I run EA Anywhere, a virtual group for people who donāt have local groups nearby.
I co-founded EA Russia and have been involved in community building for the last three years. I contributed to several EA organizations as a research intern, created a Youtube channel with EA-related videos, and studied the MIT Micromasters program on global health and development policy.
https://āāwww.linkedin.com/āāin/āāsasha-berezhnoi/āā
Thanks for pointing this out, Andy! Iāve updated the post. The application deadline is October 19th.
The deadline is 8:00 UTC on 19 October.
(I added this to the event description)
Thanks, Kirsten! We will announce a tentative agenda in 2-3 weeks.
Thanks for sharing the review, Ozy. I picked the movie for a watch party and everyone loved it! It touches on so many topics relevant to EA, definitely worth watching. And it aged really well, some scenes are very sweet and touching.
Recently someone asked me to comment on an article āWant to hurt Putin? Back a brain drain from Russiaā. Itās a slightly edited version of my response.
From a personal perspective, I would be happy to support refugee quotas or immigration quotas for Russian in Europe or the US. One of the EAs from Russia even wrote a post on that. Right now, itās even more challenging to get a visa to Europe if you have a Russian passport than before the war. Baltic states stopped issuing tourist visas for Russian, and Norway stopped issuing residential visas. Iāve been waiting for a UK visa for two months to attend EA Global and didnāt get it, probably due to rising concerns about issuing visas to Russian citizens. Iām not mentioning that itās problematic even to pay a visa fee right now, because Visa/āMastercard stopped working in Russia.
But from a big-picture perspective, I donāt think the goals described in the article would be met by this kind of action:
The role of the IT sector in Russian GDP is negligible, ~1%. Putin relies on the army, repression mechanisms, and oil exports. Not on well-educated tech industry workers who can relocate and be welcomed in the West.
The state made multiple announcements that society is ācleaning itselfā from traitors with Western values, who are relocating abroad right now. So Putin is even happy that these high-skilled people are leaving the country. Because itās the same people who support independent media, join street protests, and ask for change. He doesnāt care about decreasing GDP, he cares about staying in charge.
Almost everyone who is working for the military is banned from traveling abroad. They can do it only 3-5 years after dismissal. Keep in mind that after 22 years of Putinās regime the militaries are pretty loyal due to the negative selection processes.
For the majority of my Russian friends, Meduza is the main news source. Itās more than a news aggregator. They release a lot of exclusive content, podcasts, interviews, newsletter, and FAQs on the most important topics. They also do fact-checking and have inside sources within the government.
In recent days most of the independent media operated from Russia were blocked (e.g., TV Rain channel, Echo of Moscow radio station). There are almost no āother sourcesā left. And most important, the Russian government canāt threaten the editors, because Meduza is based in Riga, Latvia. Even if it gets blocked in Russia, it will be still accessible through their app or VPNs.
They have an English edition too, hereāre some examples of their recent journalism that I recommend:
Unfortunately, TV Rain website was blocked a few days ago by the Russian government and they suspended all the broadcasting. They operated from Moscow and risks of repressions for them were really high.
I would say that Meduza is the main independent news source in Russia right now. They can experience funding gaps because a lot of Russian citizens wonāt be able to make donations with their bank cards because of sanctions. Thanks for your donations!
Advocate for introducing strict sanctions against Putinās friends and Kremlin-linked Russian oligarchs. Thatās what Navalny has been talking about for many years: āThere is no sense to sanction generals who are definitely not traveling a lot or have bank accounts in Europeā.
My intuition is that Putin doesnāt care much about money anymore and heās more concerned about impacting history, but his surroundings do care about their property and bank accounts.
Support free press and non-profits combating political persecution in Russia. Russian propaganda works well and poisons western media as well as local peopleās minds. People in Russia should have access to trustworthy sources of information. Those who arenāt scared to express their opinions in public should have access to legal assistance: today 1700 people involved in street protests against the war were arrested.
Personally, I donate to Meduza (Russian online newspaper and news aggregator) and OVD-Info (human rights service). Both of them have been labeled as āforeign agentsā in Russia.
Hereās a preliminary schedule for the event:
Ben WilliamsonāEffective Self-Help. Strategies for more effective behavior change
Madhu SriramāBehind-the-scenes work involved in running a chapter of a nonprofit
Simon NewsteadāHow to become an impact investor
Thomas FrancineāHow Skinny Dip Day helps to raise money for Fistula Foundation
Harrison DurlandāThe potential value of āepistemic mappingā for metascience/āmeta-research
Mike PoolāA strength-building exercise routine and diet
Thanks for bringing this up! CEA helped EA Anywhere get a free Slack pro planāthey might be able to do the same for other groups. Those interested should contact groups@centreforeffectivealtruism.org
Iāve listed existing Slack workspaces I know here and included invite links where possible.
You can also look through a list of existing online groups on EA Hub. It contains more groups because a lot of them are hosted on Facebook and do not have Slack.
By creating #announcements channel where only admins can post you can separate group updates from other posts and discussions. The goal is to increase the visibility of important announcements everyone should know about. #general is usually the default channel for discussions and sources everyone in the workspace might be interested in, so the posting rate is higher there.
Weāve exchanged preliminary thoughts on EAGxVirtual with Lizka and agreed that it would be better to run a completely virtual conference instead of a hybrid next year. It will allow taking full advantage of the virtual format instead of mirroring the in-person conferences. EA Anywhere team would be happy to contribute to organizing this. Weāre in touch with the CEA, but not ready to announce anything yet.
I think LPR can actually make a group more welcoming rather than unwelcoming if itās located outside of EA hubs. Without LPR, career advice will be suitable only for a tiny amount of people who consider moving abroad where effective organizations are located. After research on local high-impact careers, thereāll be suitable advice at least for some people who doesnāt consider moving. A lot of people donāt want to live abroad because of family bonds/ānot enough career capital/ālanguage barriers, and itās preferable for the community to have some thoughts on local impactful careers.
Thanks for your effort!
Last year Iāve created a channel on effective altruism in Russian and made five videos on various topics, focusing mostly on introduction to main cause areas and fighting popular misconceptions on foreign aid (no English subtitles available, sorry). Each video was ~10 minutes long and they got >4000 views in total. With videos, I reached a 50 times larger audience than with offline public talks, but it was very time-consuming. I spent around 30-35 hours on making each video and eventually stopped making new ones, even though the audience was very friendly and people still reaching me out almost every week and asking about new videos. Iāll be happy to share my experience in making these videos if needed.
I think that creating a community space on YouTube and creating high-quality videos would be valuable, and Iāll be happy to hear if someone does this. But the conversion rate from YouTube viewers to actively involved EA members could be very low. Thatās why in my videos I focused mostly on fighting ignorance, introducing ideas/ābooks/āresearch/āorganizations, and creating a better culture of charitable giving without actively promoting EA.
The show should respond to what viewers are interested in seeing content about rather than promoting a particular EA cause or philosophy.
Strongly agree with that, I think the show should introduce viewers to ideas & opportunities rather than promote a particular philosophy.
Animal Welfare
Animal Charity Evaluators has a channel with educational videos, public talks, and grantees updates.
Global health and development
J-PAL uploads lots of lectures about development economics and RCTs, as well as explanations of their research.
Econimate is a channel aimed at making cutting-edge research in economics accessible and engaging. What questions are economists asking, how are they tackling them, and how does this research help us understand the world around us.
Hereās a review of several courses from the program. Iām currently studying the third course out of five, and then I want to apply for on-campus accelerated Masterās at MIT. Iāll be happy to answer questions about the program if you have them.
Iāve done some investigation into this. All money goes to Arbor Day Foundation, but they are not planting trees themselves and work with partners like the US Forest Service.
To estimate cost-effectiveness we need to know tree mortality rate and estimated lifespan. The first factor depends on the region and maintenance level. US Forest Service estimated a 3% mortality rate per year. It takes around 40 years for a tree to absorb a tonne of CO2, and at least 30% of planted trees will survive to this age (0.97^40 ~ 30%). Itās harder to estimate lifespan because trees can live hundreds and thousands of years. But itās less relevant if we want to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere in this century, not in the distant future. From these calculations, I can conclude that the cost-effectiveness of this program in the next 40 years must be around 3.3$ per tonne CO2 absorbed or cheaper. But itās just my back-of-the-envelope calculation for those who want some numbers. For example, Founders Pledge recommended intervention by The Coalition for Rainforest Nations avert a tonne of CO2 for 0.12$ with a plausible range $0.02-$0.72 (report). And these emissions will be averted right now, not in the future when trees grow up.
Overall, I stayed neutral to this campaign. On the one hand, I feel that it bring a lot of counterfactual dollars that would not be spent on charity otherwise. On the other, I think that paying too much attention to tree planting can take us away from the importance of reducing emissions.
You should have received the Swapcard invite by now. If not, please reach out to virtual@eaglobalx.org
We process registrations manually, so once you signed up for the conference there is a small delay before you get the Swapcard link.