GV 🔸

Karma: 63

GV 🔸May 3, 2025, 4:36 PM
3 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: JoA🔸’s comment on: Prioritizing Work
Hey @JoA🔸 , I was considering having a translation (maybe adapted to our cultural context) on EA France’s website, if @Jeff Kaufman 🔸 is giving us his blessing :)

GV 🔸Feb 6, 2025, 10:11 AM
5 points
0 ∶ 0
on: What is the admissions bar for EA Global?
Hi, thanks for the post!
After discussing with other group organizers, 2 interesting ideas came up and I wanted to share them for CEA’s consideration—I hope I’m not repeating something written elsewhere:
- Referral codes that group organizers might give some specific members to signal that they’re 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 “referral codes” but they are very distinct things).

GV 🔸Jan 20, 2025, 3:58 PM
4 points
0 ∶ 0
on: What comes after the Introduction Fellowship? A tool and approach for community organizers
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 “paths” for this.
I don’t understand this, though: how do you suggest tracking people’s answers to this tool? How is the data consolidated?

GV 🔸Jan 18, 2025, 10:55 AM
5 points
3 ∶ 0
on: Announcing a new CEA-supported local event series
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 we’d like to participate still have not heard about EA. In such contexts, I think it’s probably a better idea to avoid calling the event “EA <something>” and to choose something like “Impact <summit? day? expo? ignition?>”, so that even people not familiar with the movement can have an idea about the theme as soon as they hear the title.

GV 🔸Jan 8, 2025, 10:20 PM
4 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Introducing The Field Building Blog (FBB #0)
Interesting topic ideas, thanks in advance Gergő!
Quick question: why not write on the EA Forum? I am not convinced by “the 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 forum”. Is it just a better “writer experience”?
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 you’ll get more readers; it will be more convenient for said readers; there’s a good comments system; the audio transcription; there are previous of within-forum links; and probably other important things I’m 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 “quick takes”?

(super interested to hear what was in favor of Substack! :) )

GV 🔸Dec 4, 2024, 7:20 PM
6 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Tristan Williams’s comment on: Tristan Williams’s Quick takes
The context might vary and make me reconsider in certain instances, but I generally think it’s important to say that there are ways to act that are orders of magnitude more effective than others. So yes, insist on “more” rather than on “the most possible”… 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.

GV 🔸Nov 26, 2024, 12:41 PM
6 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Sharing insights from my master’s work on the Global Health Security Index: seeking feedback and research directions
I think it’s 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 “big question”: 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 it’s necessary and useful to break this down into subquestions like you did. IMO it’s 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 GDoc’s comments).

GV 🔸Nov 7, 2024, 8:38 PM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Rick Holland’s comment on: AMA: Rick Holland, Fundraising expert and Director of Confident Philanthropy
Your comments here and there make sense to me. I feel like it’s 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 org’s willingness to allocate resources to professional communication work
- the extent to which the org’s activity lends itself to communication (eg most orgs working with cute animals have an advantage here).

GV 🔸Nov 7, 2024, 4:13 PM
2 points
0 ∶ 0
on: AMA: Rick Holland, Fundraising expert and Director of Confident Philanthropy
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?)

GV 🔸Oct 21, 2024, 7:57 AM
1 point
1 ∶ 0
on: Announcing: biosecurity.world
Thanks a lot for the hard work! This will certainly be useful to people interested in biosecurity careers in our group!

GV 🔸Aug 28, 2024, 6:11 PM
5 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Effective Altruism and the Human Mind [5000 Word Summary]
Thanks a lot to you (and to Claude) for this!
I hadn’t realized that context windows are now big enough to feed entire chapters.

GV 🔸Jun 25, 2024, 12:53 PM
2 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Scope-Sensitive Biosecurity Policy in France: An Opportunity?
Thank you very much for taking the time to write this, Alix!

GV 🔸May 22, 2024, 5:00 PM
2 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Publication of the International Scientific Report on the Safety of Advanced AI (Interm Report)
Thank you @James Herbert and @Shakeel Hashim for drawing attention to this!

GV 🔸Mar 24, 2024, 4:25 PM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: The Lack of EA in US Private Foundations
Extremely interesting article -and I’d love to see other posts exploring your assumptions!

I had a chance to meet a private foundation’s leader in Europe recently (raising and donating several millions / year). Interestingly, they also mentioned TBP and I’m 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) “having a very high bar for anticipated effectiveness” and (2) “having a very high bar for evidence of impact”. 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), you’ll probably have to provide significant evidence, and I think it’s 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 EA’s frequent, strong claim of “making decisions based on evidence” (btw, this claim is so often advertized that I’d assume that it can be conflated with a reliance on frequent reports from and control over grantees).
Also, maybe it’s be worth distinguishing different cases, in particular:
- Funders of “traditional” animal welfare or GHD charities;
- Funders of more “exotic” projects (global catastrophic risks, community-building, forecasting...), which usually cannot rely as much on historical data for evaluation.

GV 🔸Jan 18, 2024, 9:37 PM
4 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: David M’s comment on: Various roles at The School for Moral Ambition
In the meantime: good spot. I assume they assumed that an experienced “finance” person could probably take on this part-time role pro bono.

GV 🔸Aug 7, 2023, 4:22 PM
2 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Announcing Non-trivial, an EA learning platform for teenagers
I see on the website (https://www.non-trivial.org/program) that the short course is no longer presented. Now it is all about the fellowship. Is there a reason?

GV 🔸Mar 23, 2023, 1:38 PM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: GV 🔸’s comment on: Join a new slack for animal advocacy
Maybe also advertise the Slack in here? https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/groups/wiDFRkBrgfiXrPcmb

GV 🔸Mar 23, 2023, 1:34 PM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: Join a new slack for animal advocacy
Very happy to see this! But for information, the Slack link is expired (if you update it, be careful because it’s in multiple places in the article) @SofiaBalderson @Cameron.K

GV 🔸Sep 30, 2022, 10:07 PM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: Ubiquitous Far-Ultraviolet Light Could Control the Spread of Covid-19 and Other Pandemics
In a scenario where this tech works as well as we are dreaming of and has generalized in hundreds of millions of buildings: isn’t 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/many classes of virus eradicated from many modern buildings ⇒ our bodies are generally less prepared to encounter it in other settings.
(epistemic status: I’m very ignorant in these fields)

GV 🔸Sep 26, 2022, 9:37 PM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Guy Raveh’s comment on: Zzapp Malaria: More effective than bed nets? (Wanted: CTO, COO & Funding)
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 don’t disappear when entire regions use bednets more often, they just slowly become less malaria-infected.