Community Organiser for EA UK
Organiser for EA Finance
DavidNash
Karma: 4,378
“Why does GWWC continue to do charity evaluation research?”
I think it could be useful to have more than one organisation evaluating interventions, rather than having all our eggs in one basket. That doesn’t mean it should be GWWC but I’m happy for there to be overlap, it will add verification to GiveWell’s recommendations as well as potentially uncovering new ones.
Slow Thoughts:
One of the easiest things would be a charity using already tested effective methods but in different locations. For example GiveDirectly works in Kenya and Uganda, but I don’t think they have projects in India and Nigeria where there are larger populations and potentially more chance to scale up and influence policy.
It may also help to have competition for the effective charities rather than just saying there is only one for each cause whether that be cash transfers, malaria, SCI.
Milk might also be the easiest thing to replace with lots of vegan milks including chocolate milk. I’ve also found it the hardest thing to go back to as cows milk begins to always smell like it’s gone off.
Do you have any examples of evidence based policies that dont annoy people?
If you can make an organisation that deals with billions of dollars 1% more effective, I think that could have a similar outcome to making an effective charity that works with millions of dollars 1% more effective.
There may be more scope for change as well if it isn’t that effective to begin with.
Also getting higher up an organisation will lead to greater opportunities to change it from within rather than always staying outside because they aren’t as efficient.
I’m not sure there is enough data here about veganism as opposed to vegetarianism to draw many conclusions. It would also be interesting to see how many vegans for ethical reasons have reverted back and compare the two growth rates of ethical vs dietary vegans.
It may be better to look at the amount of meat being bought year to year per capita to see overall trends. 50 million people eating vegetarian for one day a week will have a much larger impact then 100,000 more vegans.
Maybe, or we could compare areas with tv/radio/internet advertising/ leafletting and the resulting change in non vegan products bought in that area, which could take in a much larger data sample.
Both would be important to see what works, and maybe reaching out to companies that sell vegan products to see if they have market data could help.
I suspect that veganism is also done at the same time as organic/local/raw and other things that drain willpower and might be unhealthy and expensive and more socially awkward. You would need to tease out the different types of veganism to see the respective growth and recidivism rates.
You should definitely post this on the EA Facebook group as they probably have a larger audience and might come up with more ideas.
The Peter Singer Ted talk has a pretty good overview of why and how.
I guess to not bias the responses, rather than having to make a later comment saying what their original brainstorm brought up.
Really cool, it would be interesting to include variable time frames studied and different statistical methods to highlight how these choices can determine results.
Thanks, my plan was to keep on going with the quarters past Q5 rather than rotate through Q1-Q4 each year, but maybe if most people understand it as a yearly thing I should change it.
One reason why I’ve avoided applying is that I think having people in careers outside of EA organisations adds more weight to arguments and adds to the diversity of people supporting EA.
Wouldn’t a true givebot factor in burn out/productivity/influence, which would allow them to spend money on themselves and take breaks and live happy lives so that others could be inspired to join in as opposed to dismiss as something too hard.
What about users having 1 vote that is next to the score circle, and then 4 more when they reach the bottom of the article?
On Meetup you can get data on how many members have joined, how many members have looked at the page in the last three months and how many have said they are going to events.
I agree that the way it is presented can cause an instant dislike.
When I’ve talked about effective altruism to people that haven’t heard about it, I talk about global poverty and then also mention that there isn’t much focus on mental health in any country in the world and that we need to focus on both physical and mental health at the same time.
This usually gets a reasonable amount of agreement and I think if it is presented side by side with increasing physical health/wealth it doesn’t sound out of touch.
Maybe that means there should be more focus on personal finance and working out how to be happier on less. It could also mean people are at the beginning of the careers and it will get much easier to give 10% after pay rises. Is there a question on the EA survey about if there is a change in the percentage/amount given between years?
Also it could be that people need to push themselves smarter rather than harder. Spending an extra ten hours in the office a week might not give the same return on spending those outside of work on other activities.
Not that people can’t push themselves harder, but we need to think about what that entails.
Most of the pubs in London are happy to have families with young kids come in, and I haven’t seen anyone have their age checked despite being a young looking group.