Working in environment education in Germany and co-leader of the EA Göttingen local chapter.
Anonymous feedback here:
https://www.admonymous.co/felixwolf
Felix Wolf
Here is the video Riccardo mentioned:
The Most Important Book I’ve Ever Read | Ali Abdaal (00:12:10)
Ali describes himself as a former doctor who turned to be an entrepreneur and centers his videos about making money.
@Riccardo, welcome back to the forum. I hope you found something interesting to read.
Hello Ray,
does your browser prevents you from opening links without https:// ?
bayesianinvestor . com/blog/index.php/2021/01/17/dirt/
If you are still unable to open the link you can use this one:
https://web.archive.org/web/20220606100451/http://www.bayesianinvestor.com/blog/index.php/2021/01/17/dirt/
Hello Ross,
welcome to the EA community. Thank you for your short introduction and nice to hear that you changed your donation pattern since 2016 with the use of Give Well.
I practice kickboxing, I figure I could learn something from you already. :D
I am currently struggeling with what your goal of this post is. Maybe split it in parts next time. One for your biography, one for getting feedback an your Value Life and one where you promote yourself for a EA related job.
Value Life is this foundation?
https://noitidart.github.io/value-life-foundation-donate/ (VLF)
If you are looking for a job, take a look at 80k.
https://80000hours.org/
80k has a jobboard and they can give you career advice if you scheduel a 1o1 with them.
https://80000hours.org/job-board/
I recommend you read the handbook:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/handbook
https://80000hours.org/key-ideas/And read an EA related book:
https://www.effectivealtruism.org/resources/books
https://80000hours.org/book-giveaway/ (get one for free here)
If you have any questions feel free to ask.
With kind regards
Felix Wolf
Hello Schwabilissimus,
welcome to EA and congratz to finishing your masters degree!
You can connect with the local community in Germany here:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/community
There are multiple ways to get career advice in EA, here are some examples:
https://80000hours.org/speak-with-us/
https://www.effektiveraltruismus.de/bibliothek/effektive-berufswahlYou can learn from written text, listen to podcasts about career building or schedule a 1o1 with someone in the EA sphere.
I hope you have fun in the forum and find new insights for your journey.
Welcome Arturo.
Changing our institutions to fit the existencial risks is a big part of EA. I hope you find a group where you can participate, learn something new and change the world to be a bit better than before. :)
Welcome!
Hello Sarah,
welcome and thank you for your donations! Even if it makes you feel good to donate and you do it because of this good feeling it would be completely fine to feel this way. If not, also great. :)
I am not part of the EA community in Canada but they seem to have seven local groups which you can join if you want.
https://effectivealtruismcanada.com/groups/Feel free to explore the forum and take a look into the handbook.
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/handbook
Welcome Fazle,
a good way to learn more about EA is to participate in the Intro Fellowship. Take a look here:
https://www.effectivealtruism.org/virtual-programs/introductory-program
I watched the Kurtzgesagt video too and was so hyped if it would bring new people to the plattform. Nice to see you here. I hope you can get the necessary information for you out of here and learn something. :)
Hello Tom,
welcome to the EA community. I also encountered EA related topics countless times before joining (Give Well, 80k, LessWrong, …). Nice to see you here. :)
Now to your questions.
I dont know if 80k works with career advisers in educational institutions, but I know that they will answer your question fast and in detail if you write them directly:
https://80000hours.org/about/contact-us/
Doing good better is published in 2015. Carbon capture and sequestration is still future tech and does not resolve the problem with rising climate gases.
Simon Clark did a video on this topic lately, condemning the tech:Have a look into the IPCC report and look for yourself:
https://report.ipcc.ch/ar6wg3/pdf/IPCC_AR6_WGIII_SummaryForPolicymakers.pdf
Why not just donate to the best cause?
The best cause is specific to you. It is good practice to splitt your donations on different cause areas, since you have different interests and want to improve the world in different areas.
If everyone would be like a perfect robot and is only donating to the best cause at the time every donation would go to them, thus making everyone else neglected which would make them the best cause in return.
You don’t have to donate strictly to one cause area, feel free to decide in which area you want to have an impact and then search where you could make the biggest impact.
Nice to see that you have read quite some EA literature and that you are working together with your students to make the world a better place. The saying goes in the education for Sustainable Development:”think globally, act locally.”
dear hank & john 002 - It’s a Humor Podcast! (a very brief mention at question 1)
https://nerdfighteria.info/v/210501999/
This redditor asked a related question:
”Did Hank and/or John ever comment on effective altruism? Where?”
https://www.reddit.com/r/nerdfighters/comments/nrikvp/did_hank_andor_john_ever_comment_on_effective/ (it says 1 comment but I am unable to find it, mabye I dont know reddit too well)
A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor by Hank Green could be considered EA related:
https://ea.greaterwrong.com/posts/5aM8qQE3Pq9D8HxrR/fiction-about-ai-risk
There was a cooperation with their charity event:
”Join our Project for Awesome workshop to make videos for high-impact charities, in order to win money for them and introduce them to a wider audience! During Project for Awesome, a community-driven charitable event created by Hank and John Green, thousands of people create videos advocating for various charities. Then, people vote for their favorite videos during a 48-hour continuous live stream. Last year, the effective altruism community won about $190,000 split across 7 charities: The Against Malaria Foundation, The Good Food Institute, GiveDirectly, Clean Air Task Force, The Humane League, Givewell Maximum Impact Fund, and Wild Animal Initiative. Three of the EA community’s videos were featured, and John gave a shoutout to EA.”
https://www.gatech.edu/event/2022/02/17/project-awesome-video-making
So they know GiveWell and Effective Altruism.
Since we are fixing broken links here, we have a outdated one here.
We currently link to the old handbook:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/cN9Zu7dowefAfmNnH/the-effective-altruism-handbook
instead of the new one:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/handbook
Every other link worked just fine.
Welcome to the EA forum Mr. Baldwin.
I like to link to stuff others pointed out so it is easier to get to the content. Here is a link to the podcast episode of People I (Mostly) Admire with William MacAskill:
Episode 86, A Million-Year View on Morality (52:31)
”Philosopher Will MacAskill thinks about how to do as much good as possible. But that’s really hard, especially when you’re worried about humans who won’t be born for many generations.”
https://freakonomics.com/podcast/a-million-year-view-on-morality/
“If we discount at the conservative rate of 2% per year [...]”.
This argument strikes me as one from Richard A. Posner presented in his book: Catastrophe: Risk and Response (https://www.amazon.com/Catastrophe-Risk-Response-Richard-Posner/dp/0195306473/).
This idea is known in the community but I am looking forward for your post and the discussion beneath it. :)
Also big kudos to donating based on effectiveness over the past decades (and donating at all). I think this could also deserve a post, on your history of figuring out which donation is effective and how you choose between them.
I did not know about the second channel. Thanks for pointing it out. Riccardo said he watched an interview, my mistake.
This youtuber seems to be popular, I saw some folks mentioning him here. Maybe I will give him a try.
Welcome Danielle,
nice to see you here! The EA movement can help you with your career choices. I really recomment getting in touch with a group either local or virtual.
If you want to learn more about EA, a Fellowship is a good way to learn together and share your different views and arguments or if you want to learn more which career would be a good fit for you book an 1o1 with someone. Don’t be shy to hit on people and write them if you have an idea or a question.
The community is here for you. :)
PS: Reading recommendation time. I belive in you can only give a book away as a present which you have read yourself, so I will recommend you Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind : Harari, Yuval Noah. The title gives its premise away but it really helped me to extent my view on our species and the timescales we are dealing with (important for longtermism and our own historical perspective). I recommend it partially because I just finished Homo Deus from the same author and it makes a good addition to the first book.
Also maybe look here:
I scraped all public “Effective Altruists” Goodreads reading lists
Welcome to the EA forum Aithir. :)
I want to learn more about truthfulness, but a quick google search stranded into meaningless. Can you please recommend something to learn more about this principle and why you think it is more important than the concerns about spreading potential harmful information?
Hey Rob,
welcome to EA and the forum. Nice to hear you are already engaged so deep with the material. I suggest just writing the local group, maybe they have meetings and are not advertising them correctly.
Have a nice day. :)
Hello Malte,
welcome to the forum and to EA! We have local groups in Hannover, Göttingen and Magdeburg. Hannover has an online reading group, Göttingen has weekly meetings in person & hybrid (we are doing a career workshop at the 13/11/22). Magdeburg seems to be inactive since 2020.
So, if you want to connect, this would be a possibility. I can give you the contact information for each group if you want.
Also, today is the last day to apply for the career fellowship from EA Germany:
https://ea-germany.notion.site/EA-Career-Planning-Program-03cb0f1f6b9a4ae0b8d723316b558b8fFeel free to contact me if you want to know more or talk about something different. :)
Greetings from Hildesheim.
Hello Jason,
welcome to the forum! Nice to hear you are comfortable with earning to give as your cause area.
I have some questions regarding your donation website.
Where do you get your rating for the projects? Sometimes you are unable to find data from charity evaluation sites, and then you typically list it with:
Impact Evidence – Strong
Relative Need – Stronger
Financial Transparency – Strongest
Financial Efficiency – Strongest
The last two are usually given the best rating, even if you have no external sources which you normally use to justify the rating.
For example:
https://blessbig.org/evangelism-discipleship-missions/
Do you have further information on the difference between strong, stronger and strongest? What qualifies for each rating?
You mention that your team spend hundreds of hours in research, but never says it anything about the conclusion and methods they used specifically. Can you please provide us with more information how you decide to list an organization and how you choose your ratings?
I have different request, please link your sources.
I was curious about your claim that your work (big blessing?) was mentioned in the Washington Post, and I was unable to find it via Google. Only after I used your name in the search, I found the post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2020/09/23/effective-altruism-charity/
Bless Big was not mentioned.
Thank you and have a great weekend. :)
Hello Victoria,
welcome to the forum! Have fun participating here, maybe subscribe to the newsletter. It’s a good way to stay in touch. :)
Greetings.
What is the name and do you have a website for your project?