Would it be worthwhile for aspiring effective altruists to download BOINC or World Community Grid to run on their computers? These are distributed computing programs that try to tackle problems that take a lot of computing power to solve. The software runs in the background on your computer and works on part of a project of your choice.
If so, would it be possible to estimate the best project to participate in? Here are the lists of projects available for BOINC and World Community Grid. At first glance, the project Malariacontrol.net looks most closely related to any promising cause that has been identified in the EA community, as one of their objectives is to “optimize deployment of established interventions and integrated strategies” for malaria (full description).
Christian raises a good point. Still, though, we could ask how much money does this sort of thing really use? Well, Gwern is a man who will analyze something to death if he feels like it, and he disparaged SETI@home from the perspective of effective altruism. That’s as close to a full answer as I know of. I don’t know how Malariacontrol.net compares. I figure it would be worth doing a whole new cost-benefit analysis for Malariacontrol.net by plugging in the numbers to calculate new rates using Gwern’s original formula(s).
Would it be worthwhile for aspiring effective altruists to download BOINC or World Community Grid to run on their computers? These are distributed computing programs that try to tackle problems that take a lot of computing power to solve. The software runs in the background on your computer and works on part of a project of your choice.
If so, would it be possible to estimate the best project to participate in? Here are the lists of projects available for BOINC and World Community Grid. At first glance, the project Malariacontrol.net looks most closely related to any promising cause that has been identified in the EA community, as one of their objectives is to “optimize deployment of established interventions and integrated strategies” for malaria (full description).
Christian raises a good point. Still, though, we could ask how much money does this sort of thing really use? Well, Gwern is a man who will analyze something to death if he feels like it, and he disparaged SETI@home from the perspective of effective altruism. That’s as close to a full answer as I know of. I don’t know how Malariacontrol.net compares. I figure it would be worth doing a whole new cost-benefit analysis for Malariacontrol.net by plugging in the numbers to calculate new rates using Gwern’s original formula(s).
Running your computer at full power costs you electricity. That costs money that you could also donate directly to a cause.