Aaron Gertler

Karma: 18,949

I ran the Forum for three years. I’m no longer an active moderator, but I still provide advice to the team in some cases.

I’m a Communications Officer at Open Philanthropy. Before that, I worked at CEA, on the Forum and other projects. I also started Yale’s student EA group, and I spend a few hours a month advising a small, un-Googleable private foundation that makes EA-adjacent donations.

Outside of EA, I play Magic: the Gathering on a semi-professional level and donate half my winnings (more than $50k in 2020) to charity.

Before my first job in EA, I was a tutor, a freelance writer, a tech support agent, and a music journalist. I blog, and keep a public list of my donations, at aarongertler.net.

Aaron Gertler 4 Apr 2024 11:46 UTC
9 points
3 ∶ 2
in reply to: James Herbert’s comment on: James Herbert’s Shortform
I think of EA as a broad movement, similar to environmentalism — much smaller, of course, which leads to some natural centralization in terms of e.g. the number of big conferences, but still relatively spread-out and heterogenous in terms of what people think about and work on.
Anything that spans GiveWell, MIRI, and Mercy for Animals already seems broad to me, and that’s not accounting for hundreds of university/city meetups around the world (some of which have funding, some of which don’t, and which I’m sure host people with a very wide range of views — if my time in such groups is any indication).
That’s my way of saying that SMA seems at least EA-flavored, given the people behind it and many of the causes name-checked on the website. At a glance, it seems pretty low on the “measuring impact” scale, but you could say the same of many orgs that are EA-flavored. I’d be totally unsurprised to see people go through an SMA program and end up at EA Global, or to see an SMA alumnus create a charity that Open Phil eventually funds.
(There may be some other factor you’re thinking of when you think of breadth — I could see arguments for both sides of the question!)

Aaron Gertler 1 Apr 2024 23:01 UTC
9 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Vasco Grilo’s comment on: Open Philanthropy: Our Progress in 2023 and Plans for 2024
Hi Vasco,
Thanks for asking these questions.
I work on Open Phil’s communications team. Regarding how Open Phil thinks about allocating between human and animal interventions, this comment from Emily (the one you linked in your own comment) is the best summary of our current thinking.

Aaron Gertler 16 Mar 2024 4:24 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Augustin Portier’s comment on: Recovering from Rejection (written for the In-Depth EA Program)
I’m glad to hear you liked the piece! Best of luck with everything.

Aaron Gertler 7 Feb 2024 0:07 UTC
10 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Rounding Up Effectively at Supermarkets
When I started Yale’s student EA group in 2014, we tried a bit of this (albeit with pharmacies, not grocery stores). IIRC, we got as far as a meeting with CVS’s head of corporate social responsibility (CSR), plus a few other conversations.
The companies we spoke to were choosing large, well-known charities. This was partly because of their branding (easier to pick up positive associations from charities people have actually heard of), partly because big charities tend to have highly appealing missions (e.g. St. Jude’s, which has used its “free care for children with cancer” pitch to become America’s fourth-largest charity), and partly (I’d guess) because the charities were easy to work with thanks to their size and staff capacity.
I also suspect, from these and other CSR-related interactions I’ve had, that changing a charity choice is hard once it’s been made. The professionals I meet tend to form relationships with the charities and staffers they work with, and it’s hard to tell someone you’ve fired them for a more effective charity (forgive the link, it was too easy a joke to make).

Aaron Gertler 18 Jan 2024 20:47 UTC
5 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Vasco Grilo’s comment on: New positions on Open Philanthropy’s Cause Prioritization team (Global Health and Wellbeing)
We don’t currently have concrete plans for this, but it’s something we might consider doing in the future; if we do, we’ll post about it on the Forum.

Aaron Gertler 21 Dec 2023 10:15 UTC
6 points
2 ∶ 0
on: Writing about my (old) job: Fisheries scientist in government
I love that we’re still seeing new “writing about my job” (WAMJ?) posts 2.5 years after the initial post, especially for jobs like this one that are on the obscure side (and thus unlikely to be covered by 80,000 Hours, Probably Good, or other career-focused resources).
Thanks for taking the time to share this!

Aaron Gertler 20 Dec 2023 17:12 UTC
8 points
3 ∶ 0
in reply to: NickLaing’s comment on: Suggestions for Individual Donors from Open Philanthropy Staff – 2023
I’m an OP staffer who helped to put the post together. Thanks for the nitpicks!
I suppose I’m asking what’s the benefit of this format over individual recommendations?
I see the main benefit as convenience. If I’d asked OP staff to write individual Forum posts, I’d have gotten less interest than I did with “send me a few sentences and you can be part of a larger post”. Writing an entire post is a bigger hurdle, and I think some people would feel weird writing a post just a few sentences long (even if the alternative was “no post”).
Why should I put any more weight on a recommendation from an OpenPhil staff rather than any other EA person who had thought a lot about this?
I don’t necessarily think you should.
But I personally put at least moderate weight on recommendations from people in research roles who’ve thought a lot about an issue, inside or outside of OP. (I like the GiveWell “where our people give” posts for the same reason!) I wish we had more charity recommendations from such people. And at OP, we’ve heard from enough people who find these posts valuable that we thought it was worth putting another one together.

Aaron Gertler 13 Dec 2023 17:52 UTC
36 points
7 ∶ 0
in reply to: Robi Rahman’s comment on: Nonlinear’s Evidence: Debunking False and Misleading Claims
The Glassdoor numbers are outdated. We share salary information in our job postings; you can see examples here ($84K/year plus a $12k 401k contribution for an Operations Assistant) and here (a variety of roles, almost all of which start at $100k or more per year — search “compensation:” to see details).

Aaron Gertler 3 Nov 2023 9:55 UTC
5 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Anyone tried to monetize a hobby with the intent of ETG?
Depends on the hobby and how good you are. Some things are relatively easy to monetize (you can teach lessons or do live performances), but even in those cases, you’ll be competing with people who do your “hobby” as their job, and you’re probably better off doing more of whatever your job is (working extra hours, freelancing...).
The thing I do is play games in tournaments, which is less common that streaming/gigging/etc., so this analysis may be of limited value, but: I’ve made something like $75,000 playing Magic: the Gathering and Storybook Brawl over the last four years (donating ~80% of that), but it took thousands of hours to do so, and a few unlucky turns of a card could have cost me most of the money. And I’m in the top 0.01% among people who try to play those games seriously in terms of success; many people roughly as good as me have put in more time to earn less.

Aaron Gertler 18 Oct 2023 22:02 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Lizka’s comment on: AMA: Six Open Philanthropy staffers discuss OP’s new GCR hiring round
Thanks! I’ve added a direct link to the roles now, to reduce potential confusion.

Aaron Gertler 5 Oct 2023 22:50 UTC

2 points

0 ∶ 0

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Aaron Gertler 5 Oct 2023 22:44 UTC
10 points
3 ∶ 0
on: Should you leave bad reviews on low quality vegan restaurants?
I’m not sure how many stars you should leave, but I think there are ways to write a review that successfully convey both of:
1. This restaurant wasn’t very good
2. Vegan food is great and you should eat it
A very brief sketch of a review for a mediocre vegan restaurant:
“I was happy to find a vegan restaurant in AREA, and I thought it was cool they offered DISH. So I ordered that, as well as OTHER DISHES. Unfortunately, the food wasn’t great; I thought OKAY DISH was fine, but BAD DISHES had problems; DESCRIPTION OF PROBLEMS. The service was fine, ETC., ETC.
There are some much better vegan restaurants I’d recommend that aren’t too far from here; the DISH at RESTAURANT 1 is to die for, and RESTAURANT 2 has a great atmosphere for lunch dates. As for this restaurant, I’m giving two stars for food, three for service, and five for “not hurting animals”, since that’s a real advantage to this place over non-vegan options. I’ll average that to a three, but would still recommend the other vegan places I mentioned.”

Aaron Gertler 26 Sep 2023 11:31 UTC
39 points
8 ∶ 0
on: My life would be much harder without the Community Health Team. I think yours might too.
I really liked this post and agree with much of it.
I ran the Forum for a while. This involved handling interpersonal conflict. At worst, the conflicts on my plate were things like “an argument between two people” or “someone having a mild breakdown in text form”. These are relatively minor issues on the CH scale, but they were among the most stressful elements of my job; I’d get lost for hours trying to write the perfect moderator response, or arguing with someone in DMs about how I’d resolved a situation.
I’d find dealing with CH situations much more stressful — because of their severity, and because I wouldn’t even get to write a moderator response. I thrive on being able to explain myself, and forced silence/vagueness would drive me crazy. Instead of “using quotes from a public post to describe why we’ve banned someone for a week”, I’d have “using my best judgment about a story with multiple sides to explain why we’ve made a decision that will have a serious impact on the lives of multiple people, at least one of whom will be unhappy with the decision and possibly share their side on the Forum later”. And I might not even be able to say what the decision was!
So while I don’t know enough about internal CH matters to say that I’d agree with all their decisions, I appreciate that having to make those decisions at all — and face public scrutiny without recourse to transparency — is extremely difficult, and that there is no way to “win” every such decision.

Aaron Gertler 20 Sep 2023 0:27 UTC
3 points
2 ∶ 0
on: Mistakes, flukes, and good calls I made in my multiple careers
In retrospect it is crazy that I updated so much on only four rejections!
Does giving up after two rejections make me twice as crazy?
(I love the “mistake” vs. “fluke” distinction, and wish I’d thought to use it in my own essay.)

Aaron Gertler 20 Sep 2023 0:22 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Writing About My Job(s): Research Assistant at World Bank / IMF
This is an excellent post!
I really like seeing profiles of jobs that are closer to being “entry-level” for classic EA-flavored career tracks, to give people a better sense of what they’ll be doing early on (it’s common for other things, like the 80K podcast or EAG talks, to be focused on work from more senior people).

Aaron Gertler 19 Sep 2023 19:21 UTC
5 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Say sorry to the people who you (accidentally) ghosted at EAG
Upvoted for pointing out that replying to people is a nice thing to do.
But I disagree with “norm” — I prefer the framing “this is an especially nice thing to do”, where “norm” feels more like “you’ve done something a bit wrong by failing to do this”. (How people ;interpret the term will vary, of course, it’s possible you meant the former.)

Aaron Gertler 19 Sep 2023 19:18 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Linch’s comment on: Say sorry to the people who you (accidentally) ghosted at EAG
I am roughly as high-profile as Linch (if we use Forum karma as a proxy, and why wouldn’t we?). Everything he says here also fits how I engage with EAG messages.

Aaron Gertler 19 Sep 2023 19:12 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Vaidehi Agarwalla’s comment on: vaidehi_agarwalla’s Shortform
I also try not to use “EA” as a noun. Alternatives I’ve used in different places:
- “People in EA” (not much better, but hits the amorphous group of “community members plus other people who engage in some way” without claiming that they’d all use a particular label)
- “People practicing EA” (for people who are actually taking clear actions)
- “Community members”
- “People” (for example, I think that posts like “things EAs [should/shouldn’t] do” are better as “things people [should/shouldn’t] do” — we aren’t some different species, we are just people with feelings and goals)

Aaron Gertler 13 Sep 2023 4:13 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Jens Aslaug’s comment on: You Should Write a Forum Bio
Welcome to the Forum!

Aaron Gertler 8 Sep 2023 19:25 UTC
23 points
8 ∶ 2
in reply to: pinkfrog’s comment on: A quick update from Nonlinear
Speaking as an advisor to the mod team who ran this past some active mods:
This isn’t something we’d issue a warning for in this context (describing a third party’s actions in a way that doesn’t seem aggressive or dismissive). In the context of a direct attack (e.g. “why are you bitching to us about something that doesn’t matter?”), it could make a comment seem more aggressive and might (weakly) push us toward more substantial action.
*****
Taking my advisor hat off, I generally prefer for the Forum to be less coarse, and I do see “bitching” as gendered (similar to e.g. “pussy”), so on balance I’d rather see “complaining”.
This is relatively minor in the grand scheme of my personal preferences for Forum comments, but I recognize that other people might (justifiably!) be more offended by the word than I am. As a cis male, I’ve seldom been accused of “bitching” about things; I’d guess that certain other Forum users aren’t so lucky.