Vincent_deB

Karma: 76

Vincent_deB Nov 16, 2014, 10:13 AM
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on: Kidney donation is a reasonable choice for effective altruists and more should consider it
I would be interested to hear whether readers do or don’t consider doing this.

Vincent_deB Nov 16, 2014, 10:12 AM
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on: Happy Birthday, Giving What We Can!
Cool, it would be great if they could sustain exponential growth! I imagine this may happen from people getting into these ideas and then telling their friends, who tell their friends, who tell their friends, and so on. That seems a good hypothesis to explain the exponential trend.

Does GWWC know how many of these members would have been donating significant sums without GWWC? Presumably they share this information with donors? I realise this is hard to work out, as people who are interested in these ideas would likely have come across GiveWell and EA at some point anyway.

Vincent_deB Nov 13, 2014, 3:49 PM
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in reply to: Peter Wildeford’s comment on: Effective Altruism at Your Work
Finding an ‘excuse’ to talk about EA like this seems like a good idea.

Vincent_deB Nov 7, 2014, 1:21 PM
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in reply to: MichaelDickens’s comment on: Aim high, even if you fall short
Yes this is pretty good—not quite as good as dairy, but close.

Vincent_deB Nov 5, 2014, 8:07 AM
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on: Open Thread 4
[Your recent EA activities]

Tell us about these, as in Kaj’s thread last month. I would love to hear about them—I find it very inspirational to hear what people are doing to make the world a better place!

Vincent_deB Oct 31, 2014, 6:30 AM
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in reply to: Ilya’s comment on: Outreaching Effective Altruism Locally – Resources and Guides
I’m pleased to hear that!

Vincent_deB Oct 29, 2014, 8:55 AM
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in reply to: UriKatz’s comment on: Outreaching Effective Altruism Locally – Resources and Guides

Do you know of any work that has been done comparing the effectiveness of outreach to other activities effective altruism supporters can take? I refer specifically to the limited kind of outreach suggested here, such as opening a local chapter, and not the kind of outreach Peter Singer is capable of.

Perhaps weeatquince could ask someone from The High Impact Network to comment?

Vincent_deB Oct 24, 2014, 7:33 AM
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in reply to: Michelle_Hutchinson’s comment on: Should Giving What We Can change its Pledge?

GWWC has also done quite a bit of work in learning how to create a cohesive community and encourage people to join, which might be quite time-consuming to replicate.

I’m not sure how strong that rationale is. You could use the same reasoning to argue that GWWC should be the only organisation where people make commitments or donation plans, and that other pledging organisations like The Life You Can Save should be subsumed into it which does not seem plausible. What does GWWC’s work on maintaining a cohesive community and encouraging people to join on the ground involve, and what are the reasons why this couldn’t be done through another platform like the Donation Registry or something else cause-neutral?

Vincent_deB Oct 23, 2014, 1:53 PM
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in reply to: Michelle_Hutchinson’s comment on: Should Giving What We Can change its Pledge?
I can see it’s hard and I’m sure you put a lot of thought into it. I’d suggest making it as direct as possible—if “people in developing countries, now and in the years to come” means “present and future people in developing countries”, you could say that.

Vincent_deB Oct 23, 2014, 8:01 AM
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in reply to: Arepo’s comment on: Should Giving What We Can change its Pledge?

I do feel as though GWWC is and should remain an important haven for those committed to poverty, who—in other EA orgs—often seem to be looked on as incomplete or fledgling EAs, an attitude which surely wouldn’t help if it developed within GWWC as well.

Very much agreed, that’s why I was concerned to see this comment. Having an influx of people to the members groups who think that donating to poverty charities is many many times less good than giving to AI work or meta causes could create that sort of attitude, making the old members feel crowded out.

I think ’10%′ would look much better than ‘ten percent’

Agreed.

‘now and in the years to come’ could be shortened to ‘hereafter’

This seems a good change which clarifies the meaning.

Vincent_deB Oct 23, 2014, 1:22 AM
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in reply to: Jess_Whittlestone’s comment on: Should Giving What We Can change its Pledge?

I’m in favour of the change—you know this, but I’m saying it here because I’m concerned that only people with strong disagreements will respond to this post,

I think it’ll pull the other way—I’ve felt awkward about explicitly stating my disagreement, whereas it’s much easier to say ‘Great!’

I think ultimately having a broader pledge will better represent the views of those who take it and the community, and agree that having a clear action which becomes standard for all EAs could be very beneficial.

I don’t find this a convincing reason, because GWWC doesn’t need to represent every view in any particular community (be it ‘EA’ or something else altogether—and many GWWC members have identified with GWWC rather than EA as such). And there can be a clear action for EAs to take (like donating) without that going through GWWC, and conversely pledging 10% is not the best candidate for a clear next step following someone first encountering EA after reading Peter Singer’s book on it.

Vincent_deB Oct 23, 2014, 1:11 AM
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in reply to: Michelle_Hutchinson’s comment on: Should Giving What We Can change its Pledge?

The pledge specifically includes ‘now and in future’ to make clear that not only currently existing people are important. We already have (and I believe have for many years had) members who donate to, for example, the Future of Humanity Institute.

Huh, I had never realised members included people who donated to FHI. I read “now and in the future” to refer to donating in future years. English is an ambiguous language indeed!

Vincent_deB Oct 23, 2014, 12:58 AM
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in reply to: Dale’s comment on: Should Giving What We Can change its Pledge?

Certainly much of the CEA management thinks that Xrisk/animals/other speculative causes is more important than global poverty

That feels a bit odd given that they’re recruiting people who care about poverty to GWWC :(
What links here?
- Vincent_deB's comment on Should Giving What We Can change its Pledge? by Michelle_Hutchinson (Oct 23, 2014, 8:01 AM; 5 points)

Vincent_deB Oct 23, 2014, 12:05 AM
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in reply to: Phil_Thomas’s comment on: Should Giving What We Can change its Pledge?

I have watched the EA movement evolve over the last few years, and it seems to be broadening its scope. This has been especially evident at with GiveWell’s Open Philanthropy Project (OPP).

This may be a semantic question about what you class under EA, but the scope’s always seemed pretty broad—with LessWrong and MIRI big, and GiveWell considering areas other than poverty, before GWWC. GWWC slotted in as the poverty pledge organisation, but that didn’t constrain the scope of EA. To that extent I don’t think the following is quite right, because GWWC doesn’t define the whole EA movement, and the movement already has plenty of visible advocates of other causes:

This broadening of scope is essential because it includes people who initially feel the movement is missing the bigger picture (even if they change their minds later).

Vincent_deB Oct 22, 2014, 6:16 PM
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in reply to: AlasdairGives’s comment on: Should Giving What We Can change its Pledge?

GWWC has brand equity precisely because it focuses on the specific cause within EA that has wide appeal and impeccable credentials. Making this change would basically allow other causes that may have significant philosophical and/or practical baggage to trade on that reputation while undermining the focus and work on extreme poverty. It does nothing to help the fight against extreme poverty and may harm it

This seems true. If people focused on animal welfare would benefit from their own pledge, we could maintain clear messaging by having Animal Charity Evaluators revive the old Effective Animal Activism one, without muddying the GWWC pledge (which I’d find upsetting).

Vincent_deB Oct 9, 2014, 11:33 AM
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in reply to: RyanCarey’s comment on: Open Thread 2

older people … provide most funding for charities

Do you have figures for this? They could be relevant for EA groups which focus on raising funds (like local groups with older members, or older people in their social networks).

Vincent_deB Sep 27, 2014, 1:48 PM
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in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: An epistemology for effective altruism?
Yes, it seems like the Forum’s established a slightly more positive culture than LessWrong, where people are supportive (a la Jess_Whittlestons’s post) and don’t downvote all that much which seems to me to be a good thing. I would think that people might have refrained from upvoting this post because it might have seemed narrowly focused on promoting 80,000 Hours, but not have downvoted it either.