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News from the World of Effective Altruism
Hi there!
We hope you enjoyed the first Effective Altruism Newsletter. Below is another round of the latest posts, articles, news, announcements, and job postings from the world of effective altruism.
On the EA forum, the newsletter doubles as an Open Thread where you can discuss anything related or not related to the newsletter.
We’ve also added a new section, “Timeless Classics”, in which we share articles and other links that deserve to be seen again.
Thanks a lot to everyone who submitted feedback last time! Let us know how we’re doing and how we can improve this newsletter. Feel free to submit interesting links and articles through this form.
Happy reading!
The Effective Altruism Newsletter Team
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What is EA?
If you’re not familiar with effective altruism, EA – to use its common abbreviation – is a growing social movement founded on the desire to make the world as good a place as it can be, the use of evidence and reason to find out how to do so, and the audacity to actually try.
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Articles and Community Posts
GiveWell has released an article on potential new high-impact charities they would like to see. Their research has shown that there are some priority programs that no one is carrying out yet. Are you the right person to set one up? GiveWell might be able to support you in doing so.
On the Giving What We Can blog, Scott Weathers writes about the Reach Act that could prove to be a high-impact reform for USAID.
Julia Wise published a short post about the importance of setting boundaries and taking care of yourself when engaging in altruistic work.
Swedish EA Stefan Schubert, who runs an organization to promote evidence-based policy, has released a “Fact-Checking 2.0” page together with clearerthinking.org. So far, they provide argument-checking and fact-checking for a large chunk of the current US presidential debates. They aim to improve argumentative standards, which will hopefully lead to more evidence-based politics.
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Updates from EA Organizations and Projects
Animal Charity Evaluators
Following last year’s great success, ACE has announced the start of its fall matching campaign. All gifts will be matched up to $50,000.
Charity Science
Future of Humanity Institute
Toby Ord published a paper on “moral trade” in top journal Ethics (open access version here). Nick Bostrom appeared in a half-hour prime time interview on BBC’s HardTalk (only available in the UK) and spoke at the UN Headquarters (see below).
The Life You Can Save
Check out The Life You Can Save's updated Impact Calculator, which shows the interventions your donation can buy with each of their 16 recommended charities, providing calculations in the currency of your country.
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Other Announcements
The New EA Wiki Is Online
Eric Bruylant has shared some great news: a team of .impact volunteers has moved the EA Wiki, which was previously hosted on Wikia, to the EA Hub. This allows for far more flexibility with zero ads. There’s lots of great content to check out. Happy reading, editing and contributing!
Nick Bostrom Speaks at the UN Headquarters
Nick Bostrom, Director of the Future of Humanity Institute, has given a talk about threats from future technologies, including artificial intelligence, at the UN Headquarters during the UN General Assembly. Watch the briefing here (starts at 2:14:30).
Advice from Effective Altruism Action
EA Action offers free one-on-one Skype sessions to effective altruists – both for newcomers and veterans. They exist to help you decide what course of action makes sense for your unique circumstances and help you navigate the vast landscape of EA organizations, projects and causes.
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Job Postings
The EA movement is growing quickly and whenever EA organizations are looking for people we’ll be posting the jobs here. There’s also a Facebook group with more job postings.
Future of Humanity Institute
FHI is looking to hire three research fellows for our new Strategic AI Research Centre. They are looking for:
- An emerging technology policy analyst
- A multidisciplinary scientist
- A computer scientist with a strong background in machine learning and the control problem.
The posts are not officially open yet, but they are encouraging expressions of interest. Full details are here.
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Timeless Classics
In this section we’ll be sharing some great content from the past which deserves to be seen again.
Helen Toner’s post “Effective Altruism is a Question (not an ideology)” reminds us of some crucial characteristics that distinguish EA from many other movements: EA is a process rather than an answer and we’re always on the lookout for information that will change our mind so we can have even more impact.
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Get in Touch!
Tell us via this form what you think and what you would like to see in the future.
Now, go forth and do the most good!
See you in two weeks,
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Effective Altruism Companies
The idea of 'EA companies' is a notion some find problematic. Here is a rough framework I've deveoped for determing what might count as effective altruist company. By 'company' in this case, I definitely mean a for-profit organization, though its structure isn't important (e.g., startup, small business, corporation, investment firm, etc.). Some corporations have their own private foundations, such as Google with their philanthropic arm, Google.org. I don't know yet whether to count these as EA companies, or non-profits, as they're in an ambiguous space.
Below is my current (and incomplete) list of EA companies. Please feel free to add any you believe meet the criteria listed. If you want to suggest a company which doesn't meet any of the criteria, rather than making a special exception for them, suggest a new criterion for me to add to the list which the company in question meets.
Type-1 Companies
Type-2 Companies
Type-3 Companies
Type-4 companies
Type-5 companies
Type-6 companies
Type-7 companies
Health eFilings is type 1.
Right, I'm now aware 10MinutePQRS has become Health eFilings.
Avant is Type-3.
Also, I thought Lendlayer was sold to Affirm. http://fortune.com/2015/08/05/affirm-acquires-lendlayer-to-bolster-education-loans/
It appears LendLayer has been acquired by Affirm. I wasn't aware of this. I'd be interested to know what the founders of LendLayer, particularly those who are also 80,000 Hours members, are doing now. I'll try finding out.
Matt Gibb is working for Affirm now. I don't know what Ben Gilbert is up to. And I don't know who the other co-founders are.
Agora For Good is type 2. We're building a donation platform that:
a) make it easy for donors (in particular, people outside the EA community who have attachments to causes other than Global Health, X-Risk or EA-Meta-Charities) to find the most impactful charities they can within their cause area.
b) makes it easy and cheap for donors to give online to any nonprofit they want, while tracking their giving over time. (And, through the same process, makes it easier for noprofits to set up online donation collecting and tracking)
c) Over time, develop a scalable process to short charities roughly into the buckets of "possibly high impact", "probably high impact" and "definitely high impact", so as the effective giving becomes mainstream we're able to handle the increased flow of donations.
This is great. I didn't expect to see another type-2 company besides Wave, so I'm pleased with this development.
I think MaxMind is type 1.
I checked out MaxMind's website, and they might be the best example of an "EA company" I never knew about. They're excellent. Thanks!
Quixey is plausibly type-1, not type-3.
Both Liron Shapira as a private individual, and Quixey as a company, have donated $15,000 to MIRI. That definitely constitutes "plausibly type-1". For a medium-sized company, I'd want to know more of what they intend to do, re: donations. I'll look into it some more.
How's that? When I watched the livestream of EAG 2015, the speakers invited any attendees in the audience to come up and address everyone with any important points they had. Topher Hallquist, an employee of Quixey, hopped on stage and told anyone qualified to apply to Quixey because the company was actively hiring. I figure Mr. Hallquist wouldn't have done this if Quixey wasn't a type-3 company.
So, what's the mistake I'm making in reading the situation?