Jeremy
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Great discussion here. I’m trying to imagine how most people consume these articles. Linked from the Vox home page? Shared on Facebook or Twitter? Do they realize they aren’t just a standard Vox article? Some probably barely know what Vox is. Certainly, we are all aware of the connection to EA, but I bet most readers are pretty oblivious.
In that case, maybe these tangentially related or unrelated articles don’t matter too much. Conversely, the better articles may spark an interest that leads a few people towards finding out more about EA and becoming involved.
I agree generally with your criticisms. It’s not particularly surprising given the frequency with which they publish and the variation in quality if Vox’s reporting in general.
I would say your advice to read and check the overall soundness of the message before sharing could probably be broadly applied—and strikes me as a bit self-evident. Do you feel like these poor quality FP articles are getting shared widely? Do you have reason to believe it is being done without the sharer reading them?
This also makes me think of whey, which is a byproduct of making cheese. Because of that, it could be a very low impact, high protein food. Ricotta cheese is made from whey (traditionally leftover from Mozzarella). Then of course there are whey protein powders and energy bars and the like—if that’s your thing. I guess they used to pump it into rivers and streams, but since they cracked down on that, they started using it as filler in ice cream, adding it to baked goods, etc. Apparently in Switzerland they use it for carbonated soft-drinks and in Iceland they sell it in bottles. (All of this comes from Wikipedia).
I’d be interested to know if anyone has done an analysis like this that includes lamb or wild caught fish. The latter in particular seems like it could vary widely by species—IE killing wild fish would theoretically allow some of it’s prey to live longer—though I’m sure there are many, many more factors to consider.
It’s worth reading the comments of that original post if you haven’t already. I think some of what the author suggests is pretty standard 80k hours/GWWC advice—invest in your human capital, donate small amounts to keep the habit, while you are poor/earning little (maybe it wasn’t at the time that was written though).
One thing he doesn’t really touch on is the time value of money—it’s worth more now than it is later—both to you and to the charity you choose to donate too. You may not be rich in 40 years if you donate your spare money now, but the effects of that money could be just as great or greater spread out over the recipients. Right now, according to Givewell, Malaria Consortium saves the equivalent of a life for around $2500. That is likely to go up and may be vastly more in 40 years.
I think most people agree though that you shouldn’t donate more than you can afford. If you put yourself at financial risk, or live in a way that constrains your job prospects or results in burnout, you’re hurting both yourself and the causes you support.
Most of the things that come to mind are not strictly movements (I guess I wouldn’t really describe poker players that way either), so I’m not sure if this is helpful, but there are the obvious connections between EA and mathematics, philosophy, computer science, to a lesser degree the rest of academia and science, as well as finance.
Sports in general has a great amount of potential. I only really follow baseball, but I hear a lot about how this player supports this charity and work in the community and I believe teams actively encourage their players to do so. The challenge of course being that athletes as a group are not known as the most rational of people.
Moved this to comments. Sorry I was on my phone and didn’t realize I was answering instead of commenting. I tried the “retract comment” feature, but it didn’t seem to do anything.
Anecdotally, I feel like I’ve read a fair amount about poker players and effective altruism—I remember one donation matching offer. Others may know more about this than I do. I imagine it could have appeal because they are familiar with concepts like expective benefits, etc.
What I am wondering is, of dung beetles are a particularly hot research topic among animals/insects. They are pretty cool, but would this graph look less extreme with something like antelope or sea urchin in there—or the average number of research papers on a particular animal.
Though I guess X-Risk is more or less an entire field, so maybe the more apt comparison is with papers about animals or biology papers—in which case I’m sure it looks much worse