vipulnaik

• vipulnaik 15 Sep 2014 16:21 UTC

  5 points

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  on: Open Thread

  Most EA giving advice is directed at people in the developed world, where purchasing power parity differences make their money go farther overseas than it would at home. For a person who’s equally wealthy in PPP terms but lives in a country where prices are lower (such as India), so that the person doesn’t have that much money when viewed at the international exchange rate, how does the calculus of giving change?

• vipulnaik 15 Sep 2014 16:25 UTC

  11 points

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  on: Open Thread

  What are some examples of things that could have been popular EA causes, but weren’t, for reasons that are not completely obvious (and may have to do with historical contingency)?

  One example I can think of is anti-aging. This is a cause that has a lot of traction in circles that have overlap with EA circles (rationalist, transhumanist, singularitarian, etc.). However, for whatever reason, it hasn’t been identified with EA. If you think anti-aging sounds too outlandish, it’s worth noting that with the exception of poverty reduction, the current popular EA cause categories (AI/​ex-risk reduction and veganism/​animal activism) both seem outlandish.

  Another area where EA focus hasn’t historically been great, but is gradually increasing, is changing or working around bad policy, in areas such as migration, drug policy, international trade, etc. Lots of economist-types are attracted to EA, so it’s interesting that the policy arena has been relatively neglected until recently.

• vipulnaik 15 Sep 2014 17:34 UTC

  6 points

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  in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Open Thread

  I’m not really sure where the altruism lies here, since most people don’t see death as inherently bad phenomenon.

  What does that mean? Anti-aging medication or technology (if it worked) would generate returns not just to the people who engage in the research, but to many others. In that respect, I don’t see how it’s qualitatively different from trying to prevent or cure malaria, AIDS, or NTDs. (Quantitative differences arise mostly from cost-effectiveness and feasibility).

• vipulnaik 15 Sep 2014 23:30 UTC

  9 points

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  in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Open Thread

  What are some of these other communities of similar size that you have in mind?

• vipulnaik 16 Sep 2014 13:51 UTC

  6 points

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  on: Open Thread

  I’d like to see a discussion on thick versus thin EA, similar to the discussions online of thick versus thin libertarianism, such as http://​​radgeek.com/​​gt/​​2008/​​10/​​03/​​libertarianism_through/​​

  Basically, thick EA would involve a wide-ranging set of commitments or organizing one’s life around EA ideas, whereas thin EA might mean just accepting the principle that it makes sense to do the most good.

  Though there might be competing ways to slice EA into thick and thin.

• vipulnaik 16 Sep 2014 13:53 UTC

  8 points

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  on: Open Thread

  Does believing in or identifying as an EA involve a fair amount of hubris and arrogance? To be an EA, and make EA-based decisions, you have to essentially believe that you have some insight into the best way to use resources to make the world a better place. The type of question whose answers EA demands are extremely difficult. When EAs think they have all, or even some, of the answers on how to go about EA, how much arrogance does it reflect? Would something like EA attract overly cocky people?

  What links here?

  • Giles's comment on The Out­side Crit­ics of Effec­tive Altruism by RyanCarey (16 Jan 2015 5:37 UTC; 1 point)

Should you donate to the Wiki­me­dia Foun­da­tion?

• vipulnaik 26 Oct 2015 2:03 UTC

  0 points

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  on: New YouTube video on Effec­tive Altruism

  It’s a nicely done video!

• vipulnaik 31 Oct 2015 23:03 UTC

  4 points

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  on: What Makes the New Athe­ists So Char­i­ta­ble?

  I think this post, and discussions like these in general, would benefit from better context about the overall empirical relationship between religiosity and morality. I attempted this in a Quora answer in the past, where I noted that theoretical considerations notwithstanding, religious people are overall more moral than irreligious people on most dimensions that have been carefully measured.

  https://​​www.quora.com/​​Is-the-growing-amount-of-atheism-affecting-the-increase-in-immoral-actions/​​answer/​​Vipul-Naik

• vipulnaik 7 Nov 2015 17:44 UTC

  3 points

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  on: An overview of Y Com­bi­na­tor’s non-profit program

  Relevant: many of the Open Philanthropy Project’s grants are to learn more about the space, something they call “giving to learn” e.g. at http://​​www.givewell.org/​​labs/​​notable-lessons

  In this respect, I think they are similar to YC, which also funds nonprofits partly with the goal of improving its own understanding of nonprofit operations to fund better ones in the future.

  The exploratory nature of the grants in both cases is consistent with them not recommending that other donors donate to the nonprofits they are funding.

• vipulnaik 12 Dec 2015 16:29 UTC

  1 point

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  in reply to: MichaelDello’s comment on: Should you donate to the Wiki­me­dia Foun­da­tion?

  I think it depends a lot on what kind of content you want to create and how efficient you are at it, but I do think that it could make sense from an EA perspective (in the loose sense) to do so. I have edited Wikipedia quite a bit, as you can see at http://​​vipulnaik.com/​​wikipedia/​​ and I have also paid others to edit Wikipedia, as you can see at http://​​vipulnaik.com/​​sponsored-wikipedia-editing/​​

• vipulnaik 19 Dec 2015 7:02 UTC

  2 points

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  on: Fi­nal Round of the Im­pact Purchase

  The idea that a fund outlay needs to be spent in haste since its completion date is approaching reminds me of the perverse incentives created in academic grants. What are your thoughts on simply rolling over the unspent money to increase the money you’ll grant in 2016, rather than spending it in a hurry?

GiveWell money moved fore­casts and implications

• vipulnaik 19 Dec 2015 20:37 UTC

  0 points

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  in reply to: Robert_Wiblin’s comment on: GiveWell money moved fore­casts and implications

  No, any TL;DR summary will be subject to ridicule for being simplistic and misleading.

• vipulnaik 20 Dec 2015 0:14 UTC

  4 points

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  in reply to: CarlShulman’s comment on: GiveWell money moved fore­casts and implications

  I did, and didn’t find a strong relationship. That was one of the reasons why I shifted away from the original hypothesis where discovery and brand awareness directly lead to donations. Now I think of them as more like the first steps in the pipeline, with the actual donation happening so much later that it’s hard to obtain any kind of reliable time series correlation other than what you’d get between two increasing things.

  The web metrics don’t even correlate well with each other more than what you’d expect any two generally increasing things to: the Wikipedia views, Google Trends and the website unique visitors all seem to have minds of their own.

Con­di­tional dona­tion com­mit­ment to GiveWell top-recom­mended charity

• vipulnaik 20 Dec 2015 17:23 UTC

  1 point

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  in reply to: Owen Cotton-Barratt’s comment on: GiveWell money moved fore­casts and implications

  Okay, I added a TL;DR, with the caveat that it may be misleading.

• vipulnaik 20 Dec 2015 17:34 UTC

  1 point

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  in reply to: kbog’s comment on: Con­di­tional dona­tion com­mit­ment to GiveWell top-recom­mended charity

  Thank you, you make some really important points.

  The reasoning here is asymmetric: you should also note that if Givewell raises more than $12.5 million, that means they’re doing something really well, and should be rewarded. Conversely, if Givewell raises less than $12.5 million, growth is less optional because it will start cutting into more critical operations.

  The point here is that there are two competing effects that go in opposite directions: (a) I don’t want to spend money if I believe they are already raising enough to “survive”, (b) I don’t want to reward failure to raise money. The relative strength of these effects varies, with (a) getting stronger as the money moved goes up, versus (b) getting weaker. The upside-down quadratic is a first attempt at formalizing both intuitions. It’s not necessarily the only formulation but it’s good enough.

  This is the same for a direct donation, though. Actually it’s probably true for a greater extent if one made a concrete donation.

  That is true holding the amount of money donated constant, i.e., a direct donation of $6,250 means more than a conditional commitment to donate $6,250. But I think a conditional commitment to donate up to $6,250 means more than a direct donation of $300 even if the EV of amount donated is $300.

  This amount depends on the quantity of money granted from Good Ventures, though. Also, shouldn’t Givewell’s information on funding gaps already be covering this issue?

  This is taking GiveWell’s information on funding gaps at prima facie value, but I’ve already indicated that I haven’t had the time to review their top charity recommendations and found their reviews inadequate on these fronts. My estimate of funding gaps is more based on the idea “below what level would people think that GiveWell has failed?” Since GiveWell basically has Good Ventures money almost for free, it’s the non-Good Ventures money moved that is actually of significance as far as judging GiveWell’s growth and influence.

Dona­tion insurance

• vipulnaik 25 Mar 2016 4:55 UTC

  0 points

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  in reply to: CarlShulman’s comment on: GiveWell money moved fore­casts and implications

  More recent estimates at https://​​docs.google.com/​​spreadsheets/​​d/​​1rIpnWtuYSfsjLWkJMO5FTOQE6SRGzJnnyFgyKSwIKOM/​​edit#gid=0