For this weekend's EA Global Student Summit I wrote a short talk about jargon that's popular in the EA community. It covers:

• When it's good to use
• When it's best to avoid
• Alternatives to common jargon terms
• Words I think we should mostly stop using
• Why people bicker about this, and a tiny piece of philosophy of language.

Folks liked it on social media and jargon has been a regular topic here on the EA Forum, so I thought I'd share.

Open commenting is enabled on the Google Slides so you can respond to specific points!

I have an interest in exploring neglected and "strange" opportunities for growth in developing settings. This one is the most recent one occupying my mind, I would appreciate a comment about which one of the "possible interventions" seems more interesting / impactful.

Background

Access to Mobile Money might have direct implications in poverty reduction. Because most of the developing world is not banked, mobile money is reaching many households as the first opportunity to obtain all the benefits of traditional finance, with almost no entry level costs. So whatever benefits a household gets from ... (Read more)

Four years ago on 18 November 2016 I posted a piece called President Trump as a Global Catastrophic Risk in which I argued:

“Because of his character, his stated policies, and uncertainty about what he will do as President, Trump likely increases the risk of a global catastrophe. He likely increases two general risks, or drivers of risk: increased international tension and a rise of authoritarianism. He also likely increases four specific risks: climate change, nuclear war, pandemics and risks from emerging technologies.”

Four long years later, in this post I review some of the claims in that pi... (Read more)

Late Edit: This post received way more attention than I expected. For important context, please see David Moss's first comment, especially his helpful visualization. "One thing worth bearing in mind is that these are very small proportions of the responses overall..." I am ultimately talking about small groups of people within the total number of survey respondents, and although I think my claims are true, I believe they are trivially so; I created this post largely for fun and practice, not for making important claims.

Note to EA Forum users: Please pardon the introductory content; this post i... (Read more)

I figured I'd write this to articulate a concern, or really more of a vague suspicion, that makes me nervous whenever I read anything about Wild Animal Suffering. This is going to seem like I'm being really uncharitable, but I'll say it anyway in case other people feel similarly.

Whenever anyone talks about how we should look into this, because wild animals suffer a lot, I have this nagging feeling that they're going to do rigorous research for a few decades, then conclude that the majority of animals on Earth would be better off dead. At this point they'll presumably recommend that we start pu... (Read more)

In this post, I introduce an ongoing research project with the aim of bringing effective giving to a wider range of altruists. The strategy combines 1) donation bundling (splitting between your favorite and an effective charity), 2) asymmetrical matching (offering higher matching rates for allocating more to an effective charity), 3) a form of donor coordination (to provide the matching). After conducting a series of experiments, we will test our strategy in the real-world using our new website GivingMultiplier.org. This project is a collaboration with Prof Joshua Greene and is supported by an... (Read more)

1- The Vegan Value Asymmetry

[this post argues that due to the titular vegan value asymmetry, buying plant-based food is a morally negative act which leads to animal suffering (in expectation). This is not, however, a counter-argument to the moral correctness of being vegan]

Regardless of our individual values, it is quite normal to think of a moral act as a good one, and an immoral act as a bad one. By good I mean that it is better than morally neutral, and by bad I mean it is worse. [1]

However, there are many places where this binary comes apart. One is when we are acting on vegan principles. ... (Read more)

Confidence: Likely

A donor-advised fund (DAF) is an investment account that allows donors to take a tax deduction now and give the money to charity later. When you put money into a DAF, you can deduct it just as you would deduct charitable contributions. Then you can direct the DAF on how to invest the money, and choose to donate it whenever you want.

If you want to invest to give later, DAFs have some clear advantages, plus some limitations. Is it better to use a DAF, or to keep your money in an ordinary (taxable) investment account?

According to the assumptions made in this essay:

• If I want to

If you enjoy the 80,000 Hours Podcast, and want to find more EA content to listen to while on-the-go or at the gym, check out EARadio.

EARadio consists of talks on topics relevant to effective altruists, taken from events like Effective Altruism Global. Much of the content is from recorded online videos, packaged for easy listening on the go!

EARadio was created by Chris Calabro and Patrick Brinich-Langlois. If you have suggestions for materials to add, you can get in contact with them here.

EARadio was originally a .impact project.

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6mpViG9EbQnKDiMnnoSWFU?si=... (Read more)

Before we had kids, Jeff and I fostered a couple of cats. One had feline AIDS and was very skinny. Despite our frugal grocery budget of the time, I put olive oil on her food, determined to get her healthier. I knew that stray cats were not a top global priority, and that this wasn’t even the best way of helping stray cats, but it was what I wanted to do.

. . . . .

The bike path near where I live has a lot of broken glass on the ground nearby. My family likes to go barefoot in the summer, and a lot of people walk their dogs there. Last summer I started bringing a container when we went out and cl

(Context: there is a long-running debate within the EA community about whether or not effective altruists should seek to avoid getting caught up in party politics. I have written a companion post to this one exploring some of these issues. What follows is intended to be of service to those who, like me, believe strongly that the current election cycle in the US represents a uniquely important opportunity for effective altruists and are looking for the best ways to get involved.)

Since early August, a giving circle entitled the Landslide Coalition has been researching time-sensitive, neglected, ... (Read more)

We're trying a new kind of monthly open thread: the progress thread!

Years ago, the Forum used to have an "Accomplishments Open Thread" where people could discuss recent wins in their EA work/donations/etc. I loved reading those; they made me feel like part of a growing, transformative movement.

When those open threads stopped, we lost an easy way for people to show off the progress they make on a month-to-month basis. So we brought the concept back.

What goes in a progress thread comment? 

Think of this as an org update thread for individuals. You might talk about...

• Securing a new job, inter

Summary: Like for quantified risk, we can sometimes hedge against deep uncertainty and moral uncertainty: we can sometimes choose a portfolio of interventions which looks good in expectation to all (or more) worldviews - empirical and ethical beliefs - we find plausible, even if each component intervention is plausibly harmful or not particularly good in expectation according to some plausible worldview. We can sometimes do better than nothing in expectation when this wasn't possible by choosing a single intervention, and we can often improve the minimum expected value. I think doing so can th... (Read more)