This sounds like a nice, helpful tool that I intuitively think will be valuable to ensure people think clearly about how to make efforts in a concrete directions. I really like the 3 āpathsā for this.
I donāt understand this, though: how do you suggest tracking peopleās answers to this tool? How is the data consolidated?
Really nice to make this a part of the EAG family framework!
Regarding the naming: I guess it depends on the location, but for instance in France, a lot of people weād like to participate still have not heard about EA. In such contexts, I think itās probably a better idea to avoid calling the event āEA <something>ā and to choose something like āImpact <summit? day? expo? ignition?>ā, so that even people not familiar with the movement can have an idea about the theme as soon as they hear the title.
Interesting topic ideas, thanks in advance GergÅ!
Quick question: why not write on the EA Forum? I am not convinced by āthe most valuable conversations on field building are happening when people share their hot takes at conferences, retreats, or between staff members of fieldbuilding orgs that are just a bit too edgy to write up for the EA forumā. Is it just a better āwriter experienceā?
To be clear, I am interested enough in your views that I went to Substack and subscribed to your newsletter! It seems to me that for your topics, there are much stronger reasons to stay on the forum than for leaving it: I suppose youāll get more readers; it will be more convenient for said readers; thereās a good comments system; the audio transcription; there are previous of within-forum links; and probably other important things Iām forgetting.
If you want people to take your writings less seriously, and to be able to write without spending hours reviewing your texts, maybe you could use the āquick takesā?
(super interested to hear what was in favor of Substack! :) )
The context might vary and make me reconsider in certain instances, but I generally think itās important to say that there are ways to act that are orders of magnitude more effective than others. So yes, insist on āmoreā rather than on āthe most possibleāā¦ But with an emphasis on the fact that there are resources to help you and guide you towards options that are likely to be immensely more impactful than most actions.
I think itās very valuable to post this like you did, for you probably but also for others (like me) to see what kind of methodological traps and limitations arise in this kind of effort. Thanks!
You mentioned this ābig questionā: How effective is the GHSI at actually driving change in the biosecurity field?
The GHSI is a really nice tool created by big orgs, so I think itās necessary and useful to break this down into subquestions like you did. IMO itās also good, while researcher these questions (who engages with the index, and how? Is this legible and actionable?) further, to take a step back to consider the limits of the whole approach, like the fact that analyzing at national-level raises some issues, given how international dynamics emerge during such times of crisis (Moeen mentioned this in the GDocās comments).
Your comments here and there make sense to me. I feel like itās quite straightforward in theory, and harder to do in practice.
I do observe that some orgs are leagues above others in communicating, and I feel like the two important reasons for this are
- the orgās willingness to allocate resources to professional communication work
- the extent to which the orgās activity lends itself to communication (eg most orgs working with cute animals have an advantage here).
Naive and broad question: what should EA and EA orgs do differently to interest non-EA donors?
(are there things you feel are frequently under-appreciated by EA actors?)
Thanks a lot for the hard work! This will certainly be useful to people interested in biosecurity careers in our group!
Thanks a lot to you (and to Claude) for this!
I hadnāt realized that context windows are now big enough to feed entire chapters.
Thank you very much for taking the time to write this, Alix!
Thank you @James Herbert and @Shakeel Hashim for drawing attention to this!
Extremely interesting article -and Iād love to see other posts exploring your assumptions!
I had a chance to meet a private foundationās leader in Europe recently (raising and donating several millions /ā year). Interestingly, they also mentioned TBP and Iām now wondering whether it was to somehow position themselves as opposed to some sort of highly demanding grantmaking.
I do think TBP and EA are compatible, to some degree. We should not confuse (1) āhaving a very high bar for anticipated effectivenessā and (2) āhaving a very high bar for evidence of impactā. It is quite simple to apply for a grant from most EA grantmakers. In my (certainly limited) experience, if you want your grant to be renewed (and, supposedly, increased), youāll probably have to provide significant evidence, and I think itās fair enough.
I suppose non-EA funders might:
- Have actually little knowledge of EA or the EA funding landscape
- Be discouraged by the depth of analysis that they can see from GiveWell
- Be annoyed or discouraged by EAās frequent, strong claim of āmaking decisions based on evidenceā (btw, this claim is so often advertized that Iād assume that it can be conflated with a reliance on frequent reports from and control over grantees).
Also, maybe itās be worth distinguishing different cases, in particular:
Funders of ātraditionalā animal welfare or GHD charities;
Funders of more āexoticā projects (global catastrophic risks, community-building, forecasting...), which usually cannot rely as much on historical data for evaluation.
In the meantime: good spot. I assume they assumed that an experienced āfinanceā person could probably take on this part-time role pro bono.
I see on the website (https://āāwww.non-trivial.org/āāprogram) that the short course is no longer presented. Now it is all about the fellowship. Is there a reason?
Maybe also advertise the Slack in here? https://āāforum.effectivealtruism.org/āāgroups/āāwiDFRkBrgfiXrPcmb
Very happy to see this! But for information, the Slack link is expired (if you update it, be careful because itās in multiple places in the article) @SofiaBalderson @Cameron.K
In a scenario where this tech works as well as we are dreaming of and has generalized in hundreds of millions of buildings: isnāt there a risk of a general weakening of our immunity systems, making us more vulnerable over the medium-long run?
Basic logic behind this question: certain/āmany classes of virus eradicated from many modern buildings ā our bodies are generally less prepared to encounter it in other settings.
(epistemic status: Iām very ignorant in these fields)
Your next question seems like a crucial point to me. Bed nets are imperfect but since mosquitos can feed on on other animals, I suppose mosquito populations donāt disappear when entire regions use bednets more often, they just slowly become less malaria-infected.
Hi, thanks for the post!
After discussing with other group organizers, 2 interesting ideas came up and I wanted to share them for CEAās considerationāI hope Iām not repeating something written elsewhere:
Referral codes that group organizers might give some specific members to signal that theyāre recommending these applicants.
Some kind of referral-rewarding program that encourages people to invite new people to apply to EAG(x) events.
(both options might involve something called āreferral codesā but they are very distinct things).