Low hanging fruit and ‘quick wins’
Introduction
I’m concerned that the effective altruist movement in general is doing little work with short term gain besides donating to top charities, analysing and recommending the best charities, and movement building. These are all very important, but there is a lack of focus on ‘quick win’ projects that EAs can work towards, or if there is I am not aware of them. I would like to argue two reasons why effective altruists should focus more on analysing, selecting and achieving some short term goals or ‘quick wins’ with solid impact, and not solely on long term existential risk style projects.
Improving civilisation now so it can achieve long term goals more effectively in the future
One of the main reasons that I focus primarily on reducing poverty is that I believe a world without poverty is one that could work towards reducing catastrophic long term risks far more effectively than the world we have today. Or take climate change; in my experience, climate change is low on the list of priorities for most EAs. My understanding of this reasoning is ‘although it will be bad, it will not wipe out humanity’. But if the projections of temperature and sea level over the next century are to be believed, we will be running into a lot of pressing problems that will slow down long term research. 40% of the world’s population lives within 100 km of the coast, many of whom will be displaced as the water, salinity and storm surges encroach on their land. Rising temperatures will lead to increased droughts, reducing food yields. The actual estimates of the number of climate refugees vary greatly, which to me indicates a large uncertainty, but there is a risk that there will be many indeed.
Who will donate to a charity focussing on analysing and reducing the risk of super intelligence misuse when there are starving refugees at their nation’s doorstep, or their city is slowly going underwater? I’m not able to determine whether climate change specifically should come to the fore of EA work, but I would like to propose that there are more factors at paly than are normally considered.
Attracting a different mindset to the movement
There are a lot of different mindsets when it comes to ‘doing good’. It is quite likely that the majority of those who currently identify as effective altruists are analytically minded. It is important to have people thinking critically about which causes to focus on and which charities within those causes to donate to, but stating the facts and expecting people to act accordingly won’t always work. There are many people who intrinsically want to ‘do good’, but aren’t willing to change the cause they focus on. Rather than setting aside these people altogether, we should utilise their expertise and passion in a specific area that, while perhaps not being the most pressing cause, can still do a lot of good. These causes may even be areas where there has not been a lot of meta-analysis to determine the best charities within them. It is ideal to have people donating to the most effective charities in the most effective causes, but failing that I would prefer them to donate to the most effective charity in their selected cause (as long as it is a positive cause!) than select their own charities, as intuition is a poor guide to effectiveness.
Evidence of quick wins being achieved by EAs should also help raise the status and profile of the movement and further attract more people to effective altruism in general.
Examples of potential quick wins
One quick win I am examining now is lobbying the Australian government to run a public health campaign to reduce meat and dairy consumption, or to tax meat and dairy, or something similar. This would lead to longer lived and healthier humans, reducing the public health burden, lead to a reduction in animal suffering, and reduce environmental impacts, especially greenhouse gas emissions exacerbating climate change.
The chances of such a campaign being completely successful may be low, but the rewards would be exceptionally high, and even a failed attempt would be likely to change public perception of the issue. It wouldn’t take many EAs to focus on such a project, and they can garner support from people who are active in specific areas but aren’t necessarily EAs (for example vegans/vegetarians in this case).
Conclusion
I haven’t crunched the numbers on these concepts, they are just some ideas I’ve had and a feeling I got after the EA Global conference that there is too much focus on long term issues. I would greatly appreciate any criticisms of this argument or ideas for more quick wins. Having some EAs focus on achieving some quick win projects has the potential to add credibility and numbers to the cause in addition to any good they achieve through the quick win itself.
In terms of quick wins, I think it is notable that so far as I am aware the EA movement has not set up a single charity/cause that aims to be suitable for Givewell’s evaluation process (or for that matter the ACE evaluation process) let alone one that has passed such a process. If something is a potential “quick win” it should be much more suitable for these things than most EA meta / GCR charities. Especially, because the progress on Givewell endorsed cause areas is large (for example, malaria deaths reduced by 60% since 2000). Having a few ideas that reach such levels (perhaps through an intermediate EA version of Ycombinator) would be a big deal for those of interested in short feedback loop EA charities.
However, I am interested in such causes just because I think there is tremendous potential to improve the world in the short term. I don’t think the argument that I focus primarily on reducing poverty is that I believe a world without poverty is one that could work towards reducing catastrophic long term risks far more effectively than the world we have today. Is very convincing and I think that people who do focus on long term risks tend to agree with me!
Evidence Action has a new ‘beta’ initiative to launch new interventions. Evidence Action seems well suited for creating new programs since they have the experience and infrastructure already in place. They have an evidence and cost-effectiveness mindset that seems closely aligned with the EA movement.
Agree. Also I think setting up a new GiveWell recommended charity is pretty hard. More discussion here: http://effective-altruism.com/ea/ib/request_for_feedback_researching_global_poverty/ Also see my comment.
I agree with the general gist of this piece, but I would strike a note of caution about the idea of “Improving civilisation now so it can achieve long term goals more effectively in the future.” If our goal is to achieve long term goals and to change society in the way most likely to achieve them, then we can’t simply improve society or reduce poverty—we need to ask ourselves exactly how we should improve society or reduce poverty to improve our long-term prospects. The mere existence of flow-through effects doesn’t tell us which intervention has the best flow-through effects. For instance, I tend to favor education-focused poverty alleviation because there’s a lot of documentation of positive flow-through effects from education on everything from violence to economic prosperity. But I think flow-through effects can often mask convenient thinking.
Not only quick wins important because they cause the good thing to happen earlier, but it can also be a step in the right direction for long-term systemic change like your example with the Australian government promoting meat reduction. I think meat reduction is a top priority but lately I’ve been thinking of putting my donations toward something that seems to have the biggest medium-term payoff: reducing pesticide-related suicides in the developing world. It causes hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of acute illnesses a year, and it is very easy to make progress on (ie. by banning the most toxic pesticides, and having better controls for pesticides like centralized storage). Maybe in a few years, I’ll go back to meat reduction once more progress is made on pesticide poisoning but right now, it’s so neglected and easy to make progress on through lobbying governments that I feel I cannot justify funding anything else!
Edit: I want to address a few myths about suicide.
People who commit suicide want to die.
This is rarely the case. Most suicides in the world are done by impulsivity during a time of severe stress, not because the person has made a clear-headed decision to die. Or it is a call for attention. The attempter usually calls 911 after their attempt or cooperates with help sent for them. Studies of people who survive violent suicide attempts show that the first thought they have once they “jump” is that they want to live. Even if the person thinks he wants to die, he really wants to be out of his difficult life situation and needs help for that.
2) Reducing means of suicides won’t reduce suicides because people made their choice to kill themselves and will find other means.
Suicide is very opportunistic, particularly when done out of impulsivity. It is actually rare for someone to “decide to die by any means necessary”. People usually attempt suicide if there’s a quick an easy means to do so: a handgun in the drawer, poison (pesticide) in the cabinet. Studies have shown that making it harder to kill yourself is very effective at reducing actual and attempted suicides. For instance, some bridges get reputations for being suicide magnets. If a fence is put up making it impossible to jump, you’d think that people would just jump off other bridges, but actually usually they don’t. Sri Lanka used to have the world’s highest suicide rate. They banned the most toxic pesticide(s) and overnight their suicide rate was cut in half, even factoring in that people would use other pesticides instead! Even Britain had a big fall in suicides after banning the most toxic pesticides.
3) Suicides “made their choice” so don’t deserve funds that could go to helping people who are innocent.
By this reasoning, we shouldn’t treat people who engage in risky activities, or knowingly unhealthy habits like smoking or overeating. Smokers and fat people “make their choice” a few times a day for decades whereas it could be a few seconds of weakness in the case of a suicide. Also, there are 3 million hospital admissions a year in developing nations for deliberate pesticide ingestion and that takes up a lot of resources that could be used for other sick people.
Treating deeper causes of suicides like depression and unemployment are also important, of course, but they are much, much harder and less cost effective than passing a few laws regulating pesticides and saving tens of thousands of people a year right away (not including non-fatal acute poisoning which is bad in itself). Also, a those bereaved by the death of a loved one through suicide are much more traumatized than if they died another way. They will be traumatized for life. I think it’s important to first capture the low hanging fruit.
I applaud your goal of preventing painful suicide attempts, but I think your approach is wrong-headed. If you ban pesticides, there will still be other bad methods available, e.g. CO poisoning.
My suggestion would be to make pentobarbital available to everybody who wants to die, perhaps with a short waiting period so they are forced to think it through. But of course, that’s not politically feasible.
Your approach of banning and restricting doesn’t actually add value to anybody’s life. It doesn’t make their lives better. It doesn’t fix the reasons they want to die in the first place. It doesn’t even pay their rent or put food on the table. It doesn’t even remove painful suicide attempts from the demographic.
I would go so far to say that doing nothing is actually better than this naive paternalism. But that may be too harsh. Even so, it certainly doesn’t beat GiveDirectly. At least they add actual value to people’s lives (other than the paid lobbyists, that is).
(No personal offense intended in this post)
what is the pesticide initiative and what’s the link between it and suicide please? Thanks!
Pesticides are the most common method of suicide in the world. Michael Eddelson at the University of Edinburgh appears to be the world leader in terms of mitigation research on this topic from what I gather so far.
I can’t find any charities that work on this topic except for the International Association of Suicide Prevention, but I think IASP may be research-focused and not as big on advocacy. I’m waiting to hear back from them, I could be wrong. There are a few pesticide-reduction charities like Pesticide Action Network, but they seem to be focused on banning the most environmentally-harmful pesticides, although I’m sure there’s an overlap there. I’ll get back to you once I have more information.
Further information: WHO: Pesticides are a leading suicide method International Journal of Epidemiology article on pesticide self harm International Association of Suicide Prevention Pesticide Poisoning page
Soz, read the links. There are some great efforts underway that look fundable.
“Several approaches have been proposed to reduce mortality from pesticide self-poisoning including restricting access to means through regulation; conversion to less toxic pesticides; development of single-use packaging; safe storage of pesticides; agricultural strategies and work with pesticide vendors; improving medical management; and communication and training initiatives. A number of projects are now underway to assess the effectiveness of a range of interventions aimed at reducing pesticide self-poisoning in China, India and Sri Lanka.”
Making suicide more inconvenient is certainly an effective goal. Gas ovens and over the counter pain killer restrictions was time-series consistent with an over 50% reduction in the suicide rate (its a compelling graph but not publicly available—UK government back-waters).
The issue is though, how do you make it really annoying to kill yourself from pesticides without getting rid of the benefits of pesticides?
There are many pesticides that are cheap and effective AND non-toxic. Thus, simply banning the toxic pesticides is the solution. It doesn’t affect crop yields.
Let me know where you get to with it, very interesting proposal!
FYI, gas ovens are no longer effective ways to kill yourself. Gas costs less and is much lower greenhouse gas emissions than electric resistance, though there are concerns with indoor air quality.
One win that might be quite quick because society is already aligned to it to a large extent—ban some forms of advertising for junk food. http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/economic_studies/how_the_world_could_better_fight_obesity
I like the idea of quick wins, and especially because it would be likely to get more media attention to the EA movement. I think we should approach quick wins specifically from the perspective of something that can gain media attention, and thus help awareness of the movement, which would attract more people and thus improve civilization in the long run.
“I don’t think the argument that I focus primarily on reducing poverty is that I believe a world without poverty is one that could work towards reducing catastrophic long term risks far more effectively than the world we have today. Is very convincing and I think that people who do focus on long term risks tend to agree with me!”
The comments in this post address this issue in part: http://effective-altruism.com/ea/oh/what_is_the_expected_effect_of_poverty/