Hey Alex, excellent post.
Two caveats:
(1) You said
Tax Justice Network is a highly effective charity: consider donating.
And then
Tax Justice Network is laying the foundation for developing countries to become self-sufficient. Based on their work on tax havens alone, TJN is a highly-effective charity. Once we consider their role in curbing illicit financial flows, we may see TJN rise to a top charity for poverty alleviation and governance.
I think there is a part missing in the middle, because I couldn’t find an argument why TJN is a good place to donate except this part,
Tax Justice Network has started changing the narrative on tax havens. For example, in 2007, with help from TJN, The Guardian published the first major story on multinational tax avoidance
which doesn’t strike me as a strong reason. Maybe I missed something?
(2) Did you make the table that ranks the interventions. (AEOI, UBO, CbCR)? If yes, can you provide details on the methodology?
Hey, I thought this discussion could use some data. I also added some personal impressions.
These are the results of the 2020 SSC survey.
For the question “How would you describe your opinion of the [sic] the idea of “human biodiversity”, eg the belief that races differ genetically in socially relevant ways?”
20.8% answered 4 and 8.7% answered 5.
Where 1 is Very unfavorable and 5 is Very favorable
The answers look similar for 2019
Taking that at face value, 30% of Scott’s readers think favorably of “HBD”.
(I guess you could look at it as “80% of SSC readers fail to condemn scientific racism”. But that doesn’t strike me as charitable.)
From the same survey, 13.6% identified as EAs, and 33.4% answered sorta EA.
I should mention that the survey has some nonsensical answers (IQs of 186, verbal SATs of 30). And it appears that many answers lean liberal (Identifying as liberals, thinking favorably of feminism, and more open borders, while thinking unfavorably of Trump.)
A while ago, Gwern wrote
I’m trying to imagine what global development charities EAs who believe HBD donate to, and I’m having a hard time.
Assuming this implies that some EAs (1-5%?) believe in this, I would reckon they’re more focused on X-risks or animal welfare. (I don’t think this is true anymore, see comment below) It would be helpful to see how the people who identify as EAs answered this question.
Finally, from Scott’s email (which I think sharing is a horrible violation of privacy), the last sentence is emblematic of the attitude of lots of people in the community (including myself). My Goodreads contains lots of books I expect to disagree with or be offended by (Gyn/Ecology, The Bell Curve), but I still think it’s important to look into them.
Valuing new insights sometimes means looking into things no one else would, and that has been very useful for the community (fish/insect welfare, longtermism). But unfortunately, one risk is that at least some people will come out believing (outrageously) wrong things. I think that is worth it.
On a personal note, I’m black, and a community organizer, and I haven’t encountered anything but respect and love from the EA community.