Having just gone to EAGxNYC, Iâd be really alarmed if I walked into an EAG and it had higher production value than that. The chairs were so many different-but-coordinated styles. There was Listerine and contact lens fluid in the bathrooms. The soap was from a perfume house!
Spencer R. Ericson đ¸
Karma: 590
Cool, thanks! My bookmarks include AAC and 80k, which you have on there, as well as Tom Wein and EA Opportunity Board mentioned by other commenters. I also have:
https://ââcharityvillage.com/ââ
https://ââgfi.org/ââvocation/ââ
https://ââwww.facebook.com/ââgroups/ââ1062957250383195/ââ
https://ââwww.effectivejobsboard.org/ââ
https://ââwww.eawork.club/ââ
Edit: And to tree out even more in the vegan space, GFIâs alt protein career portal includes links to the Tälist, Alt Protein Careers, and Blue Horizon job boards.
(Canât say enough how much I appreciate it when people take my words of uncertainty like âcouldâ literally!) Indeed, in most situations I can think of, Iâd prefer a quantitative model. Especially by an experienced expert! Would that it were always available. Thanks for your comment!
GiveDirectly is a great option for people who put a high value on beneficiary autonomy and are open to giving anywhere in the world! This post is more about including people in the effective giving conversation who want to give back to their own communityâmaybe because they already live in one of the communities in the world with extreme poverty, or maybe because theyâre not all the way EA and thatâs just how they prefer to give.
SupÂportÂing grassÂroots effecÂtively: You can give to the most effecÂtive charÂity in your comÂmuÂnity, even if none of them have âdataâ
Amazing. Maybe Iâll see you there!
[Question] Where are the EA-alÂigned fiÂnanÂcial adÂviÂsors for maÂjor donors?
What do donors need? A surÂvey to help maÂjor donors give more and give better
Thanks Vasco! This helps my understanding.
Thanks Matt!
My estimate was just one estimate. I could have included it in the table but when I did the table it seemed like such an outlier, and done with a totally different method as well, perhaps useful for a different purpose⌠It might be worth adding it into the table? Not sure.
Interesting consideration! If we expect humanity to at one point technologize the LS, and extinction prevents that, donât we still lose all those lives? It would not eradicate all life if there were aliens, but still the same amount of life in total. (Iâm not endorsing any one prediction for how large the future will be.) My formulas here donât quantify how much worse it is to lose 100% of life than 99% of life.
Sure, you could set your threshold differently depending on your purpose. I could have made this clearer!
Exactly as you say, comparing across cause areas, you might want to keep the cost youâre willing to pay for an outcome (a life) consistent.
If youâve decided on a worldview diversification strategy that gives you separate buckets for different cause areas (e.g. by credence instead of by stakes), then youâd want to set your threshold separately for different cause areas, and use each threshold to compare within a cause area. If you set a threshold for what youâre willing to pay for a life within longtermist interventions, and fewer funding opportunities live up to that compared to the amount of money you have available, you can save some of your money in that bucket and donate it later, in the hopes that new opportunities that meet your threshold can arise. For an example of giving later based on a threshold, Open Philanthropy wants to give money each year to projects that are more cost-effective than what they will spend their âlast dollarâ on.
Thanks, me too!
Thanks Ben! I totally agree. The math in this post was trying to get at upper and lower bounds and a medianâbut for setting oneâs personal thresholds, the nuance you mention is incredibly important. I hope this post, and the Desmos tool I linked, can help people play with these numbers and set their own thresholds!
This was a difficult post, and my first post for SoGive as the Lead Researcher & Philanthropy Advisor! I hope it can be useful to our discussions on cost-effectiveness.
I hope my uncertainty comes though. I havenât been thinking about the size of the future for a very long time, but I learned a lot from writing this. As I mentioned at the beginning, please leave feedback on my assumptions, math, and methods, so I can write better posts about thresholds in the future.
It might be a while, but Iâd like to do some writing about cost-effectiveness thresholds for animal advocacy and multipliers as well. Feel free to leave your thoughts about those as a reply to this comment as well.
ThreshÂolds #1: What does good look like for longterÂmism?
[Question] How has the cost-effecÂtiveÂness of treatÂing tuÂberÂcuÂloÂsis changed?
The repugnant conclusion does apply to animals, as long as you consider animals to be moral patients. (Will MacAskill does, which is illustrated in his previous book, Doing Good Better.)
If it were not possible to make humans happy on net, utilitarianism would also imply that it is worse for humanity to exist than not. But lots of people think is it possible to improve human life at scale.
Your post brings up two fundamental questions for me:
Are you a utilitarian? If youâre not, then it makes sense you wouldnât agree with the implications of biting the bullet on the repugnant conclusion.
Is it possible to make the many wild animals of the world happy instead of suffering?
If thatâs possible, it seems like we should do that. Then, the repugnant conclusion would applyâa world with many, somewhat happy animals would be better than a world with fewer, happier animals but less total utility.
If thatâs not possible, then the repugnant conclusion does not apply. The goodness of the extinction of suffering animals is a different, odd implication of utilitarianism. Their extinction would probably also cause the extinction of humans (unless we cease to be animals ourselves and become digital, or we can somehow rely on a synthetic world). But given how many more wild animals there are than humans, the humans are probably morally outweighed by the animals, meaning eliminating the animalsâ suffering is more morally important than preserving the happiness of the fewer humans.
Do you think we should try to make wild animals happy? How do you think we could make a plan to do that?
Is trying to change how wild animals go about their lives also steeped in colonialism? Does that make it worse than allowing wild animals to suffer?
Yeah, itâs a hard habit to kick when you almost always write with multiple authors! It seemed like a more effective use of my time to flag it than to try to edit it all out and miss some anyway. What makes you say using âweâ makes it hard to do good research?
Edit: That question might come from an incorrect interpretation. I interpreted the third sentence in your comment as a relationship like [pressure to use âweâ â pressure to be formal â harder to do good research]. But you might have meant [pressure to be formal â a. pressure to use âweâ b. harder to do good research]?
Anyway, I think I agree with you in that I donât think that necessarily people should use âweâ in formal writing, or that writing on the forum should be formal. This post just felt easier to write in a quasi-formal style, and I am used to writing formal pieces with multiple authors, so thatâs why using âIâ feels kind of forced for me. Definitely not an attempt to be ostentatious or use a âformalspeak norm.â :)
Thank you for your support, Constance!
EvalÂuÂatÂing claims about ContraPest
Extremely cool! I was just saying to someone how nice it would be to have a mini degree specifically in impact analysis, with the bits of econ and stats that I would need to know⌠and here we are! I just started a research-y role with SoGive. I think the material from this course could be really helpful as I get started, but I wonât be able to take 11 weeks off for quite some time. I imagine the teaching and feedback is at least as useful as the reading material and assignments. Do you think youâd ever make this program available for part-time students?
Good to know, thanks! Iâve only been to EAGxNYC and EAGxBerkeley so far, so this is useful to help me calibrate.
I did feel like it was fancier than we needed it to be. I loved it, it was a great experience! But now that I know how great it is to have Listerine at conferences, I feel like I can bring my own for cheap. Iâd also be happy enough to see like, instant oatmeal next to a kettle for breakfast. âBring your own lunch/âdinner,â especially if the venue was down the road from a market. Iâm a foodie for sure, and there is something important about showing people that vegan catering can be awesome. Good food is a big part of what turned me vegan. But it also makes me feel weird to see the EA community pampering me.
It was, however, important to me that it was in a central location. Living in Canada, any conference that I go to is probably going to be a travel situation. I donât have a license (in any country), so I wouldnât be able to rent a car if it was like, in the suburbs.