Experienced quant trader, based in London. Formerly a volunteer at Rethink Priorities, where I did some forecasting research. Interested in most things, donations have been primarily to longtermism, animal welfare and meta causes.
Charles Dillon šø
Karma: 1,551
Thanks for the responses, itās been very helpful! I still do not agree that this is a productive step but I feel I have a better understanding of your approach than I did.
That deals with the venue problem, but not with the group dynamics one. If my social group is eating together, I do not want to be the one insisting that my presence requires everyone else to eat only vegan options. Itās just going to annoy people and make them think Iām difficult to be around.
This is different to meeting one friend for food or something where the ask is smaller, but if thereās a group of six friends, say, and only one person is vegan, the ask that everyone only eat vegan options every time the group meets is not going to engender goodwill for the vegan at the table, I think.
I donāt believe this policy is viable for most people without suffering meaningful social isolation as a result, with limited benefits.
In particular, if one has few vegan friends, then this precludes participating in group dinners unless the venue is vegan, which may be a tough sell to insist upon every time thereās a group dinner. If one is not in a major metro area with lots of vegan options, it may preclude eating out at all, as there may not be any exclusively vegan dining options.
Thanks for sharing this!
I donāt think that I would have included this statement though:
I am sharing this in good faith that EAs who participate will donate whatever they earn beyond a reasonable value of their time to effective causes
For many EAs for whom this might be a good use of their time, especially those trying to position themselves for direct work, I would think donating this money will be a worse decision than using it to help themselves in their own efforts to do so.
Good points, thanks!
Thatās interesting, and if true a very disappointing and convenient delusion. Thanks!
I would think that for energy supply reasons Russia is a much more important partner for Germany than Ukraine, and that entirely explains German reluctance to help Ukraine, do you think this is incorrect?
Worth noting that Metaculus has the ability to record continuous distribution predictions, including both normal predictions and much more complicated distributions. E.g. https://āāwww.metaculus.com/āāquestions/āā5301/āāa-city-exodus/āā
If you want to record your predictions for your own questions on Metaculus you can also create private questions here. https://āāwww.metaculus.com/āāquestions/āācreate/āā
Understood, thanks. Yeah, this seems like a bit of an implausible just-so story to me.
This seems implausible to me, unless Iām misunderstanding something.
Are all such geniuses pre-1900 assumed to come from the aristocratic classes? Why?
If no, are there many counterexamples of geniuses in the lower classes being discovered in that time by existing talent spotting mechanisms?
If yes, why would this not be the case any more post-1900, or is the claim that it is still the case?
Despite your clarifications within the post here to say that we should grow the pie, and that CWRs are still underfunded, I find the zero-sum tone of much of the post (I.e. saying that we should do less CWR work and more other stuff) off putting and poorly supported.
It is not obvious to me that other areas such as those you mention can readily absorb that much extra funding that quickly, or that anyone is currently erring in their approach here not finding a particular intervention and funding CWRs instead.
I would guess that e.g. Open Phil are eager to find other good opportunities in these areas and are more constrained by lack of good opportunities than by having committed large amounts to CWRs and therefore not having the budget to give more. Do you think this is wrong?
I think there are several questions here, many of them vague, and if you sincerely want answers to them, youād more usefully get answers if you wrote them separately and with a bit more context about what exactly you mean by the question.
I agree with the main point here, and I think itās a good one, but the headlineās use of present tense is confusing, and implies to me that they are currently doing a good job in their capacity as a donor.
Nice graph, thanks!
Holden Karnofsky and Elie Hassenfeld founded Givewell as a charity club at Bridgewater while they were working there, so Dalio definitely knows about EA.
Thanks for posting! I think sharing ideas like this is very valuable, and you give what looks to me like a good overview.
I think the āGates and Wellcome already fund thisā point is worth expanding on significantly before going any further.
How much do they fund it? What havenāt they tried? These seem like important questions for gauging whether weād expect an extra $X billion to be very useful here.
It makes sense, but it feels like a very narrow conception of what morality ought to concern itself with.
In your simulation example, I think it depends on whether we can be fully confident that simulated entities cannot suffer, which seems unlikely to me.
I thought the āwhy a Virtue Ethicist might care about consequenceā section didnāt really make a convincing argument. E.g.
āFor them, the issue is not that the world is the kind of place where children drown, it is that the people in it are not the kinds of people who would save a drowning child. But itās still an issue! ā
But what if the child is on its own and nobody has the opportunity to save the child, regardless of what kind of people they are? Is it OK for children to drown then?
Do you have an opinion on whether that bar that funders are currently holding opportunities to should be lowered?
What are the most relevant considerations here in your opinion?
Minor note but these fractions arenāt rendering correctly for me on mobile (theyāre showing up as a little black X), so I would suggest replacing them with percentages or something.