I'm still fuzzy on the relationship between the EA Facebook group and the EA forum. Are we supposed to move most or all the discussion that was going on in the FB group here? Will the FB be shut down, and if not what will is be used for?

I think the format of the forum will present a higher barrier to low-key discussion than the FB group, e.g. I'd guess people are much less likely to post an EA related new article if they don't have too much to add to it. This is primarily because the forum looks like a blog. Is FB style posting encouraged?

If this has all been described somewhere. Could someone point me toward it?

Also, what's the relationship between the EA forum and the EA hub? http://effectivealtruismhub.com/

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

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

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

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

Make an extra effort to upvote people who make good contributions. There are a lot of people who are below the karma threshold for posting (including myself).

Legibility is tricky. I want to be able to easily explain my giving, so that when people ask for details on what I mean by "I give half" we don't get into complex arguments about what counts. For example, if my work has a donation matching program, does that count? What if I do work for someone and ask them to donate instead of paying me? What about money my company puts into my 401k? Luckily the US government already has figured out a set of rules for this, so I can use them. When people want details on how I account for things, I can say "income" is "income on form 1040" and "donations" is "gifts to charity on form 1040 Schedule A".

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

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

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

The EA community seems to have a relatively weak internal support system, relative to other communities of mine (of similar size). I've confirmed this with other EAs. This is in terms of mentorship, providing opportunities for engagement, etc. For example, I think more people participating on this forum strengthens our internal support system! :)

Why is this? And what can we do to improve the situation (if anything)?

[Discount Rates]

I'd like to hear more EA discussion on discount rates. Much of policy analysis involves unilaterally discounting future benefits. For example, an economist might say "Let's value eating one apple today the same as eating four apples ten years from now." The professionals I've spoken with who do this sort of analysis say that discounting is justified because it's a natural part of human decision-making. Psychologically, it's pretty clear that most people make decisions given much greater weight to instant or near-term gratification... (read more)

[Replaceability in Social Change]

When we talk about social change like improving policy or promoting an idea like effective altruism, how do we figure out the counterfactual to measure our impact? Say I'm a civil rights activist in the 1950's and I really want to give a speech titled "I Have a Dream." How would I determine if someone else would do something similar (like MLK actually did in 1963)?

In order words, what social change is inevitable and what is more malleable? In posting this comment, did I just make the idea of "Replaceability i... (read more)

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

As part of the pros/cons between "give now" and "invest now, give later", has there been any investigation into how much good is accomplished by investing itself? It seems like that is a (small) part of economic growth and innovation, so I'm curious if there's much reason to think that has a big enough impact to include in the invest-then-give decision.

Have there been movements broadly like EA before? What happened to them? More generally, why have these ideas become so popular now as opposed to a few decades ago?

I'd like to see more work done on "warm fuzzies," e.g.: How can our charitable organizations be competitive with non-EA charities in producing positive feelings in donors? How can our message be framed such that they don't lead to feelings of guilt or a sense of being overwhelmed by the scope of the problems we're trying to tackle?

That Effective Altruists, implicitly if not explicitly, nearly always assume a single moral epistemology: some version of utilitarianism. It is only one of very many plausible registers of human value, whose prominence in the Anglophone academy has long waned post-Rawls (nevermind on the continent). I find the fact that this is a silent unanimity, tacit but never raised to the level of explicit discussion, doubly problematic.

I say this as someone who completely rejects utilitarianism, but recognises the obvious and ecumenical value in gauging high-utility ... (read more)

This Forum May Offer Better, Newer Formats For Interviews

An initial interview with one effective altruist lets the rest of us know what that one person is up to. However, for individuals working on particularly deep and interesting projects, I want to know more than just what they're doing. I want to know why, and how. For example: I might want to know more about what Brian Tomasik is doing with the Foundational Research Institute, or what Owen Cotton-Barrat is doing with the Global Priorities Project. That might require a second interview, or one that int... (read more)

Over at LessWrong, user "mushroom" recently proposed a debiasing heuristic for dealing with unpopular ideas. In sum, his claim is that we should be extra charitable to such ideas because they are disproportionately more likely to be promoted by its most extreme, disagreeable or crazy adherents. In a comment, I wrote:

Your analysis has implications not only for individuals exposed to unpopular ideas, but also for movements promoting such ideas. These movements (e.g., effective altruism) should be particularly worried about their ideas being repre

In this thread, you try to argue as well as you can against the cause you currently consider the highest expected value cause to be working on. Then you calibrate your emotions given the new evidence you just generated. This is not just a fun exercise. It has been shown that if you want to get the moral intuitions of a person to change, the best way to do so is to cause the person to scrutinize in detail the policy they are in favor of, not show evidence for why other policies are a good idea or why the person is wrong. To get your mind to change, the best way is to give it a zooming lens into itself. So what is your cause?

1. Spreading EA to non-First World nations to take advantage of people's preference for helping their own country. Lots of both rich and poor in BRICS these days.

2. Spreading EA to institutions and governments. I know CEA advised the UK government but I haven't heard much about other governments or corporate giving (although I realize that only about 5% of donations come from business, with most of the rest being from individuals). Although I realize a critical mass of individuals probably needs to be reach before institutions start to change.

3. Spreading altr

What are the best books related to altruism that you have seen? Which books mostly influenced your thinking as an EA?

I would like to see a visual and possibly interactive map of all organizations and projects related to Effective Altruism, and their relationships including hierarchy, funding, room for funding, members, potential scale/scope of impact with some general metric, etc (suggest other useful attributes, and links to similar maps).

Would this project be worth the investment?

EDIT: By map I mean something like a mind map, not geographical.

In conversation with Rolandas, we wondered whether there are enough EAs learning programming to justify creating a dedicated Facebook or Google group. If you would be interested in participating in such a group, please leave a comment or contact me privately.

Can anyone think of a way effective altruists, as a group, or as individuals, can playtest (their own) different approaches to spreading effective altruism, whether among the people they know personally, or to the public at large? Also, how could any of us go about about assessing and comparing the impact of such a thing? Is there an experimental design in this we could set up?