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 🔹
Karma: 209
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 don’t 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 won’t 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 world’s 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://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/impact-calculator/
The good thing with the impact calculator is that your family / 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 Tremlett🔹!
Cited from Wikipedia:
”Its 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 bird’s cloaca, releasing its eggs into the faeces.”
I think this is a really good initiative! I have sent this post to an organization and will send it to a couple more!🙂
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 “common” 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 didn’t 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://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/issues/ohchr-cfis/transition/subm-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://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/v6PtkcfZQAHR2Cgmx/do-protests-work-a-critical-review
Check the general channel in the Slack Group “Improving Institutional Decision Making”. Maybe you should apply and see if it is something for you?
You’re welcome! Thank you for the information! Yes, it is true that people who benefit from the current structures use their money and power to gain more money and power. I have made a forum post about green basic income, in the end of the post I try to give some suggestions: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/tAF4zQSfDGpABLCaH/green-basic-income-and-health-taxes-as-a-way-for-systemic
I also co-authored the systems change 101: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/bwZ6HqRSjYh5DS99r/systems-change-101
I hope that those posts might give you some inspiration!
Thank you Jeroen for the link! I had totally forgot about that! =)
Hi Janika! I really like your ideas! I think Equal Right is closest to your ideas since they promote a low global basic income and a global wealth tax (and some other taxes and fees): https://www.equalright.org/
UN has a Universal Periodic Review about human rights. Having something similar for the SDG:s or global risks would probably be fruitful: https://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies/upr/upr-home
I hope my comment is helpful!
Thank you for a really interesting and well-written article! I am a lecturer in public health and have lectures about the interconnection between global societal and ecological crises. I have heard about the weakening of the Gulf Stream and that it could make it colder, but I have never seen detailed examples of the consequences of AMOC collapse. AMOC collapse togehter with things that I already talk about seems really problematic. E.g. 99% of coral reefs are expected to be dead by 2050. 44% (48 million km2) of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture. 33% of all soil is already degraded and 90% is estimated to be degraded by 2050.
Thanks again for a super interesting article!
Equal Right is testing a similar model in Palau and Tuvalu: https://www.equalright.org/
I guess you have already heard of it, but I put the link here just in case, because I really like their idea. :)
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 didn’t 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 don’t do very much to make sure it isn’t a threat to our planet.
I hope my list helps!