Effective Altruism Forum
EA Forum

Comment Permalink
Ramiro4
1
0
1

Elon Musk? So last year... 2024 is time for Trump scandals.
Let's buy some Truth shares and produce new scandals!

Reply
See in context
by Guy Raveh
1 min read 22

232

Building effective altruismCommunityApril Fools' DayEffective altruism fundingPublic relations
Personal Blog

It's been at least a few months since the last proper EA scandals, and we're now desperately trying to squeeze headlines out of the past ones.

On the contrary, a few scandals have been wrapped up:

  1. SBF was sentenced to 25 years in prison
  2. The investigation regarding Owen Cotton-Barratt presented its findings
  3. Whytham Abbey is being sold

Indeed, even OpenPhil's involvement in the Whytham Abbey sale shows they're now less willing to fund new scandals.

Therefore it seems to me that EA is now neither funding- nor talent-constrained, but rather scandal-constrained.

This cannot go on. We've all become accustomed to a neverending stream of scandals, and if that stream dwindles, we might find ourselves bored to death - or worse, the world might stop talking about EA all the time.

I therefore raise a few ideas for discussion - feel free to add your own:

  1. EA Funds should open a new Scandal Fund to create a continuous supply.
  2. CEA's community health team should hire a person to look harder for scandals lying under the surface.
  3. Nick Bostrom should publish a book.
  4. EA should work harder on encouraging group housing of people with their bosses, preferably in secluded areas abroad.

232

6
1
6
3

Reactions

6
1
6
3
Comments22


Sorted by
New & upvoted
Click to highlight new comments since:
David_Moss119
17
0
10
2

Our data suggests that the highest impact scandals are several times more impactful than other scandals (bear in mind that this data is probably not capturing the large number of smaller scandals). 

If so, it seems plausible we should optimise for the very largest scandals, rather than simply producing a large volume of less impactful scandals.

Reply
David Johnston12
0
0

Looks like someone should attempt a pivotal act. If you think you might be the right person for the job - you probably are!

Reply
Guy Raveh11
9
0

Thank you! This is the kind of important work EA must now strive for.

Reply
NickLaing45
6
0
2

  1. Manifest should blow up in some unexpected way.

  2. Elon Musk should announce he is giving all his money to EA causes.

  3. EA should fund SBFs appeal process

  4. Will Mac Askill should launch a new cryptocurrency "AskCoin", where rich people buy large amounts of the cryptocurrency for the poorest people on earth, driving up the value.

Love it

Reply
EdoArad26
3
1

9.  EA should publicly support Israel's war effort
10. Buy a large coal mine and employ the world's poorest people
11. Only fund community builders who say they are longtermist
12. Publish the secret deal with Huel as EA's main sponsor

Reply
MaxRa53
10
0
4
4

Meal replacement companies were there for us, through thick and slightly less thick.

https://queal.com/ea

Reply
EdoArad10
0
0

(btw, I find it funny that I cringe internally more about posting 11 than about 9)

Reply
NickLaing2
0
0

I don't see how 12 would sink us lol, but the other 3 for sure.

Reply
EdoArad5
1
0
1

They probably have a large influence on prioritization. I'd check into ALLFED

Reply
Eva Lu13
0
0

Donating to SBF's appeal process may be the highest impact charity we have ever seen.

In randomized controlled trials from 2022, SBF had donated over 130 million dollars in less than a year, and a successful appeal would counterfactually create this benefit for 25 years. An expensive criminal trial in the US can cost as much as $15,000. Even if $15k increases the odds of winning the appeal by 0.1%, that is still an expected 217x amplification of every dollar donated.

The money amplified goes in to effective charities like GiveWell, so if we use GiveWell's one life saved per $4,500 measure, donating to SBF's appeal fund would save a life for every 20 dollars.

This is just a back of the napkin calculation, so my numbers might be off a little, but this seems to be the most effective charity by *many* orders of magnitude.
 

Reply
Jason2
0
0

Does anyone know where he has been funding all his defense expenses from, and how much firepower is left there? If you'd merely be funging with his own assets, the Bank of Mom & Dad, or a D&O insurance policy, the giving would be rather ineffective.

He has to have been paying the bills, else it is unlikely new sentencing stage counsel would have signed up.

If trial counsel were somewhat competent, they already know what their best chances on appeal would be. Appeals are done on the record generated below, so the marginal returns to extra $ are likely minimal beyond a certain point.

Reply
Ramiro4
1
0
1

Elon Musk? So last year... 2024 is time for Trump scandals.
Let's buy some Truth shares and produce new scandals!

Reply
Dawn Drescher37
5
0

Scandals don't just happen in the vacuum. You need to create the right conditions for them. So I suggest:

  1. We spread concern about the riskiness of all altruistic action so that conscientious people (who are often not sufficiently scandal-prone) self-select out of powerful positions and open them up to people with more scandal potential.
  2. We encourage more scathing ad-hom attacks on leadership so that those who take any criticism to heart self-select out of leadership roles.
  3. We make these positions more attractive to scandal-prone people by abandoning cost-effectiveness analyses and instead base strategy and grantmaking on vibes and relationships.
  4. We further improve the cushiness of these positions by centralizing power and funding around them to thwart criticism and prevent Hayekian diversity and experimentation.
  5. We build stronger relationships with powerful, unscrupulous people and companies by, e.g., helping them with their hiring.
  6. We emphasize in-person networking and move the most valuable networks to some of the most expensive spots in the world. That way access to the network comes with even greater dependency on centralized funding, making it easier to control.

[Meta: I'm not claiming anyone is doing these things on purpose! It would be nice, though, if more people were trying to counter these risk factors for scandals and generally bad epistemics.]

Reply
Guy Raveh25
4
0

Scandals don't just happen in the vacuum

Has anyone tested this? Because if we could create them in a vacuum, that might save a lot of energy usually lost to air resistance, and thus be more effective

Reply
Dawn Drescher4
0
0

Even scandal-prone individuals can't survive in a vacuum. (You may be thinking of sandals, not scandals?)

Reply
Guy Raveh2
0
0

Is it definitely established that a living person is required for every scandal?

Reply
Dawn Drescher6
0
0
1

Only half a person per sandal I think!

Reply
Ramiro2
0
0

you can totally have scandals involving dead or imaginary people. So, definitely no.

Reply
Guy Raveh2
0
0

Right? Also you can have a person turn on the scandal machine, which then creates more than one scandal associated with them.

Reply
Guy Raveh5
1
0
  1. We make these positions more attractive to scandal-prone people by abandoning cost-effectiveness analyses and instead base strategy and grantmaking on vibes and relationships imaginary Bayesian updates.

FTFY

Reply
ramekin8
1
0

If this post resonates with you, consider traveling back in time a few days and submitting an application for CEA's open Head of Communications role! (Remember, EA is first and foremost a do-ocracy, so you really need to be the change you wish to see around here)

Reply
Jason2
1
0

Off-topic: When presenting the first part of the post on the front page, we get "The investigation regarding Owen Cotton". Might be better for hyphenated terms to be all-or-nothing when being cut off like this?

Reply
Curated and popular this week
Paul Present
 ·  · 28m read
 · 
Note: I am not a malaria expert. This is my best-faith attempt at answering a question that was bothering me, but this field is a large and complex field, and I’ve almost certainly misunderstood something somewhere along the way. Summary While the world made incredible progress in reducing malaria cases from 2000 to 2015, the past 10 years have seen malaria cases stop declining and start rising. I investigated potential reasons behind this increase through reading the existing literature and looking at publicly available data, and I identified three key factors explaining the rise: 1. Population Growth: Africa's population has increased by approximately 75% since 2000. This alone explains most of the increase in absolute case numbers, while cases per capita have remained relatively flat since 2015. 2. Stagnant Funding: After rapid growth starting in 2000, funding for malaria prevention plateaued around 2010. 3. Insecticide Resistance: Mosquitoes have become increasingly resistant to the insecticides used in bednets over the past 20 years. This has made older models of bednets less effective, although they still have some effect. Newer models of bednets developed in response to insecticide resistance are more effective but still not widely deployed.  I very crudely estimate that without any of these factors, there would be 55% fewer malaria cases in the world than what we see today. I think all three of these factors are roughly equally important in explaining the difference.  Alternative explanations like removal of PFAS, climate change, or invasive mosquito species don't appear to be major contributors.  Overall this investigation made me more convinced that bednets are an effective global health intervention.  Introduction In 2015, malaria rates were down, and EAs were celebrating. Giving What We Can posted this incredible gif showing the decrease in malaria cases across Africa since 2000: Giving What We Can said that > The reduction in malaria has be
Ronen Bar
 ·  · 10m read
 · 
"Part one of our challenge is to solve the technical alignment problem, and that’s what everybody focuses on, but part two is: to whose values do you align the system once you’re capable of doing that, and that may turn out to be an even harder problem", Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO (Link).  In this post, I argue that: 1. "To whose values do you align the system" is a critically neglected space I termed “Moral Alignment.” Only a few organizations work for non-humans in this field, with a total budget of 4-5 million USD (not accounting for academic work). The scale of this space couldn’t be any bigger - the intersection between the most revolutionary technology ever and all sentient beings. While tractability remains uncertain, there is some promising positive evidence (See “The Tractability Open Question” section). 2. Given the first point, our movement must attract more resources, talent, and funding to address it. The goal is to value align AI with caring about all sentient beings: humans, animals, and potential future digital minds. In other words, I argue we should invest much more in promoting a sentient-centric AI. The problem What is Moral Alignment? AI alignment focuses on ensuring AI systems act according to human intentions, emphasizing controllability and corrigibility (adaptability to changing human preferences). However, traditional alignment often ignores the ethical implications for all sentient beings. Moral Alignment, as part of the broader AI alignment and AI safety spaces, is a field focused on the values we aim to instill in AI. I argue that our goal should be to ensure AI is a positive force for all sentient beings. Currently, as far as I know, no overarching organization, terms, or community unifies Moral Alignment (MA) as a field with a clear umbrella identity. While specific groups focus individually on animals, humans, or digital minds, such as AI for Animals, which does excellent community-building work around AI and animal welfare while
Max Taylor
 ·  · 9m read
 · 
Many thanks to Constance Li, Rachel Mason, Ronen Bar, Sam Tucker-Davis, and Yip Fai Tse for providing valuable feedback. This post does not necessarily reflect the views of my employer. Artificial General Intelligence (basically, ‘AI that is as good as, or better than, humans at most intellectual tasks’) seems increasingly likely to be developed in the next 5-10 years. As others have written, this has major implications for EA priorities, including animal advocacy, but it’s hard to know how this should shape our strategy. This post sets out a few starting points and I’m really interested in hearing others’ ideas, even if they’re very uncertain and half-baked. Is AGI coming in the next 5-10 years? This is very well covered elsewhere but basically it looks increasingly likely, e.g.: * The Metaculus and Manifold forecasting platforms predict we’ll see AGI in 2030 and 2031, respectively. * The heads of Anthropic and OpenAI think we’ll see it by 2027 and 2035, respectively. * A 2024 survey of AI researchers put a 50% chance of AGI by 2047, but this is 13 years earlier than predicted in the 2023 version of the survey. * These predictions seem feasible given the explosive rate of change we’ve been seeing in computing power available to models, algorithmic efficiencies, and actual model performance (e.g., look at how far Large Language Models and AI image generators have come just in the last three years). * Based on this, organisations (both new ones, like Forethought, and existing ones, like 80,000 Hours) are taking the prospect of near-term AGI increasingly seriously. What could AGI mean for animals? AGI’s implications for animals depend heavily on who controls the AGI models. For example: * AGI might be controlled by a handful of AI companies and/or governments, either in alliance or in competition. * For example, maybe two government-owned companies separately develop AGI then restrict others from developing it. * These actors’ use of AGI might be dr
Recent opportunities in Building effective altruism
46
EA Global Referral Program
Ivan Burduk
· · 2m read
7
7
10
EAGxNordics in Norway: apply now
Amalie Farestvedt 🔸
· · 3m read
1
1
32
Introducing Effective Accountability: Project and Job Search Accountability Groups
2 authors
· · 2m read
1
1
View more