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Pablo
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Michael Nielsen’s “Notes on effective altruism”
Future of Humanity Institute 2005-2024: Final Report
In Continued Defense Of Effective Altruism — Scott Alexander
David Edmonds’s biography of Parfit is out
Anki deck for “Some key numbers that (almost) every EA should know”
Future Matters #0: Space governance, future-proof ethics, and the launch of the Future Fund
This is what ACE’s “overview” lists as Anima’s weaknesses:
We think Anima International’s leadership has a limited understanding of racial equity and that this has impacted some of the spaces they contribute to as an international animal advocacy group—such as coalitions, conferences, and online forums. We also think including non-staff members in Anima International’s governing board would increase the board’s capacity to oversee the organization from a more independent and objective perspective.
Their “comprehensive review” doesn’t mention the firing of the CEO as a consideration behind their low rating. The primary reason for their negative evaluation seems to be captured in the following excerpt:
According to our culture survey, Anima International is diverse along the lines of gender identity and sexual identity, however, they are not diverse on racial identity. This is not surprising, as most of the countries in which their member organizations operate are very racially homogenous; in practice, we think it would be particularly difficult for them to successfully attract and hire advocates who are Black, Indigenous, or of the global majority49 (BIPGM) in those countries. Our impression, however, is that the racial homogeneity at the organization has resulted in a limited understanding of racial issues, which has presented itself in some of the public and private communications50 we’ve witnessed from Anima International’s staff in the last year. In particular, we think leadership staff publicly engaging in conversations about the relevance of racial equity to the animal advocacy movement may have had a negative impact on the progress of racial equity in the movement.51 While we think this issue is less salient in the more racially homogenous countries in which they operate, for their work in more racially diverse countries, we think it is particularly important that they prioritize developing an understanding of racial equity. Additionally, for any organization working on an international scale, there are spaces that all staff may encounter that are more racially diverse—such as coalitions, conferences, and online forums—in which it is again important to have an understanding of racial equity. This is particularly important so as to ensure the safety of BIPGM and to not impede—and to eventually contribute to—work on racial equity in the broader animal advocacy movement, which we believe will be crucial to its long-term success.52 Note: Our concern here is specifically about their understanding of racial issues and not issues relating to ethnicity, of which they report frequently encountering in their work in Eastern Europe and Russia—we have no reason to doubt their handling of those situations.53
In our culture survey, some respondents mentioned that leadership could offer training to be more inclusive or to better support staff who are members of marginalized groups.
Anima International supports R/DEI through their human resources activities. Anima International has a workplace code of ethics/conduct and a written statement that they do not tolerate discrimination on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, disability status, or other characteristics. Anima International has a written procedure for filing complaints, as well as explicit protocols for addressing concerns or allegations of harassment54 or discrimination.55 In our culture survey, 96% of respondents agreed that Anima International protects staff, interns, and volunteers from harassment and discrimination in the workplace, and 98% agreed that they have someone to go to in case of harassment or discrimination. However, our culture survey suggests that Anima International’s staff experienced or witnessed some harassment or discrimination in the workplace during the past year, more than the average charity under review. Some respondents mentioned that they witnessed troubling behavior from the former CEO but that they were satisfied with leadership’s handling of the situation, i.e., suspending and removing the former CEO. Because staff feel overall protected from harassment and discrimination, and Anima International seems to have in place systems to prevent and handle harassment and discrimination in the workplace, we are not highly concerned about this finding.
Anima International does not offer regular trainings on topics such as harassment and discrimination in the workplace. In our culture survey, 75% of staff agree that they and their colleagues have been sufficiently trained in matters of R/DEI. Respondents mentioned that training has not taken place, or they are not needed. We believe that the opportunities for the team to learn about R/DEI at Anima International should be increased.
Overall, we believe that Anima International is less diverse, equitable, and inclusive than the average charity we evaluated this year.
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Although it isn’t relevant to this particular thread, I’d like to urge all participants to consider Will Bradshaw’s comment and try to “hav[e] this discussion in a more productive and conciliatory way, which has less of a chance of ending in an acrimonious split”, insofar as this is compatible with maintaining our standards of intellectual rigor.
A bunch of new GPI papers
Many people are tired of being constantly exposed to posts that trigger strong emotional reactions but do not help us make intellectual progress on how to solve the world’s most pressing problems. I have personally decided to visit the Forum increasingly less frequently to avoid exposing myself to such posts, and know several other EAs for whom this is also the case. I think you should consider the hypothesis that the phenomenon I’m describing, or something like it, motivated the Forum team’s decision, rather than the sinister motive of “attemp[ting] to sweep a serious issue under the rug”.
Retrospective grant evaluations
Research That Can Help Us Improve
EA funders allocate over a hundred million dollars per year to longtermist causes, but a very small fraction of this money is spent evaluating past grantmaking decisions. We are excited to fund efforts to conduct retrospective evaluations to examine which of these decisions have stood the test of time. He hope that these evaluations will help us better score a grantmaker’s track record and generally make grantmaking more meritocratic and, in turn, more effective. We are interested in funding evaluations not just of our own grantmaking decisions (including decisions by regrantors in our regranting program), but also of decisions made by other grantmaking organizations in the longtermist EA community.
Bibliography of EA writings about fields and movements of interest to EA
It seems that half of these examples are from 15+ years ago, from a period for which Eliezer has explicitly disavowed his opinions
Just to note that the boldfaced part has no relevance in this context. The post is not attributing these views to present-day Yudkowsky. Rather, it is arguing that Yudkowsky’s track record is less flattering than some people appear to believe. You can disavow an opinion that you once held, but this disavowal doesn’t erase a bad prediction from your track record.
Like him, I only know about this particular essay from Torres, so I will limit my comments to that.
I personally do not think it is appropriate to include an essay in a syllabus or engage with it in a forum post when (1) this essay characterizes the views it argues against using terms like ‘white supremacy’ and in a way that suggests (without explicitly asserting it, to retain plausible deniability) that their proponents—including eminently sensible and reasonable people such as Nick Beckstead and others— are white supremacists, and when (2) its author has shown repeatedly in previous publications, social media posts and other behavior that he is not writing in good faith and that he is unwilling to engage in honest discussion.
(To be clear: I think the syllabus is otherwise great, and kudos for creating it!)
EDIT: See Seán’s comment for further elaboration on points (1) and (2) above.
This was a very interesting post. Thank you for writing it.
I think it’s worth emphasizing that Rotblat’s decision to leave the Manhattan Project was based on information available to all other scientists in Los Alamos. As he recounts in 1985:
the growing evidence that the war in Europe would be over before the bomb project was completed, made my participation in it pointless. If it took the Americans such a long time, then my fear of the Germans being first was groundless.
When it became evident, toward the end of 1944, that the Germans had abandoned their bomb project, the whole purpose of my being in Los Alamos ceased to be, and I asked for permission to leave and return to Britain.
That so many scientists who agreed to become involved in the development of the atomic bomb cited the need to do so before the Germans did, and yet so few chose to terminate their involvement when it had become reasonably clear that the Germans would not develop the bomb provides an additional, separate cautionary tale besides the one your post focuses on. Misperceiving a technological race can, as you note, make people more likely to embark on ambitious projects aimed at accelerating the development of dangerous technology. But a second risk is that, once people have embarked on these projects and have become heavily invested in them, they will be much less likely to abandon them even after sufficient evidence against the existence of a technological race becomes available.
Future Matters #8: Bing Chat, AI labs on safety, and pausing Future Matters
‘Beneficentrism’, by Richard Yetter Chappell
Great post, thank you for compiling this list, and especially for the pointers for further reading.
In addition to Tobias’s proposed additions, which I endorse, I’d like to suggest protecting effective altruism as a very high priority problem area. Especially in the current political climate, but also in light of base rates from related movements as well as other considerations, I think there’s a serious risk (perhaps 15%) that EA will either cease to exist or lose most of its value within the next decade. Reducing such risks is not only obviously important, but also surprisingly neglected. To my knowledge, this issue has only been the primary focus of an EA Forum post by Rebecca Baron, a Leaders’ Forum talk by Roxanne Heston, an unpublished document by Kerry Vaughan, and an essay by Leverage Research (no longer online). (Risks to EA are also sometimes discussed tangentially in writings about movement building, but not as a primary focus.)
It’s probably worth noting that Holden has been pretty open about this incident. Indeed, in a talk at a Leaders Forum around 2017, he mentioned it precisely as an example of “end justify the means”-type reasoning.