weeatquince

Karma: 6,143

weeatquince 18 Jan 2023 10:23 UTC
149 points
82 ∶ 34
in reply to: Buck’s comment on: Doing EA Better
I strongly downvoted this response.
The response says that EA will not change “people in EA roles [will] … choose not to”, that making constructive critiques is a waste of time “[not a] productive ways to channel your energy” and that the critique should have been better “I wish that posts like this were clearer” “you should try harder” “[maybe try] politely suggesting”.
This response seems to be putting all the burden of making progress in EA onto those trying to constructively critique the movement, those who are putting their limited spare time into trying to be helpful, and removing the burden away from those who are actively paid to work on improving this movement. I don’t think you understand how hard it is to write something like this, how much effort must have gone into making each of these critiques readable and understandable to the EA community. It is not their job to try harder, or to be more polite. It is our job, your job, my job, as people in EA orgs, to listen and to learn and to consider and if we can to do better.
Rather than saying the original post should be better maybe the response should be that those reading the original post should be better at considering the issues raised.
I cannot think of a more dismissive or disheartening response. I think this response will actively dissuade future critiques of EA (I feel less inclined to try my had at critical writing seeing this as the top response) and as such make the community more insular and less epistemically robust. Also I think this response will make the authors of this post feel like their efforts are wasted an unheard.

weeatquince 6 Apr 2022 18:13 UTC
136 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Stefan_Schubert’s comment on: The Vultures Are Circling
I might be in the minority view here but I liked the style this post was written in, emotive language and all. It was flowery language but that made it fun to read it and I did not find it to be alarmist (e.g. it clearly says “this problem has yet to become an actual problem”).
And more importantly I think the EA Forum is already a daunting place and it is hard enough for newcomers to post here without having to face everyone upvoting criticisms of their tone / writing style / post title. It Is not the perfect post (I think there is a very valid critique in what Stefan says that the post could have benefited from linking to some examples / evidence) but not everything here needs to be in the perfect EA-speak. Especially stuff from newcomers.
So welcome CitizenTen. Nice to have you here and to hear your views. I want to say I enjoyed reading the post (don’t fully agree tho) and thank you for it. :-)

weeatquince 9 Mar 2022 23:46 UTC
127 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Concerns with the Wellbeing of Future Generations Bill
TL;DR
Lots of good critical points in this post. However I would want readers to note that:
- None of the criticisms in the post really pertain to the core elements of the bill. The theory of change for the bill is: government doesn’t make long term plans > tell government to make long term plans (i.e. set a long term vision and track progress towards it) > then government will make long term plans. This approach has had research and thought put into it.
- This draft of the bill makes much more sense when you see it as a campaigning tool, a showcase of ideas. This is a private members bill (PMB). PMBs are primarily campaigning techniques to build support and spark debate. It will not be passed through parliament (in its current form).
INTRODUCTION
Thank you for posting. (And thank you for sharing a draft of your post with me before posting so I could start drafting this reply).
I have been the main person from the EA community working on the bill campaign. I have never been in the driving seat for the bill but I have had some influence over it.
I agree with many of the points raised. At a high level I agree for example that there is no “compelling evidence” that this bill work work as planned. Society has not worked out how to fix short-termism in policy making. I do however think this is an important enough issue that we should try to address it with a Future Generations Bill (similar to this one). I think statements in this post like “if the Bill were passed as currently drafted, it could significantly damage short and long term welfare” are unjustified by the text and overstated given the degree of evidence.
Overall I think there seems to be some confusion in this post about what the bill is doing and trying to achieve (acting as a rallying point) and what it is not doing (being passed in Parliament). So I will briefly run though an explanation of the bill and then respond to specific points made by the post above before drawing a conclusion.
AN EXPLANATION
1. THE GOOD: What is the Future Generations Bill doing?
The theory of change for the bill is:
A: The UK government doesn’t make a long-term plan. Some bits of government have long-term (~10year) plans (NHS, Foreign Policy) but many do not, and certainly there is no single coherent long-term UK strategy document.
B: Long term planning has some key features, in particular:
• Setting coherent long term goals
• Setting intermediate objectives that if achieved move us towards the long term goal
• Working towards those objectives/goals
• Tracking progress towards that objectives/goals
C: Some politically neutral oversight / input is extremely helpful to long-term planning in government. This view is based on senior policy experts’ views of cases where long term planning appears to have gone well in the UK, all of which appear to have this feature (the IPA, the CCC, the NCSC, the BoE, etc).
+
D: Put in place legislation that requires the government to do long term planning:
• The government to set a high level long-term goal (“wellbeing goals”). A advisory public consultation (“national conversation”) would be best policy making practice for this.
• Each department to set intermediate goals (“wellbeing objectives”).
• Tracking progress towards the goals and objectives.
• Some form of non-political oversight.
↓
E: A government that is better at planning for the long-term
This is the core of the Wellbeing of Future Generations Bill.
I don’t think anyone knows with any certainty how to fix political short termism . Integrating these core ideas into government policy making (maybe with a bill) represents perhaps my best guess at how to get a government to work long term (without radical change). Evidence from the Welsh bill is mixed but there is some evidence that the bill there is having a positive effect on creating a long-term thinking culture among policy makers.
Research into this can be seen in the “Past research” section here, the report here, the forum post here and eventually the upcoming inquiry mentioned here. Note that none of the critiques in this post really seem to be against these core ideas. (So, hopefully we are all roughly on the same page with this bit.)
So then, what is all the other stuff in the bill, why the challenges with this draft?
2. THE BAD: So what about all the other bits of the bill about surveying school children or involving the courts and what about the length or the vagueness of the bill?
The current draft of the bill is a campaign tool. It will not become law. The Bill has been laid in Parliament as a House of Lords Private Members Bill (PMB).
The bill was not written by trained legal drafters. In government, when I worked on drafting a statutory instrument, it took about 6 months and involved multiple lawyers and a range of technical experts. Meanwhile any Parliamentarian can lay legislation in Parliament for debate – but they don’t get the lawyers or technical experts (maybe an hour or two of time from Table Office). The Bill was mostly drafted by the campaign staff of Lord Bird. To get this drafted they took the Welsh Bill as a template and then added and subtracted from that, often by looking at other bills and seeing what could be copied over. (In fact I found at least one typo in the earlier version that was laid in parliament.)
This draft of the bill will not become UK law. Most PMBs go nowhere and are never heard of. As far as I know no house of Lords private members bill passes through the House of Commons to become law except where they can pass completely unopposed without debate (e.g. 2019 on FGM and 2015 on the House of Lords expulsion rules). That seems extremely unlikely for this bill.
This draft of the bill is a shopping list of ideas. This bill is primarily a campaigning tool to spark debate and build support for an idea. And so a strategic decision was made by Lords Bird’s team to, rather than have a nice short bill, INCLUDE ALL THE IDEAS: legal powers, prevention targets, consulting school children, rules on companies (not in the current draft), etc. Now in my view this makes a bill worse, but also more popular. Worse: for example it does (in my view) not need independent oversight from a new Parliamentary Committee AND a new Commissioner AND 2 existing arm’s length bodies AND the public (via the courts)!! More popular: politicians (even those on the right) want to support a bill with their ideas in it, even if it has some other ideas in it, so more ideas → more supporters.
Given the above I think the drafting of the bill deserves to be given some slack. Personally this is not be the approach I would have taken (I mean I am an EA policy nerd who prefers a short tightly drafted pieces of work I can 100% stand by), but I am not sure that this was the wrong tactic to have taken. It does open up the bill to criticisms on much of the fluff – but at the same time it seems to have worked to build support from a lot of MPs across political parties.
[Edit added for clarity: I don’t think the bill is net bad and yet support it anyway as a campaign device. I think the bill could be better drafted but is still a net good (the benefits outweigh costs)]
3. THE BEAUTIFUL: Is it doing good or not?
Most private members’ bills fade into obscurity this one has not. There have been over 266 media pieces, with a global reach of 92 million. There has been support from 70+ MPs and 40+ Peers. A Conservative MP is taking forward the Bill in the House of Commons.
There has been interest from local authorities and devolved administrations. These places are where innovative policy change ideas should happen and be tested. There have been commitments for a Future Generations policy from the Mayor of Yorkshire and the Scottish Government.
It is unclear how much the bill has been useful for the APPG for Future Generations, but it has helped a bit in growing supporters and the APPG has led to change in ways that people on this Forum would be excited about such as the government committing to improve its approach to managing extreme risks (link).
So definitely not a perfect bill but beautiful in its own way.
RESPONSES TO SPECIFIC POINTS
The bill is not perfect but there was often a strategic reason for the Bill being drafted as it is. I also think John and Larks tend to overstate/exaggerate how bad the problems are without providing supporting evidence. I respond to a few points below.
superficial analysis
Mostly disagree. There has been significant analysis see here, here, and here. More would still be good.
Without any plausible theory of change
Disagree. There is a very clear theory of change described above. I admit this had not been written publicly prior to now. (I offered to write this up for the authors prior to them posting this article.)
Existential risk neglect.
Disagree. This was deliberate. My biggest impact on the draft was to add in this section on risks. At the time of drafting I consulted with staff at CSER who advised the bill should use “global risks” rather than “existential risks”. I believe they felt it was better to avoid the “existential risks” brand in this bill.
[Should push for] CLTR suggestions for three lines of defence
Strongly agree. (Note I might be bias as I am the author of that section of the CLTR paper.)
Vague language …
should write laws to try to guard against future actors’ attempts to creatively interpret them
Weakly disagree. Vague language is a tool that legislators sometimes deliberately use to achieve goals. It has pros and cons. It can increase uncertainty but is used to create legislation that can be adaptive to changing future needs. For example see the GAAR and maybe the ideas here in this white paper.
If this bill is to be an experiment then it needs to be able to be adaptable, to give powers to future Ministers to develop the specifics (And ideally set a date for review and evaluation, which it does not do, which is a genuine problem with it!). Given this context it is not clear that the vagueness of the wording is bad. Also note that a good way to mitigate any negative consequences of vagueness is by requiring a government body to issue further guidance, as is done in this draft bill.
I see no evidence to believe that vagueness will lead to an increased risk of “blocking things that were not intended to be blocked, or requiring things that were not intended to be required” in this context.
For example, consider the ‘sustainable development’ duty the Bill introduces on public bodies:
Neutral. I agree this definition is clearly hard to work with. However for context this definition of “sustainable development” was chosen because it is commonly used (it is the definition introduced by the UN in 1987 and widely used since then) which has the advantage of people already being familiar with it.

problem is that the Bill makes the judiciary the ultimate arbiter of the duties proposed
Agree. I would remove this from the Bill if it was solely up to me.
Hurts infrastructure investment
Weekly agree. As I mention above the current draft of the bill has 5 mechanisms for oversight and I expect this shopping list approach is too much and could lead to vetocracy.
On the other hand this bill could also SUPPORT more new infrastructure. The bill should facilitate long-term thinking, it the core elements of the bill are in part modelled on things that have lead to more infrastructure in the past (the IPA and the NIC). If the government’s stated long-term goals includes environmental protection (and national identity) over infrastructure (as with the Welsh example) then the bill should lead to that and if the government’s stated long-term goals include more infrastructure then the bill should help facilitate that. The bill makes no attempt to comment on what long-term goals should be in place, only to provide a framework to achieving them.
Red tape / makes procurement worse
Neutral. This is a risk but a very small one. Readers of the bill will note that for most red tape policies the drafters also included a line in the bill saying the policy was optional. For example for impact assessments (the only bit that affects procurement) departments can just not do them and say why they are not doing the. Yes this seems odd at first glance (why even include them) but it makes sense if you see the bill as a campaign tool to spark debate on a long list of policy ideas.
Regulatory capture
Disagree. This part of the critique seems tangential to the whole point of the bill. The bill does not exist to stop political pressures on policy or ensure a fully equal society, etc, ect. The bill makes no attempt to comment on what long-term goals should be in place, only to provide a framework to achieving them.
Missed opportunity for bipartisanship
Slightly agree. The bill does have fairly strong bi-partisan support but I do think more could have been done to engage the libertarian right. I do think this is harder than expected. The bill team engaged with a lot of right wing politicians including getting feedback some very senior ex-politicians. There is still a tendency for people to want to add their ideas rather than take out ideas. Also honestly they don’t say what you might naïvely expect, for example one of the ideas that did not go in following consultation with politicians on the political right was actually an idea Larks and John mention: about having the consultation involve more focus groups to get public opinions on trade-offs. (That the government does not back the bill is expect for a PMB).
Makes EAs looks bad
This is an odd critique. The bill is not EA led so I am not sure it should reflect on the EA community. In fact the idea for the Welsh bill predates the EA community. There has been one tweet critical of EA and linking EA and the bill (and to me that one Tweet did not look like it was made it good faith, it was rude, assumed incompetence, and contained no good arguments against the bill, of which there are plenty. Can add details if wanted).
[Edit added: supporters have exaggerated the size and fervour of support]
[Edit added: I think this would be bad but I know of no-one doing this and don’t know what this refers to.]
Risk of an echo chamber
Disagree. There was broad consultation across UK political and policy groups, including some EA organisations. It is not clear that a post on the EA forum by me would have had much effect or that the drafting team (in Lord Bird’s office) could have been persuaded to post on this forum. Also such engagement might just have increased the chance of the bill being associated with EA by critiques.
Sector-specific approaches may be needed
Agree. I like this bit. In fact it aligns with the current approach to the bill campaign that the secretariat to the APPG for Future Generations is taking, as of August last year. See here.
Ultimately, we think the base rate is that many efforts to improve policy in the last 50 years have ended in failure or worse. [Edited, was misquoted]~~We think the base rate is that most efforts to improve governance have ended in failure or worse~~
Disagree. ~~This is an interesting claim I would like to see evidence for.~~ If you think that the UK government today works better than it did 10 or 50 or 100 years ago then it seems false that most attempts to improve things do more harm than good.
OVERALL

I agree with some of the criticisms made in this post, but think many others are overstated. I thank the authors for their interest and feedback. Ultimately we do not know how to fix political short-termism but integrating something along the lines of the core elements of this bill into UK policy making seems like a reasonable thing to try. This specific drafting of this bill is not perfect – but to say it is so bad that it will cause significant harm is an overstatement given the evidence available. Either way this exact draft will not pass parliament but it has already sparked debate and successfully engaged politicians across both sides of the political spectrum. Overall I support this bill.
I am open to more feedback discussion and debate.

weeatquince 13 Apr 2022 8:03 UTC
114 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Free-spending EA might be a big problem for optics and epistemics
Extra ideas for the idea list:
- Altruistic perks, rather than personal perks. E.g.1. Turn up at this student event and got $10 donated to a charity of your choice. E.g.2. donation matching schemes mentioned in job adverts, perhaps funded by offering maybe slightly lower salaries. Anecdotally I remember the first EAish event I went to had money to charity for each attendee and free wine and it was the money to charity that attracted me to go, and free wine that attracted my friend, and I am still here and they are not involved.
- Frugality options, like an optional version of the above idea. E.g.1. when signing up to an EA event the food options could be: “[]vegan, []nut free, []gluten free, []frugal—will bring my own lunch please donate money saved to charity x”. E.g.2. Jobs could advertise the organisation offers salary sacrifice schemes that some employees take. I don’t know how well this would work but would be interested to see a group try. Anecdotally I know some EAs in well paid jobs take lower salaries than they are offered but I don’t think this is well known.
Also for what it is worth I was really impressed by the post. I it was an very well written, clear, and transparent discussion of this topic with clear actions to take.

weeatquince 29 Dec 2021 20:48 UTC
83 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Democratising Risk—or how EA deals with critics
Everything written in the post above strongly resonates with my own experiences, in particular the following lines:
the creation of this paper has not signalled epistemic health. It has been the most emotionally draining paper we have ever written.
the burden of proof placed on our claims was unbelievably high in comparison to papers which were considered less “political” or simply closer to orthodox views.
The EA community prides itself on being able to invite and process criticism. However, warm welcome of criticism was certainly not our experience in writing this paper.
I think criticism of EA orthodoxy is routinely dismissed. I would like to share a few more stories of being publicly critical of EA in the hope that doing so adds some useful evidence to the discussion:
- Consider systemic change. “Some critics of effective altruism allege that its proponents have failed to engage with systemic change” (source). I have always found the responses (eg here and here) to this critique to be dismissive and miss the point. Why can we not just say: yes we are a new community this area feels difficult and we are not there yet? Why do we have to pretend EA is perfect and does systemic change stuff well?
- My own experience (risk planning). I have some relevant expertise from engaging with professional risk managers, military personnel, counterterrorism staff and so on. I have really rally struggled to communicate any of this to EA folk, especially where it suggest that EAs are not thinking about risks well. I tend to find I get downvoted or told I am strawmanning EA. If I want to avoid it is is possible if I put huge amounts of time and mental energy.
- Mental health. Consider that Michael Plant has, for 6 years now, been making the case that GiveWell and other neartermist EAs don’t put enough weight on mental health. I believe his experience is mostly one of feeling that people are dismissive rather than engage with him.
- Other. A few years back I remember being unimpressed that EAs response to Iason Gabriel’s critique was largely to argue back and ignore it. There was no effort to see if any of the criticisms contained useful grains of truth that could help us improve EA.
Other evidence to note is that the top thing that EAs thinks other EAs get (source) is “Reinventing the wheel” and “Overconfidence and misplaced difference” and many EAs worry that EA is intellectually stale / stagnant (in answers to this question). On the other hand many EA orgs are very good at recognising their mistakes made (e.g with ‘Our mistakes’ pages), which is a great cultural thing that we as a community should be proud of.
I think we should also recognise that Both Carla and Luke have full time EA research jobs and they have found it time consuming and for someone without a full time position it can become almost impossibly time consuming and draining to do a half decent job. This essentially closes off a lot of people from critiquing EA.
If there was one change I would make I would like there to be a cultural shift so if someone posts something critical we try to steelman it rather than dismiss it. (Here is an example of steelmanning some of Phil Torres’ arguments [edit: although we should of course not knowingly steelman/endorse arguments made in bad faith]). We could also on occasion say “yes we get this wrong and we still have much to learn” and not treat every critique as an attack.
Hope some extra views help.
What links here?
- A.C.Skraeling's comment on Climate Change & Longtermism: new book-length report by John G. Halstead (29 Aug 2022 7:08 UTC; -5 points)

weeatquince 21 Apr 2020 8:44 UTC
80 points
0 ∶ 0
on: What will 80,000 Hours provide (and not provide) within the effective altruism community?
In many ways this post leaves me feeling disappointed that 80,000 Hours has turned out the way it did and is so focused on long-term future career paths.
- -
Over the last 5 years I have spent a fair amount of time in conversation with staff at CEA and with other community builders about creating communities and events that are cause-impartial.
This approach is needed for making a community that is welcoming to and supportive of people with different backgrounds, interests and priorities; for making a cohesive community where people with varying cause areas feel they can work together; and where each individual is open-minded and willing to switch causes based on new evidence about what has the most impact.
I feel a lot of local community builders and CEA have put a lot of effort into this aspect of community building.

- -
Meanwhile it seems that 80000 Hours has taken a different tack. They have been more willing, as part of trying to do the most good, to focus on the causes that the staff at 80000 Hours think are most valuable.
Don’t get me wrong I love 80000 Hours, I am super impressed by their content glad to see them doing well. And I think there is a good case to be made for the cause-focused approach they have taken.
However, in my time as a community builder (admittedly a few years ago now) I saw the downsides of this. I saw:
- People drifting from EA. Eg: someone telling me, they were no longer engaging with the EA community because they felt that it was now all long-term future focused and point to 80000 Hours as the evidence.
- People feeling that they needed to pretend to be long-termism focused to get support from the EA community . Eg: someone telling me they wanted career coaching “read between the lines and pretended to be super interested in AI”.
- Personally feeling uncomfortable because it seemed to me that my 80000 Hours career coach had a hidden agenda to push me to work on AI rather than anything else (including paths that progressed by career yet kept my options more open to different causes).
- Concerns that the EA community is doing a bait-and-switch tactic of “come to us for resources on how to do good. Actually, the answer is this thing and we knew all along and were just pretending to be open to your thing.”
- -
“80,000 Hours’ online content is also serving as one of the most common ways that people get introduced to the effective altruism community”
So, Ben, my advice to you would firstly to be to be super proud of what you have achieved. But also to be aware of the challenges that 80000 Hours’ approach makes for building a welcoming and cohesive community. I am really glad that 20% of content on the podcast and the job board goes into broader areas than your priority paths and would encourage you to find ways that 80000 Hours can put more effort into these areas, do some more online content on these areas and to think carefully about how to avoid the risks of damaging the EA brand or the EA community.
And best of luck with the future.

weeatquince 31 Jan 2023 9:32 UTC
68 points
26 ∶ 11
on: We’re no longer “pausing most new longtermist funding commitments”
Thanks for the useful post Holden.

I think it would be great to see the full published tiered list.

In global health and development funders (i.e. OpenPhil and Givewell) are very specific about the bar and exactly who they think is under it and who they think is over it. Recently global development funders (well GiveWell) have even actively invited open constructive criticism and debate about their decision making. It would be great to have the same level of transparency (and openness to challenge) for longtermist grant making.

Is there a plan to publish the full tiered list? If not what’s the reason / best case against having it public?

To flag some of the advantages
- Those of us who are creating new projects would have a much better understanding of what OpenPhil would fund and be able to create better more aligned projects to OpenPhil’s goals. The EA community lacks a strong longtermist incubator and this is I expect one of the challenges.
- Other funders could fill gaps that they believe OpenPhil has missed, or otherwise use OpenPhil’s tiers in their decision making.
- It allows OpenPhil to receive useful constructive feedback or critiques.
What links here?
- Should the main text of the write-ups of Open Philanthropy’s large grants be longer than 1 paragraph? by Vasco Grilo (31 Mar 2024 9:04 UTC; 49 points)

weeatquince 20 Dec 2022 14:29 UTC
66 points
18 ∶ 0
on: A Case for Voluntary Abortion Reduction
Thank you for writing. I had question about this come up a few times when I was community building so it is helpful to see an effective altruism discussion on the topic.
– –
One area of your post that confuses me, where (intuitively) I disagree with you is on your push back against family planning charities.
My understanding is that the charities you mention, Family Empowerment Media and Maternal Health Initiative, are trying to empower women with knowledge about and access to contraception. This supports women’s autonomy and right to decide on their family, and is good for maternal health and childhood health (due to more spaced out births). Neither charity has that I know of made a stance for or against abortion and they do not work on abortions, but my assumption would be that more deliberate use of contraception would mean less unwanted pregnancies and less abortions. So, if you care about the moral value of embryos then supporting access to contraception could be among the most effective places to donate.
So, I would have expected you to advocate people donate more to these charities not less.

(I can see a case for not donating to such charities out of moral uncertainty reasons but I could also see a case for avoiding working at all on abortion reduction for moral uncertainty reasons so not really sure where to take that line of argument).
Disclaimer: I work for Charity Entrepreneurship, the organisation that incubated both of the above charities. All views are my own and do not represent Charity Entrepreneurship or anyone else.

weeatquince 5 Oct 2019 17:40 UTC
58 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Some personal thoughts on EA and systemic change
In one key way this post very solidly completely misses the point.

The post makes a number of very good points about systemic change. But bases all of the points on financial cost-effective estimates. It is embedded in the language throughout, discussing: options that “outperformed GiveWell style charities”, the “cost … per marginal vote”, lessons for “large-scale spending” or for a “small donor”, etc.

I think a way the EA community has neglected systemic change in exactly in this manner. Money is not the only thing that can be leveraged in the world to make change (and in some cases money is not a thing people can give).
I think this some part of what people are pointing to when they criticise EA.

To be constructive I think we should rethink cause priotisation, but not from a financial point of view. Eg:
- If you have political power how best to spend it?
- If you have a public voice how best to use it?
- If you can organise activism what should it focus on?

(PS. Happy to support with money or time people doing this kind of research)

I think we could get noticeably different results. I think things like financial stability (hard to donate to but very important) might show up as more of a priority in the EA space if we start looking at things this way.

I think the EA community currently has a limited amount to say to anyone with power. For example:
• I met the civil servant with oversight of UK’s £8bn international development spending who seemed interested in EA but did not feel it was relevant to them – I think they were correct, I had nothing to say they didn’t already know.
• Another case is an EA I know who does not have a huge amount to donate but lots of experience in political organising and activism, I doubt the EA community provides them much useful direction.

It is not that the EA community does none of this, just that we are slow. It feels like it took 80000 Hours a while to start recommending policy/politics as a career path and it is still unclear what people should do once in positions of power. (HIPE.org.uk if doing some research on this for Government careers)

--
Overall a very interesting post. Thank you for posting.
I note you mention a “relative gap in long-termist and high-risk global poverty work”. I think this is interesting. I would love it if anyone has the time to do some back of the envelope evaluations of international development governance reform organisations (like Transparency International)
What links here?
- Managing risk in the EA policy space by weeatquince (9 Dec 2019 13:32 UTC; 89 points)
- weeatquince's comment on Democratising Risk—or how EA deals with critics by CarlaZoeC (29 Dec 2021 20:48 UTC; 83 points)

weeatquince 3 May 2020 8:50 UTC
52 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Reducing long-term risks from malevolent actors
Hi, interesting article. Thank you for writing.
I felt that this article could have said more about possible policy interventions and that it dismisses policy and political interventions as crowded too quickly. Having thought a bit about this area in the past I thought I would chip in.
MORE ON POLICY INTERVENTIONS
Even within established democracies, we could try to identify measures that avoid excessive polarization and instead reward cross-party cooperation and compromise. … (For example, effective altruists have discussed electoral reform as a possible lever that could help achieve this.)
There are many things that could be done to prevent malevolent leaders within established democracies. Reducing excessive polarization (or electoral reform) are two minor ones. Other ideas you do not discuss include:
- Better mechanisms for judging individuals. Eg ensuring 360 feedback mechanisms are used routinely to guide hiring and promotion decisions as people climb political ladders. (I may do work on this in the not too distant future)
- Less power to individuals. Eg having elections for parties rather than leaders. (The Conservative MPs in the UK could at any time decide that Boris Johnson is no longer fit to be a leader and replace him with someone else, Republicans cannot do this with Trump, Labour MPs in the UK cannot do this with a Labour leader to the same extent).
- Reduce the extent to which corruption / malevolence is beneficial for success. There are many ways to do this. In particular removing the extent to which individuals raising money is a key factor for their political success (in the UK most political fundraising is for parties not for individuals). Also removing the extent to which dishonesty pays, for example with better fact-checking services.
- More checks and balances on power. A second house. A constitution. More independent government institutions (central banks, regulators, etc – I may do some work in this space soon too). More transparency of political decision making. Better complaint and whistle-blowing mechanisms. Limits on use of emergency powers. Etc.
ARE POLITICAL INTERVENTIONS CROWDED?
Alternatively, we could influence political background factors that make malevolent leaders more or less likely… interventions to promote democracy and reduce political instability seem valuable—though this area seems rather crowded.
You might be correct, but this feels a bit like saying the AI safety space is crowded because lots of groups are trying to develop AI. However it may not be the case that those groups are focusing as much on safety as you would like. Although there are many groups (especially nation states) that want to promote democracy there may be very specific interventions that prevent malevolent leaders that are significantly under-discussed, such as elections for parties rather than leaders, or other points listed above. It seems plausible that academics and practitioners in this space may be able to make valuable shifts in the way fledgling democracies are developing that are not otherwise being considered.
And as someone in the improving government institutions space in the UK is is not evident to me that there is much focus on the kinds of interventions that would limit malevolent leaders.
What links here?
- List of donation opportunities (focus: non-US longtermist policy work) by weeatquince (30 Sep 2022 14:32 UTC; 74 points)

weeatquince 21 Mar 2019 11:43 UTC
50 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Flemming’s comment on: Introducing GPI’s new research agenda
There are maybe 100+ other steps to policy as important as voting system design. In rough chronological order I started listing some of them below (I got bored part way through and stopped at what looks like 40 points).
I have aimed to have all of these issues at a roughly similar order of magnitude of importance. The scale of these issues will depend on country to country and the tractability of trying to change these issues will vary with time and depend on individual to individual.
Overall I would say that voting reform is not obviously more or less important than the other 100+ things that could be on this list (although I guess it is often likely to somewhere in the top 50% of issues). There is a lot more uncertainty about what the best voting mechanisms look like than many of the other issues on the list. It is also an issue that may be hard to change compared to some of the others.
Either way voting reform is a tiny part of an incredibly long process, a process with some huge areas for improvements in other parts.

SETTING BOUNDARIES
- constitution and human rights and setting remits of political powers to change fundamental structures of country
- devolution and setting remits of central political powers verses local political bodies
- term limits
CHOOSING POLITICIANS
- electoral commission body setting or adjusting borders of voting areas / constituencies
- initial policy research by potential candidates (often with very limited resources)
- manifesto writing (this is hugely important to set the agenda and hard to change once )
- public / parties choosing candidates (often a lot of internal party squabbling behind the scenes)
- campaign fundraising (maybe undue influences)
- campaigning and information spreading (maybe issues with false information)
- tackling voter apathy / engagement
- Voting mechanism
- coalition forming (often very untransparent)
- government/leader assigns topic areas to ministers / seniors (very political, evidence that understanding a topic is inversely proportional to how long a minister will work on that topic)
CIVIL SERVICE STAFFING
- hiring staff into government (hiring processes, lack of expertise, diversity issues)
- how staff in government are managed (values, team building, rewards, progression, diversity)
- how staff in government are trained (feedback mechanisms, training)
ACCOUNTABILITY
- splitting out areas where political leadership is needed and areas where technocratic leadership is needed
- designing clear mechanisms of accountability to topics so that politicians and civil servants are aware of what their responsibilities are and can be held to account for their actions (this is super important)
- ensuring political representation so each individual has direct access to a politician who is accountable for their concerns
- putting in place systems that allow changes to the system if an accountability mechanisms is not working
- ensuring accountability for unknown unknown issues that may arise
- how poor performance of political and civil staff is addressed (poor performance procedures, whistleblowing)
- how corruption is rooted out and addressed (yes there is corruption in developed countries)
- mechanisms to allow parties / populations to kick out bad leaders if needed
- Ensuring mechanisms for cross party dialogue and that partisan-ism of politics does not lead to distortions of truth
AGENDA SETTING AND INITIAL RESEARCH
- carrying out research to understand what the policy problems are (often unclear how to do this)
- understanding what the population wants (public often ignored, need good procedures for information gathering, public consultation, etc)
POLICY DEVELOPMENT
- Development of policy options to address problems
- Mechanisms for Cost Benefit Analysis and Impact Assessments to decide best policy options
- access to expertise advice and best practice (lack of communication between academia and policy)
- measuring impact of a policy proposal once in place (ensuring that mechanisms to measure impact are initiated at the very start of the policy implementation)
- actually using information on
- how politicians are allowed to change their mind given new evidence (updating is often seen as weakness)
- mechanisms to ensure issues that are not politically immediately necessary are tackled (lack of long term thinking)
LEGISLATIVE PROCESS
POLICY IMPLEMENTATION
POLICY REVIEW
PUBLIC COMMUNICATION
RISK MANAGEMENT
GENERAL
- flexibility to deal with shocks of every step of the above process (often lacking)
- transparency of every step of the above process (often lacking)
What links here?

weeatquince 30 Jan 2024 16:24 UTC
45 points
9 ∶ 0
in reply to: ChanaMessinger’s comment on: EV investigation into Owen and Community Health
Have you considered blinded case work / decision making? Like one person collects the key information annonomises it and then someone else decides the appropriate responce without knowing the names / orgs of the people involved.

Could be good for avoiding some CoIs. Has worked for me in the past for similar situations.

weeatquince 1 Mar 2024 11:25 UTC
44 points
3 ∶ 2
on: This is why we can’t have nice laws
Thank you so much for an excellent post.
I just wanted to pick up on one of your suggested lessons learned that, at least in my mind, doesn’t follow directly from the evidence you have provided.
You say:
These wins suggest a few lessons. … the value of cross-party support. Every farm animal welfare law I’m aware of, globally, passed with cross-party support. … We should be able to too: there are many more conservative animal lovers than liberal factory farmers.
To me, there are two very opposing ways you could take this. Animal-ag industry is benefiting from cross party support so:
A] Animal rights activists need to work more with the political right so that we get cross-party support too, essentially depoliticising animal rights policy, with the aim of animal activists also getting the benefits of cross party support.
B] Animal rights activists need to work more with the political left so that supporting animal farming is an unpalatable opinion or action for anyone on the left to hold, essentially politicising animal rights policy, with the aim of industry loosing the benefits of cross-party support.
Why do you suggest strategy A] depolticisation? Working with conservative animal lovers. Do you have any evidence this is the correct lesson to draw?
I have not yet done much analysis of this question but my initial sense from the history of social change in the US is that the path to major change though an issue becoming highly politicised and championed by one half of the political spectrum is likely to be the quicker (albeit less stable) route to success, and in some cases where entrenched interests are very strong, might be the only path to success (e.g. with slavery). I worry the a focus on depoliticsiation could be a strategic blunder. I have been pondering this for a while and am keen to understand what research, evidence and reasoning there is for keeping animal rights depoliticsed.

weeatquince 3 Jan 2024 16:55 UTC
44 points
11 ∶ 5
in reply to: Marcus_A_Davis’s comment on: Rethink Priorities needs your support. Here’s what we’d do with it.
[Edit: as per Saulius’ reply below I was perhaps to critical here, especially regarding the WAW post, and it sounds like Saulius thinks that was manged relatively well by RP senior staff]
I found this reply made me less confident in Rethink’s ability to address publication bias. Some things that triggered my ‘hmmm not so sure about this’ sense were:
- The reply did not directly address the claims in Saulius’s comment. E.g. “I’m sorry you feel that way” not “I’m sorry”. No acknowledgement that if, as Saulius claimed, a senior staff told him that it was wrong to have expressed his views to OpenPhil (when asked by OpenPhil for his views), that this might have been a mistake by that staff. I guess I was expecting more of a ‘huh that sounds bad, let us look into it’ style response than a ‘nothing to see here, all is great in Rethink land’ style response.
- The story about Saulius’ WAW post. Judging from Marcus’ comment It sounds like Rethink stopped Saulius from posting a WAW post (within a work context) and it also looks like there was a potential conflict of interest here for senior staff as posting could affect funding. Marcus says that RP senior staff were only deciding based on the quality of the post. Now I notice the post itself (published a few months after Saulius left Rethink) seems to have significantly more upvotes than almost any of Rethink’s posts (and lots of positive feedback). I recognise upvotes are not a great measure of research quality but it does make me worry that about the possibility that this post was actually of sufficient quality and the conflict of interest may have biased senior Rethink staff to stop the post being published as a Rethink post.
- The stated donor engagement principles seem problematic. Eg: “there are also times when we think it is important for RP to speak with a unified voice to our most important donors” is exactly the kind of reason I would use if I was censoring staff’s interaction with donors. It is not that “unified organisational voice” policies are wrong, just that without additional safeguards they have a risk of being abused, of facilitating the kinds of conflict of interest driven actions under discussion here. Also as Saulius mentions such policies can also be one-sided where staff are welcome to say anything that aligns with a certain worldview but need to get sign-off to disagree with that worldview, another source of bias.
I really really do like Rethink. And I do not think that this is a huge problem, or enough of a problem to stop donors giving to Rethink in most cases. But I would still be interested in seeing additional evidence of Rethink addressing this risk of bias.

weeatquince 11 Dec 2019 1:04 UTC
44 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Where are you donating this year and why – in 2019? Open thread for discussion.
Donation: £5,000
Cause: EA meta (+ global poverty)
Main donation: £3000 to Happier Lives Institute (HLI)
Other donations: £500 to each of EA meta Fund, Let’s Fund, Rethink Priorities, Against Malaria Foundation (AMF)

Why EA Meta
Leverage: It seems empirically evidence to me that meta EA activity is influencing both the amount and the direction of funding at a ratio of at least £10 influenced £1 inputted.
Evidenced: I was skeptical of what EA meta work could achieve but over the last few years this kind of giving has gone from being an idea to having demonstrated impact.
Underfunded: The EA Meta Fund has than other EA Funds and on its last pay-outs it only filled about 15% of the funding gaps of the organisations it was looking to support.
Collective action: If everyone in EA funded meta work rather than pet causes more money would go to good places (or we may learn we were wrong about our pet causes).

Why EA meta research not outreach
I think we are still learning about how to do good and getting that right is more important than getting more money moved. This has had most impact to date and I am very unconvinced that we are getting close to diminishing marginal returns on this.

Why £3000 to HLI
Happier Lives Institute are doing innovative and useful new research on subjective wellbeing data that I believe could significantly change how people in the EA community think about what causes are most important. I expect this donation combined with a donation from a collaborator can fill their funding gap at least until August 2020. I may donate more at a later date.

Why £500 each EA Meta Fund, Let’s Fund and Rethink Priorities
I am not giving everything to HLI partly because I think HLI’s immediate funding gap can be filled and partly I want to influence and keep up with these other projects and partly just poor heuristics on my part. Note that my view that HLI is better than any of these 3 other donation opportunities is very weak (although I expect they have a more pressing funding gap).
These 3 projects are the other EA meta (research) projects that I think it is worth supporting. Splitting between them because not sure it is worth the time / energy to evaluate and compare them all given the amount of money I am giving. I have not included GPI because I have not been as impressed by the immediate usefulness of their research or research agenda.
On Let’s Fund: They are not actually asking for money but they are doing good work and always seem short of funds so will try to offer them funds. If they don’t take it will split the money between other projects.

Why £500 to AMF
I am not giving everything to meta, partly I want to still force myself to think about what is the most important non meta cause and partly because I think if I am give the amount I would likely have given to non-meta causes had I not come across EA / GWWC then I help avoid the meta trap.
Against Malaria Foundation are an excellent charity, continuously top-rated by GiveWell. (Giving to AMF rather than to GiveWell to distribute as not totally convinced that Deworming or GiveDirectly are as good as AMF).
I might alternatively give the EA Animal Fund – need to think about this more.

Key uncertainties
Is it silly to split my donations this much?
Have I done enough due diligence of HLI?
AMF or the EA Animal Fund?

weeatquince 28 Mar 2024 10:18 UTC
42 points
8 ∶ 2
in reply to: mildlyanonymous’s comment on: AIM Animal Initiatives
Another animal advocacy research organization supposedly found CE plagiarizing their work extensively including in published reports, and CE failed to address this.
Hi, I am Charity Entrepreneurship (CE, now AIM) Director of Research. I wanted to quickly respond to this point.
I believe this refers to an incident that happened in 2021. CE had an ongoing relationship with an animal advocacy policy organisation occasionally providing research to support their policy work. We received a request for some input and over the next 24 hours we helped that policy organisation draft a note on the topic at hand. In doing so a CE staff member copy and pasted text from a private document shared by another animal advocacy research organisation. This was plagiarism and should not have happened. I would like to note: firstly that this did not happen in the course of our business as usual research process but in a rushed piece of work that bypassed our normal review process, and secondly that this report was not directly published by us and it was not made clear to the CE staff member involved that the content was going to be made into a public report (most other work for that policy organisation was just used privately) although we should of course have considered this possibility. These facts of course do not excuse our mistake here but are relevant for assessing the risk that this was any more than a one-off mistake.

I was involved in responding when this issue came to light. On the day the mistake was realised we: acknowledged the mistake, apologised to the injured party, pulled all publicity for the report, drafted an email to the policy org asking to have the person who’s text was copied added as a co-author (the email was not sent until the following day after as we waited for approval from the injured party). The published report was updated. Over the next three weeks we carried out a thorough internal risk assessment including reviewing all past reports by the same author. The other animal rights research organisation acknowledged they were satisfied with the steps taken. We found no cases of plagiarism in any other reports (the other research org agreed with this assessment), although one other tweak was made to a report to make acknowledgment more clear.
FWIW I find mildlyanonymous’ description of this event to be somewhat misleading referring to multiple “reports” and claiming “CE failed to address this”.
CE’s reports on animal welfare consistently contain serious factual errors … noticing immediately that it had multiple major errors, sharing that feedback, and having it ignored due to their internal time capping practices.
I don’t know what this is about. I know of no case where we have ignored feedback. We are always open to receiving feedback on any of our reports from anyone at any time. I am very sorry if I or any CE staff ignored you and I open to hearing more about this, and/or hearing about any errors you have spotted in our research. If you can share any more information on this I can look into it, please contact me (I will PM you my email address, note I am about to go on a week’s leave). It is often the case if we receive minor critical feedback after a report is published we do not go back and edit our report but note the feedback in our Implementation Note for future Charity Entrepreneurship founders, maybe that is what happened.

weeatquince 26 Apr 2020 12:17 UTC
42 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Benjamin_Todd’s comment on: What will 80,000 Hours provide (and not provide) within the effective altruism community?
Hi Ben, Thank you for the thoughtful reply. Super great to see a greater focus on community culture in your plans for 2020. You are always 2 steps ahead :-)

That said I disagree with most of what you wrote.

Most of your reply talks about communications hurdles. I don’t think these pose the barrier you think they pose. In face the opposite, I think the current approach makes communications and mistrust issues worse.

You talk about the challenge of being open about your prioritisation and also open to giving advice across causes, risks of appearing to bait and switch, transparency Vs demoralising. All of these issues can be overcome, and have been overcome by others in the effective altruism community and elsewhere. Most local community organisers and CEA staff have a view on what cause they care the most about yet still mange an impartial community and impartial events. Most civil servants have political views but still provide impartial advice to Ministers. Solutions involve separating your priotisation from your impartial advice, having a strong internal culture of impartiality, being open about your aims and views, being guided by community interests, etc. This is certainly not always easy (hence why I had so many conversations about how to do this well) but it can be done.

I say the current approach makes these problems worse. Firstly thinking back to my time focused on local community building (see examples above) it appeared to me that 80000 Hours had broken some of the bonds of trust that should exist between 80000 Hours and its readership. It seems clear that 80000 Hours was doing something wrong and that more impartiality would be useful. (Although take this with a pinch of salt as I have been less in this space for a few years now). Secondly it seems surprising to me that you think the best communications approach for the effective altruism community is to have multiple organisations in this space for different causes with 80000 Hours being an odd mix of everything and future focused. A single central organisation with a broader remit would be much clearer. (Maybe something like franchising out the 80000 Hours brand to these other organisations if you trust them could solve this.)

I fully recognise there are some very difficult trade-offs here: there is a huge value to doing one thing really well, costs of growing a team to quickly to delve into more areas, costs of having lower impact on the causes you care about, costs of switching strategy, etc.

Separately to the above I expect that I would place a much stronger emphasis than you on epistemic humility and have more uncertainty than you about the value of different causes and I imagine this pushes me towards a more inclusive approach.

weeatquince 18 Jan 2023 18:53 UTC
41 points
19 ∶ 8
in reply to: Jan_Kulveit’s comment on: Doing EA Better
Thank you for the reply Jan. My comment was not about whether I disagree with any of the content of what Buck said. My comment was objecting to what came across to me as a dismissive, try harder, tone policing attitude (see the quotes I pulled out) that is ultimately antithetical to the kind, considerate and open to criticism community that I want to see in EA. Hopefully that explains where I’m coming from.

weeatquince 30 Dec 2021 13:42 UTC
41 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: William_MacAskill’s comment on: Democratising Risk—or how EA deals with critics
I just want to say that I think this is a beautifully accepting response to criticism. Not defensive. Says hey yes maybe there is a problem here. Concretely offers time and money and a plan to look into things more. Really lovely, thank you Will.

weeatquince 1 Aug 2019 22:31 UTC
41 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Age-Weighted Voting
It is an interesting suggestion and I had not come across the idea before and it is great to have people thinking of new innovative policy ideas. I agree that this idea is worth investigating.

I think my main point to add is just to set out the wider context. I think it is worth people who are interested in this being aware that there is already a vast array of tried and tested policy solutions that are known to encourage more long term thinking in governments. I would lean towards the view that almost all of the ideas I list below: have very strong evidence of working well, would be much easier to push for than age-weighted voting, and would have a bigger effect size than age-weighted voting.

Here’s the list (example of evidence it helps in brackets)

* Longer election cycles (UK compared to Aus)
* A non-democratic second house (UK House of Lords)
* Having a permanent neutral civil service (as in UK)
* An explicit statement of policy intent setting out a consistent cross-government view that policy makers should think long-term.
* A formal guide to best practice on discounting or on how to make policy that balances the needs of present and future generations. (UK Treasury Green Book, but more long term focused)
* An independent Office for Future Generations, or similar, with a responsibility to ensure that Government is acting in a long term manner. (as in Wales)
* Independent government oversight bodies, (UKs National Audit Office, but more long term focused)
* Various other combinations of technocracy and democracy, where details are left to experts. (UK’s Bank of England, Infrastructure Commission, etc, etc)
* A duty on Ministers to consider the long term. (as in Wales)
* Horizon scanning and foresight skills, support, tools and training brought into government (UK Gov Office for Science).
* Risk management skills, support, tools and training brought into government (this must happen somewhere right?).
* Good connections between academia and science and government. (UK Open Innovation Team)
* A government body that can support and facilitate others in government with long term planning. (UK Gov Office for Science, but ideally more long term focused).
* Transparency of long term thinking. Through publication of statistics, impact assessments, etc (Eg. UK Office for National Statistics)
* Additional democratic oversight of long term issues (UK parliamentary committees)
* Legislatively binding long term targets (UKs climate change laws)
* Rules forcing Ministers to stay in position longer (untested to my knowledge)
* Being a dictatorship (China, it does work although I don’t recommend)

I hope to find time to do more work to collate suggestions and the evidence for them and do a thorough literature review
(If anyone wants to volunteer to help then get in touch). Some links here. My notes are at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KGLc_6bKhi5ClZPGBeEQIDF1cC4Dy8mo/edit#heading=h.mefn6dbmnz2 See also: http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/LLN-2019-0076/LLN-2019-0076.pdf

As an aside I have a personal little bugbear with people focusing on the voting system when they try to think about how to make policy work. It is a tiny tiny part of the system and one where evidence of how to do it better is often minimal and tractability to change is low. I have written about this here: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/cpJRB7thJpESTquBK/introducing-gpi-s-new-research-agenda#Zy8kTJfGrY9z7HRYH Also my top tip for anyone thinking about tractable policy options is to start with asking: do we already know how to make significant steps to solve this problem, from existing policy best practice. (I think in this case we do.)
What links here?
- Deliberation May Improve Decision-Making by Neil_Dullaghan (5 Nov 2019 0:34 UTC; 66 points)
- EA Forum Prize: Winners for July 2019 by Aaron Gertler (20 Aug 2019 7:09 UTC; 24 points)