Vincent_deB

Karma: 75

Vincent_deB 22 Oct 2014 18:16 UTC
6 points
0 ∶ 0
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 23 Oct 2014 8:01 UTC
5 points
0 ∶ 0
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 3 Oct 2015 0:36 UTC
4 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: CarlShulman’s comment on: What is the expected effect of poverty alleviation efforts on existential risk?
This is useful but doesnt entirely answer William’s question. To put it another way: suppose GiveDirectly reduced extreme poverty in East Africa by 50%. What would your best estimate of the effect of that on xrisk be? I’d expect it to be quite positive, but havent thought about how to estimate the magnitude.

Vincent_deB 23 Oct 2014 1:22 UTC
4 points
0 ∶ 0
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 23 Oct 2014 1:11 UTC
4 points
0 ∶ 0
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 23 Oct 2014 0:58 UTC
4 points
0 ∶ 0
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 (23 Oct 2014 8:01 UTC; 5 points)

Vincent_deB 25 Mar 2015 2:33 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
on: EA Advocates announcement
Are you only going to use people who sign up to promote things the Centre for Effective Altruism is working on, like the books by Will and Peter that EA Outreach is working on (and in Will’s case is even written by the founder)? Are there any specific non-Centre for Effective Altruism things that you plan to promote?

Vincent_deB 13 Dec 2014 19:21 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Niel_Bowerman’s comment on: Effective Altruism Outreach needs your donations this Christmas!

Currently the only person we know who is working on this full time is Tyler Alterman from Leverage, and we work so closely with him that he practically feels like part of the team!

Interesting—is what Tyler or Leverage are doing written up anywhere?

We’ve been talking with Tom Ash and looking for ways that we can best collaborate with effectivealtruismhub.org, which hosts many .impact projects.

Likewise interesting—what are the options for this?

We’ve been talking with some of the German EAs about their plans to create “superteams” to work on new EA projects.

Would this be the sort of thing that EA Ventures might fund, or are you imagining slightly different sorts of projects?

Vincent_deB 16 Nov 2014 10:12 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
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 23 Oct 2014 0:05 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
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).

Tell us about your recent EA activities: thread 2

Vincent_deB27 Nov 2014 14:37 UTC

2 points

4 comments1 min readEA link

Vincent_deB 25 Mar 2015 15:28 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Bernadette_Young’s comment on: EA Advocates announcement
As I understand it, it’s one of the core things that EA Outreach is working on in advance of Will’s book—they raised funds for doing so as part of their funding announcement here. So it would still be using these people for EA Outreach projects.

Vincent_deB 3 Mar 2015 16:23 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Can we set up a system for international donation trading?
Neat idea to simply set up a spreadsheet for it.

Vincent_deB 9 Jan 2015 15:59 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Robert_Wiblin’s comment on: I am Samwise [link]
I’ve heard people who’ve worked at EA organisations say that the people doing that work struck them as some of the most altruistic, because it didn’t have the rewards or glory or fun associated with more visible work.

Vincent_deB 18 Nov 2014 14:53 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Michelle_Hutchinson’s comment on: Happy Birthday, Giving What We Can!
Thank you, that review of 2011 and 2012 looks like a very interesting, detailed read. It does seem to cast doubt on the exponential growth model that I was excited about which is a shame, but I still think that could happen. I couldn’t see information about how many GWWC members would be donating significant sums without GWWC on my first read, am I missing that? Will it be in the next impact review?

Vincent_deB 5 Nov 2014 8:07 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
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 29 Oct 2014 8:55 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
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 24 Oct 2014 7:33 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
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 27 Sep 2014 13:48 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
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.

Vincent_deB 18 Sep 2015 15:21 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: MichaelDickens’s comment on: My Cause Selection: Michael Dickens

Can you talk more about what convinced you that they’re a good giving opportunity on the margin?

I asked Tobias Pulver about this specifically. He told me about their future plans and how they’d like to use marginal funds. They have things that they would have done if they’d had more money but couldn’t do. I don’t know if they’re okay with me speaking about this publicly but I invite Tobias or anyone else at REG to comment on this.

I heard—all be it second hand, and last year—of two people involved, Lukas Gloor and Tobias Pulver, saying that thought that the minimal share of GBS/EAF manpower − 1.5 FTEs—that was being invested in REG was sufficient.

Vincent_deB

Tell us about your re­cent EA ac­tivi­ties: thread 2

Tell us about your recent EA activities: thread 2