Kaleem Ahmid. Entrepreneur in Residence at EV.
Previously a Community Builder at Northeastern and in Boston. Previously a Visiting Scholar at JHU Center for Health Security. EAGxBoston 2022 and EAGxNYC 2023 organiser.
Kaleem
Karma: 2,050
I think I agree with the general point you’re making, but I specifically I disagree that the longtermist project is incompatible with good PR, and that it doesn’t appeal to common moral intuition (eg people do care about climate change, nuclear war, rogue AI, deadly pandemics).
EA (via discussion of SBF and FTX) was briefly discussed on the The Rest is Politics Podcast today (the 3rd of April) and …. I’m really irritated by what was said. This is one of the largest politics podcasts in the world at the moment, and has a seriously influential listener-base.
Rory Stewart said that after 15min someone at FTXFF cut his call with Rory short because that person wanted to go have lunch. The person reportedly also said “I don’t care about poverty”.
Rory Stewart (the ex-President of GiveDirectly, and ex-MP) now seems to think that we are weird futurists who care more about “asteroids and killer robots” than we care about the 700M people currently in poverty.
Great work, whoever that FTX person was...
I was going to suggest the same thing but I wanted to be able to read the article before pointing this out
Can you post a non-paywalled version, if possible?
I’m sorry that you had to go through this terrible event, but thanks for writing this—I found it really moving and I think the lesson is a good one. I think you conveyed the value of moth wellbeing, and your respect for it, in a touching way.
I enjoyed this a lot, thanks !
Done ✅
If someone knows/is able to put me in touch with Mehdi Hassan, I’d be SUPER grateful
[Question] Legal advice in the UAE
Looking for potential co-founders for an Effective Zakat org.
I’m exploring launching a new org which aims at redirecting zakat to effective charities. The whole plan is extremely speculative at the moment (I’m currently funded to explore this idea, including looking for potential co-founders). I’m open to people from different backgrounds, locations, and experience levels. Ideally you’d be someone who is Muslim and has a decent amount of theological understanding around zakat, or have a history of working in Islamic Philanthropy. Fluent Arabic speakers would be a huge plus.
FAW#2.
An interesting potentially high-impact intervention: banning dog meat production/trade in Indonesia.
I was surprised to find out that Indonesia produces/consumes ~1M dogs per year, given that it’s ~89% Muslim, and dogs are absolutely not permissible to consume in Islam. For context, very quick googling and estimating leads me to believe that the number of dogs killed per year in Indonesia is ~half the number of cows consumed in Indonesia per year (nowhere near the ~700M chickens per year though).
I’d assume it’d be WAY easier to help push through a dog meat ban in Indonesia than it would be to get people to eat less chicken or beef? I know there are already quite a few orgs working for dog meat bans across all of Asia, and (at least one) working in some capacity towards a ban in Indonesia (which OP has mad a small grant to, but I don’t think it was specifically for this issue). This could be a very cost effective opportunity in terms of $/animal saved, given that I assume there’d be quite a lot of domestic and international support.
Leonie and Akhil, are there any results from this would could be shared?
This does answer the question and is much appreciated! Do you have any sources I can cite (other than the paper linked in your response) ?
I don’t know what price or % of daily income would be unaffordable, but I think it would be very useful to know what that was so that I could use the number in a question to a theological authority.
I assume the standard that would be more widely useful would be “not available in local markets at any price”.
yeah it answers the question—although I think for the purposes of leaning on this answer I’d probably want someone/something with reputation on the subject (no offence intended).
The point I’m trying to clarify is whether or not funding e.g. AMF means that people are getting something which they couldn’t get otherwise. I don’t think the idea that they might not choose to purchase them even if they’re available is necessarily good enough in this instance.
The reason behind the question is to see whether or not I can apply the reasoning behind the ruling that “yes you can give zakat to a charity which provides free organ transplants to people who can’t afford them” to something like AMF.
[Question] ITBN availability
Wow, this is amazing news. Thank you so much for all the hard work that must have gone into writing this book, I can’t wait to read it !
(Small, very reluctant point of correction: I think unfortunately, “The good it promises, the harm it does” is probably the first book focusing on EA and FAW (assuming we don’t consider Animal Liberation to be a book about EA, which I think is fair)).
thanks for this—I think I get it now. I think the points relating to the effects on zakat-donors and non-zakat donors are good ones, especially since I hadn’t considered the effect on non-zakat donors a huge amount up until now.
With regards to Zakat donors: I don’t think the majority of muslim donors would find this argument a reason not to donate. The thing they care most about is whether or not the entire amount of zakat they donate is reaching the hands of zakat-eligible recipients. There is a large amount of scholarship around the philosophy of zakat, and group/societal upliftment is the primary non-spiritual goal. So I don’t think the idea that there are spillover effects which benefit non-muslims would be an issue for most donors, since there is a general expectation that people who are not eligible recipients (e.g. Muslims who aren’t poor) will experience positive effects too.
With regards to maximization-oriented non-zakat donors: I’m not sure about this. I think in the scenario where GD somehow ignore the (hopefully massive) new restricted pool of funds, then yeah maybe this means that donating to GD stops being an extremely cost-effective thing to do. But I think the group of people who care very much about this either 1) don’t donate to GD already, since we seem to have many much more cost-effective options available and 2) would be fine with that because it’d be a result of an influx of donations which are contingent on the new program and are counterfactually significant when thinking about “all the money given to effective causes”.
But … It seems unlikely that GD would react that way to this type of influx in restricted funding? Given that the realistic way which this would happen would be that GD set up a new muslim country-specific program (e.g in Bangladesh or Afghanistan), I’d expect unrestricted funds to be used in the same way they’re currently being used with respects to the various programs they already run? Maybe I’m still missing something you’re pointing out here.
I think your point about new org vs GD benefits are right, but maybe also overlook many of the reasons why GD would be an appealing option to muslim donors (low admin cost and transaction costs, high transparency and accountability, track record) whereas setting up a new org means that these things aren’t there immediately and might never be there to the same degree
Hi—good questions, and things I’ve been trying hard to find out.
-
I think most scholars would say this is dubious but maybe acceptable depending on what the context is. I’ve come across mixed reactions when I’ve explained NI’s model
-
Its unideal and pretty uncommon—the vast majority of zakat is cash, and in rare cases its emergency supplies like food, water, and medical supplies in disaster regions.
-
I haven’t asked this question specifically to anybody (because I hadn’t really considered it as an option) but my intuition from all the other discussions about recipient eligibility would lead me to think that this would generally not be certified as zakat-compliant by a mainstream org.
-
I’d argue that an important part of running a new philanthropic organisation is stakeholder engagement and relationship management, and this was not a good example of fostering a good relationship with someone who is highly influential and a likely source of valuable connections with respect to FF’s goals.