Avi Norowitz

Karma: 692

Avi Norowitz Jan 22, 2019, 10:56 PM
9 points
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in reply to: ak-’s comment on: Introducing Sparrow: a user-friendly app to simplify effective giving
I don’t think Facebook permits automated donations, so I don’t think this will be feasible.

Avi Norowitz Jan 21, 2019, 2:06 PM
7 points
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on: RC Forward—Canada’s Effective Giving Experiment: Results & Plans for 2019
Thanks for all this work on this! A few comments and questions:
1. I think there’s another important benefit that I didn’t see mentioned: There’s a risk that people’s donations may be influenced towards less effective organizations just for the tax deduction. Permitting people to get tax deductions when donating to a wide variety of effective organizations can help mitigate this risk. My guess is that this is a more important consideration than tax deductions providing incentives to donate more.
2. Do Canadian donors already have a way to get tax deductions for donating to EA Funds? It seems like it could be worthwhile to give Canadian donors this option, though the benefits would need to be weighed against any administrative overhead it would create for RC and CEA.
3. Have you thought about permitting something like an optional 5% “tip” when people make their donations to help fund your operations? Perhaps opt-in by default? I have seen this option Crowdfunding websites, for instance. GiveWell also has an optional 10% “tip,” though they’re opt-out by default, and their value-add is different.

Avi Norowitz Jan 15, 2019, 4:11 PM
5 points
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in reply to: Jeff Kaufman 🔸’s comment on: EAs Should Invest All Year, then Give only on Giving Tuesday
It’s also notable that PayPal announced that they were doing a dollar-for-dollar match of up to $500k in donations through the PayPal Giving Fund on Giving Tuesday, separately from the Facebook match.
That post was made on Giving Tuesday itself and the details there are very limited, but I found this post by an organization with a date of Nov 23, along with the match start and end time. I’m going to dig into this some more. Maybe we can ask some EA-aligned organizations signed up for the PayPal Giving Fund if they can keep an eye out for this and give us an early tipoff.

Avi Norowitz Jan 12, 2019, 7:29 PM
6 points
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in reply to: Ben Millwood🔸’s comment on: EAs Should Invest All Year, then Give only on Giving Tuesday
A number of people got $20k matched out of $20k donations. This required 8 donations of $2500 each.

Avi Norowitz Jan 9, 2019, 3:53 AM
2 points
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in reply to: Kirsten’s comment on: EA Giving Tuesday Donation Matching Initiative 2018 Retrospective
I think improving recruitment could help. I did recruit people in late September 2018 after Facebook dropped a hint that they would do a repeat, but in retrospect it may have helped to focus on recruiting individuals who would be able to commit to 80 hours (or whatever) if necessary.
This might not be so easy though, since I suspect most people with the skills to do this well are already working on other things and would have difficulty sparing that many hours. Perhaps compensation (e.g. through a grant) could help, but I’m not sure.
I also don’t think having large numbers of people each working 10 hours would help, because managing, training, and delegating tasks to that many people would be impractical.

Avi Norowitz Jan 7, 2019, 1:06 PM
3 points
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in reply to: Kirsten’s comment on: EA Giving Tuesday Donation Matching Initiative 2018 Retrospective
Thanks for the suggestion. I already had EA Grants in mind as an option, but it’s interesting to know that the EA Meta Fund lists a fundraising project as an example. As William noted, we were more time constrained rather than funding constrained this year. However, I’ll keep this in mind as an option for future years if our circumstances change, or if we can come up with effective ways to convert funding into time.
One other complication with applying for a grant is that we wont know whether there’s a worthwhile opportunity until a month or so in advance. After that, if there is a worthwhile opportunity, then we’d need to start working immediately. So we’d probably need to apply for a grant early and, if a worthwhile opportunity doesn’t materialize, then we’d need to (a) use the grant to work on something else or (b) return it.

Avi Norowitz Jan 6, 2019, 6:01 PM
1 point
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in reply to: Denkenberger🔸’s comment on: Why I’m focusing on invertebrate sentience
Based on Georgia Ray’s estimates, it looks like there are > 100x more neurons in soil arthropods than in humans.
Soil arthropods:
Using this, we get 1E22-1E23 neurons from large arthropods and 6E22 neurons from smaller arthropods, for a total of 6E22-2E23 neurons in soil arthropods.
Humans:
[...] we get 6.29E20 neurons in humans [...]

Avi Norowitz Dec 24, 2018, 4:07 PM
4 points
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in reply to: Larks’s comment on: How Effective Altruists Can Be Welcoming To Conservatives
Presumably, GWWC did not want to exclude EA cause areas outside of global poverty. Since animal welfare is an EA cause area, presumably it did not want to exclude it.
1-3 applies to nearly all EA cause areas to varying degrees, including global poverty. The difference, of course, is that EA cause areas (including animal welfare) are supported by evidence and reason, while religious outreach is not.
Specifically, “animal cruelty is bad” is a well argued position, making it very different from a religious belief. See Animal Liberation by Peter Singer.

Avi Norowitz Dec 24, 2018, 1:57 PM
8 points
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on: How Effective Altruists Can Be Welcoming To Conservatives
“If you’re religious, then the most effectively altruist thing is to convert everyone because of the infinite utility of Heaven” is not nearly as clever as you think it is. Every religious effective altruist has heard this argument from a hundred different atheists, including ones whose religion does not actually include a concept of Heaven. No religious effective altruist is doing this. Stop bringing it up.
I don’t believe this is representative of Christians involved in EA, but the Pay It Forward Foundation advocated applying EA principles to “saving souls” in addition to recommending GiveWell top charities.
The website now redirects to effectivegive.org, but it’s not clear to me whether they’ve stopped trying to “save souls” or if they’re just more subtle about it. For instance, if I click through the donate section, I still see an option to donate to the “Save a Soul Program.”

Avi Norowitz Nov 29, 2018, 1:58 AM
3 points
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in reply to: John_Maxwell’s comment on: Earning to Save
It’s common and fully legal in the US for wealthy people to create their own 501(c)(3) private foundations. I don’t think this is an issue.
Even for a 501(c)(3) public charity, a wealthy person should be able to donate enough to support ²⁄₃ of its budget without any legal problems, as long as the remaining ¹⁄₃ fits the IRS criteria of “public support.” And even if that doesn’t work out, it just means the 501(c)(3) may have to turn into a private foundation.
I don’t know what the laws are in other countries.

Avi Norowitz Nov 25, 2018, 3:07 PM
2 points
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in reply to: Monica’s comment on: Outreach to Farmers
In the podcast, Leah makes the case the economic case for farmers starting at 39:00. Farmers aren’t going to be listen to Our Hen House, but presumably Compassion in World Farming USA is making arguments appropriate for each audience.
Also, this very popular clip with John Oliver is heavily focused on the bad economics of chicken contract farming for the farmers. This was likely influenced by Compassion in World Farming USA’s work.

Avi Norowitz Nov 24, 2018, 12:33 AM
6 points
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on: Outreach to Farmers
Compassion in World Farming USA has been working on this since at least 2014. You may want to listen to this interview with Leah Garces, former Executive Director. Start listening at 18:20.

Avi Norowitz Sep 10, 2018, 12:49 AM
3 points
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in reply to: Jc_Mourrat’s comment on: Concerns with ACE research

On human poverty, GiveWell is one among several very serious actors. It engages very thoroughly in discussions and explanations when diverging views emerge.

The diverging views in the case of the GiveWell example you gave are from respected research organizations Campbell and Cochrane, with all parties arguing in good faith. This was very different from the case of Nathan’s criticisms of ACE.

So again I see a small dissenting voice in the otherwise rather monopolistic position of ACE which is being dismissed without due consideration.

But ACE did reply to Nathan Harrison’s criticisms:

https://animalcharityevaluators.org/blog/responses-to-common-critiques/ https://animalcharityevaluators.org/blog/response-to-a-recent-critique-of-our-research/

But again, I want to pause and think about the bigger picture for a while. The fact is that at the time of writing this argument, the organisation Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) had put up a rather comprehensive report explaining that they had come up with the opposite conclusion! (That cage-free reform is actually detrimental to animal wellfare.) I will refrain from discussing it at length here because this comment is already long, but this report of DxE was, in my opinion, dismissed with precious little good argument.

My understanding is that ACE did in fact take DxE’s arguments into consideration, and that their relatively pessimistic estimate that cage-free represents a ~5% improvement is informed by many different views, including DxE’s arguments that cage-free is harmful. (This is from conversations I’ve had and I’m not sure if ACE has published this. I agree it would be helpful if ACE published their reasons for this estimate.)

But we have to realize that when it comes to animal suffering, as far as I know ACE is the only game in town.

I’m not sure how you define “the only game in town.” There are currently a number of other organizations who do research on effective animal advocacy, including Open Philanthropy, Sentience Institute, Rethink Charity, Faunalytics, Humane Society of the United States, Humane League Labs, Animal Welfare Action Lab, Wild Animal Suffering Research, etc.

Avi Norowitz Sep 9, 2018, 11:18 PM
6 points
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on: Concerns with ACE research
I started out with a negative impression of ACE when I found it years ago. Since then, I’ve seen substantial improvements in their research quality, substantial willingness to update to new evidence, and substantial willingness to publicly state unpopular conclusions (e.g. leafletting has a slightly negative expected value). I was also impressed with the conference they ran in 2016. My overall impression is now positive, and I appreciate their contributions. I’d also suggest putting ACE in context: GiveWell, which generally has a positive reputation, also got off to a rough start.

I agree that ACE still has room to improve, and I appreciate that you have provided constructive feedback in good faith.

With regard to:

In its cost-effectiveness analyses, ACE estimates that their mean estimate of the “proportional improvement in welfare due to cage-free policies” is ~0.05, but provides only a one sentence explanation for this estimate.

I agree that ACE should provide more justification for this estimate, but I think there are a few points worth noting:
- This is a fairly pessimistic estimate, far more pessimistic than a reasonable reading of De Mol et al 2006. (Of course a negative estimate would be even more pessimistic.)
- GiveWell also makes some subjective judgements in their cost-effectiveness estimates that are not supported by comprehensive literature reviews, especially regarding moral weights.
With regard to:

In its review of THL’s and Animal Equality’s corporate outreach, ACE relies only on the charities’ self-reported corporate policy successes, which it then discounts by an arbitrary uncertainty factor: ~0.4 for both Animal Equality and THL.

I assume you’re referring to the metric “THL’s responsibility for changes”? My understanding that this is mostly supposed to reflect the case that it’s often the case that multiple charities are involved in securing a given corporate commitment, making it incorrect to assign 100% of the effectiveness to just one charity.

With regard to:

ACE does not check with third party news sources, experts or with the companies themselves on whether the claims of the charities are accurate.

I agree that ACE should do this, but I predict most of the claims would withstand this scrutiny. As I mention here, I found that 15 out of the 22 corporate commitments that CIWF USA was allegedly involved in from January 2016 to March 2017 had some publicly available evidence to support their causal role.

With regard to grassroots outreach, it’s worth noting that a large amount of THL’s grassroots work in the past few years has been in coordinating in person protests against food corporations. This differs quite a bit from activities like leafletting, so it’s understandable that evidence on the effectiveness of leafletting may not be the most relevant consideration to an evaluation of THL’s grassroots work. (ACE has published an intervention report on protests earlier this year, which I haven’t read yet.)

Avi Norowitz Sep 9, 2018, 10:03 PM
4 points
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on: ACE’s Response to John Halstead
Thanks for the informative post, Toni!

With regard to:

We do search online for evidence in the news of each charity’s achievements. The problem is: there usually is no such evidence, particularly in the field of corporate outreach. Of course, the absence of evidence of a charity’s involvement in a corporate campaign is not evidence that the charity was not involved. We’ve also looked up corporations’ press releases announcing their commitments, but these generally do not mention animal charities. (As far as I can remember, I’ve never seen one that does.) We have little reason to believe that a corporation could or would share detailed information about their decisions with us if we asked them. I don’t know who Mr. Halstead has in mind when he mentions checking with “experts,” though we’ve certainly spoken with many experts in corporate campaigning, if that is what he means.

I’ve found that the causal role of animal charities in corporate commitments is often supported by publicly available evidence. This evidence generally takes one of two forms:
- Some corporations do name animal charities in their press releases. This often occurs when the charity secured the commitment through a cooperative approach, though it also sometimes occurs after a public campaign.
- In cases of public campaigns, the timeline of events often provides some evidence of causality. I’ve found that the following pattern is typical: An animal charity launches a public campaign, leaving historical evidence in the form of a petition, tweets, media coverage, etc. Weeks or months later, the corporation publishes a press release agreeing to the commitment. (For reference, I’ve found Twitter to be a helpful resource for establishing these timelines.)
For example, here’s is a list of corporate commitments that CIWF USA was allegedly involved in for the period from January 2016 to March 2017. (I had originally compiled this back in March 2017.) In 15 of the 22 cases, I found that their causal role was supported by publicly available evidence.
What links here?
- Avi Norowitz's comment on Concerns with ACE research by John G. Halstead (Sep 9, 2018, 11:18 PM; 6 points)

Avi Norowitz Aug 10, 2018, 4:29 AM
1 point
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in reply to: saulius’s comment on: Fish used as live bait by recreational fishermen
This is the approach I use:

http://effective-altruism.com/ea/1lr/avoiding_ai_races_through_selfregulation/djt

Avi Norowitz Jul 26, 2018, 11:50 PM
0 points
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in reply to: KevinWatkinson’s comment on: The EA Community and Long-Term Future Funds Lack Transparency and Accountability
Open Phil hired a Senior Associate, Farm Animal Welfare in March 2018.

https://www.openphilanthropy.org/about/team/amanda-hungerford

Avi Norowitz Apr 26, 2018, 2:24 PM
1 point
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in reply to: kbog’s comment on: Please Take the 2018 Effective Altruism Survey!
I didn’t see it either.

Avi Norowitz Apr 22, 2018, 1:39 PM
1 point
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in reply to: jayquigley’s comment on: Excerpt from ‘Doing Good Better’: How Vegetarianism Decreases Animal Product Supply
I wonder if the cutoff point is more like 25,000 though, the number of broiler chickens raised in a shed. It’s unclear to me whether producers respond to small changes in demand by adjusting the numbers of broilers in a shed or only by adjusting the number of sheds in use.

If the cutoff point is more like 25,000, then this would imply that most veg*ns go their entire lives without preventing the existence of a single broiler through their consumption changes, while a minority prevent the existence of a huge number.

For what it’s worth, it seems likely that donations to AMF are similar since their distributions typically cover hundreds of thousands or millions of people.

Avi Norowitz Apr 5, 2018, 12:13 AM
4 points
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on: How to improve EA Funds
I agree with a lot of the content here, but I disagree with this suggestion:

The funds could take a similar approach to Giving What We Can – allocate funds to the top charities in their cause area, and donate to those charities on a regular basis until the fund manager comes along and updates the allocation.

If the annual discount rate is 12% and funds are granted out annually, then I believe this implies an average loss of around 6%. But the expected loss of a grant to a default charity vs a carefully selected charity is likely to be far greater than 6%.