Hi!
I’m currently (Aug 2023) a Software Developer at Giving What We Can, helping make giving significantly and effectively a social norm.
I’m also a forum mod, which, shamelessly stealing from Edo, “mostly means that I care about this forum and about you! So let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”
Please have a very low bar for reaching out!
I won the 2022 donor lottery, happy to chat about that as well
Did you understand the mechanism by which FTX claimed to be generating revenue? Were the revenues they reported sanity-checked against a back-of-the-envelope estimate of how much their claimed mechanism would be able to generate?
I think it’s important to note that many experts, traders, and investors did not see this coming, or they could have saved/made billions.
It seems very unfair to ask fund recipients to significantly outperform the market and most experts, while having access to way less information.
See this Twitter thread from Yudkowsky
Edit: I meant to refer to fund advisors, not (just) fund recipients
Bill Gates just endorsed GiveWell!
I don’t know how much we should update on this, but I’m now personally a bit less concerned about the “self-recommending” issues of EA resources being mostly recommended by people in the EA social community.[1]
I think this is a good sign for the effective giving ecosystem, and will make my relatives much less worried about how I spend my money.
Not that I was super concerned after digging deeper into things in the past year, but I remember being really concerned about it ~2 years ago, and most people don’t have that much time to look into things.
Hey everyone, the moderators want to point out that this topic is heated for several reasons:
Lots of relevant information comes from people’s personal experiences, which will vary a lot.
Harassment and power dynamics are often emotionally loaded and can be difficult to discuss objectively.
Polyamory is something that a lot of the world stigmatizes, so some people will be defensive (whether merited or not), and some will be subconsciously biased against it. This makes it hard to discuss without assuming that some people are hostile.
The facts mentioned in the article are very serious and disturbing, and some readers have experienced similarly appalling episodes
So we want to ask everyone to be especially understanding and generous when discussing topics this sensitive.
And as a reminder, harassment is unacceptable. One resource that exists for this is the Community Health Team at CEA. You can get in touch with the team here. If you ever experience harassment of any kind on the Forum, please reach out to the moderation team.
Edit: added the last bullet point after a useful comment
Just noting, for people who might not read the book, that there are many more mentions of “effective altruism”:
I agree that EA seems often painted as “High IQ immature children”, especially from Chapter 6 or 7.
To me, EA also seems painted as kind of a cult[1], where acolytes sacrifice their lives for “the greater good” according to a weird ideology, and people seem to be considered “effective altruists” mostly based on their social connections with the group.
I’m surprised you didn’t mention what was for me the spiciest EA quote, from SBF in ~2018:
This combos really badly with the current EA shitshow I’m supposed to be, in some ways, adjudicating.
Same way as this Washington Post article puts it
Hey everyone,
Note that there’s also a statement from EV UK board, and there is some discussion in the comments there. We suggest centralizing the discussion there if you think a comment could be written on either post.
Edit: unpinning this comment because there are now several independent conversation threads on the two posts, with little overlap
I think some of your recent comments raised valuable points but, unfortunately, too many do not follow Forum norms. Specifically, norms around assuming good faith, staying on topic, not being unnecessarily rude or offensive, and avoiding deliberate flamebait.
Some examples:
Also noting that this is your 14th comment on this thread, in a very short span of time, and your comments appear to be becoming increasingly rude.
This is a warning. I’ll note that this is your third warning — please be more mindful in the future. In order to avoid breaking norms going forward, please phrase your contributions in a more collaborative manner. Further norm violations could lead to rate-limiting or a ban.
(This was written in reply to the comment above, before your most recent comments)
Hey everyone, as usual, the moderators want to point out that this topic is heated for several reasons:
Lots of relevant information comes from people’s personal experiences, which will vary a lot.
These situations can be very serious and disturbing, and readers may have experienced appalling episodes.
Harassment and power dynamics are often emotionally loaded and can be difficult to discuss objectively.
Some recent threads on similar topics devolved into fights, sometimes on things very tangential to EA, so we want to ask everyone to be especially thoughtful when discussing subjects this sensitive.
And as a reminder, harassment is unacceptable.
I strongly think that, like with FTX, we should wait two weeks (or more) before forming opinions and reaching conclusions, as more information comes out[1]. But I want to quickly highlight footnote 7, as I think it might be relevant for some people and a bit buried
After this, there were further reports of claims of Kat professing her romantic love for Alice, and also precisely opposite reports of Alice professing her romantic love for Kat. I am pretty confused about what happened.
I really don’t know if the new information will be better or worse for Nonlinear, I just expect the picture to become clearer in a few weeks, and to be better to look for lessons then as opposed to now
Moderation update: We have indefinitely banned 8 accounts[1] that were used by the same user (JamesS) to downvote some posts and comments from Nonlinear and upvote critical content about Nonlinear. Please remember that voting with multiple accounts on the same post or comment is very much against Forum norms.
(Please note that this is separate from the incident described here)
my_bf_is_hot, inverted_maslow, aht_me, emerson_fartz, daddy_of_upvoting, ernst-stueckelberg, gpt-n, jamess
Update: Winners have been drawn!
The lotteries have been drawn and results are in!
$100k – @Jess_Riedel
$100k – @Will Bradshaw
The winners will receive an email in the next few days with more information.
Congratulations to the winners and thanks to everyone who participated this year!
Summary
Last Sunday, a bad post (definitely violating multiple forum norms) from a new anonymous user was published on the Forum. It got a lot of views and we removed it 11 hours and 30 minutes after it went up. I think we made some mistakes and wanted to write a quick postmortem.
Timeline (all times are Sunday April 2, 2023 and in CEST, although the mod team is in different timezones):
| 10:49 AM | The post “A modest proposal for women in EA” from a new user “ozaiscometh” goes up |
| 1:03 PM | I notice the first user report on the forum, “maybe this is well intentioned satire, but it misses on the rather sensitive issue of sexual assault”, and start a discussion in the moderation Slack |
| 1:57 PM | I notice a second user report on the forum |
| 4:56 PM | JP proposes banning ozaiscometh for the post |
| 9:47 PM | We notice a lot of other reports (~6 from memory). We notice that the post (despite being heavily downvoted) is getting a lot more views than expected (~190 at the time) |
| 9:55 PM | A user suggests deleting the post in a comment |
| 10:06 PM | We ban ozaiscometh, and post a comment mentioning that |
| 10:18 PM | We remove the post |
Key mistake: I allowed the post to be visible on the Forum
I read it as a bad taste (satirical) criticism arguing something like “EA doesn’t listen to my reports on sexual assault”, which in hindsight is also not ok written like that, but I was worried about censoring criticism and didn’t examine enough whether it was just straightforwardly norm-violating. I didn’t realize other readers might interpret it very differently and didn’t consider enough how sensitive the topic is.
We currently approve almost all new users, except in extreme cases (e.g. spam, calls to violence, etc.). Our general approach is to let karma take care of hiding low-quality content, and actively remove content very rarely.
Learnings
Before approving users whose first post/comment is dubious or in bad taste, I’ll default to double-checking with other moderators.
The moderation team is not synched up on which posts to approve, or our criteria for approving posts are wrong
We’ll think more about this in the future.
Other considerations
The post went up on a Sunday morning and was removed less than 12 hours later. The offender was banned at the same time. Overall, we think this is an ok response time, especially given that the post was so downvoted that it was not showing up for people who weren’t actively looking for it (at least 84% of views came from Twitter, and we think that many were after the post was removed).
We think the karma system did its job. The post was at −185 karma with 55 downvotes less than 12 hours after it was posted. If I remember correctly, it was at −10 karma after less than 10 minutes.
I’m particularly grateful to the (many) users who reported the post on the Forum.
We’re doing a quick check to see if this account is an alt of another user.
Edit: the forum team checked and there is no other user using the same IP address.
All the [redacted] parts of this post were written that way by the author, mods did not edit this post and if we edit or remove information, we will always either post a comment explaining what we did, or get in touch with the poster directly. (which we did not do in this case)
Thanks for posting this, super interesting! I was nicely surprised to find this forum post in the Wikipedia page on the “Scientific Charity Movement”.
I think that post highlights some important differences. Some interesting quotes:
> EAs are also much less confident that they know what people need better than they do.
> To many EAs, dividing the poor into deserving and undeserving groups just doesn’t make sense
> standards of evidence are much better now than they were over a century ago
> errors of charity that EA is a response to generally include the errors of SC
> The main way I see the comparison as a warning is that EA could end up somewhere where EA continues to talk in a scientific way, confidence goes up, standards of evidence fall, and EA ends up pushing hard on things that aren’t actually that important.
This doesn’t really match my (relatively little) experience. I think it might be because we disagree on what counts as “EA Leadership”: we probably have a different idea of what counts as “EA” and/or we have a different idea of what counts as “Leadership”.
I think you might be considering as “EA leadership” senior people working in “meta-EA” orgs (e.g. CEA) and “only-EA experience” to also include people doing more direct work (e.g. GiveWell). So the CEO of OpenPhilanthropy would count as profile #1 having mostly previous experience at OpenPhilanthropy and GiveWell, but the CEO of GiveWell wouldn’t count as profile #2 because they’re not in an “EA leadership position”. Is that correct?
I think the easiest way would be to compile a list of people in leadership positions and check their LinkedIn profiles.
Working on the assumption above for what you mean by “EA Leadership”, while there is no canonical list of “meta-EA leaders”, a non-random sample could be this public list of some Meta Coordination Forum participants.[1]
Here’s a quick (and inaccurate) short summary of what they show on LinkedIn before their roles:[2]
Edit: this is getting a lot of votes, I want to really highlight that this is not how I would compile a list of “EA Leadership”.[3]
CEO of Open Philanthropy since 2023: 6 years at OpenPhilanthropy before becoming co-CEO, 3 years as a research analyst at GiveWell
CEA Head of Events since 2015: 2 years as “plaintiff’s attorney in Federal Court” at a non-EA org, 3 years at MIRI, and lots of things before
Managing Director/co-founder at Effektiv Spenden since 2022: 3 years as Associate Director of a non-EA org, 5 years as Project Leader and Program Manager at non-EA orgs, 9 Years at BCG, …
Website Director at 80,000 Hours since 2021: 1 year as research analyst at 80k, 5 years of PhD + University Lecturer, 2 years as content editor for a professor
Research Analyst at Open Philanthropy since 2018: 3 years analyst at J.P. Morgan, 3 years D.Phil. at Oxford
Division Manager at The Centre for Effective Altruism since 2020: 2 years at CEA, 1 year founding and selling a startup, 7 months recruiting at Ought (EA AI Safety org), 4 years founding and selling another startup, 8 years R&D Team Lead at Epic
CEO at Clinton Health Access Initiative since 2022: 2 years as Managing Director of GiveWell, 8 years as CEO at IDinsight, 2 years at the world bank, 1 year as Project Coordinator at J-PAL
Project Lead at EA Funds since 2022: 5 months research assistant at GPI, 4 months contractor at CEA, 1 year director at EA London, 1 year founder of a Charity Entrepreneurship charity
Community Health Analyst at CEA since 2022: 9 years mathematics teacher at three schools, 2 months instructor at two rationality camps
Program Director at Open Philanthropy since 2023: 8 years at Open Philanthropy
Co-Founder at BlueDot Impact since 2022: 3 years founder of Biosecurity Fundamentals/AI Safety Fundamentals/Existential Risk Alliance, 3 years Officer Cadet in the Royal Air Force, 7 years actor in a soap opera
Senior Program Officer at Open Philanthropy since 2022: 5 years at GiveWell, 1 year at CEA, 4 years at L.E.K. Consulting.
AI Alignment Researcher at Charles University since 2022: I assume they don’t count as “Leader” according to your classification
Co-founder at Charity Entrepreneurship/AIM since 2018: 2 years co-founder of Charity Science Health, 3 years co-founder of Charity Science
Executive Director at Atlas Fellowship since 2022: 2 years executive director at EA Funds, 7 years co-founder at Center on Long-term Risk, in parallel 4 years board member at Polaris Ventures/Center for Emerging Risk Research
Community Liaison at CEA since 2015: 4 years as mental health clinician, 1 year as social work intern, 2 years donor services administrative assistant at Oxfam
Co-Founder at Cambridge Boston Alignment Initiative since 2022: 2 years program director at Stanford Existential Risks Initiative, ~2 years of research roles while in university
Farm Animal Welfare Program Officer at Open Philanthropy since 2015: 2 years as policy advisor and litigation fellow at The Humane Society of the United States, 3 years of J.D. Law, 1 year associate consultant at Bain
Board member and trustee of Effective Ventures: 10 years founder of Sendwave and Wave, 2 years engineer at a videogame company, 1 year cofounder at a startup
Previous ED of CEA since 2019: 2 years at CEA, 4 months researcher at GWWC, 2 months researcher at FHI
Senior Program Associate at Open Philanthropy since 2022: 1 year chief of staff at Forethought Foundation, 3 years at FHI, 2 years executive director at Stiftung für Effektiven Altruismus, 1 year vice president at Etudes Sans Frontières
Director of One-on-One Programme at 80k since 2022: 4 years at 80k, 2 years head of research operations at GPI, 4 years ED at GWWC, 4 years PhD in Philosophy of which 2 as director of operations at CEA
AI Safety and governance consultant since 2022: 1 year at Future Fund, 7 years at Open Philanthropy, 2 years at FHI, 5 years PhD in Philosophy
Head of Community Health and Special Projects at CEA since 2021: 3 years at CEA, 3 years research analyst at Open Philanthropy, 6 months staff assistant at a hospital
CEO of 80k since 2024: 6 years at 80k, 2 years assistant director at FHI, 4 years Co-founder and Director of Special Projects at CEA, 1 year
Climate Science Advisor for the Office of the President of the Maldives, (in parallel) 4 years PhD in atmospheric, oceanic and planetary physics, 2 years Executive Director at a climate change policy analysis group
CEO of Lightcone since 2021: 5 years project lead on LessWrong, 1 year director of strategy at CEA, 3 years co-founder and head of design at (I think) a web agency, 1 year internships at Leverage/CFAR/MIRI
CEO of Effective Ventures since 2023: 4 years at CEA, 5 years Engagement Manager at McKinsey, 3 years Technology Consultant at Deloitte, 1 year Graduate Engineer at EDF Energy
CEO of Longview Philanthropy since 2022: 3 years at Longview, 4 years at Goldman Sachs, 2 years teacher of mathematics
Director of Research at Giving What We Can since 2022: 4 years researcher at founders pledge, 1 year cofounder and director of EA Netherands, 2 years supporting UBI experiments
Cofounder of CEA/GWWC/80k since 2009: (in parallel) 6 years research fellow at GPI, (in parallel) 9 years associate professor at Oxford, (in parallel) 4 years PhD in Philosophy
CEO of CEA since 2024: 1 year CEO of EV, 3 years chief of staff/program officer/fellow at Open Philanthropy, 1 year director of product and strategy at a market research consultancy firm, 2 years associate consultant at Bain, 1 year as cowboy at a college, 1 year Interim Kitchen Manager/Butcher/Head Cook at a boarding house
I think that even in this highly biased sample there are plenty of examples of Profile #2, a quick count is 50%. Did you have a different reference class in mind?
Note that this is a list of people who:
1. Were invited and planned to attend a top “meta meta-EA” event.
2. Decided to have their name public (12 people out of 43 did not disclose their intention to attend)
I think this skews heavily in favour of #1, people less professionally close to EA are probably more likely to opt-out, and to not care as much about “meta meta” things even if they were invited.
Also note, from the original post:
This was compiled very quickly, there will be errors. Apologies to the people mentioned, this is only meant to be a quick overview.
Also note that different people spend very different amounts of time polishing their LinkedIn profile, things are self-reported and not verified, and some might not mention their “real world” experiences or some “EA” experiences.
E.g. I would include senior people at GiveWell’s top charities (where most of the money goes) and at GiveWell itself