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: 2,049
An Elephant in the Community Building room
Do you want to work in the new Boston EA office at Harvard Square?
Two things that I think could make the community better
Say “nay!” to the Bay (as the default)!
2023 update on Muslims for Effective Altruism
EAGxBoston: Updates and Info from the Organizing Team
EZ#2
After doing a LOT of reading of Fiqh, and speaking to islamic scholars, it seems that (for the purposes of EA- so ignoring most of the permitted uses of zakat, like freeing slaves, promoting the faith etc), anything other than an org which directs zakat to poor muslims would be religiously dubious and unlikely to be strictly zakat compliant.
This is a pretty big disappointment for me: I went into this research with an expectation that there would be some reputable, sizeable minority of opinions which would support using zakat for things like the public health of a largely but not solely Muslim population, which would at least enable us to try and promote a small number of e.g. GiveWell recommended charities.
I think that this means a couple of things:
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thinking about “To Whom?”: in terms of interventions, direct cash transfers to the poorest people (which are truly what zakat is meant to be used for) is likely going to be the most cost-effective way to deploy zakat. The most widely appealing way to do this would either be to start a new org which is basically “GiveDirectly to Muslims only”, or to get GD to run a dedicated zakat compliant program (like the one they ran in Yemen in 2023). We could try and run a “Give Directly for Mostly Muslims” and hope that we’d still be able to convince/attract a sizeable portion of zakat from Muslims who aren’t super orthodox with their adherence to the obligations of zakat when it comes to recipient eligibility (I guess this would look like promoting GD more strongly as an org to give zakat to, and helping GD set-up proper zakat-compliant systems for handling zakat).
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Thinking about “From Whom?”: I think the bulk of the work to do now on this project is to figure out how to go about capturing the biggest slice of zakat possible. There are a bunch of ways which philanthropic fundraising can go (focusing on UHNWIs, retail donors, institutional donors etc), and figuring out which strategy to prioritise, and honing the pitch for effective zakat, are all important steps.
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EAGxBoston 2022: Retrospective
I’ve been doing judging for the African EA forum post competition, and its been really irritating/sad to see how uncharitable (and keen to be harsh) more experienced EAs have been towards the posts of first-time posters or people who write in a non-rationalist way. Come on people....
If you think a post is bad or could easily be improved, just point out how. Don’t strong downvote and deride the author?
Thoughts on (re)naming EA conferences
EZ#1
The world of Zakat is really infuriating/frustrating. There is almost NO accountability/transparency demonstrated by orgs which collect and distribute zakat—they don’t seem to feel any obligation to show what they do with what they collect. Correspondingly, nearly every Muslim I’ve spoken to about zakat/effective zakat has expressed that their number 1 gripe with zakat is the strong suspicion that it’s being pocketed or corruptly used by these collection orgs.
Given this, it seems like there’s a really big niche in the market to be exploited by an EA-aligned zakat org. My feeling at the moment is that the org should focus on, and emphasise, its ability to be highly accountable and transparent about how it stores and distributes the zakat it collects.
The trick here is finding ways to distribute zakat to eligible recipients in cost-effective ways. Currently, possibly only two of the several dozen ‘most effective’ charities we endorse as a community would be likely zakat-compliant (New Incentives, and Give Directly), and even then, only one or two of GiveDirectly’s programs would qualify.
This is pretty disappointing, because it means that the EA community would probably have to spend quite a lot of money either identifying new highly effective charities which are zakat-compliant, or start new highly-effective zakat complaint orgs from scratch.
Thank you for writing this—it articulates so many things that I have also been feeling and thinking over the past few days, in a way that I wouldn’t have been able to. I hope I’m not mistaken in sensing that you hold some optimism and hope even during this tumultuous time—if so, you’re not alone. I think that fellow EAs who resonate with these sentiments will emerge at the end of this storm with the same convictions and moral beliefs that lead us here, and that things will be ok.
Ezra Klein and Will MacAskill on Longtermism
[Question] Debates at EAGxNYC
Stuart J. Russell on “should we press pause on AI?”
Some non-EAs worry about EA’s effect on mental health
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.
Should EA grantmakers make p(success) public?
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...
Hi James,
Thanks for writing this—its difficult/intimidating to write and post things of this nature on here, and its also really important and valuable. So thanks for sharing your experience.
Please don’t read this response as being critical/dismissive of your experiences—I have no doubt that these dynamics do exist, and that these types of interaction do happen (too frequently), in EA spaces. It makes me unhappy to know that well-intentioned people who want to make a different in the world are turned off by interacting with some people in the EA community, or attending some EA events.
I do want to say though, for fairness sake, that as a member of an ethnic, religious, and geographical minority in the EA community, I feel valued and respected, and that I don’t think the attitudes or opinions of the people you’re reporting in your post are that common in the greater community, and that (the vast majority of the EAs I know) would be upset to hear another EA behave the way you’re reporting they did.
^This preempts what is the overall theme of the ideas I had when reading your post: that we make a mistake of thinking about the EA community, and EA events, as monolithic or homogenous (in some ways—it is obviously homogenous in many ways). These aren’t directed at you, but they’re relevant here.
1. Specifically about EA events:
People attend EA events (especially EAG(x)s for many different reasons. Some people go to expand their network in a specific way/in a specific domain. Others go to further their work or certain objectives and are singularly focused on doing so. Others attend because they value the social and communal spirit of being in a big gathering of altruistically motivated people. However, in my opinion, we should not lose track of the fact that these events exist to improve/enhance attendees positive impact on the world, and to improve the wellbeing of the beings we serve—those suffering in the developing world, animals in factory farms and elsewhere, and the disenfranchised yet to be. We shouldn’t be viewing conferences primarily as places for the EA community to congratulate and celebrate ourselves and have a jolly good time. Given how limited/scarce time is at these events, I do think its reasonable for people to be mindful of the way that they use their time, and be open in communicating when they think an interaction isn’t producing value (to other people, not just the participants of the interaction). But the way that they do that can vary in appropriateness and It’s hard to see a reason that someone does this in a way that insults the other person when a non-insulting alternative could have easily been deployed.
2. Generally about the EA community:
There are people from overlapping communities, sub-groups, and differently-motivated backgrounds in the EA community—yet alone people with differing moral schools of thought, cause-area interest, and needs of the EA community. Not to try and caricature you or try and psychologically analyse you, but the types of complaints in your post point to the types of deficiencies which would be most noticed by someone who would highly value the social and communal nature of the EA community, which many people do. However it’s easy to forget that not everyone cares about the community—many people who are in the EA community care about the community and its network for purely instrumental reasons (in that its only valuable because it helps them achieve their goals). I’m sorry that the community interactions you had were so negative and not what you’d want them to be like. However, there are lots of other places where ‘nice’ people abound that you could be part of at the same time as being part of the EA community. One thing I worry about is EAs trying to use the EA community/ecosystem to fulfil every possible social function/need, because its clearly not set up to do that. Please don’t abandon EA values or goals just because of these interactions—being an EA is about how you live your life and how you behave and treat others.
(again, I really do mean this all in the most understanding and sympathetic way—I hope it comes across, but I apologise if it doesn’t).