IanDavidMoss

Karma: 2,666

IanDavidMoss 12 Sep 2015 20:17 UTC
2 points
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on: A new response to effective altruism
I think there’s some merit to Reid’s 2nd point, although I would frame it differently. The most efficient giving opportunities typically are not local, it is true. However, the relative efficiency of giving opportunities for EAs is defined in part by an assumption that other parties’ giving will remain the same (this idea is at the core of GiveWell’s “room for more funding” calculations).

EAs do not have the ability to control all or even a majority of donations within their local communities. There’s lots of research (e.g., http://www.hopeconsulting.us/pdf/Money%20for%20Good_Final.pdf) showing that most donors are tied to specific causes, contexts, geographies, etc., and don’t see any reason to change that. However, EAs might make more headway with this audience by pursuing EA principles within boundaries that they care about. So you’re not asking a donor to give up on supporting (say) Seattle, but simply to direct his or her giving in ways that help Seattle more effectively. That approach is much more likely to actually move the needle on donating behavior in the short term, and it’s a way to make all of giving more efficient and effective through a network of domains. It may even eventually make some of those inefficient giving opportunities much more competitive with the most efficient giving opportunities.

Remember, I’m suggesting this as a supplement to cause/geography-agnostic giving advocacy, not as a replacement for it.

IanDavidMoss 6 Aug 2016 16:06 UTC
2 points
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on: New version of effectivealtruism.org
On my laptop using Windows 10 and the latest version of Firefox on full screen, the cause prioritization tool has some obvious formatting issues. The text stating “OK, got it. Tell me how to help” extends past the right edge of the button, the text in the modal window seems intended to fit on one screen but just exceeds the space allocation, requiring a scrollbar, and when you do scroll down the flowchart does not scroll with the text.

Links should open in a new window so that you can easily get back to the flowchart after getting more information.

I think the ability to follow along with the flowchart as you’re making your choices is cool, but I would suggest that until a professionally-designed version of the flowchart can be created, it would be more effective to omit it if the site is primarily aimed at audiences new to EA. Right now the visual effect is sloppy, with text colliding with lines, etc., and it creates a bad contrast with the relatively more polished quiz next to it. I doubt that most new-to-EA folks will get that much out of having the flowchart there if they already have the quiz to work with.

Let me know if you need me to email screenshots of any of this—I couldn’t figure out a way to upload them in the interface here.

IanDavidMoss 16 Aug 2016 22:21 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Kerry_Vaughan’s comment on: Effective Altruists really love EA: Evidence from EA Global
I think the founder effect explanation is definitely a big part of the story in terms of the demographic makeup. However, that does not mean being more welcoming won’t help. As a white founder myself, I have learned the hard way that racial diversity in particular must be actively cultivated, and you can get yourself very deep into a hole after a short time because people start to notice the demographic makeup and make judgments and inferences about the community based on it. I was pleased to see more racial diversity at EA Global this year than I expected (although still very few black and Latino participants), but one thing I couldn’t help but notice is that there were no non-white speakers at ANY of the sessions I attended over two days. That’s the sort of thing that can be perceived as unwelcoming for someone who has made the commitment to attend a conference and has already spent a bunch of time being one of the few people in a room who looks a certain way, and it also shows that it’s not just about who expresses interest in EA in the first place.

IanDavidMoss 19 Sep 2016 0:10 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Evan_Gaensbauer’s comment on: Reflections on EA Global from a first-time attendee
Thanks, Evan. I did see that article, but I think its thesis makes more sense in theory than in practice. The reality is that people coming into these spaces from the outside will think of “effective altruists” as an identity whether we/you want them to or not, because that’s a frame that is familiar to them from other contexts. Communities are sometimes defined as much by people outside of them as by people on the inside.

IanDavidMoss 19 Sep 2016 13:13 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Fluttershy’s comment on: Reflections on EA Global from a first-time attendee
I appreciate the vote of confidence! But I should also clarify that my wavering on self-identification with effective altruism has mostly not been due to lack of kindness from other EAs. I’ve sometimes been asked tough and direct questions, but I fully expected that and didn’t consider it any kind of harassment (with one exception where the guy later apologized). It sounds like you’ve experienced much worse and I’m sorry for that.

IanDavidMoss 20 Sep 2016 18:09 UTC
9 points
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on: Review of EA Global 2016
Great summary! Regarding location selection, one thing to keep in mind is that selecting based on existing concentrations of interest is likely to have self-reinforcing effects. With any conference, a significant percentage of the attendees are likely to come from the local area, and it stands to reason that those attendees are, on average, likely to have a looser or more casual connection to the community than those who have traveled from far away. That’s a big reason why many industry and association conferences choose to alternate time zones, or continents, every year. Otherwise, you might risk unintentionally fostering a strong regional bias to community growth over time.

IanDavidMoss 25 Sep 2016 2:44 UTC
5 points
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in reply to: Benjamin_Todd’s comment on: Reflections on EA Global from a first-time attendee
I think there is some truth to the second part of this, although I would encourage folks not to see it as a reason to be dismissive towards people in the strategic philanthropy community. A lot of them have spent decades banging their heads against the wall trying to motivate the kinds of changes that EA advocates, and they have valuable lessons to share from that experience.

IanDavidMoss 25 Sep 2016 21:24 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: mbennedsen’s comment on: All causes are EA causes
Sure thing. I don’t have a fully-fleshed-out plan to offer you, but here is an initial thought.

My main suggestion is to implement a kind of chapter-based network (let’s assume for the sake of argument that we can figure out a way to avoid confusion with the existing EA-based local chapter system). This is similar to your suggestion of sub-groups dedicated to specific causes and geographies. I think the difference between what I’m envisioning and what you’re suggesting, though, is that I am not thinking that the talent and resources for these organizations would primarily come from the existing EA community. For example, in Createquity’s case, we are all people in the arts and I am the only one who even borderline considers myself an effective altruist. Yet, the work we do is very aligned. Similarly, there is a large if somewhat unorganized community of evaluators, scientists, philanthropists, think tanks, and service organizations dedicated to effective practice in various domains. (I use the term “domain” here rather than “cause” since I am considering geography to be a potential domain.) It is possible that some of those folks could be converted to working on more global EA issues, but for those who can’t be, the domain-specific groups would be a way for them to plug in and put to good use the knowledge that the larger network is generating.

So it would not be a huge drain on existing EA resources, but neither am I advocating that EA take a completely hands-off approach. I think there is a ton of value to be realized from coordination and spread of the EA brand to individual domains. As long as it’s always recognized that domain-specific is subordinate to cause neutral, the brand need not be harmed. It’s almost like the domain-specific organizations are the farm team for EA’s major leagues, both in terms of recommended interventions/actions and potentially for talent as well.

IanDavidMoss 25 Sep 2016 21:39 UTC
5 points
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in reply to: MichaelDickens’s comment on: All causes are EA causes
Michael, a large part of my argument rests on the premise that the EA community has grown to the point where it is capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time. You seem to be viewing this through an individual scarcity lens where we only have one choice to make about which action we’re going to take, and it has to be the most effective one. I disagree. I see EA as a diverse, multifaceted movement with many assets that can be deployed toward the collective good. This piece is about how those resources can be collectively deployed most effectively, which is a different question from “how can I do the most good.”

IanDavidMoss 25 Sep 2016 22:32 UTC
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in reply to: sulodt’s comment on: All causes are EA causes
Can you walk me through your reasoning of why the marginal value of encouraging the practice of effective altruism within domains is not likely to be greater than the marginal opportunity cost of doing so?

IanDavidMoss 25 Sep 2016 22:34 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: sulodt’s comment on: All causes are EA causes
If you don’t believe that there are other valuable causes out there, or that cause X can be conclusively determined to be better than cause Y, then why do you think cause prioritization research is a valuable use of EA resources?

IanDavidMoss 27 Sep 2016 0:39 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: Ben_West’s comment on: All causes are EA causes
Hi Ben, the answer to that is simple. EA currently says to donors, “give 10% (or whatever amount you’re willing) to the top charities that we recommend. Then do whatever you want with the rest, we don’t care.”

My claim is simply that EA should care about “the rest,” if the goal is to maximize total wellbeing improvement. For many donors, I believe it is not as simple as having two pots, one for which you use your head and one for which you use your heart. In my family’s case, we are interested in maximizing the good we do within the other 50%, subject to those top-level restrictions. That is also true of a large portion of grantmaking foundations with professional staff. It all comes back to my point about EA leaving opportunities for impact on the table.

IanDavidMoss 27 Sep 2016 1:07 UTC
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in reply to: sulodt’s comment on: All causes are EA causes
So, are you arguing that investing in EA outreach in domain-specific ways can’t compete or that investing in EA outreach at all can’t compete? Your last paragraph sounds like you’re saying the latter, but I find that to be a rather nonsensical position if you think that correctly targeted donations are so highly leveraged.

If the claim is that domain-specific EA outreach is less effective per unit invested than cause neutral EA outreach, keep in mind that I argue domain-specific EA outreach will grow the movement faster/more than the alternative, which in turn creates more resources that can be deployed toward further outreach (or other helpful functions, like operations or research). Depending on your assumptions about the ratio between the total ceiling of cause-neutral people and domain-specific people out there, that growth factor could be extremely significant to EA’s total impact on the world.

IanDavidMoss 27 Sep 2016 1:18 UTC
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in reply to: sulodt’s comment on: All causes are EA causes

Spreading EA-thinking in other domains doesn’t provide nearly as much data

I really disagree with this. I think it would result in dramatically more data compared to the alternative, especially if each of those domains is doing its own within-cause prioritization.

IanDavidMoss 27 Sep 2016 11:41 UTC
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in reply to: MichaelDickens’s comment on: All causes are EA causes
Michael, I’ll clarify what actions from the EA community I am specifically I am making a case for. I am arguing two things:

1) people who are already invested in EA outreach ought to consider strategies that reach and activate people invested in specific domains; and

2) people who are invested in EA in general, but not in EA outreach specifically, ought to recognize the value of 1).

Now, those “ought tos” are of course contingent upon your agreement with the specific arguments and assumptions that I lay out in the piece. But I am not trying to convince you, specifically, to campaign for domain-specific EA except to the extent that you’re campaigning for EA already and not 100% successful in those efforts.

IanDavidMoss 27 Sep 2016 11:56 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: CarlShulman’s comment on: All causes are EA causes
That’s interesting, Carl, I wouldn’t have necessarily thought of copyright reform as one of the highest-impact arts interventions, but the consumer surplus angle is intriguing. This exchange is actually a great example of how domains can benefit from participation in this community.

I also want to throw another thought out there: it’s not inconceivable to me that we might find the most effective way to support the arts in the world is to, say, give cash transfers to poor people in Africa. Or put resources towards some other broad, systemic issue that affects everyone but is disproportionately relevant in the domain of the arts. If people in the effective altruist community said that, everyone would freak out and think you’re just throwing stuff at a wall to get people to switch donations away from the arts. But if an entity with authentic roots in the arts said that, the reaction would be quite different. See, for example, this: http://creativz.us/2016/02/02/what-artists-actually-need-is-an-economy-that-works-for-everyone/ Furthermore, Createquity would only come to that conclusion after researching the other major interventions and causes within the arts that people already care about, so we would have a much more concrete comparative case to make.

As always, everything I’m saying here potentially applies in other cause areas as well. I know we’re talking about the arts a lot in this thread because that’s my background and what I know best, but I don’t think any of this is less true for, e.g., higher education or local social services.

IanDavidMoss 27 Sep 2016 15:17 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Benjamin_Todd’s comment on: All causes are EA causes
(First, really stupid question—not sure I understand the math here? Why wouldn’t switching from typical US to good US produce 9 extra units of impact per your assumption, not 4?)

Anyway, regarding this:

At the current margin, it seems substantially easier to me to persuade one person to change cause towards international health and support the best charity in the area, than to persuade 49 US focused donors to choose the best thing in their area.

I think one thing you’re not taking into account is that not all EA community members are interchangeable; different people have different leverage within their communities. It would be trivial for me to motivate 49 arts enthusiasts to switch donations to a better US charity in the arts, given that I run a publication with roughly 10k total followers and several hundred “true fans.” There are analogous people in other domains across the spectrum. So one approach to outreach could largely involve finding and forming partnerships with aligned, influential individuals in those domains.

IanDavidMoss 27 Sep 2016 15:36 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: Ben Millwood’s comment on: All causes are EA causes
That’s very kind of you, Ben. I’m not getting burned out, but I am getting a little frustrated that some of my more substantive responses and clarifications are getting spread out across multiple threads when it would be easier for everyone if they were collected in one place. Not sure if you have any suggestions for that...maybe I could update the OP?

IanDavidMoss 27 Sep 2016 19:06 UTC
0 points
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in reply to: Ben_West’s comment on: All causes are EA causes
I would question whether 1 is in fact easier. In the case of most of the people I know, I would guess that it’s not.

IanDavidMoss 29 Sep 2016 21:18 UTC
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in reply to: Chris Leong’s comment on: All causes are EA causes

People who are passionate about the arts and want to support the arts can already join the community, it is just that if they truly want to be part of the community, then they should be supporting Effective Altruist causes as well, just as you can’t become an artist just by hanging around artists, you have to occasionally make things.

I think this is reasonable. I guess the way I would put it is this. We need people in the effective altruist community who can serve as bridges between EA and domains, to help make those domains more effective. The people who are serving that bridge function should really understand EA and buy into its core concepts, including the basic logic of cause neutrality. That said, the people they’re bridging to, in the domains, don’t necessarily need to consider themselves effective altruists or be active in the EA community in order to do effective things within their domains. They just need to be willing to work with the person who is serving as the bridge.