MarkusAnderljung

• MarkusAnderljung 11 Sep 2014 9:04 UTC

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  on: The Haste Consideration

  So am I right to think that the point of the haste consideration is that there is a “return on investment” on doing good? Many good things you do will in turn cause other good things to happen and so good things done further in the past will have had more time to do good through indirect effects. If so, it would seem that it would be really important to think about what good things actually have these indirect effects.

• MarkusAnderljung 12 Sep 2014 15:03 UTC

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  on: Dis­abil­ity Weights

  Really interesting post!

  Regarding the non-correlation between the different methodologies: isn’t it the case that the two methods are not even trying to measure different things. There was a bit of talk of this at the Good Done Right conference, where it seemed like the consensus was that e.g. person tradeoffs try to measure something like the wellbeing associated with health-states, while the newer method simply measures a more removed concept of healthiness. These two may come apart especially in cases of really unhealthy states that do not change your wellbeing significantly such as becoming paraplegic.

• MarkusAnderljung 2 Oct 2014 8:55 UTC

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  on: Effec­tive policy? Re­quiring li­a­bil­ity in­surance for dual-use research

  Really interesting idea.

  Two questions:

  • Not knowing anything about the insurance industry, I’m wondering if the market for this type of insurance be big enough in order for insurers to be willing to offer it?

  • It seems to me that this kind of policy would risk decreasing the amount of research done on natural pandemics. If anything, this seems to be the kind of research there should be more rather than less of. It’s true that the point of the insurance is to push people to safer ways of doing the same research, but the increased bureaucracy could have institutions shy away from the research entirely. However, maybe this could be counteracted by lobbying for more funding for research on natural pandemics.

• MarkusAnderljung 16 Nov 2014 12:56 UTC

  3 points

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  in reply to: Vincent_deB’s comment on: Happy Birth­day, Giv­ing What We Can!

  On your second point of how much people would have donated without signing the pledge, people who sign the pledge are asked “What percentage of your income would you have donated over your lifetime if you had not come across Giving What We Can?” I’m pretty sure the answer to this question is used in figuring out the money moved figure.

• MarkusAnderljung 26 Jan 2015 13:35 UTC

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  on: Ini­tial re­search into cor­po­rate fundraising

  Interesting to read! Good to see you’re considering such a wide variety of ways to fundraise.

  My thought in reading this was that it seems difficult for outsiders to companies to sway them to give to more effective charities. But could there be a bigger chance of success if it was driven by EA employees at companies e.g. talking to their CSR department? Charity Science’s role could then be in supporting these EAs.

• MarkusAnderljung 2 Feb 2018 11:52 UTC

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  on: On­go­ing law­suit nam­ing “fu­ture gen­er­a­tions” as plain­tiffs; ad­vice sought for how to investigate

  Sounds really interesting!

  Here are some potentially interesting things to be aware of:

  • The Human Rights Project: https://​​www.nonhumanrights.org/​​

  • There has been a similar case in Norway recently, where the constitution states that people have the right to an environment that supports health and that this right also applies to future generations. My understanding is that the case failed, but it might be interesting nonetheless. Here’s an article about the case: https://​​www.reuters.com/​​article/​​us-climatechange-norway/​​norway-environmental-lawsuit-says-arctic-oil-plan-violates-constitution-idUSKBN1DE173 Here’s the relevant article of the Norwegian constitution: https://​​static1.squarespace.com/​​static/​​57f7996cf5e23175d8f0de01/​​t/​​5888deb7414fb5440508f140/​​1485364919565/​​Article+112+of+the+Norwegian+Constitution-final.pdf

  • There’s also been significant work on how to give future generations representation in political systems, by CSER and some students at Cambridge: http://​​www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/​​entry/​​to-save-generations-of-tomorrow-we-need-to-change_uk_5a6f4347e4b0290826014b1c?utm_hp_ref=uk-news

Effec­tive Altru­ism Swe­den plans for 2018

• MarkusAnderljung 5 Feb 2018 13:35 UTC

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  in reply to: Chris Leong’s comment on: Effec­tive Altru­ism Swe­den plans for 2018

  Thanks for the input!

  Yeah, looking at where the drop-off is seems like a very good idea. Unfortunately, we haven’t had data on this historically and can only go off anecdotal data. Given those anecdotes we’ve reached the conclusion that more effort should be put on the latter parts of the sales funnel.

  Regarding mass media my impression is the same. However, I think that it is likely useful to put some effort into it, e.g. since it adds credibility to the organisation.

  Going forward, we’ll have data on who comes to what events, data from membership forms and will hopefully be able to connect that to end-line results, e.g. career changes and donations.

• MarkusAnderljung 6 Feb 2018 12:50 UTC

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  in reply to: JonathanSalter’s comment on: Effec­tive Altru­ism Swe­den plans for 2018

  Thanks for the keen eye, Jonathan! Corrected now.

• MarkusAnderljung 12 Feb 2018 10:16 UTC

  1 point

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  in reply to: SebastianSchmidt’s comment on: Effec­tive Altru­ism Swe­den plans for 2018

  Thanks, Sebastian!

  1. I think this might be a risk. Especially in a Scandinavian context where consensus decisions are really important. It also seems really important to me to avoid risks of feelings of resentment. My hunch is that this is mainly avoided by transparency and honesty, regarding e.g. where the money is coming from and what it’s for. However, I think that effect is outweighed by other effects. I’ve seen people’s engagement in doing stuff for EAS go up since I started working full-time, partly since that means I can spend more time and energy into being a leader, encouraging and helping people to become usefully involved. However, with all of these things, people who have done this sort of thing for longer will likely know better.

  2. We intend to use IASPC, but also figures regarding number of coachings, referrals etc. Regarding donations, the idea is to get data on how many swedish donations go through EA Funds. In addition to this, we will likely collect our own data on impact as well through a survey.

• MarkusAnderljung 23 Feb 2018 8:07 UTC

  7 points

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  in reply to: Chris Leong’s comment on: An­nounc­ing Effec­tive Altru­ism Com­mu­nity Build­ing Grants

  The org’s I can remember off the top of my head are: EA Sweden (that’s me), EA Geneva, EA London, EA China, EA Netherlands (used to have full-time staff, but don’t anymore) and EA Australia.

  I’m excluding CEA, EAF and Rethink Charity here.

• MarkusAnderljung 28 Mar 2018 14:28 UTC

  5 points

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  in reply to: Chris Leong’s comment on: Hi, I’m Holden Karnofsky. AMA about jobs at Open Philanthropy

  Cost-Effectiveness Analysis :)

• MarkusAnderljung 20 Apr 2018 18:05 UTC

  3 points

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  in reply to: Ervin’s comment on: How to im­prove EA Funds

  Just noticed this, so sorry for the late reply! I (through EA Sweden) was the recipients of an EA Community Fund grant a few months back. I’ll just say a few things about the grant, some general thoughts about the EA Community Fund and am happy to answer any questions you might have!

  I’d say that there was a bit more information to go on than simply Will having seen me do EA group organizing over the past 5 or so years: I also provided a project proposal. However, I’d agree with the impression that the main factor in making the grant was about trust and first-hand knowledge of my work in the past.

  If you wanna know more about what we’ve been up to, you can read our plans for the year (as of February) here: http://​​effective-altruism.com/​​ea/​​1kf/​​effective_altruism_sweden_plans_for_2018/​​

  Abstracting from my particular situation, there currently seem to be growing pains in the EA community building-space. My impression is that the bottleneck is not good projects to fund, but rather ability to consider proposals and allocate funds. I think making funding decisions in the community building-space based largely on trust and proven track record is a good heuristic. However, it won’t be particularly scalable and so needs to be supplemented by more time-intensive methods.

  Given the small size of the EA Community Fund, it seems unreasonable for Nick Beckstead to be managing it. Once CEA is able to allocate their EA Community Building Grants effectively, I’d recommend the EA Community Fund being allocated by CEA rather than Nick Beckstead.

• MarkusAnderljung 24 Apr 2018 8:14 UTC

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  on: Em­piri­cal data on value drift

  Thanks for this, Joey!

  I’d be very keen to see more thorough data on this, for example:

  1. To what extent is 80k’s pivot away from recommending Management Consulting due to value drift?

  2. My impression is that one of the reasons to focus less on GWWC has been attrition (i.e. value drift in these terms). Does anyone have access to those figures?

  3. Would e.g. CEA or 80k be able to carry out a retrospective study on this?

  4. Even more awesome would be to conduct a longitudinal cohort study on the topic.

• MarkusAnderljung 1 Aug 2018 9:51 UTC

  2 points

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  in reply to: SamDeere’s comment on: The EA Com­mu­nity and Long-Term Fu­ture Funds Lack Trans­parency and Accountability

  There are links missing from the EA Community Fund post to the OpenPhil writeups on 80k and CEA.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tion for Fu­ture Gen­er­a­tions in Swe­den – a sum­mary of our work so far

• MarkusAnderljung 9 Aug 2018 8:29 UTC

  1 point

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  in reply to: ole_koksvik’s comment on: Rep­re­sen­ta­tion for Fu­ture Gen­er­a­tions in Swe­den – a sum­mary of our work so far

  Thanks, Ole!

  1. Yep, I would say there is definitely overlap. At the very least between the Ombudsman and the Future Commission. They would both serve as checks. I think (and am not sure whether the others in the project would agree with this), we do not need to think about all of these as a package. If I could wave a magic wand and implement a set of institutional changes, I would likely be in favour of a different package. Instead, we’ve recommended things that fit well together where we would be incredibly pleased if one or two would be implemented.

  2. One of the main things we’re doing now is thinking about how to get to implementation of these recommendations. My view is that we need to keep building a coalition with other organisations (e.g. environment-focused think tanks). On top of this, we need to keep finding allies among the MPs.

  3. I think that’s a great idea! We’ll likely spend the next few months taking a step back and deciding on how we’re gonna be pushing for our recommendations. One really simple communications tactic would likely be to do some polling.

• MarkusAnderljung 9 Aug 2018 8:47 UTC

  2 points

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  in reply to: David_Moss’s comment on: Rep­re­sen­ta­tion for Fu­ture Gen­er­a­tions in Swe­den – a sum­mary of our work so far

  Thanks, David!

  I have not, though Jones et al 2018 has (this is the paper written by the same people who worked to set up the APPG in the UK). They say of the Read proposal that “We encountered several ideas which we do not include above, for various reasons. One of these is the proposal for a “third house of parliament”, or “Guardians”, made by Rupert Read (Read 2012). Under Read’s proposal these Guardians, appointed randomly amongst citizens on the same principle as juries, would have the power to (a) veto new legislation that threatened the basic needs and fundamental interests of future people, and (b) force a review of any existing legislation that threatens such needs and interests. He also suggests similar structures within local governments. As we found previously, institutions with veto powers did not last long, and as such we do not think this “third house of parliament” would be workable. In addition, we share concerns raised by Michael Bartlet about the proposed method of selection by lot (Bartlet, 2012).”

  To give some context on veto powers not lasting long, the Hungarian Commissioner was removed with four years and the Israeli commissioner lasted about five years. Both of these had quite strong powers that they actually used, which seems to have made them politically controversial and had them removed after the next election.

  Another crucial point here is what types of policies you think are going to be most impactful to work on. If you want to focus on environmental issues, I can see the allure of institutions that are given a lot of power. The bottleneck is not agenda-setting but rather closer to the right bills not being voted through. If you’re more concerned about other GCRs, institutions or tweaks focusing on agenda-setting will be more interesting, such as the APPG.

• MarkusAnderljung 14 Aug 2018 9:18 UTC

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  in reply to: ole_koksvik’s comment on: Rep­re­sen­ta­tion for Fu­ture Gen­er­a­tions in Swe­den – a sum­mary of our work so far

  Yeah, I agree that we’ve gone for quite a top-down rather than bottom-up approach. Though less so than in the UK case. There, my understanding is that the APPG was started only after having arranged 1-on-1 meetings with the relevant MPs.

  My intuition is that it will be difficult to cause change in this area by driving popular opinion, but you might need some public opinion behind it to make it stick. To be crass, I would expect politicians to be able to wrangle very few votes by spear-heading initiatives such as these.

• MarkusAnderljung 4 Dec 2018 20:43 UTC

  11 points

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  in reply to: Jan_Kulveit’s comment on: So you want to do op­er­a­tions—which skills do you need?

  I think what really filters down the number of candidates significantly is that most organizations want to fill ops-roles with people who are able to do their job very autonomously. This means that a premium is put on something like value-alignment and good judgment. These two factors significantly narrows down the talent pool.