I currently believe the most impactful marginal funding opportunities focus on improving the welfare of highly numerous but neglected classes of animals (especially wild animals, shrimp, and invertebrates). As a longtermist, my work focuses on existential risk reduction, but my sense is that the key existential risk-related causes (e.g. AI safety, biosecurity) are relatively well-funded compared to the highest priority animal welfare causes, so I choose to donate there.
Darius M šø
Karma: 1,865
My cause prioritization would be much worse and I would be much less morally ambitious. I also received tremendous support in my career from other people in the EA community, which made an extremely large impact on my own career opportunities and my ability to do good.
As a caveat, there are some nuances to Wikipedia editing to make sure youāre following community standards, which Iāve tried to lay out in my post. In particular, before investing a lot of time writing a new article, you should check if someone else tried that before and/āor if the same content is already covered elsewhere. For example, there have been previous unsuccessful efforts to create an āExistential riskā Wikipedia article. Those attempts failed in part because relevant content is already covered on the āGlobal catastrophic risksā article.
I broadly agree with this and have also previously made a case for Wikipedia editing on the Forum: https://āāforum.effectivealtruism.org/āāposts/āāFebKgHaAymjiETvXd/āāwikipedia-editing-is-important-tractable-and-neglected
One other relevant resource Iād recommend is Will and Tobyās joint keynote speech at the 2016 EA Global conference in San Francisco. It discusses some of the history of EA (focusing on the Oxford community in particular) and some historical precursors: https://āāyoutu.be/āāVH2LhSod1M4
I enjoyed reading this and would love to see more upbeat and celebratory posts like this. The EA community is very self-critical (which is good!) but we shouldnāt lose sight of all the awesome things community members accomplish.
I recently had to make an important and urgent career decision and found it tremendously valuable to speak with several dozen wonderful people about this at EA Global SF. Iām immensely grateful both to the people giving me advice and to CEA for organizing my favorite EA Global yet.
Going very broad, Iād recommend going through the EA Forum Topics Wiki and considering the concepts included there. Similarly, you may look at the posts that make up the EA Handbook and look for suitable concepts there.
See also this recent post: What happens on the average day?
For inspiration, here are some other examples of TEDx talks given by EAs:
1. Beth Barnes (2015): āEffective Altruismā
2. Gabriella Overƶdder (2019): āHow Using Science Can Radically Increase Your Social Impactā
3. Linh Chi Nguyen (2020): ā5 Lessons for choosing an impactful careerāFeel free to add others below that Iām not aware of.
At the risk of self-promotion, I wrote a motivational essay on EA a few years ago, Framing Effective Altruism as Overcoming Indifference.
Well done! The article receives about 50,000 page views each year, so there are a lot of people out there who benefit from your contribution.
Toby Ord explains several related distinctions very clearly in his paper āThe Edges of Our Universeā. Highly recommended: https://āāarxiv.org/āāabs/āā2104.01191
Copied from my post: Notes on āThe Myth of the Nuclear Revolutionā (Lieber & Press, 2020)
I recently completed a graduate school class on nuclear weapons policy, where we read the 2020 book āThe Myth of the Nuclear Revolution: Power Politics in the Atomic Ageā by Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press. It is the most insightful nuclear security book I have read to date and while I disagree with some of the bookās outlook and conclusions, it is interesting and well written. The book is also very accessible and fairly short (180 pages). In sum, I believe more people interested in nuclear security would benefit from reading the book.
In āThe Definition of Effective Altruismā, William MacAskill writes that
āEffective altruism is often considered to simply be a rebranding of utilitarianism, or to merely refer to applied utilitarianism...It is true that effective altruism has some similarities with utilitarianism: it is maximizing, it is primarily focused on improving wellbeing, many members of the community make significant sacrifices in order to do more good, and many members of the community self-describe as utilitarians.
But this is very different from effective altruism being the same as utilitarianism. Unlike utilitarianism, effective altruism does not claim that one must always sacrifice oneās own interests if one can benefit others to a greater extent. Indeed, on the above definition effective altruism makes no claims about what obligations of benevolence one has.
Unlike utilitarianism, effective altruism does not claim that one ought always to do the good, no matter what the means; indeed...there is a strong community norm against āends justify the meansā reasoning.
Finally, unlike utilitarianism, effective altruism does not claim that the good equals the sum total of wellbeing. As noted above, it is compatible with egalitarianism, prioritarianism, and, because it does not claim that wellbeing is the only thing of value, with views on which non-welfarist goods are of value.
In general, very many plausible moral views entail that there is a pro tanto reason to promote the good, and that improving wellbeing is of moral value. If a moral view endorses those two ideas, then effective altruism is part of the morally good life.ā (emphasis added)
The following paper is relevant: Pummer & Crisp (2020). Effective Justice, Journal of Moral Philosophy, 17(4):398-415.
From the abstract:
āEffective Justice, a possible social movement that would encourage promoting justice most effectively, given limited resources. The latter minimal view reflects an insight about justice, and our non-diminishing moral reason to promote more of it, that surprisingly has gone largely unnoticed and undiscussed. The Effective Altruism movement has led many to reconsider how best to help others, but relatively little attention has been paid to the differences in degrees of cost-effectiveness of activities designed to [in]crease injustice.ā
Great video, I was very happy seeing Kurzgesagt promote this frame! Also relevant: https://āāforum.effectivealtruism.org/āāposts/āāckPSrWeghc4gNsShK/āāgood-news-on-climate-change
Great post! While I agree with your main claims, I believe the numbers for the multipliers (especially in aggregate and for ex ante impact evaluations) are nowhere near as extreme in reality as your article suggests for the reasons that Brian Tomasik elaborates on in these two articles:
(i) Charity Cost-Effectiveness in an Uncertain World
(ii) Why Charities Usually Donāt Differ Astronomically in Expected Cost-Effectiveness
Iām very excited about this development!
I joined Coefficient Giving a few weeks ago as Chief of Staff on the GCR executive team, and Iāve updated strongly upward on how much counterfactual impact each new hire here can have! The GCR team is stretched really thin relative to the problems weāre aiming to solve, and some of the opportunities we canāt currently pursue feel really painful to leave on the table. Iād really encourage people to apply: in my view, these are some of the most exciting roles in the ecosystem right now, and CG is also just a very fun place to work, with deeply caring, smart colleagues and a great internal culture.
One signal-boost: my own team is hiring a senior generalist as part of this round. Most of the round is grantmaker roles, but if you have a strong generalist skill set, please apply to our team!