Yelnats T.J.

Karma: 890

Co-founder of Concentric Policies

CE Incubatee 2023

Talk to me about American governance/political systems/democracy

My journey to EA:

2009: start arriving at utilitarian-adjacent ethics
Dec 2012: read Peter Singer’s Famine Affluence and Morality
Circa 2013/14: find my way to EA through googling about Singer and FAaM
2014-2019: in the orbit of EA. i.e. will talk to people about morality and utilitarian stuff but not very engaged in the community aside from attending uni club meeting every once and while.
2020: EAGxVirtual (I’m starting to move from the orbit closer to the actual community)
2022: Dive deep into the community. And now we arrive at the present day.

Yelnats T.J.Oct 1, 2023, 6:04 PM
57 points
17 ∶ 3
on: Reflecting on the EA Mexico Residency Fellowship: Lessons and Opportunities
I think it’s very misleading to equate “would recommend the program to a friend” (>40% 10 out of 10) to >40% were 10 out of 10 satisfied with the program. These are two different things.
When I did the survey, I gave it a high mark because which of my friends wouldn’t love to spend a month in CDMX with air fare and rent covered. However, this does not mean that my satisfaction was high marks.
I would have given it a lower score for satisfaction because the program seemed unnecessarily costly by locating both a co-living space and co-working space in one of the most upscale districts in CDMX. Also, when I applied to the program, it was billed as a way to help the Mexico EA community and launch CDMX as an EA hub. The program was majority non-Mexican EAs and many of us had little interactions with the Mexican EAs. Some of this was on the participants (including myself) for not being more proactive in finding out who the Mexican EAs were, but the program should have been more hands on in fostering this.
Also the observations about food seem to miss the biggest critique I heard from participants, which was that about half of the co-working-space catered meals sponsored by the residency had meat, people didn’t hear a rationale as to why given that EA conferences are all plant-based.
In general, my sense from my time there was that participants felt there was more room for improvement than this post indicates (this my personal perception, so other participants can chime on if they agree or disagree).
I think it would be even more helpful to do an assessment of the EA Mexico community, EA LatAm community, and prospects of CDMX becoming hub 8 months after the fact to see if the residency materially changes those things.
I think EA residencies/fellowships should be subjected to a cost-effectiveness standard of if they would be better for community building than just spending all that money on community builders. In the case of the CDMX residency that was 330,000 USD, which could hire 8 full-time Latin American community builders at 40,000 per person. So to me it seems like the biggest question is if the connections made, benefits to Mexico and LatAm EA communities, and increased viability of CDMX as a hub realistically outweigh what 8 full-time community builders in LatAm would have achieved in a year.
Despite this being a critical comment, this doesn’t take away from the fact that there were many positives, such as the strong handle the organizing team had on logistics and many intercontinental relationships made.

Yelnats T.J.Aug 17, 2023, 5:47 PM
4 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: lilly’s comment on: A potential EA Aligned candidate for congress
the not realistic is a debatable assertion

Yelnats T.J.Aug 17, 2023, 1:56 AM
8 points
2 ∶ 1
in reply to: lilly’s comment on: A potential EA Aligned candidate for congress
Before you can get dozens or even several, you need to get the first.

Yelnats T.J.Aug 12, 2023, 10:53 PM
4 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Joseph’s comment on: Soaking Beans—a cost-effectiveness analysis
Pretty sure its not public. I only know about it because the anthropologist and I were staying at the house of the same mutual friend for a two week overlap.
I think it was Bboxx.
The most interesting thing I heard though was how much the military (FARDC) benefits from the illicit trade of charcoal. The FLDR (major armed group) has been described as a charcoal cartel operating in Virunga Park and for this reason US representatives and others have wanted to get people in Goma to switch to another fuel source so that it hurts the revenue of the FDLR.
The anthropologist followed charcoal from the source to the end market and documented all the mark-ups it went through. The amount that came from the FDLR taxing the movement of the good was less than what traffickers had to pay the FARDC at various check points. The conclusion of the anthropolist was that the framing of the FDLR acting like a cartel with charcoal was not accurate and the military has vested interest in the trade as well.

Yelnats T.J.Aug 7, 2023, 7:54 AM
3 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Akhil’s comment on: Soaking Beans—a cost-effectiveness analysis
I can imagine this be not just an economic intervention but also a health one. If I recall from one of my uni projects, indoor air pollution causes 600k deaths in SSA and the biggest source is burning biomass for cooking (more certain on the first claim, less certain on the second claim).

Another mass media intervention that could be considered is moving families from charcoal to gas or electric. Positive byproducts of the intervention is reducing deforestation and reducing revenue to illicit networks in a place like eastern DRC (where charcoal “makala” is harvested in protected parks).

Yelnats T.J.Aug 7, 2023, 7:48 AM
12 points
2 ∶ 0
in reply to: Karthik Tadepalli’s comment on: Soaking Beans—a cost-effectiveness analysis
People don’t always act rationally or optimize. Tradition/norms can have a lot of staying power. E.g. in neighboring eastern Congo, people pay more money for charcoal than they would for gas plus they are subjecting themselves to more indoor air pollution with charcoal. It’s an issue that is stumping the local gas stove companies. They even hire an anthropologist to help them design a new marketing campaign.

Yelnats T.J.Aug 2, 2023, 12:49 PM
6 points
3 ∶ 0
in reply to: Jonas Becker 🔸’s comment on: [JOB] Opportunity to found Charity Entrepreneurship NGO (outside of the incubation program): Tobacco taxation advocacy
Another alternative is for people to stay in their well-paying EA job but just donate more to the leaner EA orgs.

Example: someone earning 100k (which is close to the starting salaries I see posted for OP and CEA jobs) that already donates 10% of their income could donate another 5% to a CE charity to increase a founder salary. That 5% sacrifice would represent a salary increase of 10-20% for the founder.

It seems to me that you’d have to think that that marginal difference from 90k to 85k had a very outsized impact on your productivity/well-being AND that your work is as important or more important than the work of the new org for you to hold on to that 5k rather than donate it to the increase the salary of the founder of that new org.

Yelnats T.J.Aug 1, 2023, 3:32 AM
6 points
3 ∶ 0
on: Deep Report on Hypertension
Also in support of the sodium tax is that we’ve seen health taxes used as a cost-effective way improve health/save lives in tobacco, alcohol, and sugar sweetened beverages. For tobacco, taxation is the most cost-effective of all the tobacco control measures. I’m not surprised to see the evidence point to a sodium tax.

Yelnats T.J.Aug 1, 2023, 2:33 AM
10 points
2 ∶ 1
in reply to: Elizabeth’s comment on: [JOB] Opportunity to found Charity Entrepreneurship NGO (outside of the incubation program): Tobacco taxation advocacy
To be clear I am not CE staff or a seed funder. I don’t make decisions regarding how much is doled out or the culture upstream of those decisions. I’m an incubatee focused on the co-founder search here. Yes, I’d like to see more funding, but I’m not gonna benefit by railing here against a group of people who I don’t know and don’t know their circumstances or reasoning in their decision making.

Also worth noting most CE charity founders are not American. The range is much more manageable for other people around the globe. But people with more needs have asked for more. E.g. A line item for American health insurance.

Yelnats T.J.Aug 1, 2023, 1:25 AM
3 points
1 ∶ 1
in reply to: Karthik Tadepalli’s comment on: [JOB] Opportunity to found Charity Entrepreneurship NGO (outside of the incubation program): Tobacco taxation advocacy
Yah I think these are reasonable points

Yelnats T.J.Aug 1, 2023, 1:16 AM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Jason’s comment on: [JOB] Opportunity to found Charity Entrepreneurship NGO (outside of the incubation program): Tobacco taxation advocacy
I was referencing the comment for this: “We are a bit skeptical about the perception that talent increases from offering higher salaries (instead of attracting new talent, we typically see the same EA people getting job roles but just for a higher cost). ”

My understanding is that the 40-60k figure is for CE itself not the founders of CE charities.

Yah I’m not opposed to better compensation for founders. Note: founders with more needs have asked for more before. How the seed funders have considered that is opaque though.

Yelnats T.J.Jul 31, 2023, 11:37 PM
1 point
0 ∶ 1
in reply to: Karthik Tadepalli’s comment on: [JOB] Opportunity to found Charity Entrepreneurship NGO (outside of the incubation program): Tobacco taxation advocacy
As a principle I’d like to see impactful roles be more compensated than non-impactful roles e.g. a marketing position figuring out how to sell more sugary beverages to kids shouldn’t be more rewarded than someone trying to solve a problem.

Re: “a salary range like this just can’t be optimal”
Joey (co-founder of CE) had this to say about it in CE’s AMA:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xnHnsrFEMEMPXBWqR/ask-charity-entrepreneurship-anything?commentId=w93Smttpwa8eKboT7

My two cents:
As I mentioned in the post, a co-founding and an intervention are an experimental product. Only about a ¹⁄₃ of CE charities will go onto be stellar. So the ETG seed funders don’t want spend 80k on a nice salary for a founder that isn’t fully proven yet and org that might go bust in a year.
You can also launch more charities (i.e. experiments) per year the more people can take a lower salary (and co-founder salaries are the biggest line item of seed budgets).
That being said my personal opinion is there can be too much of a race to the bottom dynamic with salaries that leaves some founders in their first year might feel financial stress or save money by not spending on convivences and things that have an ROI for annual productivity. (but to be fair I haven’t founded a charity yet, maybe some other alums will disagree).

It should be noted that some CE founders did a significant bump in their salaries in their second year following a successful fundraising round.

Yelnats T.J.Jul 31, 2023, 7:44 PM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Sam Glover’s comment on: [JOB] Opportunity to found Charity Entrepreneurship NGO (outside of the incubation program): Tobacco taxation advocacy
USD

Yelnats T.J.Jul 31, 2023, 6:50 PM
12 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Jason’s comment on: [JOB] Opportunity to found Charity Entrepreneurship NGO (outside of the incubation program): Tobacco taxation advocacy
To my knowledge the highest co-founder salary that has been asked of the seed funders was 54k, but even then I don’t what they did in practice. Most asks that I’ve seen are 25k − 45k. Again, what co-founders actually ended up doing in practice after the figured out the amount of seed funding received is a different Q.
Revised to say 54k (previously said 51k)
Also want to flag for people skimming this quickly that this is just 1st year salary. The one example I know off the top of my head was a founder bumping their salary up 20k for the second year
Revised to say that these are the asks that “I’ve seen” that way people don’t take what i’m saying as definitive/exhaustive. Joey has more exposure than me and he says “40-60k” although unclear if this is seed funding salary asks or current founder salaries.

[JOB] Opportunity to found Charity Entrepreneurship NGO (outside of the incubation program): Tobacco taxation advocacy

Yelnats T.J.Jul 31, 2023, 3:38 PM

61 points

42 comments9 min readEA link

Yelnats T.J.Jul 22, 2023, 5:28 PM
4 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Badness of eating farmed animals in terms of smoking cigarettes
Fun fact: a million smoked cigarettes equates to one human death (according to Robert Proctor, Stanford historian of tobacco)

Yelnats T.J.Jul 9, 2023, 10:37 PM
4 points
1 ∶ 0
on: PR risks come from the extremes
Flagging here where I think the next problem can arise from: AI doomers taking matters into their own hands to slow down AI progress or bring attention to the issue through tactics/strategy similar to those of Earth Liberation Front in late 90′s/early 00′s reminiscent.

Perceiving something as existential & impending and the typical options for change as inconsequential creates a logic to drastically escalate. I’ve heard this sentiment even as strong as tepidly supporting triggering a great power wat that would likely decimate semiconductor production because it would slow down AI development.

If you told me that five years from now a fringe EA did something like send a pipe bomb to an AI exec, I would not be surprised. We as community should on guard of doomer unilateralists doing something extreme in the name of an EA cause area.

Yelnats T.J.Jul 6, 2023, 3:05 AM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: Apply to run an EAGx event in 2024
I’ve been hearing for a year about an EAGx potentially being run in Sub-Saharan Africa. Any updates on that? I heard CEA was hesitant on backing an EAGx in Africa until communities were more developed there. If CEA was hesitant, it would be great to hear why and what they would want to see to get behind and EAGx on the continent?

Yelnats T.J.Jun 6, 2023, 10:14 PM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Yelnats T.J.’s comment on: Debates at EAGxNYC
Just read the comment about not necessarily being famous EAs. I would also be willing to debate in favor of the position that US democracy faces a serious chance (~50%) of destabilizing, and that the probability and severity of consequences necessitate that EA treat it as a major X-factor.

Here is piece I wrote arguing that position (i have an unpublished one roughly twice the length)

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/5Yk6MczhaeWiDCcv6/the-top-x-factor-ea-neglects-destabilization-of-the-united

Yelnats T.J.Jun 6, 2023, 10:03 PM
2 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Debates at EAGxNYC
Mike Berkowitz and Ezra Klein (both have been on 80k) arguing for why US democracy is at risk and why it could be one of the most impactful things for EA to address. This is a position not popular with American EAs (including amongst some of the EAs that were at the helm of the SBF political operation—very consequential to EAs net political effect). I’m sure you could find some qualifed EAs to take the counter position.

To give a little context of the severity we are talking about: Berkowitz (as of July last year) thought there was a 50-50 chance of US democracy failing in the next 6 years.

Yelnats T.J.

[JOB] Op­por­tu­nity to found Char­ity En­trepreneur­ship NGO (out­side of the in­cu­ba­tion pro­gram): Tobacco tax­a­tion advocacy

[JOB] Opportunity to found Charity Entrepreneurship NGO (outside of the incubation program): Tobacco taxation advocacy