Ben Williamson

Karma: 1,649

Director of Partnerships and Field Operations for the Maternal Health Initiative (https://maternalhealthinitiative.org), a global health charity training healthcare workers in lower-income contexts on family planning counseling.

I co-founded MHI in September 2022 out of the Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Programme.

Prior to that, I founded Effective Self-Help (https://effectiveselfhelp.org) a research organisation studying the most effective ways people can improve their wellbeing and productivity.

Ben Williamson 1 Nov 2021 23:43 UTC
11 points
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on: ben3536′s Shortform
Effective Self Help—Rough Concept
A rough explanation of the pilot project I am leading thanks to funding from the EA Infrastructure Fund.
Aim
To find the most effective ways in which people can improve their wellbeing, and to then share this information as simply and practically as possible.
How will this be done?
1. We will study and compile initial evidence for a wide range of: (1) potentially promising self-help interventions and (2) particularly valuable areas of wellbeing to focus on.
2. From this long list, we will select the most promising interventions/ areas of wellbeing and undertake extended research into their effectiveness, based on an adapted framework of expected value and cost-effectiveness.
3. A series of articles will then be published on the EA Forum to share the findings and recommend specific practices/ interventions.
4. These articles can then be posted elsewhere and form the basis of a website that would in time provide a trusted, comprehensive, and effective guide to improving one’s wellbeing—for both community members and the wider public.
How is this valuable?
1. Effective self-help advice has the potential to be highly cost-effective given the large audience published guidance could reach and the lack of costs involved in the project outside of researcher salary.
2. Assuming that most people in the EA community are doing highly-impactful work (or will likely do so in future), a small increase in the wellbeing of EA community members should produce a tangible and valuable increase in the quality of highly important work.
As a (very rough and likely flawed) back of the envelope calculation of the project’s value:
- A (mean) average post on the EA Forum receives 250 views (https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ogkS8MyqtYzx6Zxev/the-ten-most-viewed-posts-of-2020 [in comments])
- During the pilot of this project, we expect to produce 6-10 articles. Taking the middle there, we can say the pilot project’s total views will be 2000 (8 x 250).
- If 5% of those viewers make a sustained change based on the article, we have 100 community members who have concretely benefitted.
- Let’s then say the wellbeing gains from changes made based on the articles produce a knock-on 2% productivity increase.
- Applied to a year in which two-thirds of the 100 community members worked full-time (which I believe is in line with the last EA Survey’s figures), this produces (67 x 200 = 13,400; 13,400 x 0.02 = 268 hours of added work [6.7 FT week’s of work]).
- These figures don’t account for a range of additional benefits that seem plausible results of improving wellbeing in the community:
  - (e.g.) Reduced sick days; reduced community dropout from poor mental health; higher-quality research and improved networking/ collaboration from happier workplace dynamics.
  - I also expect the total audience to end up significantly larger than just people who read the Forum. I intend to post this information on other sites (e.g. LessWrong), as well as build a dedicated site for it, and then there’s also the likelihood of people spreading the ideas through word-of-mouth/ their own blogs, social media, etc.
Why self-help?
1. Other promising interventions already exist or are in development for improving access to and the quality of external mental health support (loosely classified as anything that requires a professional to administer it [e.g. therapy]).
2. This project is based on the premise that current self-help literature is often anecdotal, lacking in thoroughness when assessing existing literature/ evidence, and narrative-driven rather than aimed at best providing practical guidance.
3. Self-help advice within the EA community tends to avoid these pitfalls but is often only a partial exploration of a topic (which is entirely reasonable given most articles on the Forum are written for free).
Summary
On this basis, a funded research project following EA/ rational norms of collecting and presenting evidence could produce self-help guidance that is significantly more useful than is what is currently available.
By providing the EA community with better advice, this project aims to produce a meaningful increase in community wellbeing.

Ben Williamson 2 Nov 2021 11:12 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Brendon_Wong’s comment on: ben3536′s Shortform
Thanks for reaching out! Better looks a very interesting project with a lot of scope for impact. I’ll message you to discuss experiences/ collaboration possibilities more.
I’m currently building a long list of interventions and wellbeing areas that seem particularly promising so what exactly I’ll evaluate is still somewhat up in the air. The same goes for an evaluation method—I expect I’ll use some adaptation of an expected value calculation, possibly combined with a weighted factor model—but I need to do more work on this before settling on a method.
As for the estimates, I agree that hopefully they are pretty conservative and that’s definitely intentional. Quality evidence on many of these things can be hard to come by so I think it’s best to shoot low. Also worth noting that I don’t think wellbeing improvements = productivity improvements so while I’ve estimated a 2% productivity increase, I’d expect the wellbeing increase to be higher (maybe closer to 5% - and 5% is a lot once you start spreading the information!).
Lighting adjustments are definitely on the long list of promising areas and is a recommendation I have high hopes for.

Ben Williamson 2 Nov 2021 19:03 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Brendon_Wong’s comment on: ben3536′s Shortform
Thanks to you both for the pointers!

Ben Williamson 15 Nov 2021 17:09 UTC
7 points
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in reply to: Akash’s comment on: Sleep: effective ways to improve it
Thank you! I think those are some quite reasonable suggestions/ questions.

Short response:
- I think differences in effectiveness based on current sleep quality are likely outweighed by differences in individual behaviours (e.g. how much caffeine/ magnesium you already consume).
Long response:
- I’m reasonably confident that the relative value of each of these interventions is likely to be similar for people regardless of their current quality of sleep, just with reduced effect for those currently with better quality sleep.
I expect that differences in value on that basis (poor quality vs average quality) are likely outweighed by differences in value based on personal circumstances as the individual effectiveness of several of these interventions depends based on people’s current behaviours. (e.g. current bright light exposure/ night-time window policy/ previous exposure to mindfulness/ quality of mattress).

The only exception to this is likely CBT-I given it’s specifically geared to insomnia, though I’d expect improved sleep hygiene and sleep restriction to still offer significant benefits to someone with more average sleep quality.

From the studies that I’ve looked at, I’d say that the evidence tends to be strongest for the effect of these interventions on insomnia. In general, I found research to be relatively thin for many of these topics which led me to largely combine findings for people with average sleep quality and those suffering with insomnia/ other sleep issues.

There’s definitely a risk of that skewing the results, which perhaps I should’ve discussed in the text, but it felt like a trade-off between that and either splitting the recommendations, perhaps making the article more taxing to read, or giving recommendations based on very little evidence (by discounting some of the studies used for being the wrong group).

Given all that, I’d likely stick with the same recommendations regardless of someone’s current sleep quality. I’d encourage anyone to choose what resonates based on their current behaviours and perhaps experiment with multiple interventions.

Ben Williamson 16 Nov 2021 10:20 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Thomas Kwa’s comment on: Sleep: effective ways to improve it
Thanks for flagging this! I’m going to edit it and clarify as ‘shortly’ is not a very specific recommendation. I’ve seen recommendations ranging from 30 minutes to 3 hours, with 1-2 hours being most common, so it’s not exactly clear when is most effective. Earlier doses seem to cause some people to wake abnormally early.

I’ll change this to 2 hours as that’s what was used in the literature cited.

Ben Williamson 16 Nov 2021 10:23 UTC
4 points
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in reply to: David_Moss’s comment on: Sleep: effective ways to improve it
Thanks for highlighting this! The image really makes apparent the issue in a much more obvious way. It’s a shame there aren’t SAD lamps designed to offset this, at least from what I’ve seen (e.g. by producing more than 10k lux to begin with). This issue definitely makes the construction of a whole-room lighting setup a more valuable solution.

Ben Williamson 16 Nov 2021 10:32 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Lakin’s comment on: Sleep: effective ways to improve it
Thanks for the suggestions! I think I may come back to this and expand the number of interventions I’ve reviewed and these are valuable suggestions that could well be worth promoting.

Temperature and daytime sunlight are both somewhat mentioned in the article already but may be worthy of their own specific sections. I’d expect the benefits of daytime sunlight to roughly equal light exposure + Vitamin D. Given that, I think light therapy probably covers the majority of the positive effect but this likely warrants more specific research.

With the larger project I’m working on in mind, there’s a balance to be struck between research depth on a certain topic and breadth in the number of topics that I cover over the next few months, so there’s definitely more depth that could be added to an article like this to improve it.

Ben Williamson 17 Nov 2021 10:52 UTC
4 points
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in reply to: Max Görlitz’s comment on: Sleep: effective ways to improve it
+1 for the Waking Up recommendation. Definitely the best meditation app I’ve used, with a lot of interesting content around what it means to live well more generally, plus the series with Will MacAskill on EA. I’m planning to do a proper write-up of meditation and mindfulness benefits and options in the near future.

Ben Williamson 17 Nov 2021 16:23 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Lakin’s comment on: Sleep: effective ways to improve it
I think that’s a fair point about the title and have changed it in light of that. I’m curious as to what you’d expect the other 50% of effect to come from? (no snarkiness intended)

Ben Williamson 17 Nov 2021 20:31 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Yonatan Cale’s comment on: Sleep: effective ways to improve it
Both the Slate Star Codex and Gwern articles are great and helped inform the article! (I think both are linked at points in the text)

And yes, 2 hours is the timing used in the Zhdanova study. I couldn’t find a clear consensus on any particular timing so I have chosen this without doing significant further research. I completely agree with you that experimenting with the timing of it seems ideal.

Ben Williamson 17 Nov 2021 20:32 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Ramiro’s comment on: Sleep: effective ways to improve it
Thank you! I’m definitely interested in potential additional benefits from being outside. I have a rough intention to do a more in-depth analysis of bright light exposure and its full range of wellbeing benefits at some point. I think this, alongside vitamin D, approximates a good amount of the benefit of being outdoors.

Ben Williamson 17 Nov 2021 20:34 UTC
0 points
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in reply to: KevinO’s comment on: Sleep: effective ways to improve it
Cheers! It’s great to know that this work has been useful, or at least interesting, for people.

Ben Williamson 18 Nov 2021 12:16 UTC
10 points
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in reply to: MichaelPlant’s comment on: Sleep: effective ways to improve it
Thank you for the feedback!
There’s a few points you make that I feel are important to clarify but I want to first acknowledge that the format and presentation of the research is a work in progress and could definitely be improved. In particular, I can agree that the “5.95/10” numbers aren’t particularly useful given the lack of any context/ scale.
To respond quickly to a few specific points:
1) This research was overwhelmingly based on the existing literature. I chose not to include a reference list or in-text citations to maximise the readability of the text but perhaps this was an error.
2) The interventions’ strength of effect, which accounts for about 40% of the score, is an average of improvements in sleep efficiency and total sleep time found in the literature I reviewed. In hindsight, I think it could have been better to highlight these findings on their own in the text and may add them in.
3) The focus of this research was to explore interventions that the reader is less likely to have heard of previously. I assumed that ideas like avoiding alcohol and late naps are things that nearly all readers would already know. On that basis, I felt that highlighting them in an article like this is unlikely to produce any change in behaviour, though I can see now the potential usefulness of presenting the size of effect.
4) I think an article like this recommending low-cost, personal interventions can reasonably have a different approach and level of rigour to one recommending charitable interventions and/or shifting large sums of money. A weighted factor model may not be the best way to frame this research but I think additional considerations like the potential risks and additional benefits of a recommendation are important and necessary to highlight.

These points make me realise that a more explicit description of the methods used and the literature reviewed would be valuable for future posts, rather than linking to them in out-of-text docs or leaving them out for a marginal improvement to the conciseness of the text.
This is the first post intended in a series and I expect to revise and improve the methods involved with each post and certainly the feedback I get on posts helps to direct that process. As a first attempt, some of the process was not as rigorous as it could or perhaps should be. In part, this is a relatively time-limited project for now (~3 months) so I am sacrificing some potential added depth in each post for the ability to cover more topics.

On a final note, I have immense respect and appreciation for the work of HLI and so really appreciate the feedback from someone who does wellbeing research at a much higher level!

Ben Williamson 8 Dec 2021 12:50 UTC
3 points
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on: ben3536′s Shortform
EA groups should focus more on demonstrating value to new students
Aritcle idea posted here so I might be more likely to write it up properly in future. In the spirit of the best being the enemy of the good.
My relatively uninformed opinions on why some uni groups might be struggling to grow, or not growing as large/ fast as they could be...
1. I think the current standard uni group programs can be off-putting to a significant proportion of potential participants
- Intro fellowships and book clubs require work/ commitment on the part of the participant (application and weekly readings for the fellowship; weekly book chapters for the book club) with little demonstration of why that will be valuable for the student.
  - I think there’s an over-reliance on an implicit assumption that people’s curiosity about EA and desire to do good will be sufficiently motivating.
- I don’t think this is the optimum way of encouraging people to get involved as potentially good people are put off by the commitment necessary to get involved.
- EA groups are competing for students’ time with more general socialising, other societies, work commitments, coursework, adjusting to living in a new place, etc. A better value pitch is needed to incentivise people to choose EA involvement over other things that often offer more explicit benefits.
2. I think there’s good ways in which EA groups can (better) market their value to new students
- EA offers valuable career guidance for students (80k; 1:1 coaching; EA Forum articles) that new students could find useful once they’re familiar with EA
- EA offers lots of volunteering/ internship/ funding opportunities for students looking to build work experience to get involved in high-impact work
- EA groups could put a greater emphasis on social/ other events that don’t require work in advance (e.g. are just an opportunity to meet other people interested in improving the world effectively)
- EA groups could teach the skills/ methods that underpin the EA and Rationality communities and are valuable framing for engaging with other work/ general life decisions (e.g. expected value; cost-effectiveness analyses; BOTECs; etc.)
The current model is plausibly a particularly large obstacle to poorer students. If you are already studying for a degree and working significant hours to cover bills, your time becomes precious enough that you need more than an interest in a topic to follow through with commitment. A fellowship may sound cool but it is also time-intensive with no clear benefit in comparison to your job that allows you to live a vaguely normal student life. Demonstrate value first.

Ben Williamson 8 Dec 2021 15:28 UTC
24 points
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on: ben3536′s Shortform
Project Proposal—The Altruist
Rough notes on an idea for a potentially large, high-impact project: launching an EA-focused, online long-form newspaper
“News, articles, and interviews on doing the most good”
What?
Concept: a news agency providing journalistic coverage of EA topics and organisations.
- Via a website and possibly with a monthly/ quarterly digital newspaper distributed by email.
- Provisionally titled ‘The Altruist’
- This would mirror the kinds of articles produced say by Vox’s Future Perfect team (e.g. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/21728843/best-charities-donate-giving-tuesday) but greatly expand the quantity of this sort of high-quality coverage that EA receives.
In the style of …The Atlantic; Vox; the Economist; the New Yorker; Current Affairs.
Types of articles this could include:
- Interviews with B-Tier figures—I think the public face of EA is limited around a small number of A-Tier individuals (e.g. Will McAskill; Toby Ord; Peter Singer; Holden Karnofsky). Interviewing people directing highly-impactful work and organisations could increase the number of public figureheads for the community and generate interest in a wider range of organisations.
  - Interviewees could include figures within EA (e.g. Joey Savoie and Karolina Sarek (Charity Entrepreneurship); Michael Plant (Happier Lives Institute); Marcus Davis and Peter Wildeford (Rethink Priorities).
  - Interviewees could also include figures from high-impact organisations not directly tied to the EA community working on priority causes (e.g. Armond Cohen—Clean Air Task Force; Rob Mather—AMF). This could help to better publicise these organisations, potentially increasing donations and support for them.
- Community member profiles—interviews discussing the story and motivations of a wide range of people in the community, highlighting its diversity of perspectives, motivations, and backgrounds. (e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/nov/09/i-give-away-half-to-three-quarters-of-my-income-every-year)
- Narrative-driven cause profiles—articles that aim to explain key concepts within EA (e.g. longtermism) in a particularly engaging and relatable way (e.g. rooted in the stories of a few individuals or told from a perspective looking back on today from the future)
- Success stories—highlight and celebrate progress made on key issues, either by EA organisations or more generally (e.g. positive government policy changes)
- Guest posts from the Forum—with permission from authors, present the best few recent articles posted to the Forum in a more engaging, readable manner (e.g. with professional copyediting; with (more) pictures and diagrams)
Why?
- This would improve public perceptions of EA and key ideas while helping to mitigate future reputation risks.
  - EA would benefit from more high-quality journalistic coverage of its ideas and organisations. An in-house organisation producing this coverage could feasibly help to positively shape the public narrative of EA and counteract sloppy, negative reporting that people might otherwise be first exposed to (e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/money/belief/2017/nov/23/its-called-effective-altruism-but-is-it-really-the-best-way-to-do-good; https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/07/the-dangerous-ideas-of-longtermism-and-existential-risk).
- Journalistic articles (e.g. interviews, story-based write-ups of key issues) provide a more accessible and appealing way of initially engaging with the ideas of effective altruism than currently exists.
  - Articles from The Altruist could provide a more engaging tool for community members to share the concept of EA with others. On a rough basis, I think attractive, long-form articles would be more engaging (a more familiar style; less content-dense; greater curation; a greater focus on readability) to a novice audience than the Forum or the effectivealtruism.org website.
- This could provide valuable publicity and an increase in donations to organisations within EA that currently struggle for coverage (e.g. some of the charities more recently incubated by Charity Entrpreneurship)
- If produced to a sufficient level of quality, these articles could be picked up by other news organisations and published elsewhere. Feasibly, this could increase the coverage of EA in other places as articles are published by certain news organisations that would not have commissioned the article from scratch.
How?
- CEA could provide seed funding for the organisation, assembling a small, well-qualified team to produce and curate the coverage.
- Funding could be provided publicly or privately depending on whether explicit links between The Altruist and CEA would be beneficial or detrimental to either/ both organisation(s).
- A pilot version could be produced with a skeleton website hosting an initial 5-10 high-quality articles, plus a digital magazine containing these articles advertised on the Forum and distributed via an email sign-up.
- With sufficient popularity, The Altruist could feasibly later become fully independent and financially self-sustaining, either through advertising or subscriptions.

Ben Williamson 13 Dec 2021 10:13 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Lakin’s comment on: ben3536′s Shortform
It could start small for sure! A cheap, maybe solo trial version would make good sense. I think the larger concept of the project benefits from scale though, to add credibility for interviewing people and a size of readership/ projection that could usefully compete for attention with current news sources on EA topics.

Ben Williamson 14 Dec 2021 12:20 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Puggy’s comment on: ben3536′s Shortform
Thank you! I’m thinking now that I may try to launch a trial version of this next month!

Ben Williamson 21 Dec 2021 18:13 UTC
6 points
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in reply to: Alex Barnes ’s comment on: Stress—effective ways to reduce it
Thanks! Re:
1. Yes, almost certainly given the high time investment for CBT and Sudarshan Kriya Yoga.
2. I’d expect that a short breathing exercise could be pretty valuable at the start of meetings for helping people to settle in and boosting attention. More anecdotally, I think practices like this can serve as a useful anchor, helping people reset their focus and creating a separation from what they were previously doing.
  
  It seems plausible to me that a few minutes of breathwork at the start of an hour meeting could be cost-effective time-wise but I would have to look more at the wider benefits of a practice like this to better estimate the extent of the benefit.
  
  The intention for the larger project is to assess the benefits of interventions like this across many different areas which will then hopefully provide a useful basis for estimating the total benefit they might bring to certain people/ settings/ etc.

Ben Williamson 22 Dec 2021 10:23 UTC
4 points
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in reply to: Aaron Gertler’s comment on: Stress—effective ways to reduce it
I appreciate how this straddles both “frontpage” and “personal blog”. I’ll be publishing a case for the value of the project as a cost-effective mental health intervention later this week, which may help better demonstrate this as a ‘problem area’ somewhat separate from more general life advice.

Happy to defer to collective opinion though on the best placement of the content.

Ben Williamson 24 Dec 2021 10:54 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: basil.halperin’s comment on: Stress—effective ways to reduce it
The studies used for all our figures can be found in the evidence table. These are average effect sizes across the studies found that were relevant. In the case of diaphragmatic breathing, this is an average in effect size vs. control between the results of Ma et al. (2017) and Perciavalle et al. (2016). I hope that clarifies it a bit!

Ben Williamson

Effective Self Help—Rough Concept

EA groups should focus more on demonstrating value to new students

Project Proposal—The Altruist