EricHerboso

Karma: 748

I’m the Executive Director at Effective Giving Quest, a fundraising org at the intersection of EA and gaming. I also am an Organizer of WikiProject Effective Altruism, where we coordinate effective altruism related articles on Wikipedia, and am a moderator of r/EffectiveAltruism, the main EA subreddit with 20,000 members. Most of my history with EA is through my service at Animal Charity Evaluators from 2012–2022; I helped influence ACE’s formation in 2012 and became the 2nd paid employee in 2013 as Director of Communications. Between 2019–2022, I served as Secretary on ACE’s Board of Directors.

I’ve been involved with the EA movement since 2011, well before the phrase “effective altruism” was coined. I hope to continue being a part of the movement for many years to come.

You can learn more about me through my personal blog at ericherboso.org. I also have a profile up on the EA Hub.

EricHerboso 19 Jan 2023 8:57 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Ariel Simnegar 🔸’s comment on: Possible changes to EA, a big upvoted list
I incorrectly (at 4a.m.) first read this as saying “Would this include making EA apparel…for views like nativism and traditionalism?”, and my mind immediately started imagining pithy slogans to put on t-shirts for EAs who believe saving a single soul has more expected value than any current EA longtermist view (because ∞>3^^^3).

EricHerboso 9 Dec 2022 13:10 UTC
45 points
10 ∶ 0
in reply to: Magnus Hambleton’s comment on: Why did CEA buy Wytham Abbey?
That may be the case with those in your social circle, but several existing EA donors have been vocally upset on the EA subreddit. One question we’ve had to answer there multiple times is whether GiveWell had anything to do with this, because, if so, they would cease their donations there.
People on the EA subreddit are generally more casual than the people that come here to the EA Forum. But comments like this are typical in the last few days:
“I really have trouble believing that someone who has even vaguely brushed up against the insights of EA would buy a mansion. In fact, I could think of few acts that would be more bluntly and vulgarly antithetical to EA.”
These are not anti-EA zealots posting on social media about how this kind of thing disgusts them, using this opportunity as a chance to strike (though some of those also exist). No, these are actual EAs — they may not be as engaged as EA Forum users, but they care enough to join the subreddit, to donate to EA orgs, and to participate in light EA discussions on reddit. They are really not happy about the purchase of Wytham Abbey.

EricHerboso 8 Dec 2022 5:00 UTC
3 points
6 ∶ 2
in reply to: Jay Bailey’s comment on: Why did CEA buy Wytham Abbey?
It depends. In isolation, that statement does seem concerning to me, like they may have been overestimating the potential negative optics.
What matters to me here is whether sufficient thought was put into all the different aspects. Clearly, they thought a lot about the non-optics stuff. I have no way of easily evaluating those kinds of statements, as I have very little experience organizing conferences. But I’m concerned that maybe there wasn’t sufficient thought given to just how bad the optics can get with this sort of thing.
My career has been in communications, so I’m used to thinking about PR risks and advocating for thinking about those aspects. Perhaps I’m posting here with a bias from that point of view. If I were in a room with decision-makers, I’d expect my comments here to be balanced by arguments on the other side.
Even so, my suspicion is that, if you write something like “do what really is good rather than just what seems good”, you’re more likely to be underestimating rather than overestimating PR risks.

EricHerboso 8 Dec 2022 3:30 UTC
16 points
21 ∶ 8
in reply to: Owen Cotton-Barratt’s comment on: Why did CEA buy Wytham Abbey?
I did feel a little nervous about the optical effects, but think it’s better to let decisions be guided less by what we think looks good, and more by what we think is good — ultimately this was a decision I felt happy to defend.
While I understand this sentiment, optics can sometimes matter much more than you may at first expect. In this specific case, the kneejerk response of many people on social media of this seeming incongruity (a seemingly extravagant purchase by a main EA org) can potentially cement negative sentiment. By itself, maybe it’s not that bad. But in combination with the other previous bad press we have from the FTX debacle, people will get in their heads that “EA = BAD”. I’m literally seeing major philosophers who might otherwise be receptive to EA being completely turned off because of tweets about Wytham Abbey.
This isn’t to say that the purchase shouldn’t have been made. But you specifically said that you think the general rule should be that we make decisions about what we think is good rather than by what looks good. While technically I agree with this, I think that blindly following such a rule puts us in a state of mind where we are at risk of underestimating just how bad optics can become.

EricHerboso 10 Nov 2022 15:54 UTC
9 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Google Scholar is now listing (some) EA Forum posts
This actually may affect whether Wikipedia policies will count certain EA Forum articles as “reliable sources” (in the Wikipedia sense). I’ll be taking this back to WikiProject: Effective Altruism to see whether this may allow us to cite specific EA Forum posts for claims where no secondary source is yet available.

EricHerboso 2 Jul 2022 19:26 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Tyner’s comment on: What are some artworks relevant to EA?
Unfortunately, I don’t have a firm launch date that we can publicly share yet. It will be no later than Q4 2022, but we’re aiming for earlier than that.

EricHerboso 2 Jul 2022 3:41 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Tyner’s comment on: What are some artworks relevant to EA?
Effective Giving Quest hasn’t quite officially launched — when we do, we will be certain to post an announcement on the EA Forum. But EffectiveGivingQuest.org did somewhat quietly go live today.
Unfortunately, we’re not yet ready to host a full list of games either about EA or created by EAs, but I can share a smaller list of non-commercial games if you’re interested.
Right now, Effective Giving Quest is in the process of working with several game developers and publishers that are receptive to EA. When we finally get to our hard launch, you’ll be able to see several commercially available games listed on our site. But until we get to that point, all I can offer is this unofficial short list of non-commercial games.

EricHerboso 25 Jun 2022 20:51 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Giving What We Can’s response to recent deworming studies
Note that the hyperlink given no longer works. GWWC now has the deworming study response post at this updated link.

EA on r/Place: An Art Project Post-mortem

EricHerboso13 Apr 2022 21:47 UTC

42 points

5 comments3 min readEA link

EricHerboso 3 Apr 2022 3:39 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
on: EA logo and title on Reddit’s r/Place
Note that the location has changed to (~~1906,587~~). Details on why/how are on the subreddit.
EDIT: ~~After relocating to~~ ~~(1906,587), we have successfully been able to put up the EA logo plus the EffectiveAltruism.org url! I’m impressed by the effort that some of our redditors have.~~
While it may not exactly be the best use of any one person’s time, and there was somewhat significant effort (by 2–3 redditors) put into negotiating with nearby subreddits, it appears that a discord channel of relatively few EAs has been successful at this communications project. Please check out the image live by clicking the coordinates above, or you can see a screenshot here.
The intention from here is to defend the text from trolls so that it makes it to the final canvas when the r/Place event ends.
EDIT 2: The EA logo+text is now located at (957,1772). We are stable in this new location, thanks to help from several surrounding communities. You can see what we look like by clicking the coordinates link.

EricHerboso 2 Apr 2022 19:27 UTC
11 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Initiative to draw the EA logo on Reddit’s r/place
While the OP’s effort didn’t end up working, a ~~much smaller alternate effort has been somewhat successful. The logo is at~~ ~~(1644,570)~~ ~~and coordination is at~~ ~~r/EffectiveAltruism~~.
Note that I don’t actually believe this is a good use of our time; it is unlikely to result in any sort of outreach without text next to the logo, and not only does it seem unlikely that text will persist, but also the small size means it will likely get no play when the final r/Place image gets shared around online. Nevertheless, it seems like a number of EAs are interested in doing this, so I thought it might be relevant to post their success here.
EDIT: I crossed out the above because we had to relocate to ~~(1906,587)~~. However, we have successfully been able to put up the EA logo plus the EffectiveAltruism.org url! I’m impressed by the effort that some of our redditors have.
While it may not exactly be the best use of any one person’s time, and there was somewhat significant effort (by 2–3 redditors) put into negotiating with nearby subreddits, it appears that a discord channel of relatively few EAs has been successful at this communications project. Please check out the image live by clicking the coordinates above, or you can see a screenshot here.
The intention from here is to defend the text from trolls so that it makes it to the final canvas when the r/Place event ends.
EDIT 2: The EA logo+text is now located at (957,1772). We are stable in this new location, thanks to help from several surrounding communities. You can see what we look like by clicking the coordinates link.

EricHerboso 1 Mar 2022 20:06 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Database of orgs relevant to longtermist/x-risk work
I just wanted to leave a note saying that I found this database useful in my work.

EricHerboso 18 Jan 2022 14:31 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
on: What are some artworks relevant to EA?
At Effective Giving Quest, we’re aware of several video and board games that are relevant to EA, either because they deal with the topic of EA directly or because the developers behind the games are EAs themselves.
We have not yet launched, and so are still in the process of standardizing a way for EA-friendly developers to commit to giving a set percentage of their profits toward EA causes. Once we do this, we should have a much more comprehensive list of relevant-to-EA video and board games that we can share with the EA community.
I’ll come back to edit this post with a list of EA-relevant games after EGQ launches.

EricHerboso 11 Jan 2022 12:50 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Eevee🔹’s comment on: Effective altruism merchandise to advertise the movement
I just wanted to note that the link to Gleb’s post from six years ago is an example of how not to do this sort of thing. His organization, Intentional Insights, actively harmed the EA movement rather than helped it.
I still think EA outreach via t-shirts is good — my favorite shirts are from GWWC, GW, ACE, and EA Global! — but communications is hard, and the way Gleb went about it was not good at all.

EricHerboso 25 Nov 2021 20:06 UTC
16 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Announcing my retirement
Thank you so much for all your work managing the EA Forum. You’ve done an excellent job, and I’m sure that you’ll do many and varied good things at OpenPhil.
Also, we’re so excited to have you join Effective Giving Quest as our first partnered streamer! I’m really looking forward to what we can accomplish in the gaming space for effective altruism. (c:

EricHerboso 30 Sep 2021 12:00 UTC
7 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Issues with Giving Multiplier
it is more important to build a robust movement of people collaboratively and honestly maximizing impact than it is to move additional money to even very good charities in the short term.
I generally agree with your sentiment here. However, I think the analysis changes when it comes to introducing people to EA.
Giving Multiplier doesn’t target existing EAs with this offer. They’re targeting people outside the movement who very likely are not yet familiar with EA ideas. Because the standard in the industry is that donation matching is a norm, reaching that audience sometimes takes doing something like this kind of match. Then, once someone has given to an EA cause, they are far easier to convince to give to EA charities later on, and (presumably) they’ll be good targets for converting to EAs themselves.
While I agree that this type of influence matching is ultimately misleading in the ways you describe, I don’t think it’s fair to call it illusory matching. I mean: it is illusory in the colloquial sense, but illusory matching as a term originated in GiveWell’s 2016 post, where Holden specifically put forward the claim that this kind of influence matching is a type of non-illusory matching. He even suggests the very concept that Giving Multiplier is doing:
you should fight back by structuring your own influence matching – making a conditional commitment to the highest-impact charity you can find, in order to pull other dollars in toward it.
With all that said, I do think it makes sense for people that read this forum to not give through Giving Multiplier nor to be really all that influenced by donation matching campaigns generally. But as a technique for reaching people new to EA, I don’t think that legitimate non-illusory matching in the form of coordination matching or influence matching is necessarily bad.
It is generally misleading in the sense that a careful read will make you realize that they are doing something different from how it may naively seem from a read on their homepage — but when it comes to an unsophisticated audience who is already used to the norm of illusory matching, I’m not sure it’s fair to call someone like Giving Multiplier especially misleading just because their homepage doesn’t go into all the details of how this type of matching works. If someone asks me where the nearest gas station is, I shouldn’t be labeled as misleading just because I don’t give significant detail on the best route there. I think it’s okay to just point and say “five minutes that way”. I feel the same about how Giving Multiplier has structured their homepage.

EricHerboso 27 Sep 2021 20:31 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Ben Millwood🔸’s comment on: Honoring Petrov Day on the EA Forum: 2021
This is not how I understand the term. What you’re describing is how I would describe the word “commitment”. But a “precommitment” is more strict; the idea is that you have to follow through in order to ensure that you can get through a Newcomb’s paradox situation.
You can use precommitments to take advantage of time-travel shenanigans, to successfully one-box Newcomb, or to ensure that near-copies of you (in the multiverse sense) can work together to achieve things that you otherwise wouldn’t.
With that said, it may make sense to say that we humans can’t really precommit in these kinds of ways. But to the extent that we might be able to, we may want to try, so that if any of these scifi scenarios ever do come up, we’d be able to take advantage of them.

EricHerboso 26 Sep 2021 15:59 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Davidmanheim’s comment on: Honoring Petrov Day on the EA Forum: 2021
Don’t forget that this is iterated, though. In order to save the site from going down a year from now, we might want to follow through on a tit-for-tat strategy this year.
I’m not certain that this is the correct play, but it is an important distinction from the usual MAD theorizing.

EricHerboso 26 Sep 2021 15:35 UTC
4 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Honoring Petrov Day on the EA Forum: 2021
On the one hand, in order for MAD to work, decision-makers on both sides must be able to give credible threats for a retaliatory strike scenario. This is also true in this experiment’s case: if we assume that this will be iterated on future Petrov Days, then we must show that any tit-for-tat precommitments made are followed through.
But at the same time, if LessWrong takes down the EA Forum, it just seems like wanton destruction to similarly take it down, too. I know that, as a holder of the codes, I should ensure that I’m making a fully credible threat by precommitting to a retaliatory strike, but I want to take precommitments seriously and I don’t feel confident enough to precommit to such an action.
After giving this much thought, I decided to present the perhaps-too-weak claim that if the EA Forum goes down due to a LessWrong user pressing the button, I may press in retaliation. While this is not an idle threat, and I am serious about potentially performing a retaliatory strike, I am falling short of committing myself to that action in advance. I give more of my reasoning in my blog post on this.
(Ultimately, this is moot, since others are already willing to make such a precommitment so I don’t have to.)

EricHerboso 26 Sep 2021 15:24 UTC
6 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Peter Wildeford’s comment on: Honoring Petrov Day on the EA Forum: 2021
Were you selected to have the codes for both LessWrong and the EA Forum? I see you made a similar post on LW.

EricHerboso

EA on r/​Place: An Art Pro­ject Post-mortem

EA on r/Place: An Art Project Post-mortem