Founder of Data Strategy Professionals (https://www.datastrategypros.com/) and Community Organizer of EA Software Engineers (https://subscribepage.io/eaSoftwareEngineers)
NicoleJaneway
The situation at FTX is illustrative of a central flaw in utilitarianism. When you start thinking the ends justify the means, anything becomes justifiable.
Trust is so important. Doing the right thing is so important.
I don’t really know what else to say.
Really cool ideas, Luke! Love to support social giving however possible. Both projects seems quite doable (e.g., spinning something up with Streamlit as a prototype). It’s great that we could get something for the Data Scientists to work on.
Nice!! Really looking forward to the debrief from this event, Esben. Thanks for organizing!
Hi there cdenq,
Thanks so much for this question!! afaik, this is one of the first EA Hackathons of this sort, so we don’t have a list of historical projects.
I wouldn’t worry too much about setting the constraint of what you can accomplish in 5-6 hours (accounting for intro talks, socialization, and lunch here). Ideally, devs will continue to work on their contributions after the Hackathon ends.
If there’s interest, I was thinking we may do a regular (e.g., once a month) coworking session on Gathertown to push this projects forward.
Let me know what other questions you have.
This is wonderful, thank you very much for the thorough write up, Esben. I wonder if you have any lessons learned regarding the logistics of the hackathon, particularly the GatherTown aspect?
Ivy, I’m free today from 9:30 − 10am, 10:30-11am, 11:30-1pm (all times PT). Unfortunately, I do have a handful of client calls I’ll need to take in the inbetween times. I did a full afternoon of calls yesterday, so I have some ideas about how to do them well.
plex, you always have the most interesting projects.
I am personally working toward something that shall henceforth be referred to as FIREA — Financial Independence Retire and EA.
Agreed it’s helpful to have a bit of a cushion and then go into direct work, balancing that with plans to donate GWWC too.
Thanks for raising this topic.
Watching.
Sure! If folks want to pick this up at the upcoming Hackathon, that’d be stellar.
This is an awesome way for nontechnical attendees to contribute — thanks for this, Jehan.
This is a great high impact project that should be easy to knock out in a day!! Thanks for the submission, Dony 🙌
I would love to see a personal finance tool that is geared towards a public facing (i.e., non-EA) audience that provides 1) useful financial guidance such as lifetime earnings projections and 2) concludes with a call to action to sign up for Try Giving / GWWC pledge.
I think it would be awesome to show people that they can donate a substantial portion of their income and still maintain a desirable standard of living.
Of course, EAs would benefit from this tool too, but my goal for it would be to introduce the idea of GWWC to a general audience.
Check out Rebecca’s recent post before the talk: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/4ssvjxD8x9iBLYnMB/fire-and-ea-seeking-feedback-on-fi-ilanthropy-calculator
Just a quick note to say there will be two talks on this topic coming up later this month:
Tue, 2⁄21 at 7pm EST—Personal Finance (option 1) with @BenSchifman (EA for Jews and EA DC) and @Chris_Webster (EA DC and Open Phil)
Thu, 2⁄23 at 12pm EST—Personal Finance (option 2) with @Rebecca Herbst (Yield & Spread and EA Salt Lake City)
📅 Subscribe to the EA Software Engineers’ calendar to never miss an event
Check out Rebecca’s awesome “Fi-lanthropy” Calculator
Yes! Lessons Learned here.
After EAGxBerkeley, I think there needs to be a lot more emphasis on the basics of personal finance, particularly for student groups and other young EAs.
EAs have different financial needs. Balancing giving and saving is much less stressful if you have a reasoned plan about how to do so. I imagine it’d be pretty easy to get bad advice from a financial counselor who isn’t familiar with philanthropic giving.
At the EA Software Engineering meet, earning to give came up, so we talked about some slightly advanced financial strategies. In the US, donating appreciated assets is the best strategy for tax advantaged giving. Aaron Hamlin has some great resources on how to set up a donor advised fund (DAF) to do this. I recommend the following:
Read his articles on philanthropy, especially Practical Philanthropic Giving, Planned Giving For Everyone, and Donor-Advised Funds
Check out Tax-Efficient & Effective Philanthropy (talk, slides)
Thanks for your thoughts, rodeo. Anecdotally, VT discontinued their original program because of unpopularity with state residents. It was funded with taxpayer money, therefore locals were essentially defraying the moving costs for out-of-state folks.
I’ve updated the article to reflect the fact that Tulsa Remote is largely privately funded, with some funding from OK for certain individuals (i.e., tech workers).
The other programs I know of are WV and northwest AR. I’m tempted to maybe try one of these programs in the future (if they’re not turned off by the fact I’ve already done Tulsa Remote). Both states are beautiful, but offer less in the way of career development and urban amenities compared to Tulsa.
This sounds like a lot of fun. Love poaps.
I will try to read everyone’s comments and the related articles that have been shared. I haven’t yet, but I’m going on a trip today — I may have time on the way.
To be clear: I am against utilitarianism. It is not my personal value system. It seems like an SBF-type-figure could justify any action if the lives of trillions of future people are in the balance.
The utilitarians who aren’t taking radical actions to achieve their ends just have a failure of imagination and ambition relative to SBF.