Is helpful/friendly :-) Loves to learn. Wants to solve neglected problems. See website for current progress.
Madhav Malhotra
Karma: 476
Young People of EA—Database of Friendly Contacts
Could you please share more details on which parts of the curriculum would be inaccessible to recent graduates? From the outline of the book alone, it’s hard to estimate the level of technical depth needed.
I’d look forward to seeing you post the results of the in-depth survey on the forum :-)
I’m not sure this is a good idea.
It seems possible that the individual interventions you’re linking to research on are not representative of every possible intervention about skill development.
Also, it seems possible that future interventions may integrate both building human and economic capital to enable recipients to make changes in their lives. Ie. Skill-building + direct cash transfers.
Also, it’s generally uncertain whether GiveDirectly will continue to be the most effective or endorsed donation recommendation. I say this given changes in how we measure wellbeing (admittedly, a topic with frequent updates to opinions and mistake corrections being made).
Why potentially reduce the effectiveness of those future interventions by launching this campaign?
I’m surprised to see how the book giveaway is more expensive than the costs of actually placing the ads to get eyes on the sites! Why did you decide to give away a physical book? What do you think the cost-effectiveness of that is compared to ebooks or not having a giveaway?
If you’re interested in supporting education, scholarships to next generation education companies might be worth supporting (example—disclaimer, I’ve gone through the program of this particular company).
Regarding investments in environmental causes, more neglected causes are more valuable to invest in. For instance, supporting NOVEL carbon capture companies (ie. not tree planting).
Given the high-tech industry in Canada, it might be relatively advantageous to support neglected research priorities.
For instance, you might be able to fund organisations like iGEM or the National Research Council to support biosecurity work on broad-spectrum antivirals, germicidal UV lights, shotgun genetic sequencing at airports, etc. Feel free to search the forum for simple explanations about these concepts.
Similarly, you might be able to fund research grants to work on AI safety topics including interpretability, robustness, and anomaly detection research at the Vector Institute.
If you’re donating to humanitarian causes, you’d have the greatest impact on the dollar directing resources to Indigenous communities. Interventions related to eCBT (mental health apps) for indigenous youth might be especially promising to fund.
It would be helpful to hear more details (including sources) about the problem you’ve found:
What has the NSA publicly announced in its position on AGI?
What has the external academic community or relevant nonprofits assessed their likely plans to be?
Which decision-makers are involved in determining the NSA’s policies on AGI development and/or safety?
Also, please add a more specific call to action describing:
The action you want to be taken
Which kinds of people are best suited to do this
“I’m not sure I buy the fourth point—while there will be some competition between plant-based and cell-based meat, they also both compete with the currently much larger traditional meat market, and I think there are some consumers who would eat plant-based but not cell-based and vice versa.”
How confident are you in your reasoning here?
What kind of empirical evidence do you think would disprove/prove this argument?
The evidence I’ve seen (Source) suggests that consumers are largely confused about the difference between cell-based and lab-based meats, which doesn’t help sales of either. Also, cell-based meats are currently HORRIBLE for animal rights given the amount of suffering they cause to cow fetuses (Source). If consumers started conflating the issues with cell-based meats and plant-based meats, it would be a large setback to the industry. And given how largely the traditional dairy market has been lobbying against plant-based milks (Source), I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect that they might intentionally blur the lines between cell-based and plant-based meats to find whatever arguments they can against alternative meats.
@Brad West Would you know any Canadian colleagues?
I’m curious, how do you think about the relative importance of promoting cell-based (cultivated) vs. plant-based meat?
From an animal suffering perspective, they both displace animals that might suffer.
From an environmental perspective, plant-based meat is currently much better. (Source)
Economically, one could argue that more competition will lead to more product choice, winning over more consumers.
But one could also argue that the competition between plant-based and animal-based meats will keep traditional meats being consumed for longer and the product diversity won’t be tangibly perceptible to consumers (taste, smell, look, feel, cost will have negligible differences over time).
I appreciate you formatting the post summary with brevity in mind :-) Makes it easy to quickly understand the main points and I can see you put in deliberate thought into formatting as a table.
I’d be interested in hearing someone from Anthropic discuss the upsides or downsides of this arrangement. From an entirely personal standpoint, it seems odd that Anthropic gave up equity AND had restrictions in how the investment could be used. That said, I imagine there are MANY other details about I’m not aware of since I wasn’t involved in the decision.
For anyone seeking more information on this, feel free to search up the key terms ‘data poisoning’ and ‘Trojans.’ The Centre for AI Safety has somewhat accessible content and notes on this under lecture 13 here.
Key takeaway: “He preferred to be good, rather than to seem so.”
Where can we get more information on projects done
in the past fellowship?
Confirming this issue
Appreciate you summarising these resources! Still helping people years later :-)
Update: lesson learned—read the fine print effectively
My donation wasn’t matched. I didn’t do enough due diligence to read a final clause on their website that said we had to email our donation receipt somewhere.
One ‘little’ mistake on my part is the difference between 50 people not stuck in poverty vs. 18 people not stuck in poverty.
Doing good effectively = reading the fine print effectively.
I’m interested in building a career around technological risks. Sometimes, I think about all the problems we’re facing. From biosecurity risks to AI safety risks to cybersecurity risks to … And it all feels so big and pressing and hopeless and whatnot.
Clearly, me being existential about these issues wasn’t helping anyone. So I’ve had to accept that I have to pick a smaller, very specific problem that my skillset could be useful in. Even if it’s not solving everything, I won’t solve anything if I don’t specialise in that way.
Maybe some spirit of that could also apply to the altruistic actions I take in general? Ie. I have to start by going vegan OR setting up regular donations OR working towards a more flexible career OR thinking about whether I want kids OR … I can’t take on all those things at once.
I suppose the simple way I might remind myself of that is “Altruism requires one step at a time and not every altruistic person needs to generalise in all methods of being altruistic.”
This is certainly a useful resource for those who live in areas without the effective altruism groups around them! Thank you for sharing :-)