update: we're moving to the couch area on the first floor behind the stairs. just head straight and we have a circle of couches.
Date: Saturday April 13
Start Time: 1:30pm
End time: 3:30pm? No pressure to stay any particular length of time.
Location: Equator Coffee at the NAC (1 Elgin St, Ottawa - Google Maps Link)
Discussion topics:
1) A talk on cause prioritization under various assumptions and risk tolerances. Under what scenarios is global catastrophic risk reduction the best approach according to expected value maximization? What kinds of interventions should we prefer under various kinds of risk aversion? (Watching is encouraged but not required - I'll aim to be able to communicate the key ideas so there's no required homework)
2) an associated modeling tool (also not required to try beforehand)
3) socializing and whatever we want to discuss at the time
The Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkGHvUDW8q4
The Tool: https://ccm.rethinkpriorities.org
The talk is 38 minutes long followed by 15 minutes of Q&A (if you watch at 1x speed).
Transcript of the talk: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PExSf_RWi-Db5wUQWNylatBgr8bnKJQWiMOCLVzWsMw/edit?usp=sharing
This topic is fairly complex but I think the talk does a good job of making it approachable. The tool seems pretty neat and maybe we can try it out during the meetup.
Some more highly optional material:
Post series on the entire research project surrounding the talk, tool, and related articles https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/s/WdL3LE5LHvTwWmyqj
Post introducing the tool https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/s/WdL3LE5LHvTwWmyqj/p/pniDWyjc9vY5sjGre
A video on the tool: https://www.loom.com/share/d577afaae88648cc811fc5ff275505ed
A virtual walkthrough of the model: https://www.loom.com/share/0a8cbaa3acc1458586bf1b35e36fc2bf?sid=b08ec1de-8d2c-402d-9f38-192e072d87be
You're invited to join us even if you haven't watched the talk or we haven't met before or you aren't sure what this effective altruism thing is all about, etc. We'd be happy to meet you!
Once we meet at Equator, depending on how busy it is we may move to another location (such as the roof of the NAC, or somewhere else in the interior). If we move, we'll wait until 1:45pm before we do and I'll leave a comment here saying where we went (see the bottom of the event page for comments).
I'll wear a shirt that says 'GiveWell' so you can find me and the group. Hope to see you there!
