EA has nothing else but the best intentions which I respect and admire but the focus of every billionaire should be on how many solutions for a sustainable future they have supported instead of how much money they give away.

When money is given to a charity responding to our intention to help, it is going to the less fortunate and we are telling them we are giving up on the possibility for them to generate income to have a descent life, which is what dignifies our existence. When that money helps small entrepreneurs directly to solve a problem that touches the lives and the future of as many as possible, that is generating good, is multiplying the power of giving.

A charity could be giving millions every week some milk, bread and eggs, for how long? Is going to impact on their daily lives but not on the root of their problem. Entrepreneurs with solutions focused for example in promoting and offering the tools to grow any crop sustainably and anywhere would mean instead an opportunity to solve the problem.

There are way too many non profits because they became a good income by not solving anything. There are as well many underfunded projects of people with real answers to the challenges the world is facing.

Billionaires decide how much power of goodness they want for their money by deciding to create foundations to avoid taxes by giving away money to big non for profit organizations or just give it away to charities or contributing directly to solve real problems where going to another galaxy is definitely not one of them.

1

0
0

Reactions

0
0
Comments4


Sorted by Click to highlight new comments since:

Hey!

You wrote: "every billionaire should be on how many solutions for a sustainable future they have supported instead of how much money they give away"

Are you talking about EA Billionaires?

If so: If you'd discover that they donate mainly based on things like "expected impact" and not "how much money they give away", would that change your mind?

You wrote: "telling them we are giving up on the possibility for them to generate income to have a descent life"

You also wrote:

A charity could be giving millions every week some milk, bread and eggs, for how long? Is going to impact on their daily lives but not on the root of their problem.

Do you mean that giving money to poor people directly will prevent those people from, for example, getting a job and looking out for themselves?

If so - I'll note that this is probably (?) only a guess of yours regarding what happens, it's not that you've checked? Or maybe I'm wrong?

If so - would it change your mind if you'd see convincing studies by GiveDirectly, running RCTs on the effects of giving people money?

You wrote: "Entrepreneurs with solutions focused for example in promoting and offering the tools to grow any crop sustainably and anywhere would mean instead an opportunity to solve the problem."

I agree. The thing is that developing such crops is not a kind of help that will surely work, it's high-risk-high-reward. I'm not saying that as a bad thing. The EA community also tries finding solutions like this, if you're interested (but not specifically "finding a crop that could grow anywhere", at least not that I've heard of. I assume that's hard to do, but it's not my domain, I don't know)

Hi!

“If so: If you'd discover that they donate mainly based on things like "expected impact" and not "how much money they give away", would that change your mind?” It would be much better than just assigning money to charities for sure but I think giving back by investing to create opportunities directly or supporting others to do that is the real impact.

“Do you mean that giving money to poor people directly will prevent those people from, for example, getting a job and looking out for themselves?” “ If so - would it change your mind if you'd see convincing studies by GiveDirectly, running RCTs on the effects of giving people money?”

I have seen that case. When you are wealthy and you help people giving them money regularly they will count on it very soon and if they know the benefactor has so much they would assume that is the least you can do (believe me) and don’t even think about stoping at some point you would be the evil because you are doing them a great harm now. About the job, that is what they need, opportunities, giving away money to poor people would not prevent them from getting a job but will not encourage them to do it neither. I would think about committing to help for a limited time while they are looking for a job offering a certain amount as a prize for getting a job and a bonus for every year they stay employed for 2 years, make sense? My basic idea is that creating opportunities is the answer.

“ The EA community also tries finding solutions like this, if you're interested (but not specifically "finding a crop that could grow anywhere"”

I assume you just suppose they are trying to find that kind of solutions because I can tell you is hardly the truth. Even if you have the solution to change the world to make it a better place you will never reach them unless you sell it to one big corporation that takes away the goodness of your solution to make of it another source of big profits and only then the same members of the EA community will be ready to hear and invest.

What I said was “the tools to grow any crop sustainably and anywhere would mean instead an opportunity to solve the problem.” As of today there is no sustainably grown food, anywhere. I was talking about a technology to grow sustainably any crop anywhere, meaning minimum energy and water consumption, full use of sun light. no arable land needed and no pesticides required. Sounds incredible? It’s real but as I said the people passionate about solving this problem went through years of research, engineering, construction until proving it but no matter how hard they have tried, all the doors are closed to reach the EA community... lots of foundations but just try to get to anybody...they would need connections and normally those kind of independent people passionate about finding answers are far from those circles. So it looks like no only the poor need opportunities right? Imagine that solution generating jobs everywhere and solving the problem of food security with food healthy for both the people and the environment.

I'm glad to hear you are passionate about the role of for-profit entrepreneurs in EA; the EA Entrepreneurs Slack Group might be of interest to you. 

Regarding crop sustainability, Our World In Data's recent post digs into this: Increasing agricultural productivity across Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the most important problems this century

Thanks so much, I just joined the Slack Group, looks great

Curated and popular this week
Andy Masley
 ·  · 4m read
 · 
If you’re visiting Washington DC to learn more about what’s happening in effective altruist policy spaces, we at EA DC want to make sure you get the most out of it! EA DC is one of the largest EA networks and we have a lot of amazing people to draw from for help. We have a lot of activity in each major EA cause area and in a broad range of policy careers, so there are a lot of great opportunities to connect and learn about each space! If you're not visiting DC soon but would still like to connect or learn more about the group you should email us at Info@EffectiveAltruismDC.org and explore our resource list!   How to get the most out of DC Fill out our visitor form Start by filling out our visitor form. We’ll get back to you soon with any resources and connections you requested! We’d be excited to chat over a video call before your visit, get you connected to useful resources, and put you in touch with specific people in DC most relevant to your cause area and career interests. Using the form, you can: Connect with the EA DC network If you fill out the visitor form we can connect you with specific people based on your interests and the reasons for your visit. After we connect you, you can either set up in-person meetings during your visit or have video calls ahead of time to get a sense of what's happening on the ground here before you arrive. To connect with more people you can find all our community resources here and on our website. Follow along with EA DC events here.  Get added to the EA DC Slack Even if you’re just in town for a few days, the Slack channel is a great way to follow what’s up in the network. If you’re okay sharing your name and reasons for your DC visit with the community you can post in the Introductions channel and put yourself out there for members to reach out to. Get hosted for your stay We have people in the network with rooms available to sublet, and sometimes options to stay for free. Find an office to work from during the
rai, NunoSempere
 ·  · 5m read
 · 
We’re developing an AI-enabled wargaming-tool, grim, to significantly scale up the number of catastrophic scenarios that concerned organizations can explore and to improve emergency response capabilities of, at least, Sentinel. Table of Contents 1. How AI Improves on the State of the Art 2. Implementation Details, Limitations, and Improvements 3. Learnings So Far 4. Get Involved! How AI Improves on the State of the Art In a wargame, a group dives deep into a specific scenario in the hopes of understanding the dynamics of a complex system and understanding weaknesses in responding to hazards in the system. Reality has a surprising amount of detail, so thinking abstractly about the general shapes of issues is insufficient. However, wargames are quite resource intensive to run precisely because they require detail and coordination. Eli Lifland shared with us some limitations about the exercises his team has run, like at The Curve conference: 1. It took about a month of total person-hours to iterate of iterating on the rules, printouts, etc. 2. They don’t have experts to play important roles like the Chinese government and occasionally don’t have experts to play technical roles or the US government. 3. Players forget about important possibilities or don’t know what actions would be reasonable. 4. There are a bunch of background variables which would be nice to keep track of more systematically, such as what the best publicly deployed AIs from each company are, how big private deployments are and for what purpose they are deployed, compute usage at each AGI project, etc. For simplicity, at the moment they only make a graph of best internal AI at each project (and rogue AIs if they exist). 5. It's effortful for them to vary things like the starting situation of the game, distribution of alignment outcomes, takeoff speeds, etc. AI can significantly improve on all the limitations above, such that more people can go through more scenarios faster at the same q
 ·  · 3m read
 · 
Project for Awesome (P4A) is a charity video contest running from February 11th to February 19th this year (2025). Participants create short videos supporting a specific charity. Afterwards, the public can vote, and the charities with the most votes receive donations. This presents an excellent (and cost-effective, as explained below) opportunity to raise funds for EA charities and promote EA principles to a wider audience. In recent years, winning charities have received between $14,000 and $38,000 each. In 2024, over $100,000 was distributed among three different EA charities. Videos don’t need to be professionally made but must be submitted by 11:59 AM EST on Saturday, February 8th. How It Works 1. Create and Submit Videos Participants make 1-4 minute videos supporting charities, upload them to YouTube, and submit them via the P4A website by 11:59 AM EST on Saturday, February 8th (earlier submissions are preferable). 2. Voting Period Voting takes place between February 11th and February 19th. This year, you have one vote per charity per device. 3. Livestream A P4A livestream will run from Friday, February 14th, to Sunday, February 16th. Some videos will be featured during this stream, likely increasing their chances of receiving votes. 4. Donation Distribution Funds raised during P4A are split 50/50. Half goes to Save the Children and Partners in Health, while the other half is distributed among the charities with the most community votes. Key Statistics * Last Year’s Success In 2024, the Against Malaria Foundation, GiveDirectly, and ProVeg International each received $37,297. In total, over $1.1 million was distributed to 30 charities. * Video Impact Around 320 videos were submitted last year, averaging $3,500 in donations per video. Of those, 30 videos (one in eleven) were featured in the livestream, and 19 of those ultimately won donations. According to P4A, there is no magic formula for being featured in the livestream. For ex