ImmaSix

Karma: 137

ImmaSix 27 Dec 2021 19:47 UTC
7 points
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on: Making large donation decisions as a person focused on direct work
(Somewhat unrelated to my other comment)

How clear are you on your cause prioritization? If you know your cause area, you might just defer to a charity evaluator. (It sounds boring and too easy for so much money, but it might be the best way to go for many individuals). Obviously this does not work if you don’t know your cause area or your cause area does not have charity evaluators (yet!).

ImmaSix 27 Dec 2021 19:39 UTC
10 points
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on: Making large donation decisions as a person focused on direct work
Does your direct work give you access to knowledge that others don’t have? Even if you are not a professional grantmaker in your cause area, you might still have lots of expertise. If your current best-guess donation opportunity is based on that knowledge, it might be quite a good guess, and maybe better than many individual donors. That’s why I like it that some staff members of open philanthropy project tell where they donate.

As someone who does not do direct work and wants to donate thoughtfully, domain knowledge is something I miss a lot. I cannot be an expert in my priority cause area, no matter how much I would love to.

I’m not a huge fan of this option because it doesn’t feel like my comparative advantage and I don’t like (and am not good at) splitting my focus like this.

I agree attention is a thing.

ImmaSix 4 Dec 2021 7:21 UTC
3 points
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on: The case for investing to give later
This is the post I most often refer to when talking about donating now versus investing to donate later. It provides a good summary of the main considerations and is accessible for non-expert donors. Having a back of the envelope model with real numbers is also really great.

Individual non-expert donors can defer to experts to decide where to donate by using charity evaluators and the EA Funds. But the question when to donate they have to make mostly themselves (except maybe in case of the Patient Philanthropy Fund).

Suggestions for follow-up posts.
- updating the Guesstimate model upon new insight.
- a better estimate of the exogenous learning rate
- what is the effect of AI timelines
- what is the effect of the growing amount of funding in EA
- how does the investing versus giving question differ per cause area? It would be great to see a breakdown of this analysis for specific causes like global health, climate change, animal welfare, etc.
Some research has already been done on these questions. Having the findings written up in an accessible way for non-expert donors would be really useful.

ImmaSix 4 Dec 2021 6:26 UTC
3 points
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on: Altruistic Motivations

Low-cost lives are not something to celebrate. They are a reminder that we live on an injured planet, where people suffer for no reason save poor luck.

This is motivational quote that I keep reminding myself of. This is one way I see the dark world.

This piece is not part of the replacing guilt series but has the same vibe. It deserves the same credit as replacing guilt.

ImmaSix 4 Dec 2021 6:12 UTC
6 points
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on: Donating effectively does not necessarily imply donating tax-deductibly
Focusing on tax-deductibility too much can be a trap for everyday donors, including myself. I keep referring to this article to remind my peers or myself of that.

One piece of information is not mentioned: At least in some countries, donating to a not-tax-deductible charity may be subject to gift tax. I recommend that you check out if this applies to you before you donate . But even then the gift tax can be well worth paying.

ImmaSix 19 Nov 2021 11:48 UTC
3 points
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on: We’re Rethink Priorities. Ask us anything!
From a talk at EAG in 2019, I remembered that your approach could be summarized as empirical research in neglected areas (please correct me if I’m wrong here). Is this still the case? Do you still have a focus on empirical research (Over, say, philosophy)?

ImmaSix 19 Nov 2021 11:39 UTC
2 points
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on: We’re Rethink Priorities. Ask us anything!
About funding overhang:

Peter wrote a comment on a recent post:

I’m optimistic we will unlock new sources of needed funding (Rethink Priorities is working a ton on this) so we should expect the current funding overhang to be temporary, thus making it important to still have future donors ready / have large amounts of money saved up ready to deploy.

You also wrote in your plans for 2022:

Help solve the funding overhang in EA and unlock tons of impact by identifying interventions across cause areas that can take lots of money while still meeting a high bar for cost-effectiveness.

In which cause areas do you expect to identify the most funding opportunities? Will the funding gaps be big enough to resolve a significant part of the funding overhang?

ImmaSix 7 Aug 2021 6:31 UTC
7 points
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on: Writing about my job: Web Developer
I have a very related job, as test engineer on a web application and have in some places very similar experiences. I might write my own post but this post already covers part of it.

Software testing is easier to transition into from an unrelated background and requires a somewhat different skillset and mindset. People who are more conscientious or more generalist may be a better fit for testing. Rather than working on a small part of the application, you work on the entire application (or at least a bigger part of it, depending on the product or company) and can sometimes understand interactions that developers are less likely to see. Collaboration skills are very important. There is a (mis)conception that testing, especially manual testing, is boring and monotonous. There is a grain of truth in that but it gets better when you become a more senior tester, get to automate things, and improve the overall testing workflow in the company.

I roughly agree with your notes on the “path to impact”. Web development or testing can be a reasonable plan B or plan Z career path.

ImmaSix 14 May 2021 16:26 UTC
1 point
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on: Animal Welfare Fund: Ask us anything!
Much of your grantmaking goes to new and less established projects. There are many of those. Should we fear the (successful) programs get more funding-constrained once they have scaled up and therefore need more funding, but maybe they have lost the novelty for high-risk-high-reward-seeking donors? Or are other funders (individual donors, ACE recommendations, OpenPhil, other philanthropists) likely to take over?

ImmaSix 14 May 2021 16:19 UTC
1 point
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on: Animal Welfare Fund: Ask us anything!
What will the AWF look like in 5 years? What may have changed? What do you hope for? What challenges do you foresee?

ImmaSix 14 May 2021 16:16 UTC
1 point
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on: Animal Welfare Fund: Ask us anything!
Besides your request for proposals, do you do any active grantmaking? How much? If so, how do either of the two ways bring you good opportunities?

ImmaSix 1 Jan 2021 16:11 UTC
3 points
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on: 10 things I bought and recommend (2020)
Thank you for recommending the cooling gel mat. If heat turns out a problem in my new bedroom, I might give it a try.

My recommendations (not sure how useful they are, I realize some are quite specific for my lifestyle):

cleanable earplugs for sleeping.

I sleep earlier than most people. With these earplugs at hand, I never needed to complain to my flatmates when they talk or watch movies next to my bedroom. Clean with handsoap.

noise-isolating headphones in the bad old days working in an open office.

I tried the noise cancelling headphones of my friends to suppress distraction from colleagues talking in an open office. I did not like the noise cancelling enough to be willing to pay for it, because it generated soft noise by itself. In combination with a gentle rain noise or music I can not understand even conversations nearby. Good sound quality. Currently in use for video calls.

swiffer staubmagnet (“dust magnet”)

Looks nonsense but works. I don’t hate dust cleaning anymore. (H/t my flatmates)

sports watch for running

I wanted a cheap and easy-to-carry timer and not pay for features like a GPS tracker or heartrate measurement. Watches seem often too big for me but this one fits comfortably. If aestetics is important to you, try to find something else.

IKEA wooden step

to reach the upper kitchen shelf. Nicely stable but light enough to lift it and take it to wherever I need it. (H/t my flatmates)

100% peanut butter

I eat a lot of bread with peanut butter and good peanut butter is hard to get in Switzerland, where I live. Lots of calories per money spent, but no added sugar. A kg lasts me for a while. (H/t my flatmates)

Re: footrest

I’m also pretty short and I can relate to the problems with the footrest. The best footrest I’ve used so far is a folded not-so-soft blanket (in home office, so not wearing shoes). The storage box you’re recommending would be a another good idea in my employer’s office. I got myself a desk with height-adjustable legs but my chair cannot go lower, the blanket is for the last few centimeters.
Ironically, I got a decent footrest using a stack of flattened Hello Fresh meal boxes. The meals were more valuable for my flatmate than for me.
I have no good experiences with footrests that are made to be footrests: not stable, too high, don’t fit between the legs of my chair—my feet end up everywhere except there they are supposed to be.
What links here?
- Stuff I Recommend You Use by Arjun Panickssery (LessWrong; 7 Feb 2023 12:18 UTC; 16 points)
- Stuff I Recommend You Use by Arjun Panickssery (7 Feb 2023 12:18 UTC; 12 points)

ImmaSix 12 Sep 2020 18:50 UTC
6 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Kerry_Vaughan’s comment on: How have you become more (or less) engaged with EA in the last year?
Question for my understanding: what is your current job?

ImmaSix 6 Sep 2020 15:23 UTC
16 points
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on: AMA: Tobias Baumann, Center for Reducing Suffering
How could individual donors best help in reducing suffering and S-risk? How should longtermist suffering-focussed donors approach donating differently than general longermist donors?

ImmaSix 6 Sep 2020 15:14 UTC
8 points
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in reply to: Pablo’s comment on: AMA: Tobias Baumann, Center for Reducing Suffering
Strong-upvoted this question. Follow-up question: what kind of research could resolve any factual disagreements?

ImmaSix 15 Dec 2019 8:47 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: MichaelStJules’s comment on: Where are you donating this year and why – in 2019? Open thread for discussion.
Sounds like a plan. Congratulations with doing your first donations!

How do you prioritize between the 5 charities that you mentioned?

ImmaSix 15 Dec 2019 8:41 UTC
11 points
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on: Where are you donating this year and why – in 2019? Open thread for discussion.
Related: GiveWell’s staff personal donations

I strong upvoted the post because I’m really happy to see a discussion about donating—this is an important and actionable topic.

ImmaSix 14 Apr 2019 7:17 UTC
14 points
0 ∶ 0
on: What are people’s objections to earning-to-give?
This post gives an excellent description of some challenges of earning to give:
https://80000hours.org/2015/06/why-i-stopped-earning-to-give/
This post is from 2015, but I think the reasoning is still valid. The author stopped earning to give because he 1) performs better working for a cause he believes is important than for the business he used to work for, 2) does not see excellent giving opportunities and could have more impact by doing something else, 3) had different values than his colleagues.
I sort-of earn to give myself and have similar challenges, but I can overcome them and enjoy being with my colleagues even if their values aren’t exactly the same—there are always work-related or everyday life topics we can exchange about. I don’t agree that there is a lack of giving opportunities, in 2015 it might have been true. Nowadays more charities and cause areas have been evaluated and there are the EA Funds.
[edited to add a little more nuance]

ImmaSix 3 Feb 2019 5:56 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
on: What are the easiest highly positive and effective things that people can do?
See also here for more suggestions: https://www.effectivealtruism.org/get-involved/
I don’t think that anyone knows a clear right answer to your question (at least, I don’t). What is ‘easiest’, I guess, depends on your personal situation. If you have enough money, donating is probably the easiest start. If you are early in your career, maybe read up on 80.000 hours.

ImmaSix 1 Jan 2019 6:23 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Toph’s comment on: What’s the Use In Physics?
[epistemic status: anecdotical] on not doing physics
If you want to build a resume in a non-physics direction, as Christopher suggests, and you are early in your career, don’t wait too long to explore alternatives. I personally made a mistake by not exploring alternative options enough before I finished my master’s degree (in Europe).