Hi! I’m a generalist on the executive office, where I work on M&E, data, and other projects. I used to work on the EA Global team at CEA, and before that I did economic consulting. I was born and raised in Hong Kong 🇭🇰.
Think I’m making a mistake? Want to give me feedback? Here’s my admonymous. You can also give feedback for me directly to my manager, Oscar Howie.
Came here to also comment, “the right way to get Toby to see things is to post on the forum” 💙 (Glad you liked the header!!)
I really enjoyed your EAG talk, and am glad you’re sharing it here! This is the first I’ve heard of the “ecologically inert” strategy, and I found it inspiring to understand how some WAW researchers tackle cluelessness head on.
I find your section on justification standards provocative in a valuable way. Thank you!
If we’re still early on in the name change process then the cost to change to a better name is basically nothing.
I think the point where the “cost to change to a better name is basically nothing” has long past, at the point where they have published a brand new set of digital assets, done journalist interviews, etc. :)
(I am expecting the new name is going to stick around!)
This is so exciting to hear about, thank you for sharing!!
Are you willing to share what your rough fundraising target is? I can’t tell if you are aiming to raise $60K, or if your room for more funding is larger than that. No worries if you don’t want to share on a public forum and would prefer potential donors reach out for more information, I understand.
Wow thank you! I’m sending this to someone I know. Appreciate it!
Something that would make this post more helpful for me: If you had to pick 1-3 resources for someone to start reading about cluelessness (say: someone who is vaguely worried about cluelessness but hasn’t invested deeply in building their own models yet / could use a refresher), where would you choose?
(No pressure of course, this is already very helpful :) )
Nice, I remembered when you first posted on the Forum about this: very cool that the project is alive still! If it felt low cost to share, I feel curious about how it’s going, but also no pressure :)
I like this as a memorable term for (some variants of) this failure mode. Thanks Toby!
Nice, really appreciate you doing this + sharing both the BLUF and the raw data :)
This feels like an interesting benchmark that other media projects in the community (within and outside of AIS) could extend upon. Thanks!
Really excited to read these essays once they roll in! :)
This is a crosspost from my new Substack Power and Priorities where I’ll be posting about power grabs, AI governance strategy, and prioritization, as well as some more general thoughts on doing useful things.
I think your link is broken btw. Should be: https://powerandpriorities.substack.com/
If you were to write a second book about GCRs, what would you focus on next?
These chapter titles are amazing!
You cover a lot of different topics within the GCR space in your book. Has the reception to any chapter surprised you?
The percentage of EAs earning to give is too low
I’m voting yes because I think more people interested in EA should seriously consider earning to give as a career path, which is much higher absorbency and (IMO) important for the health of our movement.
So I’d be interested in a world where folks learning about EA seriously consider earning to give more, and if they do so I expect the population of people EtG would increase. (I’m also with 80K here that I’d only advocate for more EtG if your job doesn’t do direct harm).
I haven’t thought hard about whether people currently working in direct impact jobs should switch over to earning to give.
I’d be interested in hearing more career stories of people who have been earning to give for a while!
I’m sorry you have been feeling worn, and am glad you are taking time away!
But on reflection, I think I confused working hard with impact, and many of these projects were not very high value. Even if they were high value, I was probably working too much to be able to think clearly and creatively about them.
I really relate to this. When I was earning to give as a consultant, I also felt this pull towards “impactful” side projects, and took up a myriad of projects on top of a busy job without really critically thinking about their impact case.
As one of her colleagues, I feel so grateful to work with Kathleen! 💜 She’s such a star—Kathleen, so glad you pivoted to come work with us!
Astonishingly good <3 <3 <3
Everything is so polished and well communicated: chef kiss! Nice work team!
Trachoma: how a common cause of blindness can be prevented worldwide—I knew very little about trachoma before working on this piece. I was very surprised by how much progress had been made against it, and also the scale of the data collection effort (eye tests of more than 2.6 million people!) - it raised my ambitions on how much was possible against neglected diseases with targeted efforts.
<3 just read the post and I found it a fun read! Man, successful public health initiatives are so great :’) Definitely one of the more inspiring things about humanity.
True, it’s cool that we have large scale data on this—nice graphs! Thanks for sharing :)
To me, the main one is figuring out a good article structure early on: what the author actually needs to explain first, how they’ll introduce and connect the different points, and so on, in a way that’s readable and logical, while also conveying their message effectively. I think people often struggle with that, and I would want to use their time more efficiently so they know what extra research to do (or what to cut down if it turns out it wasn’t necessary).
That’s really interesting, thanks! I don’t have a great idea of what editors for journals do, and it’s interesting to me that you’re involved so early in the writing journey vs receiving a mostly complete piece. Thanks for the answer!
A rule of thumb that I follow for generating data visualizations: One story = one graph
The best visualizations are extremely simple and easy to read: e.g. a line or bar chart that tells you exactly what you care about
If you are struggling to figure out what to visualize, zoom out and ask yourself: what story are you trying to tell? Once you have clarity on that, figure out the simplest way to illustrate this.
If you have multiple stories to tell, make multiple graphs :)
Some made up stories and solutions:
Total engagement hours steadily went down over this year = You want a line graph of engagement over the year, and possibly you want to smooth your data out to show the trend line: e.g. graph the rolling 7 day average over time, or include a trend line.
Engagement really spiked on May 1, 2025 = You want a line graph of engagement per day, zoomed out far enough to show how it’s changed over time, and maybe add a labelled vertical line on May 1
Engagement this giving season is much stronger than last year = You want to plot two lines: engagement per day in 2025 over giving season, plus the equivalent engagement per day in 2024. Here, the comparison is the story you want to tell, so you want to make sure your 2025 and 2024 data are apples to apples.
Sharing communication advice a few colleagues have found helpful.