catherio

• catherioFeb 23, 2023, 9:48 PM

  40 points

  18 ∶ 2

  in reply to: 𝕮𝖎𝖓𝖊𝖗𝖆’s comment on: Tak­ing a leave of ab­sence from Open Philan­thropy to work on AI safety

  RE direct work, I would generally think of the described role as still a form of “leadership” — coordinating actors in the present — unlike “writing research papers” or “writing code”. I expect Holden to have a strong comparative advantage at leadership-type work.

• catherioDec 13, 2022, 9:20 PM

  7 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: cathe­rio’s Shortform

  Offering a (mutually counterfactual) donation match to GiveDirectly 💖
  
  I’m offering a mutually counterfactual donation match to GiveDirectly, for anyone who wants to extend beyond their usual donation budget to take advantage of this!
  
  https://​​twitter.com/​​catherineols/​​status/​​1602770363204583424
  
  (That is: If you donate $ that you would not otherwise have donated anywhere, reply with screenshot and I’ll 1:1 match with money I likewise would’ve kept for personal spending (above my usual 10%/​yr); will close on Friday evening at 6pm PT or after I pay out $10k, whichever is first.)
  

  
  I’m doing this in honor of the work Nathan Young and Émile Torres are doing to mutually improve discourse around criticism of longtermism and EA. These two ideological adversaries have set up this joint fundraiser. Emile is a critic of longtermism and of EA leadership; I find their writing/​epistemics at times inflammatory and misleading, but there’s central aspects of their critiques I find good/​worthy.
  
  I have a sense that Emile’s dialog with Nathan has been visibly raising the bar on twitter discourse; making criticisms more specific, and the general tone of the discussion more targeted and constructive, with fewer exaggerated blanket statements. I love this deeply.
  
  GiveDirectly is also a very worthy cause, particularly by being so incredibly straightforward, reasonable, and palatable to people from very different ideological backgrounds.
  
  
  Feel free to post receipt screenshots in comments here instead of on twitter!
  https://​​twitter.com/​​catherineols/​​status/​​1602770363204583424
  

cathe­rio’s Quick takes

• catherioNov 22, 2022, 8:01 AM

  5 points

  2 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Eli_Nathan’s comment on: The Next EA Global Should Have Safe Air

  (2) Much more cantankerously: “If your dear friends are suffering deeply, and you have created a system that can help, do not spend any spare time (outside your EA day job) on teaching them the system. You need to spend that spare time on altruistic things, not your friends’ suffering. Certainly do not allow any motivated non-EA friends to spend THEIR time helping you build a scalable version for your entire community” is not a moral system or set of community norms I can get behind.

• catherioNov 22, 2022, 7:58 AM

  8 points

  4 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Eli_Nathan’s comment on: The Next EA Global Should Have Safe Air

  (1) I do want to note that I don’t think one should evaluate microcovid as though it was an altruistic action selected by a prioritization process! It was more like a selfish and friend-oriented project, which we made scalable enough to unlock big positive externalities in our broader community and beyond. The first version of the system was purely to save my own group house! (That said, I do think it’s well-described as a project in the spirit of rationality, and a good example of rationality in action.)

• catherioDec 27, 2021, 8:29 PM

  3 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Ozzie Gooen’s comment on: Mak­ing large dona­tion de­ci­sions as a per­son fo­cused on di­rect work

  I’d guess you would be better than many at vetting

  I agree with this!

• catherioDec 27, 2021, 8:29 PM

  27 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: catherio’s comment on: Mak­ing large dona­tion de­ci­sions as a per­son fo­cused on di­rect work

  Separately but somewhat relatedly: Having worked at Open Phil, it’s definitely the case that smaller opportunities just don’t clear the bar of being worth spending time vetting. I think a powerful way that “individual” donors can contribute is in helping get small things “off the ground”, so that they can grow to a size where they’re later in the right range for large institutional donors. In that sense it’s bit like angel investing.

• catherioDec 27, 2021, 8:27 PM

  23 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Mak­ing large dona­tion de­ci­sions as a per­son fo­cused on di­rect work

  One idea that isn’t on your list is to start a “donor circle”. I found this really powerful in the past, and I’d greatly like to do again in the future!
  
  My previous “donor circle” experience was for making a ~$10k grant near the start of COVID: I got a few dozen other friends on board who also wanted to give $1k-$100k each, and we all started a messenger chat and a spreadsheet to look through various opportunities.
  
  Everyone contributed as much research manpower as they wanted; one person stepped up with “co-lead” level of involvement, but many others contributed as well. Together we identified a whole bunch of opportunities, came up with criteria, and made “recommendations” that the less-research-involved members of the circle then followed as they saw fit. Overall we ended up collectively giving about $400k, which was a size at which it felt really worthwhile for ~2-4 people to do a “side project” for.
  
  (see writeup here: https://​​forum.effectivealtruism.org/​​posts/​​opdMXibKjkoL69s96/​​prioritizing-covid-19-interventions-and-individual-donations).
  
  Some things that were really cool were:
  
  (1) once you’re (collectively) a >$100k donor, you can get on the phone with people who might not otherwise give you time, and donate to groups that aren’t taking “normal-person-sized” donation. E.g. a representative from CEPI was willing to spend time with us, and CEPI is mostly courting >$1m donations.
  
  (2) our writeup and criteria ended up influencing a medium-sized foundation; their decisions >$10m in grants used our list of criteria as a rubric.
  
  (3) the presence of others who were excited to use my recommendations made it feel more directly socially rewarding and valuable to spend time on the project.
  
  
  I think this works best when everyone in the donor circle agrees up-front on approximate “type” of opportunity the group is looking for, or criteria, or something like that.
  
  I’m not sure when exactly a donor circle is the right strategy, but in general I do think that banding together with others, and building strong “working relationships” with other practitioners, is really important for any meaningful endeavor.

• catherioMar 16, 2021, 12:54 AM

  3 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: billz’s comment on: When to get a vac­cine in the Bay Area as a young healthy person

  Right. AFAICT the openings available are in Sacramento, Auburn, or other places >1 hr drive.

• catherioMar 14, 2021, 10:34 PM

  21 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: When to get a vac­cine in the Bay Area as a young healthy person

  I also want to offer an “offsets” perspective, for anyone who can access a vaccine but feels uneasy about doing so.
  
  Namely: in classic EA fashion, I hypothesize “choose to let yourself slip further back in line” is not the most effective way to put your resources towards getting the vaccine to someone else sooner.
  
  Let’s say the cost to you of delaying your own vaccination (in mental health, lost productivity, money spent not taking public transit, whatever it may be for you) is something you value at one day of lost time.
  
  I would much rather see you choose to get vaccinated as soon as you are able, and spend an entire day volunteering to help get underserved populations signed up for vaccine appointments counterfactually sooner.
  
  (Perhaps phonebank with http://​​vaccinateca.com/​​? Perhaps reach out to essential workers you know personally, and offer to drive them?)
  
  I don’t have a rigorous argument here, I’m just broadly happier to see effort/​resources going towards active thinking about how to accelerate distribution into the arms that need it the most, rather than that same amount of effort/​resources burned on someone who could’ve been vaccinated and gain some freedom instead continue staying home being cranky and cooped-up and unproductive.

• catherioMar 14, 2021, 10:25 PM

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: When to get a vac­cine in the Bay Area as a young healthy person

  Note that just because you are “a person in the Bay Area” doesn’t mean your vaccination options are limited to “get a vaccine in the Bay Area”.
  
  You can drive to Sacramento or Auburn (where appointments are not being saturated), or fly to Phoenix and volunteer there, or other options.
  
  Location is of course just one part of a vaccination plan (alongside “are you claiming eligibility in some group?” or “are you trying to last-dose standby?” or “are you volunteering at a vaccination site?” or other paths) but it seems highly relevant to point this out in a world where available appointments are perhaps being saturated within the Bay Area, and not elsewhere, within accessible distance.

• catherioFeb 25, 2021, 10:09 PM

  20 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Milan Griffes’s comment on: Some pre­limi­nar­ies and a claim

  Attempting here to respond to & engage with the request, not “this post” in any sense beyond the request itself.
  
  I’m feel sad that you don’t want me to upvote this post. I would like to increase the number of people who have read & reflected carefully on the things you point to (even though I have not yet read all eight links), and upvoting this post seems like the easiest way for me to do that. Is there some other way I can do that?

• catherioAug 31, 2020, 11:11 PM

  6 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Linch’s comment on: microCOVID.org: A tool to es­ti­mate COVID risk from com­mon activities

  Just want to chime in and say

  1) yes, we think that thinking about chains of onwards infections is important, and

  2) we haven’t done this in great detail, and

  3) we would ***LOVE*** if someone wrote up an analysis of this. Issue for it: https://​​github.com/​​microcovid/​​microcovid/​​issues/​​17

• catherioAug 29, 2020, 10:29 PM

  12 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: catherio’s comment on: Cus­tomized COVID-19 risk anal­y­sis as a high value area

  Update: our tool is now public https://​​forum.effectivealtruism.org/​​posts/​​MACKemu3CJw7hcJcN/​​a-tool-to-quantitatively-estimate-the-covid-risk-to-you-from

microCOVID.org: A tool to es­ti­mate COVID risk from com­mon activities

• catherioJul 24, 2020, 6:10 PM

  7 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Davidmanheim’s comment on: Cus­tomized COVID-19 risk anal­y­sis as a high value area

  Yes David, we would love to build off that risk model and include it in our group house microcovid estimates project. Knowing how to value a “microcovid” is an important step in choosing how many microcovids per year you should select as your tolerance.

• catherioJul 24, 2020, 2:41 AM

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Cus­tomized COVID-19 risk anal­y­sis as a high value area

  (combined with other comment)

• catherioJul 24, 2020, 2:39 AM

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Cus­tomized COVID-19 risk anal­y­sis as a high value area

  (combined with other comment)

• catherioJul 24, 2020, 2:31 AM

  23 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Cus­tomized COVID-19 risk anal­y­sis as a high value area

  Strong agree!

  Our house has a custom model & “points system” for group houses that we are working as fast as we can to release legibly (constrained by most of us having full-time jobs etc.).

  (Basically: quantifying different activities in terms of microcovids i.e. literal 1-in-a-million chance of getting COVID)

  We are already spending our spare time on informal custom consults. We really don’t want to be doing this as an ongoing “job” in the long run, but we really DO want the information to be out there to help people.

  We would LOVE LOVE LOVE to train people in what we know, so they can run consults!

  Please reach out to me (ideally on messenger, or my username @mit.edu) if you would like to help us turn our V1 version into something scalably usable by EAs & group houses!

  
  

  In the meantime, we have a stack of sources here that feed into our microcovid estimates, which you can consult: https://​​docs.google.com/​​presentation/​​d/​​1pkYTQA5hR-52pUbfGqjTFR1yieocOmEj1O0RnV2x6jI/​​edit#slide=id.g8b0e9b222b_0_179

  
  

  Creating template “scenario plans” that could be used if someone gets sick, ot if infection rates rise above a certain amount in an area, etc.

  Here is Ibasho’s isolation protocol, with clear criteria about what counts as “sick” etc: https://​​docs.google.com/​​document/​​d/​​1OpWFFoUB4gULcpOZMZL4A1xdDfu-qvgSQDCFi8dXa6E/​​edit#

  
  

  Writing weekly summaries of the outlook, progress on vaccines and treatments, etc. so that people are less likely to compulsively news search

  We are already doing this and sharing on a messenger thread. Anywhere already existing that we could post them to be useful?

• catherioJun 6, 2020, 9:01 AM

  0 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: alex lawsen’s comment on: What are some good char­i­ties to donate to re­gard­ing sys­temic racial in­jus­tice?

  Campaign Zero is getting a *lot* of criticism, e.g. https://​​twitter.com/​​PowerDignity/​​status/​​1268735286646726656

  They do “sound good” because they’re paying attention to “data”, but personally I wouldn’t feel comfortable supporting them unless you had a very good reason to think that the criticism is not legitimate.