Suffering should not exist.
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What I’m asking is if there are other similar organizations. I doubt QRI and CRS are the only organizations that fit the description of what I’m talking about.
[Question] What are the most underfunded EA organizations?
Anatoly Karlin has argued that wokeism/SJWism has done significant damage to the Effective Altruism movement.
In the past year, I donated about $2000 to organizations focused on reducing S-risks, namely the Center for Reducing Suffering and the Center on Long-Term Risk.
What do you think is the risk of a “near miss” in AI alignment? From a suffering-focused perspective, Brian Tomasik has argued that a slightly misaligned AI has the potential to cause far more suffering compared to a totally unaligned AI.
How does ARC differ from other AI alignment organizations, like MIRI?
I’m not sure how relevant this is to Effective Altruism, but I found this video about what would realistically happen geopolitically if Santa actually existed.
Brian Tomasik wrote this article about the risks of a “near miss” in AI alignment. From a suffering-focused perspective, Tomasik argues that a slightly misaligned AGI could potentially cause far more suffering compared to an AI that is totally unaligned. He has also argued that there may be a ~38% chance that MIRI is actively harmful.
One form of slacktivism I have personally engaged in is sending superchats related to EA topics to various YouTube livestreamers. Doing this may potentially introduce Effective Altruism and topics related to it to hundreds of people at once.
Couldn’t stopping miscarriages potentially increase the mutational load within the population? Embryos that end in miscarriages may miscarry because they have genetic defects. The embryos that are saved will potentially still have those genetic defects, which will potentially lead to a lower quality of life.
What do you think of the Humane Slaughter Association? The HSA is focused on reducing livestock suffering, and is trying to have livestock be slaughtered in less painful ways. Brian Tomasik has also endorsed it.
Demographics are a major factor in determining the values of future generations. Currently, the demographics in the US with the highest fertility rates tend to be insular religious fundamentalists like the Amish, certain groups of Mormons, and Ultra-Orthodox Jews. Because of these demographic trends, it’s plausible that religious fundamentalists will become demographically dominant during the 2100s. Robin Hanson talked about this in his article The Insular Fertile Future. Eric Kaufmann has also talked about this in his lecture Why the religious will inherit the earth.
As for possible ways to preserve modern/WEIRD values, Robin Hanson suggested trying to create new subcultures that have cultural traits that result in high fertility, but also inherit most of their cultural values from modern/WEIRD culture. With enough experiments involving creating new subcultures, high fertility subcultures that preserve modern values might be created.
This is definitely true if “it’s processes are simple” is a requirement for the longtermist organization in question. Influencing the far future is extremely difficult, and can’t even remotely be called a simple process. There definitely are longtermist organizations that have a lot of room for funding and spend their money effectively, though.
The Effective Altruism Foundation seems to satisfy some of your criteria. They have a variety of projects they are working on, all of which seem to be longtermism-oriented. Brian Tomasik has also endorsed it.
No, I am not affiliated with either. I have been mentioning them because reducing S-risks seems like an extremely important cause, yet S-risks seem to be highly neglected within the Effective Altruism community.
Are they currently funded by any large EA donors?
The Center for Reducing Suffering is definitely underfunded. To quote them directly: “As a small, early-stage organisation, we currently operate on a very limited budget; in fact, we only recently started paying researchers at all. The marginal benefit of additional funding is therefore particularly large: we have much room for funding, and funding at this early stage is critical for enabling CRS to get properly off the ground. the same amount makes a much bigger difference at this stage, compared to a more established or less funding-constrained organisation.”
The Center on Long-Term Risk has significantly more funding. CLR has an annual transparency report where you can see their financial information. Open Philanthropy also recommended a $1 million dollar grant to the Effective Altruism Foundation, the parent organization of CLR.
Is funding a bottleneck, such that more funding would result in better results?
More funding for S-risk research could potentially result in these organizations being able to hire more people and acquire more top talent. In the case of the Center for Reducing Suffering, as mentioned above, they are an early stage organization with a lot of room for funding.
Scott should definitely consider funding the Center on Long-Term Risk and the Center for Reducing Suffering. These organizations are focused on reducing S-risks, or risks of astronomical suffering. Brian Tomasik has also endorsed these organizations as his top charity recommendations. S-risks are highly neglected, so more funding for these causes will likely have more marginal impact compared to other causes.
Brian Tomasik wrote this article on the amount of direct suffering caused by various animal foods. In general, meat from large animals like cows causes less suffering than meat from small animals like chicken and fish, since fewer animals are needed per unit of meat. Eating insects may also be a bad idea for this same reason.
If you’re still trying to decide what to donate to, Brian Tomasik wrote this article on his donation recommendations, which may give you some useful insight. His top donation recommendations are the Center on Long-Term Risk and the Center for Reducing Suffering. Both of these organizations focus on reducing S-risks, or risks of astronomical suffering. There was also a post here from a few months ago giving shallow evaluations of various longtermist organizations.
This isn’t specifically about private schools, but there’s a book called The Case Against Education that argues that the education system in general adds very little in terms of human capital, and is mostly a way of certifying intelligence, conscientiousness, and conformity.