There is high-quality evidence supporting some of these orgs, but for the think-tank types, giving to them would be part of a more hits-based giving approach.
Also, I think many people would say that economic development in LMICs in particular is neglected and underfunded. Stefan Dercon’s work (ex-chief economist of Britain’s aid agency and development economics professor) challenged my previous assumption that LMIC governments are already optimising for broad-based economic growth.
This can still be a counterfactual decrease in meat sales right?
Great question which merits more discussion. I’m sure there is an interesting argument to be made about how we should settle for “good enough” if it helps us avoid extinction risks.
Your first comment claims that the 120 fold difference in population makes Israel’s enemies more influential than its allies at the UN (which I disagree with), which is different to claiming that the disproportionate populations have “some” effect over the UN (which I agree with).
Religions are not represented at the UN, countries are, and the major forces influencing the UN in favour of Israel are the US and the UK, which are mostly not made up of Jews, and the main force influencing the UN against Israel is China, which is largely not made up of Muslims.
In other words, power struggles at the UN on Israel-Palestine are not really a power struggle between Jews and Muslims, and like lots of other geopolitics things are more of a power struggle between the USA and China.
I think I generally agree with the idea that “making altruism a habit will probably increase your net impact”, and thinking of altruistic effort as a finite resource to spend is inaccurate.
However I think there are is a force, “moral licensing” (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0146167215572134) pushing in the opposite direction of habit formation.
My personal recommendation is that people should make altruism a habit where it does not feel like a large personal sacrifice. For almost all this will include generally acting morally under virtue ethics and deontology too, and include things like donating blood and being an organ donor. But depending on the person this can still include donating 10%, going vegan or at least reducing meat consumption etc.
If someone has time, I’d love to see a more comprehensive version of this post, even with quick bullet points!
Thanks for your comment!
I think a sufficiently intelligent ASI is equally likely to outsmart human goal-directedness efforts as it is to outsmart guardrails.
I think number 2 is a good point.
There are many people who actively want to create an aligned ASI as soon as possible to reap its benefits, for whom my suggestion is not useful.
But there are others who primarily want to prevent the creation of a misaligned ASI, and are willing to forgo the creation of an ASI if necessary.
There are also others who want to create an aligned ASI, but are willing to considerably delay this to improve the chances that the ASI is aligned.
I think my suggestion is mainly useful for these second and third groups.
I don’t think adoption by LMIC governments removes the desirable wealth transfer to LMICs. I think most of the wealth transfers to LMICs will continue via other NGOs.
CGD have some interesting work making the case that governments should focus on prioritising the most cost-effective health services, and donors, whose funding is less reliable should focus on additional, less cost-effective stuff—https://www.cgdev.org/blog/putting-aid-its-place-new-compact-financing-health-services
Great post!
My recommendation to policy people, having worked in policy, is where possible, name things (initiatives, policies, bills, organisations). It makes it much easier to evaluate your impact in the future, if something does get set up and it has the name that you gave it!
Do you think there’s an opportunity for LLMs to enable a lot of translation of primary school books into local languages / help develop lesson plans? Is there a charity idea here?
Great piece!
I’ve long thought society overestimates the value of schooling (particularly secondary school).
One reason is negative spillovers (i.e, some of the benefits to individuals from education is probably from winning zero-sum games around jobs). Do you know if education RCTs have tried to take this into account (Eg—via two-step randomisation?)
Another reason I’ve been thinking about recently is the fact that most people forget most of the knowledge they learned in school, very soon after finishing school. I don’t think there’s a plausible mechanism by which this forgotten knowledge generates benefits for the individual or wider society.
I think it’s likely that the optimal age to finish school isn’t 17⁄18 as is the norm in many countries. The time we spend in school seems to have been very arbitrarily selected (eg—why not extend secondary school by 5 more years and have everyone continue a broad education if education is so beneficial?)
I also feel that the opportunity cost of more schooling isn’t discussed near enough—people could do more on-the-job training more relevant to their actual jobs instead.
I disagree because I think these people would be in favour of action to mitigate x-risk from extreme climate change and nuclear war.
Right, but pooling or not pooling effects of different interventions relies on a subjective assessment of whether the interventions (chlorine, filtration, spring protection) are similar enough. Kremer et al have made different assessments to the Cochrane review authors, which I think needs justification. The subjectivity in this part of any meta-analysis is very susceptible to p-hacking.
Is this essentially the same as the “cluelessness objection” to longtermism?
What is the case for new initiatives as opposed to expanding GWWC / OftW’s operations to more countries? Or regional offices for these orgs?
Good point, I don’t think I had considered the large number of board spots. That being said, I’d be excited for some senior people who don’t explicitly identify as EA to be on boards of EA orgs, who may have general relevant experience and connections in relevant sectors. So I’d probably stand by my previous recommendation, but would still prefer your idea to heavily overlapping boards.
I’m really happy to hear this and have previously posted on this forum wondering whether splitting up EA orgs might make sense (https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/SBSC8ZiTNwTM8Azue/a-libertarian-socialist-s-view-on-how-ea-can-improve)
In that same post I proposed:
I would recommend that individuals are only allowed to hold leadership, board or governance positions in one EA organisation each. Beyond reducing risks of bias in funding allocation, this would also help to distribute power at the top of EA, safeguarding against individual irrationality and increasing diversity of thought, which may generate additional benefits.
Is this something you would consider?
I think you’re asking a general question of whether we should politicise or depoliticise issues we care about. I pretty much always think the answer is depoliticise, because very crudely, I expect the right and left to be in power about 50% of the time in 50% of the places, so if we want the laws we want everywhere, we should depoliticise things we care about.