Thanks for everything you all do! Have been consistently impressed with ALLFEDās work and its importance. Donated $1000 NZD, hope it helps somewhere. Good luck with the triaging
Gavin Bishop š¹
Karma: 52
Great stuff!
Iām noticing I donāt have a very good mental model for this (if I assume youāre interested primarily in maximising effective GHD donations). Would love other peopleās insight.
I saw that OPās bar for funding was about ~$50 per DALY averted in Oct 2023. Excerpt from OP below:
Weāve reduced the annual rate of our funding for GiveWellās recommendations because our ābarā for funding in our Global Health and Wellbeing (GHW) portfolio has risen substantially. In July 2022, it was roughly in the range of 1100x-1200x; we recently raised it to slightly over 2000x. That means we need to be averting a DALY for ~$50 (because we value DALYs at $100K) or increasing income for 4 people by ~1% for a year for $1 (because we use a logarithmic utility function anchored at $50K).
Some more questions:
How do GiveWellās current top charity recommendations each sit at $/āDALY-averted?Does that mean that we can expect a donation to GiveWell to be buying DALY-aversions for >$50? (But less than what?) (I know that doing this calculation is not always a great idea, but keen to know how OP and GiveWell are thinking about this if they have)
What are reasonable alternatives to consider in this space? (Iām aware of other great non-GHD donation opportunities)
Re:fully funded, my vague mental model is they have a list of projects, ordered in some way, and then they fill till they run out of money +/ā- saving for future opportunities. Would love to know whether this is accurate.
Cheers for the practical post question.
Love your work!
I was literally starting to compile a list like this for myself personally. Thank you!
Bit late to the party and mostly meandering from the footnote but Iāve been thinking about this as well. +1 for the reference to Liu Cixinās Three-Body problem series (Rememberance of Earthās Past). Warning mild spoilers below although Iāve tried to keep them to a minimum.
While the physics used were super sci-fi, this has been the best book series Iāve read that really made me āfeelā the concepts of Longtermism and how they related to x-risk on a planetary scale. Few thoughts:Two bits I thought were particularly well done were a) the experiences of those waking up from hibernation tech (they woke up to a world significantly different than they predicted, and you could feel their disorientation) and b) the Australia chapter where you really get a sense of how horrific worst case x-risks might be
The speculative fiction on how society might respond to lots of these existential challanges also seems like good material to be able to reference and try to find solutions to in a common cultural language. E.g. as discussed here (Including referencing how a particular scenario is not like the one described).
The fact that it is written by one of the most popular Chinese Fiction writers seems like a major positive in terms of providing common ground for international cultural common ground between representatives of superpowers.
A counterpoint to promoting this may be his personal comments on politics in modern China, but I didnāt get the impression that his writing in the series was problematically anti-democratic.
I donāt want to update too much on something like āthis is a representative view of how Chinese society tends to think about the long-term futureā. If anyone has any insight on this Iād love to know.
Would it be a good idea to promote reading Liu Cixinās books on these merits above? How does it compare to other longtermist fiction for Instilling Cultural Longtermism?
Iām unsure about the tractability and desireability of a date-on-consititution-change. My major crux would be how much bipartisan support you could get.
This is awesome! Is there a page somewhere that collates the results of a bunch of internal forecasting by the end of the grant period? Iād be interested
Thought this was excellent. Great range of content and super high quality. One of my favourite 80k episodes of all time
This was a great read, illuminating and well-paced. Thanks!
The WHO has some good rankings of disease burden. They have different rankings for DALYs, YLLs and YLD. For example, back and neck pain is globally the leading cause of years lived with disability, but neonatal conditions and ischaemic heart disease cause the most DALYs. I imagine you could combine this with some other table that quantifies research effort and another which quantifies investment in that particular cause area.
Does anyone know of a good place to find them?
This is great. Was looking for stuff similar to Scott Alexanderās āEvery Bay area house partyā
Just adding my comment to +1 this one. Great articulation of an intuition Iāve had as well.
Hello Will very excited to read the book! My question however is about fire raves. How do you run them and what are your tips for making them the best experience they can be?
Iām one of the organising members of EA Dunedin in New Zealand and Iām planning on organising one for our group. I have a fair bit of experience organising bonfires/ācampfires but these tend to be the rather chill sort, maybe with a bluetooth speaker for some people to dance.
Bunch of questions: Feel free to just reply to whichever one you want and ignore the others :)
What are some key things to bring these to the next level? Whatās an underrated aspect that people tend to forget about? What are the highlights of your night?
For example Iāve learned from organising house parties that itās good to have the dancing area out of direct line of sight of the table with the food on it. So people dancing donāt get self-conscious about people just standing and eating and watching them. Any insight would be awesome (also welcome comments from others with fire-rave experience)!
This is an excellent project and an excellent post. Big kudos for making it happen. Also, thanks for introducing me to the term visual knowledge projects. Iād never heard of the specific term before and have always thought these sorts of visual maps are fantastic.
Iāve been trying to think of any important topic areas which have been missed and the first one that springs to mind is one on rational and compassionate/āaltruistic interpersonal communication. I really enjoyed Nonviolent Communication but Iām not sure itās our best bet due to a lack of randomised studies and some of the vibe. Maybe something on CBT like Feeling Good? Although this may now be drifting out of EA scope.
Secondly, for anyone who has enjoyed Factfulness by Hans Rosling or anything by Steven Pinker, Iād recommend this video essay for some strong counterpoints. I learned a lot and itās made me more cautious regarding the global application of ānew optimismā.
Finally, hereās another of my favourite visual knowledge projects: The Map of Philosophy by Carneades.org
Not involved, but awesome! Iām quite keen to see what you find