EA Updates for October 2019

UPDATES

• The Research on Research Institute has launched, an international consortium of funders, academics and technologists working to champion transformative research on research

• Stefano DellaVigna and Eva Vivalt have created a new website that allows people to make predictions about social science research results

• Open Philanthropy Project looking at the feasibility of long range forecasting

• Ozzie Gooen with a new open-source prediction registry

• Gregory Lewis writing about the limitations of using data whilst problem solving and the danger of ‘EA exceptionalism’

• A summary of criticisms of the important, tractable, neglected framework, that is often used to support cause areas related to EA

• A summary of what randomisation can and can’t do in international development

• LSE Impact blog on how complex social problems have made the author question the use of data in driving impact

• The Center for Global Development on how access to ID can help achieve the sustainable development goals

• The World Health Organisation has pushed back by a decade the target date for Guinea worm parasite eradication to 2030

• Catherine Hollander looking at how Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer influenced the work done by GiveWell

• J-PAL with an overview of ‘Teaching at the Right Level’ which has improved learning opportunities for over 60 million students in India and Africa

• A post suggesting that investments in global trade may be an impactful intervention

• GiveDirectly with a blog post on why one village refused their funds twice before accepting

• The Institute of Health Metric Evaluation on how precision mapping can help reduce child mortality

• Saulius Šimčikas with a comprehensive overview of effective animal advocacy resources

• Tom Billington and Haven King-Nobles introducing their new charity Fish Welfare Initiative

• Lewis Bollard on why meat is so cheap

• Behavioural Insights Team on how sticky national diets are

• Caroline V. Olsson and Gustav Alexandrie have won the inaugural undergraduate thesis prize for global priorities research for their thesis ‘An empirical analysis of income and animal farming’

• CGD looking at how cost effective the different Green Climate Fund projects have been

• Clean Air Task Force on how Nigeria has cut flaring during gas extraction by 70%,equivalent to taking 15 million cars off the road

• Ben Dixon with a post looking at effective CSR and climate change

• The Centre for Homelessness Impact on what works in tackling homelessness

• The Innovation Growth Lab have launched a database with randomised controlled trials in the field of innovation, entrepreneurship and growth

• Nesta have created arXlive, an open source platform for live monitoring of innovation activity in arXiv pre-prints

• Ben Clifford has set up Tyve, which is a software platform that empowers employees to give tax-free through their paycheck to causes they care about

• Luke Muehlhauser with notes on ‘Atomic Obsession’, looking at whether the dangers of nuclear weapons have been exaggerated

• A look at drug resistant infections, which, without intervention, could kill more people than cancer by 2050

• How China is combining art and science to improve disaster risk reduction

• A law perspective on why AI research needs responsible publication norms

• Richard Ngo with a list of 30 technical AGI safety research questions that require expertise outside of AI

• Aaron Gertler with a list of EA related newsletters that might be worth subscribing to (I’ve added a few myself in a comment)

• The Women and Non-Binary Altruism Mentorship network has been set up to connect and support through mentorship a global network interested in effective altruism

• Simon Beard writing on the problem with trolley problems

• Helen Toner talking about building organisations, aimed at anyone who might want to found a nonprofit, found a company or lead a team

• Lynette Bye with a post on how to improve your sleep

• Ceri Price and Natalie Podd have created a trivia board game that helps people improve their use of confidence intervals

• Benjamin Todd on how useful long-term career plans are

• 80,000 Hours with anonymous answers about ‘What’s good career advice you wouldn’t want to have your name on?’ and ‘How have you seen talented people fail in their work?’

ORGANISATION UPDATES

• GiveDirectly with 10 things they got right and wrong over the last decade

• The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk with a six months update

• Happier Lives Institute with a strategy update after the Charity Entrepreneurship incubation program

• Giving What We Can has now updated the ‘My Giving’ dashboard to include recurring donations

• 80,000 Hours with an update to their guide to using your career to help solve the world’s most pressing problems

• Animal Charity Evaluators with an update to the way they evaluate charities

• Innovation for Poverty Action with their annual report

GRANTS

• Open Phil have made 22 grants recently with a total value of $32,439,000. With $19,500,000 for the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, $5,775,000 on Global Development, $4,414,000 on farm animal welfare and $2,750,00 on criminal justice reform

• The Global Innovation Fund have given $2,100,000 to GiveDirectly, focused on refugees in Uganda and $225,000 to No Means No Worldwide

• The Long Term Future Fund with their August 2019 grants with $439,000 going to 13 projects

• The Department for International Development is putting £220,000,000 into fighting neglected tropical diseases, making them the second largest donor in this area

• DIFD have also announced they will grant £600,000,000 over 5 years to provide millions of women access to family planning

• The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk have secured a five year grant from the Isaac Newton Trust allowing them to expand their research programmes

RESEARCH

• A paper on ‘The Psychology of Existential Risk’ by Stefan Schubert, Lucius Caviola & Nadira S. Faber

• ‘An upper bound for the background rate of human extinction’ by Andrew E. Snyder-Beattie, Toby Ord & Michael B. Bonsall

• Global Preparedness Monitoring Board with it’s first report on country preparedness against epidemics and pandemics

• Initial findings on “what works” in evidence based policy from 75+ randomised controlled trials

• The Behavioural Insights Team with a report on how to apply behavioural insights to business policy

• An economics paper that suggests the majority of workplace wellness programs have minimal impact

• Sanjay Joshi with research into what extent study participants care about people in the far future

• Alex Hill and Jaime Sevilla with a post attempting to understand the role of moral philosophy in moral progress

• John Halstead looking at problems with the important, tractable, neglected framework and why marginal cost-effectiveness may be a better framework for prioritising causes

• Michael Plant also with a post looking at cause prioritisation frameworks prompted by the above post by John Halstead

• Hauke Hillebrandt comparing the effectiveness of climate change and global development interventions

VOX

• Why industrial heat may be one of the most neglected areas for reducing carbon emissions despite being a bigger contributor than all cars and planes combined

• Are we winning the war on malaria?

PODCASTS

• 80,000 Hours with Bruce Schneier on how insecure electronic voting could break the United States

• AI Alignment podcast with Stuart Russell

• China AI podcast with Eric Drexler and Jeff Ding

• Azeem Azhar talking with General Sir Richard Barrons, former Commander of the UK’s Joint Forces Command, about why the definition of warfare is changing with the development of technology

• Rhys Lindmark, from MIT Media Lab’s Digital Currency Initiative, talking about effective altruism and blockchain ethics

• Future of Life Institute podcast looking at how to feed everyone in a global catastrophe

• Not Cool episode 11 with Jakob Zscheischler on climate-driven compound weather events

• Does research translate into policy? Evidence from Brazilian municipalities

• A podcast on the three main findings after 9 years of research on government effectiveness

• Lant Pritchett talking to the Harvard EA podcast about international development and migration

• Leah Garcés, president of Mercy for Animals on working with factory farmers to help animals

• BBC world service looking at a meatless future

• Joseph Gordon-Levitt talking to Liv Boeree about effective altruism, creativity and rationality

• Lewis Williams with a podcast looking at whether we should do good effectively, and a second episode on how to do that

EFFECTIVE ALTRUISM RELATED BOOKS

• Time and the Generations is a new book about population ethics by Partha Dasgupta of CSER, synthesising the concerns and values of demographers, philosophers, and environmental scientists

• A collection of essays on 15 philosophies, including a chapter on effective altruism by Kelsey Piper

• Stuart Russell on BBC Radio 4 talking about his new book ‘Human Compatible: AI and the Problem of Control’

GOOD NEWS ROUNDUP

• The world is now wild poliovirus type 3 free and is the second strain to be eradicated worldwide. This leaves only wild poliovirus type 1 still in circulation in Pakistan and Afghanistan

• India has halved it’s poverty rate since the 1990′s

• Donors at the Global Fund’s Sixth Replenishment Conference pledged $14,200,000,000 for the next three years to help end the epidemics of AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria

• The EU has imposed hen welfare standards on egg imports for the first time in a trade agreement with Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay

• Information is Beautiful have daily data visualisations on improving trends around the world