I took 10% pledge in May 2022. First with Giving What We Can, later with Fundación Ayuda Efectiva.
Miguel Lima Medín 🔸
Karma: 126
European citizens’ initiative for vegan meal registered by EU Comission
It works now. Thanks :)
It might be of interest:
Reslab Request for Information: EA hardware projects—EA Forum
Thanks for the clarification!
I was expecting an answer like this, but it is great to have your confirmation. I will definitively apply!
I my opinion to say “continued to do work on charities that would reduce human populations” is very unfair referring to a proposal on family planning.
I guess there is a typo in the end date.
Many thanks for organizing this, Luke.
The link https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAtfumqrDMsGtygEf21Ax0Gtpp_i9hc83ZB is not working for me.
I work since 2003 for an automotive company. We manufacture several components for the engine and drivetrain. We also produced and donated some PPEs in the early phases of covid, as other companies in your examples, taking advantage of our advance engineering and industrial capacity.
I don’t think “EA is neglecting physical goods”. I guess EAs think physical goods are provided by the market and don’t see a competitive advantage to take care of the manufacturing. As an example, Against Malaria Foundation considered buying their bed nets locally, coming to the conclusions published here:
https://www.againstmalaria.com/NewsItem.aspx?newsitem=Where-do-we-buy-our-nets-fromThis is for the regular provision of goods in standard market conditions. If you are worried specifically in pandemic preparedness or other existential risks which may require an extremely fast escalation of production, I also see this as an area of concern. But the intervention to get better prepared should be advocacy, so the governments and companies proactively take these scenarios into account and invest in flexible equipment that let them quickly adapt the existing production capacity to PPEs or whatever might be needed. I don’t really see the value of having a few dozen/hundred of individual EAs with manufacturing skills when we will require billions of masks. They will be valuable if they are very well positioned in the chain of command of existing industrial companies and can influence their upfront decisions. A kind of earning to give and influence approach, by taking roles of high responsibility not only to donate but also to influence the decisions of companies to become more aligned to EA values. But this more of a management career path than a hands-on career path.
I’m not sure if I understood properly your exact proposal.
I agree with the example of the robot in the space. There the EROI doesn’t matter so much. Until we have this solution in place, we would have to analyze the whole technological package and environmental context, as you very well said.
I would be very interested to know what your assumptions about this whole technological package and environmental context are, especially when it comes to a fast transition to replace a declining amount of energy from fossil sources. Have you ever done this exercise for your country or the world? I would love to see the results.
Charity Entrepreneurship identified many ways to use entrepreneurship to improve the world, but decided to focus specifically in charities.
Are you aware of any organization equivalent to CE but focused on identifying for-profit entrepreneurship opportunities aligned with EA values and goals, and supporting EA for-profit entrepreneurs? I’m not sure if the concept makes sense, but I’m curious to understand if there is anyone already working on it.
Thanks again for your time!
Great! This is exactly what I was referring to.
I understand your concerns about the risks of making it available to the general public of your site. Publishing it in the EA forum is a good option to make it available to a very specific informed audience.I assume you compare the impact of health interventions using human DALYs. How do you measure and compare against each other the animal welfare initiatives?
I read in your post Region-Specific Impactful Charity Groundwork—a New Way to Join the CE Incubation Program from 2020 that you presented the possibility to work on region specific research.
How did it go? How many people worked on this? Was there any particular region starting the region-specific research program?
Is it possible to apply for this regional research option on the 2023 programs?
I have an additional question about timing:
Is October 31st 2022 the application deadline for June-August or will you provide later a new deadline for the program June-August?
You may be interested on this paper:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421513006447
It explores the question of whether EROI correlates with several quality of life metrics.
Section “5.1. The concept of minimum EROI” covers your debate with Corentin about what is the lowest EROI for a complex society.
I love your research process and how you present it in a very transparent and simple way. I appreciate the fact that you share publicly the result of Stage 6: Deep Dive in the form of high-quality research reports for the top 2-4 charity ideas.
Have you ever considered publishing also some conclusions of the exploratory stages 1-5?
I understand a lot of the information will be in informal unstructured notes, but I guess there might be valuable information that is easy to share (for example a list of all ideas considered at each stage).
Your process to improve the world is based on two steps:
Research potential initiatives. Filter the most impactful and prepare an initial plan for them
Support potential leaders to set up a new charity that will work on the initiative
Have you ever considered replacing step 2 by “working with existing charities so that they include the idea in their portfolio”?
I read about the Incubation program in your site.
Is the “Foundations program” a different initiative? I don’t recall seeing it in the site. Please guide us to the information. Thanks!
Hi Steve,
I feel a contradiction in these messages:In this reply you recognize that applicants are the bottleneck, and you encourage more applicants
In your blog post Most common reasons people do not get into the program you explain that each year you get several thousand applications for an incubation program with 20-40 seats
So it seems that less than 1% of applicants will be accepted, but you still feel that applicants is the bottleneck. Please let me know if I misinterpreted some information.
Many thanks for your time answering our questions and for your great incubation program!
Should I/we use the acronym HQALYs (Human QALYs)?
Assuming the language we use is not only descriptive but also performative, when I talk to others:
… I use “non-human animals” as a reminder that we are also animals and all of us deserve moral consideration
… I use “non-human primates” and “non-human simians” as a reminder that we belong to the same order/family
Following the same rational, I also use “Human QALYs” to be explicit that I’m comparing the impact of different interventions in terms of human lives. When we talk about “lives with value to be measured and saved” referring to human lives only (without being explicit of that and assuming that everyone will understand we are referring to human lives only), we may unconsciously link the concepts “valuable lives” and “only human lives” in our minds.
On the other side I’ve never seen HQALY written anywhere else, and QALY/DALY is such a widespread term that I’m afraid we don’t need an additional acronym.
What do you think? Shall I/we use QALY or HQALY?
Corentin, you might be interested on this European project to explore pathways towards post-growth economics
To explore “how dramatic reductions in energy and resource use can be achieved, while at the same time ending poverty and ensuring decent lives for all” seems to me a very important and neglected problem. Based on the difficulties highlighted in your post I’m not sure how tractable it is, but I’m glad that some funds go into researching this issue.