Always happy to meet new people! This profile is open to messages from anyone.
Interested in:
Policymaking, Blogging, All of the Charity Entrepreneurship /â AIM Initiatives
Previously:
Research Intern for
Campaign contractor for UK MP Candidate
EA Oxford Community Organiser
Head of Speakers for TedXOxford2024
1.5 Generation immigrantâextremely grateful for the opportunity to help others
A delightful thing happened a couple weeks ago, and it gives an example for why more people should comment on the forum.
My forum profile is pretty scarce, less than a dozen comments, most of them are along the lines of âI appreciate the work done here!â. Nevertheless, because I have linked in some social media profiles and set my city in the directory, a student from a nearby university reached out to ask about career advice after finding me on the forum. I gave her a personalised briefing on the local policy space and explained the details of how to enter the UK civil service if she chose to do so.
Some internet activites are like little seeds that take no effort to plant but may lead to something nice, even months later.
Iâd be doing less good with my life if I hadnât heard of effective altruism
Iâve taken the 10% pledge and now donate to high-impact charities. My experiences at EAGs have also inspired me to regularly share career opportunities with others and make connections when I think it could benefit someoneâs career path.
This is neat! If youâre taking feature ideas Iâd suggest a button to hide/âreveal the final recommendation because users may want to set the sliders in a way to get the outcome they want to see. Stopping and thinking carefully on what the value of each slider should be is harder when you see the number of the final decision float around on the side!
Thank you for publicizing this!
This post has phrased comms and âamplifyingâ roles better than other resources that iâve come across! I will use this post as a reference guide in my future discussions on these concepts
Commenting to indicate that Iâd be interested in reading such post!
Great post! Itâs clear that the journalist is skilled and a good investigator but im convinced by your case that he didnât fully engage with the nuance of existential risk. Thank you for putting light and your thoughts to this article!
I wonder what are the most effective persuasion methods for charitable giving?
Donation choices are personal and potentially difficult to influence. Red Nose Dayâs website does have impact metrics so maybe they could be convinced:
âÂŁ20 could provide
- 80 meals at a UK community center
- 4 essential clothing items for a child
- 2 toiletry kits for a homeless youth
- 1 legal assistance package for a refugee familyâ
The forum previously discjssed redirecting foundation donations. Organizations like Effective Giving and Longview apparently do this work, but their involvement with fundraisers is unclear.
Theres a cool new tool that produces cute graphics and vectors out of text.
Yeah the quality of life in Poland is ahead of most of the world, and in most comparisons thereâs no equivalence in circumstances, The Poland vs developing economy GDP per capita differences range from ~10x (Nigeria) to 30x (Niger, CAR).
I re-examined my Syria example and I think many of the returnees could feasibly be individuals with very poor economic prospects in their host countriesâspecifically, those in the bottom quartiles of incomes in Lebanon, Iraq, or Jordan, which collectively host 1.6 million Syrians. Some of these individuals may have also lived in camps, which total 275,000 people (though these two figures overlap). For them and those who have left in the past few months of fighting, returning to Syria could offer an opportunity to start better lives and they are likely to be the bulk of the 1 million returnees in the first 6 months.
My argument for returns was more focused on the idea that if these developing countries experience economic booms, people might choose to return there, even if the countries are still somewhat poorer. But this would be a more long-term consideration, its hard to predict and brain-drains by definition make this less likely to happen. Nevertheless, this scenario seems particularly relevant to modern South American examples, like Guyana, about 50% of Guyanese people are part of the diaspora. If Guyanaâs recent economic boom is sustained, well-redistributed, and if the government manages to defend their borders, (big asks I know) it could potentially bring many Guyanese back.
All the numbers are quite rough.
Itâs a very thoughtful set of questions!
Firstly, I think you would be interested to know about Malengo which is a charity which is helping people in impoverished provinces in Uganda to enrol in German Universities and eventually settle there. They often seek out volunteers to mentor these propsective students, itâs very rewarding.
Re brain-drain I have 4 thoughts.
TLDR they are
1) Lots of talent doesnât flourish in their home countries
2) Advocating for specific visa-pathways can give much more win-win opportunities for all involved
3) Many people go back to home countries when they have the choice/âcredible opportunity to do so
4) Moral argument, my strong passport is awesome, I have a right to have options as to where I live, others deserve it too
Long version:
1) Is it really a brain drain if talent would be counterfactually lost? For every ambitious underemployed dishwasher in the US theres likely many more people who were born in the wrong place, time and/âor body/âsexuality/âreligious family to ever have a fair opportunity to grow and make an impact. Often itâs simply âbrain allocationâ and the remittances sent home can have a greater impact than if the immigrant would have not found a good role in the home country.
2) Advocating for policies of specialised visa pathways can largely by win-win without brain draining effects. Letâs say hyopthetical rich country has a shortage of nurses and a developing country has a over-supply in nursing graduates (rare scenario ik) /â can really up the amount of trained nurses in a few years. A specialised visa-pathways can heavily benefit both countries.
3) Often people will come back when given the chance. About half if not most of Polish nationals in the UK have left the country after 2018, largely back to Poland despite the UK still having a much larger GDP per capita. The UN predicts 1 million Syrians will return in the first ~7 months after the end of the civil war, in 14 years 6.7 million left the country, thatâs quite a significant fraction for such a short amout of time. Many people want to be at their original home country in the long-term (Of course the UN prediction may be wrong). The perceived opportunities/â trajectories within countries as well as the cultural ties make people to come back.
4) Thereâs a moral argument here. My entire life was determined by my parentâs freedom to move freely with European Union borders. Many of there peers did not make the same choice and stayed in Poland. Itâs excellent that they had the right to make that choice. I believe people in developing states also should have that right, and its the responsibilities of Governments to give them reasons to stay.
Biology and/âor Biochemistry most likely (but iâm not in this space myself). You also want to carefully consider who you want to be your supervisor when you write your masters thesis if you want to become a researcher.
A useful tip I use when it comes to these kind of career questions is finding the people 1 or 2 steps ahead of you and asking them for advice.
Are there any biohacking societies or students blogging about anti-aging research that you could reach out to? Finding someone who has gone down the path you want to follow and asking them for advice is very valuable, and theyâll likely be happy to give it.
Status: recollection of past reading on meat consumption elasticity a while ago and some claude fact-checking
AFAIK atleast in many developing economies (which collectively hold atleast >70% of the human population),an increase in disposable incomes leads to an increase in meat consumption.
I think the net effects in developed countries is the same, plant based meat consumption goes up but simulatounsly the lower income members of society eat more meat.
Most of this meat consumption increase relies on the cheapest meat of factory farmed chickens in particular so Iâm not sure if I agree on the symbiosis here.
However, Sonnet 3.5 says that insect consumption broadly decreases with economic development so a weaker version of your claim could be closer to the truth
I think this challenging of career assumptions is especially valuable to people who are young or new to an area.
Iâve seen people before tunnel vision towards a particular path due to missing some details in the field as a whole and all their questions presupposed some sort of path.
Challenging this can help see the tradeoffs of decisions more clearly.
I think its excellent that you guys are working on publicly evaluating past grants! Also congrats to all the new hires especially Alejandro who I know as a very thoughtful and smart guy.
Careful curation is an act of service. I want to thank you for that.
If you havenât already this sounds like a good question to ask on Lesswrong probably moreso than here.
The copyright banner at the bottom of their site extends to 2024 and the Google form for workshop applications hasnât been deactivated.
I got a copy of the CFAR handbook in late 2022 and the intro had an explicit reference to self studyâalong the lines of âwe have only used this in workshops, we donât know what the results of self study of this material does and it wasnât written for self studyâ
So I assume self study wasnât common but I may be wrong
The people directory placed into the forum is such a great idea! Iâve stumbled on a few defunct or rarely updated EA directories and the working ones e.g. High impact professionals seem very useful. I hope it brings more opportunities to qualified people and builds up friendships and connections :)
Hi Tessa, good question. I guess it depends on what type of university youâre in. Your bio says that your an engineering student which suggests that there may be quite a few quantitatively minded peers, they are likely to appreciate the cost effective and scope sensitive focus of EA that many other altruistic areas lack.
An EA focused group can have quite broad topics of discussion from global health to AI, and you could host events which critique or contrast EA principles against other forms of altruism e.g. âhow does EA differ from Christianity?â as one of your early events but then have most themes stick to EA. I guess my answer is focus on where the demand is and what could bring people but remember that a lot of EA principles are fascinating for a broad range of people. Good luck! Building a chapter is an admirable thing to do :)