EdoArad

Karma: 5,134

Hey! I’m Edo, married + 2 cats, I live in Tel-Aviv, Israel, and I feel weird writing about myself so I go meta.

I’m a mathematician, I love solving problems and helping people. My LinkedIn profile has some more stuff.

I’m a forum moderator, which mostly means that I care about this forum and about you! So let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.

I’m currently working full-time at EA Israel, doing independent research and project management. Currently mostly working on evaluating the impact of for-profit tech companies, but I have many projects and this changes rapidly.

EdoArad Oct 4, 2023, 11:44 AM
6 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Marcus_A_Davis’s comment on: A Model Estimating the Value of Research Influencing Funders
Do you mind sharing your main consideration against releasing it? Not trying to push back, but rather to understand this as I’m considering working on related topics

EdoArad Oct 1, 2023, 7:32 AM
11 points
0 ∶ 0
on: A Model Estimating the Value of Research Influencing Funders
That’s really exciting! Do you plan on open-sourcing the project?

EdoArad Sep 25, 2023, 8:58 AM
4 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Voting Methods
In case you arn’t aware of it, the idea of approval voting is being promoted strongly in the Center for Election Science. They have some relevant resources here.
I also remember an 80k episode with Aaron Hamlin on the topic. Yeah, from 2018.

EdoArad Sep 22, 2023, 8:08 AM
3 points
2 ∶ 0
on: What do we care about at the end of time?
Value monism is the thesis that there is only one intrinsically valuable property.
(I didn’t know this term)

EdoArad Sep 18, 2023, 4:14 AM
4 points
2 ∶ 0
in reply to: hmijail’s comment on: Who should we interview for The 80,000 Hours Podcast?
Maybe controversial is too strong a word. I think EAs tend to think on the margin and are also less concerned with inequality or with non-existential risks from advanced tech.

EdoArad Sep 14, 2023, 11:21 AM
8 points
3 ∶ 0
on: Who should we interview for The 80,000 Hours Podcast?
I find Jaron Lanier’s thoughts on the impacts of tech development interesting and probably controversial in EA circles.
Daron Acemoglu is a known growth economist, and he has recently published a new book and had an interesting episode with Rhys Lindmark.
I also remember following Vinay Gupta a while back, and that he had interesting opinions on civilizational resilience (say, here). He was also involved with Ethereum, and is doing blockchain stuff, not sure what.
Generally, I’m interested in more discussion with people in communities or ideas that could be EA-adjacent but there isn’t a lot of (visible) overlap at the moment. Say, leftist economists, blockchain, metascience, or virtue-ethicists.

EdoArad Sep 11, 2023, 8:21 AM
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: EdoArad’s comment on: Announcing the Meta Coordination Forum 2023
(Sharing this because I’m uncertain and would be interested in thoughts/pushbacks)

EdoArad Sep 11, 2023, 8:21 AM
20 points
6 ∶ 1
on: Announcing the Meta Coordination Forum 2023
Thank you for sharing this!
My answer to the survey’s question “Given the growing salience of AI safety, how would you like EA to evolve?”:
I think EA is in a great place to influence the direction of AI progress and many orgs and people should be involved with this project. However, I think that many people in this forum think that the most important outcome of the EA community is by influencing this technology, and I think this is mistaken and misleading.
The alternative would be to continue supporting initiatives in this space, including AI safety-specific subcommunities, but to support a thriving EA community which is measured by the quality of thought and decision making, and the number of people actively dedicating a sizable proportion of their resources toward doing the most good they can (in contrast with measuring communities and individuals based on their deference to top-down cause prioritization).
I’m reasonably sure that the current wave of orgs and people working on AI safety is strong enough to maintain itself and grow well, and I’m worried about over-optimizing on near timelines.

EdoArad Sep 10, 2023, 12:44 PM
17 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Chris Leong’s comment on: Thoughts on EA, post-FTX
Some ideas held by many EAs—whether right or wrong, and implied by EA philosophy or not—encourage risky behaviour. We could call these ideas risky beneficentrism (RB), and they include:
i. High risk appetite.
ii. Scope sensitivity
iii. Unilateralism
iv. Permission to violate societal norms. Violating or reshaping an inherited morality or other “received wisdom” for the greater good.
iv. Other naive consequentialism. Disregard of other second-order effects

EdoArad Sep 6, 2023, 2:05 PM
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: NunoSempere’s comment on: Grumpy Squid’s Quick takes
Is the game something like “EA online discussion norms” and the strategy that you are proposing something like “make your writings independent of the EA forum, and allow for competing discussion spaces on your posts”?

EdoArad Aug 31, 2023, 11:10 AM
23 points
4 ∶ 0
on: Should I patent my cultivated meat method?
I know the author personally, and I want to signal that Michelle is genuinely interested in doing good, that the proposed technology does seem highly promising, and that an informed take on this question would help her make a better decision.
Thanks for anyone experienced with the subject matter who is willing to help here!

EdoArad Aug 31, 2023, 8:45 AM
4 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Guy Raveh’s comment on: edoarad’s Shortform
Sure! Looking into GiveWell’s main CEA, and their analysis of AMF (link), the location granularity is by country. However, AMF prioritizes their distribution location based on malaria prevalence rates and operational partners, so the results might be much better than the country’s average.

EdoArad Aug 30, 2023, 11:25 AM
2 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: david_reinstein’s comment on: Local charity evaluation: Lessons from the “Maximum Impact” Program in Israel
Regarding the first question, I just briefly looked again at the report and indeed I don’t see that explicitly taken into account. I only vaguely remember thinking about that, and I’m not sure how that was resolved.
I think the main causal pathway they used in their report is QALY gains from people quitting smoking, so that sounds like it wouldn’t change drastically if the intervention was delayed by, say, a couple of years. So I agree that this is a good question to look into further, and I expect that could indeed reduce the cost effectiveness by 3x-10x. Great catch David!

EdoArad Aug 27, 2023, 10:27 AM
2 points
0 ∶ 0
on: edoarad’s Shortform
I think cost-effectiveness analyses may generally be under-evaluating interventions due to the possibility of optimizing some parameters of the intervention. Such optimization could be accounted for in prospective quantitative CEAs by running some optimization algorithm, but I’m not sure how useful/accurate the result of that would be.

EdoArad Aug 23, 2023, 7:26 PM
22 points
9 ∶ 0
on: Empowering Numbers: FEM since 2021
FEM developed a new technology to evaluate our impact: a transmitter that identifies when FEM’s content is on air, and replaces it with music. This means the region surrounding the transmitter is temporarily not exposed to our programmes.
This is SO COOL!
Really amazing progress all around 👏

EdoArad Aug 16, 2023, 7:23 PM
4 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Ozzie Gooen’s comment on: Ozzie Gooen’s Shortform
That’s cool. I had the thought of developing a “personal manager” for myself of some form for roughly similar purposes

EdoArad Aug 16, 2023, 8:28 AM
9 points
3 ∶ 1
in reply to: Ozzie Gooen’s comment on: Ozzie Gooen’s Shortform
It’s funny, I think you’d definitely be in the list of people I respect and care about their opinion of me. I think it’s just imposter syndrome all the way up.
Personally, one thing that seemed to work a bit for me is to find peers which I highly appreciate and respect and schedule weekly calls with them to help me prioritize and focus, and give me feedback.

EdoArad Aug 16, 2023, 8:07 AM
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Ozzie Gooen’s comment on: Ozzie Gooen’s Shortform
How would you use AI here?

EdoArad 15 Aug 2023 9:05 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Amateur Systems Analyst’s comment on: Housing
I’m not sure, what do you think you should learn?

EdoArad 14 Aug 2023 16:10 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Housing
I think Elizabeth’s recent recommendation to get ambitious slowly is really good. Here, it’d probably make sense to start where you feel more comfortable with working to cause change, and then you can get this experience to move on to more important locations or opportunities. Does that make sense to you?