James Ozden

An­i­mal Ad­vo­cacy Digest #2 (Nov 18th—Dec 2nd)

• James Ozden 28 Nov 2022 18:35 UTC

  16 points

  2 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Partial Identification’s comment on: Dou­ble your dona­tion with match­ing opportunities

  *sigh*

  This comment is pretty disheartening to see. A lot of this is inaccurate, but I’ll only reply to a few key things as I’m not sure this will be the healthiest or best use of my time:

  1. I’m not sure why you think Social Change Lab is “just a website”. We’re an org with 3 employees (2 of which started today hence not on the website yet) but we’re also a registered non-profit in the UK via Companies house.

  2. The point about me not being an EA is particularly bizarre, given that I literally just wrote a piece on my personal blog defending EA.

  3. Producing extremely long articles...yes that is culmination of various research projects! We also have short pieces, and pretty clear summaries. Would you rather we take donations and not do any work? Other orgs produce long reports, so not sure why ours are so much worse!

  4. The other claims are mainly ad-hominems about my supposed bad intentions, so I’ll leave those be. For those that know me, or have interacted with me in various ways, I’m sure it’s pretty clear that “earning great status and power” etc is not my main goal.

  FWIW there’s a reason I left doing social movement organising—it’s because I was sceptical of it’s effectiveness! If I was so sold it was the right thing to do, I would be trying to get funding for that, rather than funding for research to figure out if it’s actually overall helpful or harmful.

• James Ozden 28 Nov 2022 17:07 UTC

  6 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Dou­ble your dona­tion with match­ing opportunities

  Social Change Lab (the non-profit I run) has a matched-funding opportunity where the next $50,000 we receive will be matched by an anonymous donor. It’s looking very likely we won’t meet this in the allotted time period (until January) so this will likely be a counterfactual donating opportunity. You can donate via Giving What We Can if you’re interested!

• James Ozden 28 Nov 2022 17:04 UTC

  2 points

  on: Effec­tive giving

  [reconsidered and figured this is not the best place for this post but I can’t delete!]

• James Ozden 28 Nov 2022 15:26 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Seth Ariel Green’s comment on: Where are you donat­ing this year, and why? (Open thread)

  Someone who donates to DxE, very cool! I spent some time with DxE folks during the AVA summit in DC and know a few fairly well—they’re a really committed and great bunch :) plus amazing win with Wayne & Paul getting acquitted if you saw it!

• James Ozden 28 Nov 2022 15:23 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Gina_Stuessy’s comment on: In­tro­duc­ing the An­i­mal Ad­vo­cacy Bi-Weekly Digest (Nov 4 - Nov 18)

  Very good question! The main differences (IMO) are:

  • This one will almost exclusively cover content posted on the EA forum, whereas the Impactful Animal Advocacy Newsletter will post things from a range of sources.

  • I will do 1-2 paragraph summaries for 5-8 posts, rather than just a list of links. So it will be slightly more curated and more in-depth!

  • This will (by definition?) be more EA-related content and might form the basis of some EA-related community building on the EA Forum (e.g. a subforum)

  I also spoke with Sofia before launching this as I agree it’s somewhat similar, but we thought it was different enough (especially as this might evolve into something bigger).

• James Ozden 26 Nov 2022 15:42 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Shiney’s comment on: Effec­tive Altru­ism: Not as bad as you think

  Extinction Rebellion & Just Stop Oil are also both explicitly non-violent so the same side constraints apply! Fair enough re the lack of ability of black people to participate in politics, but there’s more recent examples e.g. LGBT folks using disruptive protest to raise awareness about the AIDS/​HIV epidemic or marriage equality which we now (mostly) also look back on as justified.

• James Ozden 26 Nov 2022 9:55 UTC

  3 points

  2 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Shiney’s comment on: Effec­tive Altru­ism: Not as bad as you think

  I don’t know if you’ve seen but there’s also been some push back that the ends must justify the means sometimes at least! I mean with the case of Martin Luther King, he was definitely inconveniencing people with his disruptive protests, but we all look back on him now as a moral hero, do we not? Surely equality for black people in the US, which then spurred a shift towards racism being immoral globally, was worth the price of people not being able to sit in certain seats on a bus or lunch counter?

  Regarding EAs being associated with Extinction Rebellion or JSO, I think we’re a long way off that! To my knowledge, there are very few people in both camps, and even less who are openly in both camps. I think amongst the current major concerns for EA, that is quite far down the list.

• James Ozden 25 Nov 2022 8:32 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Re­think Pri­ori­ties’ 2022 Im­pact, 2023 Strat­egy, and Fund­ing Gaps

  Formatting note: your footnotes seem to link to an external private Google doc that I can’t view. Might be better to unlink them and leave them as normal footnotes!

• James Ozden 24 Nov 2022 15:54 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: arghya’s comment on: Effec­tive Altru­ism: Not as bad as you think

  Thank you, much appreciated!

  Fair enough on the title—it’s something I went back and forth on quite a lot, and wasn’t convinced it was the best title. I was looking for something a bit funny or catchy, and not sure your suggestions meet that criteria. I also considered: “In defence of Effective Altruism” or “EA: Is there a better alternative?” but titles are hard!

Effec­tive Altru­ism: Not as bad as you think

• James Ozden 23 Nov 2022 23:57 UTC

  143 points

  78 ∶ 0

  on: Re­think Pri­ori­ties’ Lead­er­ship State­ment on the FTX situation

  Quite off-topic but I think it’s quite remarkable that RP does crisis management and simulation exercises like this! I’m glad that RP is stable financially and legally (at least in the short-term), and put a significant chunk of that down to your collective excellent leadership.

• James Ozden 23 Nov 2022 19:54 UTC

  27 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Where are you donat­ing this year, and why? (Open thread)

  I took advantage of the Every.org Matching Challenge (thanks William Kiely!) and donated to:

  • Happier Lives Institute because they’ve been doing some pretty amazing work recently and progressing GiveWell/​EA thinking that has been unchallenged for quite a while!

  • Animal Ask because research is often not very “sexy” and hard to fundraise for—yet I know these folks have done some great work in making animal orgs be more strategic with their campaigns.

  • Wild Animal Initiative because the scale of wild animal suffering is pretty alarming and I went to some great talks by WAI about concrete things they’re working on, as well as some pretty tractable-seeming interventions (which was my main doubt before).

  I’ll probably keep these recurring donations going for a bit too!

  Probably will donate to a few other projects in the more community-building /​ EA infrastructure space, as well as x-risk focused, so suggestions welcome!

• James Ozden 23 Nov 2022 19:50 UTC

  12 points

  in reply to: NunoSempere’s comment on: Where are you donat­ing this year, and why? (Open thread)

  I would be keen to hear examples from you and Michael about what this looks like in practice! Can’t conceptualise the kinds of projects you mean so examples would be very useful.

• James Ozden 19 Nov 2022 15:21 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Neil_Dullaghan’s comment on: In­tro­duc­ing the An­i­mal Ad­vo­cacy Bi-Weekly Digest (Nov 4 - Nov 18)

  Apologies—I’ve fixed it so I use the 39-43% figure from SI as well as referencing survey 2 rather than survey 1 (agreed it’s much more useful as it’s larger and nationally representative).

  No worries re the confusion, yeah I didn’t quite understand how it was framed in your post and thought Zoe might have the right interpretation but seems not! Thanks for amending your post and explaining though—it’s much clearer now.

In­tro­duc­ing the An­i­mal Ad­vo­cacy Bi-Weekly Digest (Nov 4 - Nov 18)

• James Ozden 18 Nov 2022 10:38 UTC

  34 points

  17 ∶ 0

  on: In­tro­duc­ing new lead­er­ship in An­i­mal Char­ity Eval­u­a­tors’ Re­search team

  I’m excited for the public cost-effectiveness analyses and greater transparency by ACE. Great decision and I’m looking forward to the next set of recommendations!

• James Ozden 11 Nov 2022 13:52 UTC

  85 points

  24 ∶ 4

  in reply to: Jakob’s comment on: Some com­ments on re­cent FTX-re­lated events

  I want to push back on this a tiny bit. Just because some projects got funding from FTX, that doesn’t necessarily mean Open Phil should fund them. There’s a few reasons for this:

  There will be projects that 1) have significant funding gaps, 2) have been vetted by people you trust for both their value alignment and competence, 3) are not only shovel-ready, but already started.

  1. When FTX Future Fund was functioning, there was lots more money available in the ecosystem, hence (I think) the bar for receiving a longtermist grant was lower. This money is now gone, and lots of orgs who got FTX funding might not meet OP’s bar /​ the new bar we should have given less resources. So basically I don’t think it’s sufficient to say 1) they have significant funding gaps, 2) they exist and 3) they’ve been vetted by people you trust. IMO you need to prove that they’re also sufficiently high-quality, which might not be true as FTX was vetting them with a different bar in mind.

  Stepping in to help these projects bridge the gap until they can find new funding sources looks like an unusually cost-effective opportunity. It may also require somewhat less vetting on your end, which may matter more if you’re unusually constrained by grantmaker capacity for a while

  2. The problem I see here is that these projects might not ever find new funding sources, or it would take longer to find than is reasonable. For example, EA funding in general is quite down (e.g. tech stocks) and we’re looking at an extended period (1-2 years) of recession /​ slow growth, so keeping alive projects that don’t meet the OP longtermist bar for 1-3+ years probably isn’t the best use of money, as it’s unclear if all of these projects would definitely find funding in the future. As I say below, a 3 month exit grant to help people transition to other projects might be a better use of funds.

  3. I think your second point is a tough one as I can definitely imagine mishandling this might be bad for encouraging future folks to start-up projects in EA. That said, I think EAs of all people should be happy to accept that some charities, if they’re not amongst the most effective things to do, shouldn’t exist. If we (the EA community or Open Phil) thinks that the bottom 20% of FTX-funded projects aren’t worth funding, then we likely shouldn’t fund them. ^[1] Just like there could be a negative impact on founders being put-off by the a lack of a safety net within EA, I’m also worried that it could be bad for community epistemics (and more importantly, the world) if we’re willingly supporting projects that clearly aren’t amongst the best things we could be doing with our money. I definitely agree though some sort of exit grants over 3 months by OP /​ other EA funders might be useful to help people transition if their projects got totally tanked, but funding sub-par projects for another year or more seems less than ideal.

  I’m kind of unsure about my points above and happy to be pushed back on them—but I also don’t think it’s a simple as: if FTX funded it, those longtermist opportunities out must be great so let’s fund them.

  1. ^

     This feels a bit harsh to say, and it’s easy for me to do as I don’t have FTX funding. Apologies if it comes across as insensitive, as I understand this is a hard time for a lot of people. I really do hope people at least have enough resources to figure out alternative plans without any serious hardship.

• James Ozden 10 Nov 2022 23:46 UTC

  5 points

  1 ∶ 0

  on: Does the US pub­lic sup­port rad­i­cal ac­tion against fac­tory farm­ing in the name of an­i­mal welfare?

  Thanks for doing this work Neil (and the great RP survey team) - it’s super interesting and helpful as useful! I’m particularly quite interested in this idea you had in your conclusion:

  It would be better to test people’s responses to more detailed messages and policy proposals, paying special attention to how radical messages compare to counterfactual moderate messages. One could also test a radical ask (ban factory farming) and a moderate ask (labelling for cage-free eggs, say) each with a radical message (“meat is murder”) versus a moderate one (“human/​consumer welfare”).

  Is RP planning on doing anything in this vein? I know of one experimental paper released quite recently that tested this for both different radical messages, and also radical tactics (in a 2x2 design). They found that radical messages (ending all animal use vs improve animal welfare) didn’t increase support for more moderate messages, but the use of radical tactics did. The author isn’t an animal person (I’m fairly sure) so the different conditions were quite broad—which you can see in the supplemental files of the paper. For example, the radical agenda spoke about ‘eliminating the human consumption of meat and creating a “vegan world”’ whereas the moderate treatment focused on ‘increasing the number of farms using humane methods’ which is fairly coarse-grained!

  Would be interesting to try replicate this experiment with more specific policy proposals as you mention, as it will probably yield more realistic results.

• James Ozden 3 Nov 2022 17:49 UTC

  9 points

  1 ∶ 0

  on: Make a $50 dona­tion into $100 (6x)

  Thanks for this—I just set up 3 new monthly donations for $50 dollars each to get the full match! It took me about 3-5 minutes and was super straightforward. I highly recommend others do so as there’s still plenty left in the matching challenge ($40,000 at the time of writing).