I create effective, scalable educational programs. I want them to help people make better decisions, become more empathic, and more effective in their work (esp. their research). I’m an awarded educator, receiving national awards, international senior fellowships, and the highest honour from my university. I also have a strong academic research background: I’m Chief Investigator on $3.7m of competitive, industry-partnered research grants; have published in the Scimago #1 journals for psychology, applied psychology, ageing, paediatrics, education (three times, see #1, #2, #3), and sport science (twice, see #1 & #2); and my work is cited almost 4x the world average (according to InCites; all data as of June 2021).
Michael Noetel
Karma: 643
Richard I really love your writing, but as a parent I find it so hard to just sit and read stuff. 95% of the forum’s content I get via the podcast feeds. Now, I don’t expect everyone to go full Experimental History or Joe Carlsmith and audio narrate each post, but unless you’re wanting to keep things on Substack turf, you might consider cross-posting the full thing here (like Bentham’s Bulldog did for the critique of the wired article). I don’t ask this of everyone, so please consider this a compliment: I love your work and want it in my ears.[1]
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That sounded weirder than I meant it to
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Hanania gives some interesting arguments for why here: https://www.richardhanania.com/p/effective-altruism-thinks-youre-hitler
One lens to look at this is less through the ‘we’re all similarly qualified’ like the AMA but more through the ‘we’re working with the same values’ or ‘we’re working on similar problems’ like the Institute of Public Administration Australia. These have no qualification requirements. Still they offer similar things to what ea communities try to do https://qld.ipaa.org.au/for-individuals/
These examples at the end are interesting and worth me mulling over. I do get the sense that Greenpeace or the NAACP would do many of the things you do
That’s a good point. All AMA members have to meet certain criteria. I can see how ’’8 week reading group” pales in comparison to a medical degree.
Fixed thx
I’m interested in the authors’ take on this question: Change my mind: EA national organisations should be ‘professional associations’ not ‘communities’
I’ll look into it. The census data part seems okay. Collecting a representative sample would be harder (e.g., literacy rates are lower, so I don’t know how to estimate responses for those groups).
Thanks Peter. Fixed!
Thanks Seb. I’m not that surprised—public surveys in the Existential Risk Persuasion tournament were pretty high (5% for AI). I don’t think most people are good at calibrating probabilities between 0.001% and 10% (myself included).
I don’t have strong hypotheses why people ‘mostly support’ something they also want treated with such care. My weak ones would be ‘people like technology but when asked about what the government should do, want them to keep them safe (remove biggest threats).’ For example, Australians support getting nuclear submarines but also support the ban on nuclear weapons. I don’t necessarily see this as a contradiction—”keep me safe” priorities would lead to both. I don’t know if our answers would have changed if we made the trade-offs more salient (e.g., here’s what you’d lose if we took this policy action prioritising risks). Interested in suggestions for how we could do that better.
It’d be easy for us to run in other countries. We’ll put the data and code online soon. If someone’s keen to run the ‘get it in the hands of people who want to use it’ piece, we could also do the ‘run the survey and make a technical report one’. It’s all in R so the marginal cost of another country is low. We’d need access to census data to do the statistical adjustment to estimate population agreement (but that should be easy to see if possible).
As a social scientist, these lists are very helpful, thank you team. It’s useful to be able to point students and colleagues to open questions that are immediately decision-relevant.
Thanks for the support Ben. I love what giving multiplier are doing and we entertained the idea down here but we have more restrictive charity regranting laws down here. My understand is that giving multiplier can basically just forward re-grants to the donor’s target, but our read of the Aussie legislation is that we’d need to formally partner with every charity that a donor would want to choose.
Our strategy for marketing to non-EAs is to partner with Giving Green to support a Manager of Climate Giving for Giving Green Australia. Basically, we work closely with Jack who’s job is to both evaluate Australian options but also to market and fundraise around effective climate giving in Australia. We’re also planning to hire a fundraiser and marketer for EAA.
Just wanted to +1 the appreciation for all your work over the years JJ
Thanks to all who attended this event. Such a great turnout. For more information about EAAE, or to donate, go to http://eaa.org.au/environment
my pledge pin is my most expensive possession I own...
Omg I’d never done those maths 😬
Good video Peter. Agree it’s a good introduction for a wide audience. Thanks for signal boosting.
Thank you!
I popped this script in via email a few weeks ago but didn’t get confirmation of receipt. I know it’s been a crazy few weeks so no need to review. Still, do you mind confirming whether it’s ‘in’ or whether the contest is closed?
Thank you for sharing this project. It looks great. A few minor comments and ideas. Wordpress is very flexible but requires lots of plugins to interface with each other for many functions to work. Consider chatting to Aqeel or JJ Hepburn from Sangro/AI Safety Support who recently used wordpress for a learning management system to see how they found it. Consider also using an existing platform with more pre-built features (e.g., Thinkific) where cross-compatibility might be less painful (see our uni EA fellowship site). At least at the start, these help projects like this get off the ground more easily. Most projects add their bells and whistles later.
My PhD student is doing a thesis very close to this project. She’s trying to accelerate knowledge translation in developing countries. Our hypothesis, like yours, is that online learning will rapidly and cost-effectively close the research-practice gap.
The first study in her thesis is a systematic review of randomised trials using online learning in healthcare. We want to know how well online learning teaches professionals, and how well the training helps people translate it into practice. She’s aiming to find what features help the interventions work better. If you’re interested in the review, she’s looking for team members. Being a team member means you learn the results much more quickly and become an author on the paper, which can be good for credibility. If you want to find out more, email me at noetel [at] gmail.com or send me a message on the forum.
Her second study is a cost-effectiveness analysis of an online nursing intervention. Her third study is a series of interviews in LMICs to see how professionals from those countries feel about online learning. It sounds pretty well aligned with the kind of scoping your team is doing. If you’d be interested in the findings of a study like that, and possibly have some contacts from healthcare in LMICs, then again we’d be interested in collaborating (email me). She could run the interviews but you might find the results valuable.
Our project took approximately 2 weeks FTE for 3 people (most was parallelisable). Probably the best reference class.