ellie

Karma: 56

ellie 22 Jul 2026 14:35 UTC
18 points
8 ∶ 0
on: Introducing Impact List: a ranking of philanthropists by expected lives saved
This is really cool! If I might make one observation, the default assumptions (counting animal lives + assuming that AI is going to destroy the world) are not going to be understandable to most people. I think most people would assume that a list like this would count human lives that have already been saved, not ones that might be saved in the future. If the goal is to appeal to a broad audience, it might make sense to make more standard assumptions by default.
If you want to highlight animal advocacy and existential risk as cause areas, it might be helpful for the main page to show lives saved broken down by human/animal and certain/uncertain or current/expected future.
Also, I think there are huge issues with the way the population cause area is framed:
- It seems to suggest that causing an additional person to be born counts as “saving a life.”
- It says “This effect captures welfare gains from charities that increase the number of wanted births in rich countries through noncoercive means” which seems to suggest that people being born in rich countries is good while people being born in poor countries is neutral or bad.

ellie 22 Jul 2026 14:29 UTC
−6 points
0 ∶ 1
in reply to: Ariel Simnegar 🔸’s comment on: Financial things that don’t change when you get a boatload of money
Hi Ariel! These are interesting points.
For investments, private investment opportunities are not better than public ones on a after-fees basis (in fact, they’re much worse). Private investments do a lot of shady things to make their returns look better than they actually are—and in the US they can get away with it because they’re much less regulated. A great source of information about the problems with private markets is this podcast.
Having more money shouldn’t necessarily change your risk profile either. While you might be more able to task risk, you also have less need to take risk (people with smaller amounts of money may need to take risk to have a decent chance of meeting future consumption needs during retirement). Additionally, even if a windfall did change how much risk you wanted to take, it wouldn’t change the tools you should use to achieve that level of risk.
I definitely agree that a windfall should change your approach to political giving. However, I’m not sure why switching from being a small donor to an EA org to being a major donor would lead you to change how you give (assuming that the org has room for funding). For any grant makers, even small ones, their room for funding is essentially unlimited because they can always start directing the money to new causes if their existing causes don’t have room.

ellie 5 Mar 2024 14:17 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Mako060’s comment on: Defense Job Ethics
That makes sense. As to my first point, it’d point you towards this Wikipedia page. All but one war that the US has fought since WW2 has been waged against a third world country.
The US has killed over 400,000 civilians since 2001 via our wars in the Middle East.

ellie 4 Mar 2024 14:52 UTC
9 points
2 ∶ 1
on: Defense Job Ethics
I’ve previously faced a similar decision. Here is why I decided to steer clear of the American war machine:
1. Other commenters have pointed out that American military supremacy is preferable to military supremacy by a different power. I agree. However, most of what the US military is actually doing has nothing to do with great power conflicts. The military has mostly been involved in fighting wars in third world countries. The chance that you help maintain US military supremacy is low, the chance that you create something that will help soldiers kill someone that EA is trying to help (via GiveDirectly, Givewell, etc.) is high.
2. I believe it would be challenging for a moral person to exist in the social context of a group that is working on behalf of the U.S. military. I have a friend who I believe to be a good person at heart. He has always cared for the people around him. When offered enough money, he took a job working on a nuclear weapons related technology. At first, he justified this to himself by saying that the he was making the missiles more accurate so they could kill fewer people. But when he got to his job, that’s not how his coworkers viewed things. They believed that what they were doing was morally okay because they didn’t extend their moral circle past the borders of America. It’s very difficult to convince yourself that you’re a good person when your coworkers are flippantly discussing how they are working to help the military kill people. My friend drinks a lot now.
3. The military industry isn’t the only place offering good pay. The trade off isn’t between not doubling your pay vs. working for the military industry. It’s between putting more time/energy into a job search vs. working for the military industry. You can likely find a job with comparable pay elsewhere if you keep looking.

ellie 25 Sep 2023 13:11 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Small Scale Local Interventions: A Cost-Effectiveness Analysis of Passing Sunscreen at Outdoor Events
If you’re an American, you can buy suncreen using your tax-free FSA—which brings the cost down ~10-40% depending on your tax bracket.

ellie 4 Jan 2023 6:08 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Savoring my moral circle
This sounds similar to a “loving-kindness meditation” (a.k.a. metta).

ellie 2 Dec 2022 14:31 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Elliot Temple’s comment on: Game: I Find Three Errors in Your Favorite Text
I didn’t understand that by “debate” you meant an extended back and forth. I considered my response to be the debate. Sorry for the misunderstanding, but I am not interested in what I think you are looking for.

ellie 23 Nov 2022 19:11 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Elliot Temple’s comment on: Game: I Find Three Errors in Your Favorite Text
Should have specified. That was meant as my debate response under the rules.

ellie 23 Nov 2022 17:08 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Elliot Temple’s comment on: Game: I Find Three Errors in Your Favorite Text
My response to Error 1:
As I understand it your key points are this:
1. Some portion of jobs pay you like you’re a college graduate but don’t hire based on signalling. The marginal individual would be better served by going after those jobs instead of going to college.
2. Starting a business is another way for the marginal individual to outperform college as an investment.
3. Caplan doesn’t consider alternatives to college besides jumping into the labor force (I believe you would agree that, as an example, taking a welding course is one such alternative).
4. You can’t just count lost earnings as a “cost” if you’re going to actually consider these other options.
5. People go to college for other reasons besides money.
Here’s my response:
1.
I get what you’re saying here—in fact I was offered a software engineering job out of high school and turned it down. I a friend who made the same decision. I don’t think this argument works overall, though, for three reasons. First, getting your foot in the door is decently challenging. Second, it limits your employment options in a way that’s not practical. Third, college is an extremely good value proposition for the sort of person who could get a high paying job out of high school.
So how could you get your foot in the door? In my case, a former teacher got me an internship that was meant for a college student—then I had to interview well. In the case of my friend, he had some really impressive projects on GitHub which got him noticed (for a summer job). So there’s an element of luck (having connections) or perhaps innate talent (not many people, regardless of if they have a degree, build a really interesting solo project). Luck is luck, but perhaps a motivated person of average talent could build a solo project good enough to land them a job with no degree. Doing so, however, is a risky proposition. You’d be investing a lot of time and effort into a chance for a job. At the same time, you wouldn’t have a good understanding of the odds because it’s such an uncommon path.
Even if you landed one of those jobs, there’s a good chance it would be far away from your family because companies that are willing to hire someone straight out of high school are so few and far between. Even for someone who’s willing to move away from family, they’d then need to have the money saved up to make that leap. And if you do get the job? Better hope you don’t get fired. If so, you’ll have extremely limited employment options compared to someone with a degree because 99% of employers are simply going to throw away your resume. You may have to uproot your life and move again.
Lastly, for the few people who are in a really good position to get a high paying job out of high school, college is a really good value proposition. If you’re impressive enough to land that job, you can probably also get a merit-based scholarship. You can also go to a top-tier school where you’ll be able to marry rich (as Caplan discusses), network, and take advantages of opportunities for research and entrepreneurship. Alternatively, you might be able to skate by without putting a lot of hours in and use your free time for something else, further reducing the opportunity cost of college.
2.
Only 40% of small businesses turn a profit (https://www.chamberofcommerce.org/small-business-statistics/). A 60% chance of making no money or losing money is an unacceptable risk for 18 year olds. Where are the savings accounts that are going to pay for their food and housing if they aren’t making an income?
Plus, they’d need funding. A business loan for a new entrepreneur out of high school is not a thing. They look at your personal credit score. They may require collateral. SBA loans look at invested equity.
VC-backed ventures are even riskier. Founders typically work for nothing for years (which recent high school grads just can’t do because they don’t have money saved up to live on) for a slim shot at getting rich.
Overall, entrepreneurship is a high risk, high reward option which is not a similar value proposition to college.
3.
Caplan mentions this in chapter 8. Caplan essentially argues that vocational education also pays. Comparing between vocational and collegiate education is challenging due limited data.
4.
If you don’t count opportunity costs, doesn’t that make college look even better?
5.
I agree with you—Caplan is way too dismissive of this.

ellie 12 Nov 2022 21:36 UTC
2 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Sam Glover’s comment on: Game: I Find Three Errors in Your Favorite Text
Thanks, I enjoy reading these. I appreciate that you’re cautious to be too strong in your criticism but I do think that Caplan’s dismissal of quasi-experiments is a more or less a factual error.

ellie 11 Nov 2022 19:35 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Game: I Find Three Errors in Your Favorite Text
I love this idea! Would you consider reading “The Case Against Education” by Bryan Caplan? In particular, I’d be interested in errors you find in chapters 1-6 (which cover statistics about education and learning, and which I find broadly convincing). I’m really disagree with many of the arguments in chapters 7-10 (which are primarily comprised of Caplan’s policy recommendations), so I would not be likely to defend many of the points made there.

ellie 14 Oct 2022 17:29 UTC
9 points
2 ∶ 0
on: ‘Digital people’ probably experience nothing: consciousness is analog
It’s not clear to me why whether a system is composed of continuous functions or digital approximations of continuous functions would be a deciding factor between whether said system is conscious or not. In fact, there is empirical evidence that digital approximations of continuous functions can be part of conscious systems.
People currently have digital functions as part of their brains (brain controlled robot arms, cochlear implants, retinal prostheses). In the case of brain controlled arms, some arms are well integrated into the conscious self. For example, Nathan Copeland’s robot arm is incorporated into his proprioceptive map via force feedback and position sensors. It has been experimentally confirmed that he can sense the arm’s position without visual contact and he describes this sense as proprioceptive.
Additionally, computers can be composed of substantially analog functions (e.g. systems made from analog electrical components—these are just as analog as neurons, although both systems deal in electric charge which is quantized).

ellie 2 Sep 2022 19:04 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Locke’s comment on: Open Thread: June — September 2022
I’m super new to EA and I think something like that would be very beneficial for me.

ellie 26 Aug 2022 13:18 UTC
6 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Introduction to Fermi estimates
Thank you for posting this! I think the idea of Fermi problems/napkin math as something that you can practice and get better at is under-recognized. Did you end up seeing your students’ accuracy improve as they completed more problems and got feedback on their answers?

ellie 2 Aug 2022 23:01 UTC
5 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Alex Holland’s comment on: Open Thread: June — September 2022
Hi Alex! Strip charges 2.9% + $0.03 for most debit or credit card payments (plus extra for currency exchange or international cards). Stripe also supports ACH (eCheck) payments, which all bank accounts support, with a fee of 0.8% or $5.00, whichever is less. If the organization’s Stripe account already has ACH allowed, this should be no trouble for them.
Givewell asks to receive donations under $1000 through card payment and over $1000 through check. However, not all charities are Givewell—some are happy to receive a check at $500, for instance.
Lastly, don’t forget to check to see if you can use a workplace charity matching program, as many of them cover credit card fees in addition to matching your donation.

ellie 4 Mar 2022 23:20 UTC
4 points
0 ∶ 0
on: What is the expected utility of an untrained person joining Ukrainian army?
I think there are a lot of factors here. If you’re a CEO in a wheelchair, you’re certainly better off working and donating. A low-paid person who’s physically strong might be very valuable in Ukraine.

I doubt you could really estimate the utility you can’t really predict the future—Ukraine could win and we could still have many of the bad outcomes people are scared of (e.g. nuclear war, Russia attacking Europe).

There are a lot of other things you could do to promote peace—like advocating policies in the US like renewing New START and reducing the “defense” budget (or equivalent policies in your country), getting a job in arms control/foreign policy (e.g. IAEA, Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation), or focusing on understudied/funded issues like landmine nonproliferation.