I am a lecturer in public health at Halmstad University, Sweden. Since 2019, I have been helping Happier Lives Institute. My main interests are systemic change, tax policy, global health, climate change, tipping points and public health. I made a forum post about green basic income, and it was the base for this input to the UN together with Cool Earth and Equal Right. Later I co-authored a post about systemic change. It would be nice to become a researcher in the future.
Ulf Graf š¹
Karma: 230
Hi Madeleine!
Thank you for your post and for bringing up this topic! I am interested in systems change and I can probably give you some hints about what is being done there. I think there are many people in EA who are interested in systems change. I was a co-author to a forum post about systems change. There are EA groups that are interested in systems change as well. I do not āworkā on systems change, but I volunteer in that field, so I am up for it! Lead Exposure Elimination Project is probably the best example. But we also have some EA organisations focusing on policies in fields like alcohol, tobacco, soda, sodium and also Global Policy Research Group. I am not sure if everything I list here is what you are looking for, but I will make a summary about each organisation.I would say that One Day Health is a promising organisation since they are creating primary health care in a cost-effective way to fill in health delivery gaps. But I donāt know about āsystems changeā in that case. But I think it is quite a small step to systems change in that case.
Essential Emergency and Critical Care has a similar approach but focuses on critically ill patients. They have a Government led national programme, and they are cost-effective.
I know that State of Life made an impact report about Tearfund who is a Christian charity that mobilises churches for community transformation. I think they are quite cost-effective even if they are not EA.
Teaching at the Right Level Africa is one of the worldās most cost-effective programs for increasing childrenās ability in mathematics, language, and literacy and it is promoted by The Life You Can Save. The program is used in over 18 countries, of which 17 are in Africa, reaching 7 million children, and one is India, reaching 76 million children. There are many other programmes at The Life You Can Save that might be into systems change.
We have multilayered programmes like Breakthrough Trust, which is a top charity according to The Life You Can Save. Breakthrough Trust combats violence against women and girls in India and creates changes in attitudes. The program works on several levels:
Collaboration with the government, which has included gender equality in the school curriculum and trained school staff and created mass media campaigns.
Training programs for volunteers and activists who change attitudes and norms in the local community and individual families /ā individuals.
Youth engagement by training young people in gender equality so that they can be youth leaders in schools and the local community.
Media engagement, where there are workshops and training for journalists on highlighting violence and sexual harassment in the media.
Influence groups that have strategic collaboration with various groups that drive gender equality issues to strengthen these groups.
Campaigns where young people have created events and campaigns where they highlight violence against women and online campaigns.
Because the program works at multiple levels and with different stakeholders, Breakthrough Trust has created a 76% reduction in intimate partner violence as well as positive changes in attitudes among boys and men regarding sexual harassment.
Strategic Alliance for a Viable Earth is an organization that matches experts with people in power so they make better decisions in various global problem areas. They have the same idea as you, about right people at the right moment, but they focus mostly on tipping points at the moment.
Cool Earth was a top charity before but not now. They support local and indigenous peoples to protect rainforests and combat the climate crisis. They use basic income for nature and climateāwhich means giving basic income to communities that protect rainforests and help them in different ways to empower these communities and save the rainforests.
Equal Right has the same approach as Cool Earth but also promotes a global basic income, global carbon tax, cap and share policy and global wealth tax. They are testing their ideas at the national level in countries with small populations. Their CEO knows what EA is but thinks systems change is better.
There are also organisations like the Social Change Lab that is EA-aligned and does research about social change and Initiative for Safeguarding Democracy that tries to find the best ways to protect democracy. There are organisations working on task-sharing in the field of global mental health. Strongminds, Friendship Bench and Vida Plena are some examples of this. Even if they are focused on direct delivery, task-sharing and their aim to make it part of national programmes might be helpful.
Other organisations that might be interesting but are not connected to EA (as far as I know) but focus on systems change are Odyssean Institute, Club of Rome, Earth4All and Global Commons Alliance.
I hope my comment is helpful! You are warmly welcome to DM me if you have further questions!
Thank you for a very important forum post! Have you read the article āIncome inequality and the erosion of democracy in the twenty-first centuryā? I just wanted to put it here in case you have missed it.
Thank you Gabe! I am happy that it was helpful!
Thank you for sharing! I think this is a very important topic, and I am glad that you wrote about it. I share your thoughts about having a child that might not reach adulthood, since my son is two years old and I hold lectures about global problems /ā catastrophes, so this is something I think about every day. But it doesnāt bother me very much because I use to think something like this:
* Even if the risk that my son die because of global catastrophic risks are unacceptably high, it is still a good chance that things will turn out okay. It is a higher probability that my son will reach old age than the opposite. My son was in NICU during his first time in life and had worse odds back then. But now he is a happy, healthy and wonderful kid.
* What I do will probably not turn the tides. I am doing what I can, and it will probably not be enough. But many other people are doing what they can and I think many people in this community are capable of doing really great things together. It is beautiful that every day, so many people are trying to make the world a better place, and many of them succeed in amazing ways.
* The knowledge about future risks has positive sides as well. I am probably more aware as a parent and more grateful for every moment with my son because of this knowledge, than I would have been without it.* I worried much and had a lot of anxiety when I was younger. After many years I stopped worrying and stopped having anxiety. I guess over 95 % of my problems disappeared because of the realisation that worrying is a problem that you can do something about, and that risks are risks, they might not happen. Either you can do something about things= No need to worry. Or you canāt do anything about things= No need to worry.
Good advice! I solve it by clicking āAll postsā every day.š
I think that your list is really great! As a person who try to understand misaligned AI better, this is my arguments:
The difference between a human and an AGI might be greater than the difference between a human and a mushroom.
If the difference is that great, it will probably not make much difference between a cow and a human. The way humans treat other animals, the planet and each other makes it hard to see how we could possibly create AI alignment that is willing to save a creature like us.
If AGI has self-perservation, we are the only creatures that can threat their existence. Which means that they might want to make sure that we didnāt exist anymore just to be safe.
AGI is a thing that we know nothing about. If it cane a spaceship with aliens, we would probably use enormous resources to make sure it would not threat our planet. But now we are creating this alien creature ourselves and donāt do very much to make sure it isnāt a threat to our planet.
I hope my list helps!
Over the last decade, we should have invested more in community growth at the expense of research.
I think it might have been worth to invest in community growth in the same way as The School for Moral Ambition. I know Rutger Bregman has taken the 10 % pledge but I donāt know how much Moral Ambition collaborate with EA organizations. But it would probably be very valuable to collaborate with them and possibly give them some funding in exchange for help with community growth. They made Harvard students consider a meaningful career instead of a high paid career.
Happier Lives Institute, GiveDirectly, Cool Earth, Giving What We Can.
Happier Lives Institute, since I have volunteered for them since 2019 and that their work is great. Cool Earth, who I collaborated with last year, and I think basic income for nature and climate is an awesome idea. Giving What We Can, because of their multiplier effect. GiveDirectly, since they won the donation election I had with my public health students and I promised to donate from my own money to the charity of their choice (and I think GiveDirectly is a great organization).
I think that this is a really good idea. I think that we already have transgressed our limits of resources and that a higher VPP wonāt save the situation. In 1970 the resource use was 30 billion tonnes (23 kilograms of materials used on average per person per day). In 2020, the number was 106 billion tonnes (39 kilograms per person per day) and there is a projected 60% growth in resource use by 2060. 90% of land-related biodiversity loss and water stress comes from extraction and processing of biomass. 44% (48 million km2) of the worldās habitable land is used for agriculture. 33% of all soil is already degraded and 90% is estimated to be degraded by 2050. 4.4 billion people in low and middle income countries lack safe drinking water. The fashion industry uses 80 trillion liters of water per year, causing 20% of industrial water pollution. I hope that this comment is helpful!
Thank you for a wonderful text and that you mentioned how you cultivate that people are real! I will use some of the resources for my students in global health. I use Out of Eden Walk for cultivating that people are real. It is about a journalist at National Geographic who walk across the world. I hope you like it!
Thank you for your good questions! I would probably use the impact calculator by The Life You Can Save, since I use it to introduce people to effective giving: https://āāwww.thelifeyoucansave.org/āāimpact-calculator/āā
The good thing with the impact calculator is that your family /ā friends can see the impact and compare charities. But it depends on their level of engagement. It might be overwhelming to compare charities. The Life You Can Save also have cause funds, so if they have any cause areas they might like more, you can suggest one of them. Otherwise it might be a good pick to just choose 1-5 of the charities at The Life You Can Save. One thing with that organization is that they only focus on global health, so if you prefer other cause areas GiveWell is better. I hope this helps!
Thank you very much, Ruben! I am happy to hear that!
A Leucochloridium paradoxum (green-banded broodsac) for @Toby Tremlettš¹!
Cited from Wikipedia:
āIts intermediate hosts are land snails, usually of the genus Succinea. The pulsating, green broodsacs fill the eye stalks of the snail, thereby attracting predation by birds, the primary host. These broodsacs visually imitate caterpillars, a prey of birds. The adult parasite lives in the birdās cloaca, releasing its eggs into the faeces.ā
I think this is a really good initiative! I have sent this post to an organization and will send it to a couple more!š
Thank you for a very thoughtful forum post! I had an idea a few years ago that was kind of like this: That the United Nations should use the same concept as Founders Pledge to get funding. I was thinking that because they have so many collaborations, connections and volunteers, it would be quite easy for the UN to get great amounts of funding by letting people take the same kind of pledge as Founders Pledge use (giving X % to charity when you sell your business).
I was interested in altruism and acts of kindness before I heard of effective altruism. With effective altruism, I distributed my money from ācommonā charities to charities that are more effective. I have also helped organizations that I thought could make the most impact. I started volunteering for Happier Lives Institute in 2019, which would never have happened if I didnāt know about effective altruism.
Thank you for a really good overview! I will use some of these numbers for my lectures about global health! I have not held lectures about global health for a couple of years so even if I have talked about most of these areas the numbers need to be updated. You covered it really well! :)
Kind regards,
Ulf Graf
Thank you very much! I wrote input to the UN together with Cool Earth and Equal Right: https://āwww.ohchr.org/āsites/ādefault/āfiles/ādocuments/āissues/āohchr-cfis/ātransition/āsubm-just-transition-hr-ind-ulf-graf-halmstad-university-equal-right-wageningen-university-cool-earth-arth.pdf
I share your frustration and I am not sure about what to do. This post says that if 3,5 % of a population is active in peaceful social change, change will happen: https://āāforum.effectivealtruism.org/āāposts/āāv6PtkcfZQAHR2Cgmx/āādo-protests-work-a-critical-review
Check the general channel in the Slack Group āImproving Institutional Decision Makingā. Maybe you should apply and see if it is something for you?
Thank you, Nick! I am happy to hear that! I forgot GiveDirectly, that might be one of the more obvious organisations. They are thinking about trying the things in the picture and the link, which might be a step to systems change. We also have Fortify Health who enable access to micronutrient-rich wheat flour and works with both companies, NGO:s and governments. That is great, Nick! I have very much respect for your incredible work! I hope that you create systems change soon, because it is very important and seems like a project that can spread quickly and have massive impact.