Updates from EA Organizations and Projects
In this section we’ll be sharing updates from EA organizations and EA projects.
80,000 Hours
While in the Bay Area learning from their Y Combinator mentors, 80k has released a new
interactive tool for making career decisions and has been doing a university campus tour for the start of the academic year.
Charity Science
Charity Science has created an
easy way to leave money to GiveWell’s top charities in your will. It’s a simple form that takes as little as 5 minutes to complete and leaves you with a ready-made will. They have also extended their
peer-to-peer fundraiser pages to let you raise money for
any event or pitch, in addition to their birthday and Christmas fundraisers.
Effective Altruism Foundation
GBS Switzerland is rebranding as
Effective Altruism Foundation (EAF). You can find more information on their German
website. They were recently
featured on national TV in Switzerland and are currently setting up a new EA hub in Berlin – EAs who are interested are encouraged to
get in touch.
Future of Humanity Institute
FHI recently received
$2.2m from the European Research Council for existential risk research, $1m to run the Alexander Tamas Programme on Artificial Intelligence Safety, and a
$1.5m grant from the Future of Life Institute to create a Strategic Centre on the Future of Artificial Intelligence, together with the Cambridge-based Centre for the Study of Existential Risk.
Giving What We Can
Giving What We Can now has 1,288 members who have donated nearly $10m to
effective charities and have pledged almost half a billion dollars over their lifetimes!
Take the pledge as well or consider
Try Giving.
Global Priorities Project
GPP just published an
update on their activities. In the last few months they secured grants from the Finnish Foreign Ministry and the Future of Life Institute to
expand their work on policies to reduce existential risk. Be sure to check out this big
flowchart of how to help the world and prioritize between different causes.
Local Effective Altruism Network
The local
effective altruism network’s support team has grown recently, and created
websites for dozens of groups in the network and helped set up meetups of their leaders at all three EA Global conferences. Work
creating new local presences continues, through both recruiting existing EAs and mass-contacting potentially interested people at universities as part of the
coordinated chapter push.
Open Philanthropy Project
The Open Philanthropy Project recently published a comprehensive
update on the overall progress and future plans. There has been a lot of progress in many areas.
Raising for Effective Giving
REG recently released their
report about the second quarter of 2015, in which they raised a total of $160,000 for
effective charities. They’re also launching new sub-projects in professional gaming and daily fantasy sports.
Also, it doesn't seem people are using this post as an open thread much yet. I'm guessing it's because:
Anyway, I think we ought to keep experimenting with it next month and every two weeks after that on the EA Forum as well. I like more frequent open threads, plus I like how the topics in the newsletter provide a natural hook for starting discussions in the comments. I hope it's a way to get more folks involved in the Forum. I personally actually enjoy spending time on the EA Forum, and also it's my primary source for information on effective altruism now. However, that might just be because I'm a weird nerd that way.
"However, that might just be because I'm a weird nerd that way."
We all are :)
Good points, I'd suggest the same.
The two links at the top are broken.
Fixed!
Can anyone point me towards the video of the Superintelligence panel at EA Global with Musk, Soares, Russell, and Bostrom?
Yeah, confirming AviN's comment, the two links at the top are still broken. Other than that, the newsletter is great! It's even better quality than I expected. The breakdown of topics seems natural, and it seems to solve even more issues in communicating to effective altruism as a community than I expected. For example, you've covered every update anyone might need to know within the EA community, and it's also a handy way to solve the the problem of job postings, since the EA jobs board .impact created so many months ago hasn't been used as much as was hoped for (or expected?...).
Anyway, let me know anyway I can help out with this. After reading this, my credence in that someone should subscribe to the newsletter is "it's handy to know about", to "subscribing is important". I will increase how much I urge others to subscribe accordingly.
What would count as taking Effective Altruist frugalness too far, and what are the arguments against it? I'm torn as to whether I should keep eating out or buying first hand clothes, but these do bring time savings and other benefits.
I don't have an answer for this, but I've been thinking about it recently also.
Sometimes it may be useful to eat out if you are developing a network or relationship with someone/some people. In contrast, it may be useful to ask to eat at a cheaper place, or invite people over for a home meal, explaining why, aiming to influence them subtly.
Also, it may be worth buying nice clothes to be perceived more highly by your colleagues, which could be useful (promotions, influence etc.). As before though, it may be beneficial to buy second hand to subtly encourage colleagues to do the same, and to not perpetuate the idea that people need to spend a lot of money on clothes to be 'in'.
I definitely haven't answered your question!