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This post was prompted by the comments on my proposed updated 80K Hours Climate Change Problem Profile.
It’s important to make it clear up front that the surprising truth is that there is genuinely very little quantitative research into the impacts of climate change of 4C and above. The research which does exist is necessarily limited in scope and makes a large number of assumptions - many of which will tend to undervalue the overall impact of climate change.
In this post I examine four previous attempts to examine aspects of the impact of climate change and/or the cost-effectiveness of c... (Read more)
In this article I calculate my subjective probability estimate that the problem of wild animal suffering is the most important cause area in effective altruism. I will use a Fermi estimate to calculate lower and upper bounds of the probability that research about interventions to improve wild animal welfare should be given top priority. A Fermi estimate breaks the probability up into several factors such that the estimate of the total probability is the product of the estimates of the factors. This method is known in superforecasting to increase accuracy or predictive power.
With the lower and... (Read more)
Suffering focused ethics can also avoid the repugnant sadistic conclusion, which is the most counterintuitive implication of total utilitarianism that maximizes the sum of everyone’s welfare. Consider the choice between two situations. In situation A, a number of extremely happy people exist. In situation B, the same people exist and have extreme suffering (maximal misery), and a huge number of extra people exist, all with lives barely worth living (slight positive welfare). If the extra population in B is large enough, the total welfare in B become... (Read more)(Click to expand thread. ⌘F to Expand All)Cmd/Ctrl F to expand all comments on this post
Abstract
In a study initiated by SoGive, we sought to understand to what extent study participants care about (or place moral value on) people in the far future. The study sought to understand both stated opinions on the topic at an abstract level, stated opinions taking into account a concrete (but hypothetical) example, and (in another attempt to make this more concrete) considering the choice to donate to global poverty versus climate change charities. The study was intended to support SoGive’s research on charities.
This paper also introduces a new segmentation of presentdayist/longte... (Read more)
In addition to the analyses SoGive conducted that Sanjay has listed, Rethink Priorities conducted some tests which provide further evidence for the claims made, and speak to the question Will MacAskill raised “Do younger people actually have more future-oriented views?” The samples do appear to be more presentdayist than longtermist, especially so for older respondents.
Explicit questions suggest more presentdayist preferences
In both samples we find evidence in support of the hypothesis that there is a preference for prioritising helping people now rather
... (Read more)(Click to expand thread. ⌘F to Expand All)Cmd/Ctrl F to expand all comments on this postThe Procreation Asymmetry consists of these two claims together:
- it’s bad to bring into existence an individual who would have a bad existence, other things being equal, or the fact that an individual would have a bad existence is a reason to not bring them into existence; and
- it’s at best indifferent to bring into existence an individual who would have a good existence, other things being equal, or the fact that an individual would have a good existence is not a reason to bring them into existence.
However, if a bad existence can be an "existential harm" (according to c... (Read more)
got it! :-)
Journalists regularly contact individuals, groups, and organizations who are involved in the effective altruism space. At first glance, opportunities to speak with journalists may seem like a good way to spread information about important work and ideas. However, we have found that they can also be a good way to create misunderstandings or negative impressions of EA or of particular projects. Because evaluating and engaging in successful media engagements requires specialized skills and knowledge, it’s important to seek advice or resources, proceed carefully, and be prepared.
Quick takea... (Read more)
I would like to add something that the authors of this piece may be too polite or professional to say themselves: the financial pressures within the media industry have made journalism among the most dishonest professions in society.
Of course there are many fantastic scrupulous people working in the media. And there are a handful of outlets that maintain high levels of integrity.
But the median journalist is under enormous pressure to find some sensationalist angle for their stories in order to drive a lot of clicks. They're also under great pressure t... (Read more)(Click to expand thread. ⌘F to Expand All)Cmd/Ctrl F to expand all comments on this post
So here is an idea
Donation Game App
An application which allows users to play games against eachother.
- The user funds their account with money, and receives tokens in return (which are pegged to USD).
- The user buys into a game with tokens (different buy-in levels)
- The winner(s) of the game receives the tokens in the prize pool for that game.
- A user is not allowed to withdraw the tokens, they can only be used to donate to effective charities (decided by the application).
- The app takes zero commission from buy-ins, so all of the money goes to the charities.
- Users can track where their tokens h
Very good points, I agree with all.
Don't be afraid to sound negative, honest feedback can save a whole career!
Which papers published in the last decade most influenced your thinking?
This question is inspired by today's Future Perfect newsletter (signup link), see answer below. Dylan Matthews restricted himself to papers in "economics, political science, sociology, psychology, and philosophy", but I'd be interested in papers from any domain.
It basically represents my transition from thinking that algorithms were basically fair and fine, to thinking they're biased because people are biased and so bias is baked in eg through bad data, to realising the are a very wide variety of ways that algorithms can unintentionally discriminate.
They're not a particularly EA-related pair of papers, but they are very interesting.
At the time of this talk (2016), Helen Toner was a senior research analyst at the Open Philanthropy Project. Here, she shares management lessons — such as holding regular one-on-ones and soliciting feedback — that she learned in her first year at GiveWell and the Open Philanthropy Project.
Below is a transcript of the talk, which we have edited lightly for clarity. You can also watch Helen’s talk on YouTube or read its transcript on effectivealtruism.org.
The Talk
As I’m sure you all know by now, effective altruism [EA] is about doing the most good you can with the res... (Read more)
Assessing the impact of Brazilian donors and EA community
We’re thinking about testing if our actions for promoting EA in this year (translations, meetings, networking...) have led to an observable increase in donations from Brazil - particularly outside the group of more "engaged" members. Even if we haven't observed an increase in high-quality engagement (such as GWWC pledges), we do see an increase in some "cheaper signals", such as the number of Facebook group members and the amount of donations to AMF (which, curious... (Read more)(Click to expand thread. ⌘F to Expand All)Cmd/Ctrl F to expand all comments on this post
I recently joined the Institute for Globally Distributed Open Research and Education (IGDORE). They have decided to invite groups interested in metascience (specifically open and replicable science) to create a space on their forum. I think a few EAs are interested in aspects of improving the scientific process, and wonder if anybody would be interested in creating an EA space there?
I wouldn't suggest that this replace the EA forum in anyway, but could act as space where EAs interested in this area could engage with non-EAs who have similar (metascience) interests.
‘Included in thi... (Read more)
I'm organizing a preconference on 'The Evolutionary Psychology of Existential Risk' for the Human Behavior and Evolution Society (HBES) conference next June 24-27, 2020 in Detroit, with 4-6 speakers.
I'd like to include some EA experts who are interested in the psychological challenges associated with understanding & managing X-risks.
Any suggestions of possible speakers who might be interested?
Feel free to reply here or to email me directly, gfmiller@unm.edu. Thanks!
This article is about the little-noticed fact that happiness has been climbing in the UK for 20 years (despite endless bad news), and misery has almost disappeared. And why this might be.
It also outlines measuring happiness and using it to guide policies, as governments are starting to do (and arguably so too should Effective Altruism).
All comments very welcome, particularly from experts in the field.
I also thought the World Happiness Survey looked flat but it has gone up. 0.25/10 is not be sniffed at.
WHS has a much smaller sample size - around 1,000 per year - whereas the Office of National Statistics asks around 300,000 people a year. ONS data also shows a rise of about 0.3/10 between 2011 and 2019 (https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/wellbeing/datasets/headlineestimatesofpersonalwellbeing)
I’m not entirely sure that there is really no other official source for local group funding. Please correct me in the comments.
It seems that by now, CEA's community building grants programme is the only source of funding for local group leaders and community builders world-wide. (The EA meta fund distributed some funding to community builders in earlier rounds, although the bulk of the money went to other targets. In the latest round, they referred community builders to the community building grants programme and they plan on continue doing so in the future.)
According to CEAȁ... (Read more)
Hi Jan,
Thanks for flagging your concerns here. The scope of EA Community Building Grants (CBG) doesn't encompass all funding decisions regarding community building, but is limited to providing funding for people to do part-time or full-time community building with a specific EA group (i.e. at a university, city and national level). We’ve made some grants outside this category, though they account for less than 10% of the total funding we’ve granted out. Within this category of location specific EA community building, the CBG programme li... (Read more)(Click to expand thread. ⌘F to Expand All)Cmd/Ctrl F to expand all comments on this post
I think there are many questions whose answers would be useful for technical AGI safety research, but which will probably require expertise outside AI to answer. In this post I list 30 of them, divided into four categories. Feel free to get in touch if you’d like to discuss these questions and why I think they’re important in more detail. I personally think that making progress on the ones in the first category is particularly vital, and plausibly tractable for researchers from a wide range of academic backgrounds.
Studying and understanding safety problems
- How strong are the econo
For reference, some other lists of AI safety problems that can be tackled by non-AI people:
Luke Muehlhauser's big (but somewhat old) list: "How to study superintelligence strategy"
AI Impacts has made several lists of research problems
Wei Dai's, "Problems in AI Alignment that philosophers could potentially contribute to"
Kaj Sotala's case for the relevance of psychology/cog sci to AI safety (I would add that Ought is currently testing the feasibility of IDA/Debate by doing psychological research)
Thanks for this. Have you seen the reports produced by BreakThrough https://www.breakthroughonline.org.au/
The authors argue that:
I don't have the expertise to describe how the calculations you've done above would be affected by this, but hopefully someone else will.