Can I ask why you picked MSI as an example? If I take your argument seriously, is MSI the family planning charity you recommend I donate to?
anishazaveri
Karma: 168
I work at a startup designing synthetic proteins using deep learning: https://www.evozyne.com/. Even though the products my company works on are impactful, due to counterfactuality, I think my impact is through ETG.
You don’t need a bio background to work in bio-related ML. Getting a CS degree with some bio-related courses/self-study the side seems enough. Also bioinformatics != bio-ML.
As a person who was a biologist and now does ML:
My impression is EAs (especially 80k) think you will make an impact through research only if you are in the top few percent of researchers in the world. I think that is especially hard to achieve in biology (especially wet-lab biology) because:
Success in biology is incredibly resource constrained. So getting into a rich lab is key
Success in biology is much more luck-dependent than other fields. Intelligence is secondary.
Other reasons to not do biology:
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Biology postdocs/PhDs work longer and are paid lesser than CS
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Feedback cycles in biology have long time windows. This means it can take years to know your project failed. Personally, I found this incredibly demotivating but people’s tolerance for this can differ
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Option value for other jobs is worse. If you have a CS degree and decide to leave academia it’s easier to get an industry job than it’s for bio
I think a stronger case may be made for substituting fish with bivalves, though this is again anecdotal.
I second that this is a problem exacerbated by 80,000 hours. For example, I used to work in biomedical research, and 80,000 hours recommends a career path that involves getting a PhD at a top school. I did my PhD in India, which severely limits my career capital. Eventually, I decided to leave research and move to data science to ETG. To be clear, there were other factors involved and I think it’s likely that 80,000 hours is correct that it’s only worth being in academic research if you are in the top 0.1%. But it is strangely discouraging nonetheless
There is a list here where I see “Front-end web development” and “back-end web development
I’ve been in EA for 5+years and I agree this is a shocking amount of money. Even assuming that starting a blog is useful, I doubt that the incentive for someone to start a blog would be substantially different if the prize was let’s say $15,000
Interesting example of pro-GMO farmers here
How do I make cause area restricted donations?
I looked into LINK earlier this year and had the vague impression that they are not funding constrained since newer security rules during COVID have added too many barriers to attempting rescue.
Longtermists who want to donation trade against animal charities send me a message on the forum. UPDATE: Here are the ones I’ve already donated to: https://www.every.org/@anisha.zaveri
What are your thoughts on Singer’s criticism of open borders?
“But given that concerns about immigration have clearly brought about the election of Donald Trump, the Brexit vote, and the election of right-wing governments in Hungary and Poland, I think that the moral imperative is not to have open borders.”
What are concrete ways for EAs to support increased immigration in rich countries?
I found a possible error in CSS6. On page 91 you say:
Buttigieg supports increased taxes on the wealthy, which presumably would include millionaires andbillionaires, and did not mention equalizing the capital gains tax with the income tax. We give him 1 point.
We’ve found no information to judge Buttigieg, so we give him 0.3 points.
Can you elaborate more on characteristics that predict successful founders. How easy is it to identify these before the applicants go through the program?