A post announcing the Future Fund’s AI Worldview Prize, with prizes ranging from $15k to $1.5M for work that informs the Future Fund’s fundamental assumptions about the future of AI
The Future of Life Institute has a request for proposals targeting research on the humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons use and nuclear war, initial deadline 15th November. They are planning on granting at least $3,000,000
Big Think has an issue focused on progress, including contributions from Tyler Cowen, Hannah Ritchie, Jason Crawford, Saloni Dattani and Rutger Bregman
Monthly Overload of EA—October 2022
Link post for 2022 October EA Updates.
Top Posts
Holden Karnofsky—EA is about maximization, and maximization is perilous
Eli Lifland—My take on What We Owe the Future
A post announcing the Future Fund’s AI Worldview Prize, with prizes ranging from $15k to $1.5M for work that informs the Future Fund’s fundamental assumptions about the future of AI
A highly upvoted post on the forum red teaming CEA’s community building work
Sawyer—EA is too reliant on personal connections
Announcing EA Pulse, large monthly US surveys on EA
Vadim Albinsky—Does Economic Growth Meaningfully Improve Well-being? An Optimistic Re-Analysis of Easterlin’s Research
Eleos Arete Citrini—Switzerland fails to ban factory farming—lessons for the pursuit of EA-inspired policies?
Upcoming Events
Global
September to December—Prague Fall Season
21st-23rd October—EAGx Virtual—Apply by October 19th
November to January—Mexico EA Fellowship
4th-6th November—EAGxRotterdam—Admissions close 23rd October
24th-26th November—Eastern Europe Community Building Retreat
2nd-4th December—EAGxBerkeley
7th-8th January—EAGxLatinAmerica
Virtual
6th October—What’s the most effective way to help as many animals as possible?, Talk by Charity Entrepreneurship
9th October—Giving What We Can Meetup
October/November—High Impact Medicine Fellowship, Apply by 9th October
EA Virtual Programmes
The Precipice Reading Group
Intro to EA
In-Depth EA Program
29th October—Intro Course to EA for Christians
Meta
David Manheim—“Doing Good Best” isn’t the EA ideal
Luke Freeman—We’re still (extremely) funding constrained (but don’t let fear of getting funding stop you trying).
Nathan Young—Summaries are underrated
Giving What We Can—Marketing Messages Trial for GWWC Giving Guide Campaign
Sam Freedman—The Politics of Effective Altruism
Jehan—Chesterton Fences and EA’s X-risks
Ronja—EA for people with non-technical skillsets
Rudolf—Much EA value comes from being a Schelling point
Akash − 13 background claims about EA
Sabrina C—Young EAs should choose projects more carefully
Richard Ren—What is neglectedness, actually?
Jordan Arel—Why Wasting EA Money is Bad
Vaidehi Agarwalla—Sprinting & Marathoning: Two Strategies for Volunteering your Time
Thomas Kwa—EA forum content might be declining in quality. Here are some possible mechanisms
Jeremiah Johnson asking why EA isn’t spending more effort on influencing individual donations
Chana Messinger
Scattered Takes and Unsolicited Advice
Advice I Give to People Who Don’t Currently Have an EA Job and are thinking of transitioning
Evie Cottrell—“Agency” needs nuance
High Impact Professionals
Fundraising Campaigns at Your Organization: A Reliable Path to Counterfactual Impact
Key Factors for Success in Organizing a Fundraising Campaign at Your Company
If you’re interested in seeing what a campaign could look like at your organisation, you can contact federico@highimpactprofessionals.org
New Projects
Research in Effective Altruism and Political Science aims to create a community of researchers interested in governance, politics and EA
Asterix are sending out their first quarterly EA inspired magazine soon, sign up here
Rachel Norman—Announcing the Rethink Priorities Special Projects Program
High-Impact Psychology are piloting a global network for psychologists
Effective Developers aims to help software developers and people running software projects in the EA community
The Tarbell Fellowship—A one year programme for early-career journalists intent on improving the world − 9th October
Pineapple Operations has expanded to include anyone interested in operations work in EA
Céline Galletti and Camille Fayet have launched Better Matters, a student magazine based on effective altruism
There are new sub forums on the EA forum for bioethics and software engineering
Carson Ezell, Madeleine Chang and Olaf Willner—Announcing the Space Futures Initiative
Luca Parodi introducing School of Thinking, an English and Italian media startup
There is an effective jobs board that you can vote on, set up by Nathan Young
CEA Ops is now Effective Ventures—a federation of organisations and projects working to have a large positive impact in the world
Sofia Fogel—Announcing the NYU Mind, Ethics, and Policy Program
Quantified Intuitions: An epistemics training website including a new EA-themed calibration app
Movement building
A post by me on the mistakes of focusing too much on student community building
Tony Senanayake with 10 reflections from an EA India retreat
80,000 Hours podcast with Kuhan Jeyapragasan on effective altruism university groups
Cold Button Issues—Smart Movements Start Academic Disciplines
Amy Labenz—CEA’s Events Team is Hiring!
Chana Messinger—Transparency for undermining the weird feelings around systematizing community building
EA Ideas Explained
Luke Muehlhauser—Reasoning Transparency
Alana Horowitz Friedman
What is counterfactual thinking and why should you care about it?
Should charity begin at home?
Critiques
Peter Wildeford − 21 criticisms of EA I’m thinking about
Ruth Grace—Evaluating large-scale movement building: A better way to critique Open Philanthropy’s criminal justice reform
Rohit—Effective Altruism is a constant fight against Knightian uncertainty
Yonatan Cale—Criticism of the 80k job board listing strategy
Thomas Aitken—The Role of “Economism” in the Belief-Formation Systems of Effective Altruism
Connor Tabarrok—EA Worries and Criticism
Akash—Criticism of EA Criticisms: Is the real disagreement about cause prio?
Francis—Prediction Markets are Somewhat Overrated Within EA
EA Global
Scott Alexander with a suggestion to make EA global open access
Dion with her closing speech at EAGx Singapore
Constance Li—Case Study of EA Global Rejection + Criticisms/Solutions
Tony Senanayake with 10 reflections from EAGx Singapore
Careers
Madhav Malhotra—Internship Lessons at the Happier Lives Institute
Hear This Idea podcast with Michael Aird on how to do impact-driven research
80,000 Hours—Should you go to law school in the US to have a high-impact career?
Gabriel Mukobi—Levelling Up in AI Safety Research Engineering
Dan Pandori—Offering FAANG-style mock interviews
Prizes
GiveWell have announced the Change Our Mind Contest for critiques of their cost-effectiveness analyses
The Truman Prize: Rewarding Anonymous EA Work ($100,000 in prizes)
$13,000 of prizes for changing our minds about who to fund (Clearer Thinking Regrants Forecasting Tournament)
$5,000 challenge to quantify the impact of 80,000 hours’ top career paths
Grants
Open Philanthropy have made 24 grants recently, with a value of $25 million
$8,000,000 - Farm Animal Welfare
$3,600,000 - Compassion in World Farming—Broiler Chicken Welfare and Efforts to End Cages and Crates
$2,500,000 - Sinergia Animal—Farm Animal Welfare in Southeast Asia and Latin America
$1,500,000 - World Animal Protection—Farm Animal Welfare in Asia
$6,800,000 - Potential Risks from Advanced AI
$4,800,000 - Center for a New American Security—Work on AI Governance
$2,000,000 - Epoch
$4,600,000 - Global Health & Development
$3,400,000 - Bridges to Prosperity—Trailbridge Building RCT in Rwanda
$1,000,000 - Center for Global Development
$4,000,000 - Transformative Basic Science
Oregon Health and Science University—Research on Oocyte Production
$550,000 - Effective Altruism Community Growth
Apollo Fellowship—Effective Altruism Debate Camp
University of Edinburgh—Effective Altruism Psychology Course
Universidad de Sevilla—Course on Effective Altruism
Peter McIntyre—Effective Altruism Community Building Projects
$400,000 - Biosecurity & Pandemic Preparedness
$400,000 - Longtermism
Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative—SERI Summer Fellowships
The Future Fund has made 14 grants in August, with a value of $6.4 million
$2,900,000 - Longview Philanthropy
$1,000,000 - Fund for Alignment Research
$800,000 - VIVID
$350,000 - University of California, Santa Cruz, Cihang Xie
$300,000 - ALLFED
$290,000 - University of Pennsylvania, Professor Geoff Goodwin
$200,000 - HR Luna Park
Global Development
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria didn’t hit its $18 billion replenishment target, although the final tally of $14.25 billion exceeded the amount raised in the last pledging cycle
Open Philanthropy have announced the winners of their cause exploration prizes
Top prize—Organophosphate pesticides and other neurotoxicants by Ben Stewart.
Second prizes
Violence against women and girls by Akhil Bansal
Sickle Cell Disease
Shareholder activism by S Behmer
Bastian Herre—The world has recently become less democratic
Charles Kenny with a post suggesting that people interested in EA should work at the Centre for Global Development
GiveWell—The Maximum Impact Fund is now the Top Charities Fund
Leo—Assessing Cost Effectiveness: malnutrition, famine, and cause prioritization
Rosie Bettle—How Founders Pledge use (and sometimes don’t use) DALYs
The Gates Foundation with an update on the Sustainable Development Goals
India develops its first cervical cancer vaccine
Yonatan Cale—Zzapp Malaria: More effective than bed nets? (Wanted: CTO, COO & Funding)
Joel Tan—Value of Statistical Life Estimates vs Community Perspective Evaluations
Animal Welfare
Kenny Torrella looking at the history and future of animal product consumption
An Evaluation of Animal Charity Evaluators
80,000 Hours podcast with Andrés Jiménez Zorrilla on the Shrimp Welfare Project
Sofia Balderson with the September edition of Impactful Animal Advocacy Newsletter
Max Carpendale—Pathways to victory: How can we end animal agriculture?
Animal Ask and Ren Springlea—CCTV cameras in slaughterhouses: Modest benefits for animal welfare
GWWC podcast with Neil Dullaghan on using research & strategic thinking to help animals effectively
Animal Advocacy Careers—The impact we achieved to date
Alternative Proteins
Fai—Could it be a (bad) lock-in to replace factory farming with alternative protein?
Seren L. Kell—How researchers can join the race to develop new ways of making meat
The UK’s Ivy Farm has opened the largest cultivated meat pilot plant in Europe
Biosecurity
The World Bank has set up a new financial intermediary fund for pandemic prevention, preparedness and response to strengthen capabilities in low- and middle-income countries with over $1.4 billion in financial commitments already announced
Byron Cohen—Biosecurity challenges posed by Dual-Use Research of Concern
Hear This Idea podcast with Tessa Alexanian and Janvi Ahuja on synthetic biology and GCBRs
Andy Graham and Tsmilton—Developing Next Gen PPE to Reduce Biorisks
Open Philanthropy Biosecurity Scholarships—Apply by 11th October
Existential & Catastrophic Risks
Kelsey Piper—How to stop rolling the dice on the destruction of human civilization
Ethan Siegel—The biggest challenges of redirecting a killer asteroid
Rani Martin—The Pugwash Conferences and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty as a case study of Track II diplomacy
James R looking at what potential fellowship schemes/secondments could look like for tackling existential threats
NASA’s DART mission hits asteroid in first planetary defense test
WHO has released a global guidance framework for the responsible use of the life sciences: mitigating biorisks and governing dual-use research
The Neoliberal podcast with Christine Parthemore discussing the risks from nuclear and biological weapons
Lingnan University has set up the Hong Kong Catastrophic Risk Centre
The Future of Life Institute has a request for proposals targeting research on the humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons use and nuclear war, initial deadline 15th November. They are planning on granting at least $3,000,000
Improving Institutions & Metascience
Sophia Brown—Improving “Improving Institutional Decision-Making”: A brief history of IIDM
Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg—Tearing down the academic research paywall could come with a price
The Foresight Institute podcast with Tom Kalil, Chief Innovation Officer at Schmidt Futures
The Center for Open Science looking at the new policy update from the White House Office of Science Technology & Policy ensuring free, immediate, and equitable access to federally funded research
Progress Studies
Big Think has an issue focused on progress, including contributions from Tyler Cowen, Hannah Ritchie, Jason Crawford, Saloni Dattani and Rutger Bregman
Jason Crawford—Towards a philosophy of safety
Environment
Hannah Ritchie—Why being an effective environmentalist can often feel like being a bad one
Turchin—A Pin and a Balloon: Anthropic Fragility Increases Chances of Runaway Global Warming
A new report analysing the environmental benefits of agricultural research and development
Vasco Grilo—Longterm cost-effectiveness of Founders Pledge’s Climate Change Fund
Cullen O’Keefe—Contra Appiah Defending Defending “Climate Villains”
Longtermism
Future Matters newsletter on Supervolcanoes, AI takeover and What We Owe the Future
Cold Button Issues—The Base Rate of Longtermism Is Bad
Julian Hazell—A more convincing case for longtermism
Thomaaas—The discount rate is not zero
Brian Kateman—Optimistic “Longtermism” Is Terrible For Animals
Dan Luu—Futurist prediction methods and accuracy
Benjamin Todd on four types of Longtermism
Garrison Lovely—The Socialist Case for Longtermism
Michael Dickens—Should Patient Philanthropists Invest Differently?
Dwarkesh Patel—Evaluation of Longtermist Institutional Reform
William Macaskill writing in the Big Think—What NASA’s Spaceguard can teach us about our uncertain future
Sigal Samuel writing for Vox about longtermism
Richard Ren—Systemic Cascading Risks: Relevance in Longtermism & Value Lock-In
AI Policy
Mauricio—AI Governance Needs Technical Work
Matthijs Maas—Artificial Intelligence Governance under Change
Haydn Belfield—The Rival AI Deployment Problem: a Pre-deployment Agreement as the least-bad response
Michaël Trazzi interviewing Shahar Avin on how to strategically regulate advanced AI systems
Technical AI
Thomas Larsen and Eli Lifland—What Everyone in Technical Alignment is Doing and Why
Janus with a post on what it would look like if self-supervised learning created AGI or its foundation
Akash − 7 traps that (we think) new alignment researchers often fall into
AI & Forecasting
David Roodman with a review of Ajeya Cotra’s Forecasting TAI with biological anchors
Eli Lifland—Samotsvety’s AI risk forecasts
Michaël Trazzi interviewing Alex Lawsen on forecasting AI progress
Other AI
Nuno Sempere—An experiment eliciting relative estimates for Open Philanthropy’s 2018 AI safety grants
Eleni A—Alignment is hard. Communicating that, might be harder
Fergus Q—Reasons for my negative feelings towards the AI risk discussion
Henry J—A California Effect for Artificial Intelligence
Mathieu Putz and Rudolf—Why we’re not founding a human-data-for-alignment org
Kat Woods & Amber Dawn—Two reasons we might be closer to solving alignment than it seems
Michaël Trazzi interviewing Katja Grace on Slowing Down AI, AI Expert Surveys And Estimating AI Risk
Philosophy
80,000 Hours podcast with Andreas Mogensen on whether effective altruism is just for consequentialists
Calvin Baker—A dilemma for Maximize Expected Choiceworthiness
Larks—The Long Reflection as the Great Stagnation
Richard Y Chappell—Puzzles for Everyone
William D’Alessandro—Deontology, the Paralysis Argument and altruistic longtermism
Will MacAskill Interviews
The Daily Show with Trevor Noah
The Atlantic
Max Roser interviewing Will MacAskill for Intelligence Squared
Stories
Eleni A—Talking EA to my philosophy friends
Carmen Csilla Medina on her experience teaching at Condor Camp, an introductory retreat to EA for Brazilian students
GWWC Podcast with Michael Noetel discussing the mistakes he made when trying to improve the world
Sam Brown—My emotional reaction to the current funding situation
Giving What We Can member profiles
Fernando Martin-Gullans—Professional ballet dancer
Rupal Ismin—Director of a research commercialisation centre at the University of Sydney
Peter Jensen—Retired U.S. Army officer
Other Links
A post reconciling the EA and Financial Independence movements
Econ Talk podcast with Erik Hoel on EA, utilitarianism and the repugnant conclusion
Charlotte—Exploring (EA) Donation Parliaments
Interview with author Rutger Bregman on effective altruism and philanthropy
Vipul Naik—Levels of donation
Julia Wise looking at moral aesthetics of EA compared to Quakers
An obituary for Peter Eckersley
Elizabeth—Impact Shares For Speculative Projects
Sam Stowers—Altruist Dreams—a collaborative art piece from EAG SF
Habiba Islam—A peek into the EA Forum if Hamilton characters wrote the posts
Good News
Measles cases declined by 92% between 2002 and 2020 in southeast Asia and the death rate decreased by 97% - saving an estimated 9.3 million lives during this period
Maternal mortality rates in Zimbabwe declined from 657 deaths per 100,000 births in 2007, to 217 per 100,000 births in 2019
Togo has become the first country to eliminate four neglected tropical diseases
Wind and solar top 10% of global power generation for the first time
Italy bans slaughter of male chicks, sparing up to 40 million birds a year
Deaths due to malaria in Tanzania have decreased by 71% from 2015 to 2021
The murder rate in El Salvador has dropped from 18.2 per day in 2015 to 3.1 per day in 2021
Equatorial Guinea abolishes death penalty