Jennifer-Justine Kirsch, Tom Billington and Haven King-Nobles from Fish Welfare Initiative have formed a partnership with Gramodaya Trust to expand higher welfare production methods to at least 50 new farms per year
Existential & Catastrophic Risks
Nuclear Weapons is a new resource hub for people who want to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons
EA Updates for February 2021
Upcoming Virtual Events
2nd February—EA Consultants Coffee Chat—Join the Facebook group to find out more details
4th February—Charity Entrepreneurship Q&A with Joey Savoie
7th February—Giving What We Can Meetup—With guest Michelle Hutchinson, Head of Advising at 80,000 Hours
13th February—Climate Change Icebreakers—Organised by Effective Environmentalism
17th February—Effective Giving Open Forum with GWWC
20th February—Introductory EA Fellowship—Applications close 7th February
20th February—Legal Topics in Effective Altruism—Virtual reading group running until 10th April
20-21st March—EA Global: Reconnect—Virtual conference, applications open mid February
26-28th March—EA Fellowship Weekend
29-31st October—EA Global: London 2021
Meta
Joey Savoie and Vaidehi Agarwalla with a post on what they think are the top 3 charity ideas in the EA meta space
The EA Consulting Network has set up a newsletter for consultants interested in effective altruism
80,000 Hours podcast with Ajeya Cotra on worldview diversification and how big the future could be
An update from the Centre for Effective Altruism on their work in the fourth quarter of 2020
CEA with an overview of areas they are not focusing on
Founders Pledge with an overview of their research in 2020
Michelle Hutchinson looking at possible gaps in the EA community
There is a new calendar for virtual EA related events around the world
CEA’s strategy for 2021
Shay Ben Moshe has written up their career decision making process to help others making similar choices
A post looking at how effective altruism was promoted at a large tech company
The EA Forum now has a page for new users to help them get more involved
Fabienne with a post asking ‘Can I have impact if I’m average?’
The 10 most viewed posts on the EA Forum in 2020
An Ask Me Anything with Ajeya Cotra, researcher at Open Philanthropy
Eli Nathan with thoughts on on operations careers at effective altruism related organisations
People are coordinating on Project for Awesome to raise funds for potentially impactful charities
EA organisation updates for December 2020
Open Philanthropy on their approach to recruiting a strong team
Richard Ngo with the post “Lessons from my time in Effective Altruism”
Michelle Hutchinson with a post looking at training bottlenecks in EA
Arden Kohler with a critical summary of Meacham’s “Person-Affecting Views and Saturating Counterpart Relations”
Jack Malde looking at which concepts are important to know when deciding between causes
Grants
Open Phil have made 18 grants recently with a total value of $22,620,000
$15,900,000 - Scientific research
$5,500,000 - Atherosclerosis and Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension Therapy
$5,300,000 - Strep A Vaccine
$2,500,000 - In Vitro Fertilization Research
$2,000,000 - COVID-19 Testing Platform
$2,390,000 - GiveWell — General Support
$1,356,000 - Farm animal welfare
$1,228,000 - Compassion in World Farming — Farm Animal Welfare in Asia
$1,000,000 - International Refugee Assistance Project
$780,000 - Biosecurity and Pandemic Preparedness
$695,000 - Criminal Justice Reform
$500,000 - Land Use Reform
The Global Fund signed 157 grants for a total of $8,540,000,000 for HIV, TB and malaria programs and to strengthen systems for health
Global Development
A case study on the intersection of U.S. foreign aid and EA
The African Continental Free Trade Area has opened aiming to bring together 1.3 billion people in a $3.4 trillion economic bloc
Africa Insiders with an overview of upcoming elections this year
Founders Pledge with a podcast on “Solving problems for small businesses in Africa with Daniel Yu, Founder & Global CEO of Sokowatch”
Devex with a report on a new white paper outlining China’s development past and future
Care International looking at which humanitarian crises were most ignored in 2020
Derek Foster on improving preference-based health metrics
A post asking if foreign aid is effective
Exemplars in Global Health looking at how Ethiopia decreased their under-five mortality rate by 56 percent in 15 years
Coverage of the work by Sella Nevo and Google AI to improve global flood forecasting
Animal Welfare
The Effective Animal Advocacy community have a new updated community directory
Ville Sokk has created a new online calculator to look at how consumption of different animals affects climate change and animal welfare
Animal Advocacy Careers with an overview of their effective animal advocacy bottlenecks surveys
Richard Parr with a post on how the ‘veggie burger ban’ was defeated
Jennifer-Justine Kirsch, Tom Billington and Haven King-Nobles from Fish Welfare Initiative have formed a partnership with Gramodaya Trust to expand higher welfare production methods to at least 50 new farms per year
Existential & Catastrophic Risks
Nuclear Weapons is a new resource hub for people who want to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons
The World Economic Forum with global risks for 2021
The Future of Life Institute have a podcast with Beatrice Fihn on the total elimination of nuclear weapons
Toby Ord has a section on existential risks in the UN’s Human Development Report 2020 (Page 120)
EA Global Transcript—Noah Taylor: Developing a research agenda for bridging existential risk and peace and conflict studies
Jenny Xiao with a post looking at “International Cooperation Against Existential Risks: Insights from International Relations Theory”
Michael Andregg with a new infographic based on The Precipice
Improving Institutions
A post looking at quantifying the value of evaluations
Nuño Sempere with an overview of forecasting in 2020
An Ask Me Anything with Elizabeth Edwards-Appell, former State Representative in New Hampshire
Environment
A write up with concerns about Giving Green, with their response in the comments
EA Global Transcript—R. Daniel Bressler: Climate change deaths increase the social cost of carbon
Longtermism
Fin Moorhouse with an introduction to longtermism
The Legal Priorities Project have released their research agenda
Richard Fisher on the importance of existential hope
A podcast with Sean Carroll on consciousness, physicalism, and the history of intellectual progress
Emerging Technology
The Centre for the Governance of AI with their 2020 annual report
Jade Leung was on Matt Clifford’s Podcast looking at the history of emerging technologies
Metaculus with a forecasting tournament dedicated to predicting advances in AI
Charlotte Stix & Matthijs M. Maas with a paper looking at bridging the gap between AI researchers with near-term and long-term concerns
Toph with the post “What does it mean to become an expert in AI Hardware?”
2020 survey of artificial general Intelligence projects by the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute
Other Links
Andreas Fazekas and Nate Golden with posts on why they have taken the Giving What We Can Pledge
The 2020 Future of Life award has been bestowed upon William Foege & Viktor Zhdanov for their critical contribution to eradicating smallpox
The Qualia Research Institute with an overview of their history & 2021 strategy
Richard Ngo with a post on “Scope-sensitive ethics: capturing the core intuition motivating utilitarianism”
Peter Singer and Agata Sagan on making a moral plan for 2021
A podcast with Simon Beard on Parfit, climate change, and existential risk
Clearer Thinking with a new tool to help people achieve their goals
José Oliveira on doing the most good as an artist
Good News
Germany has approved a draft law to end mass culling of male chicks
The U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons entered into force on the 22nd of January