Private equity investor (E2G)
Co-Treasurer @ EA UK
Trustee @ EA for Christians
Trustee @ ICM UK
Director @ EA Good Governance Project
MBA @ INSEAD
Grayden
Karma: 1,307
Preventing catastrophic risks, improving global health and improving animal welfare are goals in themselves. At best, forecasting is a meta topic that supports other goals
Thanks for sharing, but nobody on that thread seems to be able to explain it! Most people there, like here, seem very sceptical
You might be right but just to add a datapoint: I was featured in an article in 2016. I don’t regret it but I was careful about (1) the journalist and (2) what I said on the record.
I think forecasting is attractive to many people in EA like myself because EA skews towards curious people from STEM backgrounds who like games. However, I’m yet to see a robust case for it being an effective use of charitable funds (if there is, please point me to it). I’m worried we are not being objective enough and trying to find the facts that support the conclusion rather than the other way round.
Insolvency happens on an entity by entity level. I don’t know which FTX entity gave money to EA orgs (if anyone knows, please say), and whether it went first via the founders personally. I would have thought it’s possible that FTX full repays its creditors, so there is value in the shares, but then FTX’s investors go after the founders personally and they are declared bankrupt.
I’m hugely in favour of principles first as I think it builds a more healthy community. However, my concern is that if you try too hard to be cause neutral, you end up artificially constrained. For example, Global Heath and Wellbeing is often a good introduction point to the concept of effectiveness. Then once people are focused on maximisation, it’s easier to introduce Animal Welfare and X-Risk.
When you are a start-up non-profit, it can be hard to find competent people outside your social circle, which is why I created the EA Good Governance Project to make life easier for people.
I think it’s important:
To put in place good practices (e.g. board meeting without the CEO regularly) BEFORE they are needed.
For FUNDERS to ask questions about effective governance and bear responsibility when they get it wrong.
My two cents:
Most governments heavily subsidise R&D (which is equivalent to a deliberate negative externality), often through tax credits
The patent system allows companies to extract abnormal profits for 20 years and incentivise a race (even if somebody independently develops the technology, they can’t use it if somebody else has patented it). This system is a deliberate inefficient market
Corporate R&D tends to be much more short-term and customer-focused. If you come from an academic background, you will be shocked by what is counted as R&D. For example, if you ask a consumer products company about innovation, they will talk about things that really aren’t humanity advancing (e.g. adding another blade to a razor, changing the shape of a chocolate bar to make it smaller without the consumer noticing)
Funding to EA orgs has roughly halved in the last year, so a recession would barely be noticed! More broadly, the point you make is valid. One of the reasons I’ve stayed earning to give is that I’ve never been confident in the stability of EA funding over my future career.
“Donating a kidney results in an over 1300% increase in the risk of kidney disease. A risk-averse interpretation of the data puts the increase in year-to-year mortality after donation upwards of 240%.”
Could you provide these in absolute terms as relative terms are pretty meaningless and rhetoric
Great article. Very concise, clear and actionable!
You raise some good points, so I have removed that point from the main article.
Each one of us only has a single perspective and it’s human nature to assume other people have similar perspectives. EA is a bubble and there are certainly bubbles within the bubble, e.g. I understand Bay Area is very AI focused while London is more plural.
Articles like this that attempt to replace one person’s perspective with hard data are really useful. Thank you.
At EA for Christians, we often interact with people who are altruistic and focused on impact but do not want to associate with EA because of its perceived anti-religion ethos.
On the flip side, since becoming involved with EA for Christians, a number of people have told me they are Christian but keep it quiet for fear it will damage their career prospects.
We should all try to maximise our impact and there’s a good argument for specialisation.
However, I’m concerned by a few things:
Its not obvious to me that spending more money on yourself will make you better at your job
There’s a danger of arrogance clouding our judgment, e.g. I don’t think 99% of people in EA should be flying business class
Donating has value for many people due to the “skin in the game” effect
I appreciate this comment
Highly engaged EAs were much more likely to select research (25.0% vs 15.1%) and much less likely to select earning to give (5.7% vs 15.7%)
are you sure this isn’t just a function of the definition of highly engaged?
Yes! A rather important typo! I’ve now fixed
Thanks for sharing. It’s a start, but it’s certainly not a proven Theory of Change. For example, Tetlock himself said that nebulous long-term forecasts are hard to do because there’s no feedback loop. Hence, a prediction market on an existential risk will be inherently flawed.