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JamesÖz 🔸22
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*sigh*

This comment is pretty disheartening to see. A lot of this is inaccurate, but I'll only reply to a few key things as I'm not sure this will be the healthiest or best use of my time:

  1. I'm not sure why you think Social Change Lab is "just a website". We're an org with 3 employees (2 of which started today hence not on the website yet) but we're also a registered non-profit in the UK via Companies house.
  2. The point about me not being an EA is particularly bizarre, given that I literally just wrote a piece on my personal blog defending EA. 
  3. Producing extremely long articles...yes that is culmination of various research projects! We also have short pieces, and pretty clear summaries. Would you rather we take donations and not do any work? Other orgs produce long reports, so not sure why ours are so much worse!
  4. The other claims are mainly ad-hominems about my supposed bad intentions, so I'll leave those be. For those that know me, or have interacted with me in various ways, I'm sure it's pretty clear that "earning great status and power" etc is not my main goal.

FWIW there's a reason I left doing social movement organising - it's because I was sceptical of it's effectiveness! If I was so sold it was the right thing to do, I would be trying to get funding for that, rather than funding for research to figure out if it's actually overall helpful or harmful.

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See in context
by Barry Grimes
1 min read 6

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Effective givingAgainst Malaria FoundationAnimal Charity EvaluatorsDonation matchingEvidence ActionFounders PledgeGood Food InstituteNew IncentivesStrongMindsThe Life You Can Save
Frontpage

There are several matching opportunities running this Giving Season. If you know of any that I've missed, please mention them in the comments.

Double Up Drive

The 2022 Double Up Drive will start at 8:00 am PT / 11:00 am ET / 4:00 pm GMT on Giving Tuesday (29 November).

I don’t know how big the matched pool will be or how long it will last so it's best to donate as soon as it opens. 

2022 charities

  • Against Malaria Foundation
  • Animal Charity Evaluators
  • Clean Air Task Force
  • Evidence Action
  • Founders Pledge
  • International Refugee Assistance Project
  • New Incentives
  • StrongMinds
  • The Good Food Institute
  • The Life You Can Save

Double your donation

UBS Optimus Foundation (StrongMinds)

All donations to StrongMinds will be matched up to $800,000 or until the end of 2022 (whichever comes first)

Double your donation

Animal Charity Evaluators

Until December 31, any donation you make to ACE’s Recommended Charity Fund will be matched up to $300,000, thanks to the estate of a generous legacy donor.

Double your donation

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JamesÖz 🔸6
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Social Change Lab (the non-profit I run) has a matched-funding opportunity where the next $50,000 we receive will be matched by an anonymous donor. It's looking very likely we won't meet this in the allotted time period (until January) so this will likely be a counterfactual donating opportunity. You can donate via Giving What We Can if you're interested! 

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Partial Identification-24
3
4

In the last 12 months, James Ozden's work on social change appears almost entirely designed to lobby and obtain EA resources for his "social movement work".

Ozden's "non-profit" Social Change Lab is a website with his content, and has no registration and little activity besides this meta EA work.

Ozden took 40K of EA infrastructure funding, which he then used to produce extremely long articles, whose length conceals that these are self-reviews on the promisingness of his own project. He also used this as a springboard to network and publicize his associations with EA funders.

Ozden does a variety of activity online, which invariably aggrandizes or promotes his own projects, and his work is often low effort or quality, and competes with others.

Ozden is not an EA, because he has set upon his goals on the outset, does not update or acknowledge new information, and his activity has not been demonstrated as promising as a cost effective intervention. If successful, the resources and status he would obtain from EA would give him great status and power in his external community, which is almost certainly his main goal. This would also give him further incentives for his meta EA work.

This was extremely disappointing to some of us which supported him and looked forward to interesting and promising work on social change. This is not only bad because it is not truth seeking, but takes up space for deep analysis of social change.

Ozden has instincts for managing appearance and navigating social movements. His attempts to position himself in "meta" EA or meta animal welfare is problematic.

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JamesÖz 🔸22
3
0

*sigh*

This comment is pretty disheartening to see. A lot of this is inaccurate, but I'll only reply to a few key things as I'm not sure this will be the healthiest or best use of my time:

  1. I'm not sure why you think Social Change Lab is "just a website". We're an org with 3 employees (2 of which started today hence not on the website yet) but we're also a registered non-profit in the UK via Companies house.
  2. The point about me not being an EA is particularly bizarre, given that I literally just wrote a piece on my personal blog defending EA. 
  3. Producing extremely long articles...yes that is culmination of various research projects! We also have short pieces, and pretty clear summaries. Would you rather we take donations and not do any work? Other orgs produce long reports, so not sure why ours are so much worse!
  4. The other claims are mainly ad-hominems about my supposed bad intentions, so I'll leave those be. For those that know me, or have interacted with me in various ways, I'm sure it's pretty clear that "earning great status and power" etc is not my main goal.

FWIW there's a reason I left doing social movement organising - it's because I was sceptical of it's effectiveness! If I was so sold it was the right thing to do, I would be trying to get funding for that, rather than funding for research to figure out if it's actually overall helpful or harmful.

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pseudonym14
5
0

I think you need to provide a lot more substance behind the claims you've made here.

If you think the problem is the quality of research, my suggestion is to give James some feedback, or to publish some substantive pushbacks of his work.

If you think his intentions are in question, then I'd appreciate documentation of this or at least some indication of the strength of evidence you have but can't share so third parties know this isn't just some vibe you're getting.

I didn't downvote, but if someone thought your claims were far too strong for the evidence provided and thought it represented a degradation of epistemic norms on the forum, or was unnecessarily unkind, it could be a good enough reason for a downvote. (At time of writing it has -4 karma over 4 votes, but +1 agreement vote over 3 votes)

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Madhav Malhotra2
0
0

Update: the Double Up Drive donation matching is no longer available. 

Donations to Animal Charity Evalutators, Hellen Keller International, and StrongMinds are still being matched. 

For Canadian donors, donations to GiveDirectly are being matched to at least 50%.

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Madhav Malhotra1
0
0

Thank you for arranging this list!

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