All of AlasdairGives's Comments + Replies

I find some of the comments posted here a bit unhelpful from a communications point of view. Frankly they read like prepared/PR statements.(lots of “excited” people who also happen to be employed/connected to CEA ) It would be helpful if people could clarify if they are posting in a professional or personal capacity going forward.

My basic takeaway from all of this is not who is right/wrong so much as that EA professional organisations should act more like professional organisations. While it may be temporarily less enjoyable I would expect overall the organisations with things like HR professionals, safeguarding policies, regular working hours, offices in normal cities and work/life boundaries to be significantly more effective contributors to EA

I’m less interested in “debating whether a person in a villa in a tropical paradise got a vegan burger delivered fast enough” or “whether ... (read more)

Apologies for the mistake!

I think this is exciting - what I would like to see at this stage is a board or advisory group with members both with predominately EA and predominately Muslim views who can review your activities and give you advice from both perspectives. I’m sure you’ve considered that but it seems like the missing bit in terms of feedback and development at the moment.

It would be a longer piece of work to engage with the model here, intuitively I find the estimate surprising

However I'd just say that the fact you've undertaken this process at all is valuable, and I think both the campaign and model will be good proto-examples for the future of how EA has tried to engage with policy change work. 

I thought this was a really interesting post, thanks! Did you have a full time job while working on your pilot project? If so I'd be interested to know how you navigated your time and any tips you have on that

This is a good article. I don't think the point on farm animal welfare can possibly be correct though. There are many animal welfare charities and organisations (as well as many commercial players) that while they don't focus on farm animals exclusively or with the same mindset, surely dominate the "farm animal welfare" space. 

I'd also be interested in this!

I just mean this could have been two posts - one about the paper and one about the experience of publishing the paper. Both would be very valuable.

I think it is disappointing that so many comments are focusing on arguing with the paper rather than discussing the challenges outlined in the post. From a very quick reading I don't find any of the comments here unreasonable but I do find them to be talking about a different topic. It would be better if we could separate out the discussion of "red teaming" EA from the discussion of this particular paper

Good post Sanjay, though I think a better title would be "Why SoGive is not yet  updating charity ratings after malaria vaccine news" though. 

 I don't disagree with any of the points you've made - and there are certainly large uncertainties around this, but  there is at least a significant possibility that when some uncertainties are resolved this could  displace nets in terms of cost-effectiveness.  So its certainly a very promising development and even if we don't change our immediate funding priorities, we need to think about how they might change in the future.

I think this is potentially very significant news - i’m hoping to write a more detailed post once I’ve looked into it more but a previous 35% effective vaccine was found to be only marginally less cost effective than LLIN nets in preventing malaria spread - a 75% effective (and cheap!) vaccine has at least the potential to shoot to the top of our list of most effective global health and poverty interventions, to the extent that we may want to think about pooling EA funds towards the project (perhaps creating a special EA malaria vaccination fund)

Finally the mystery of how CEEALAR got named is solved :D

Minor typo - The DOI for Evaluating use cases for human challenge trials in accelerating SARS-CoV-2 vaccine development. Clinical Infectious Diseases  has a trailing e in the url which causes the link to fail

I’ve vaguely thought about this but I’m not a significant enough donor that I’m going to register in people’s calculations, and if I’m donating primarily through third party funds then I’m already quite disconnected. (I.e my money isn't arriving at the charity in December/Feb in any case). I think I prefer the "end of the year" feeling and communal discussions like this to improve my donation habits.

"Some donors were surprised by the Fund’s large number of AI risk-focused grants. While the Fund managers are in favor of these grants, we want to make sure that donors are aware of the work they are supporting. As a result, we changed the EA Funds donation interface such that donors have to opt into supporting their chosen Funds. (Previously, the website suggested a default allocation for each Fund.) EA Funds also plans to offer a donation option focused on climate change for interested donors."

This is an extremely positive change and corrects what I have previously considered to be a dark pattern on the EA funds website for a long time. Thanks for implementing it.

that sounds fantastic. I'd love to read the draft once it is circulated for feedback

Thanks - I’ve read the summaries of this but hadn’t twigged it was developed into a full paper

Thanks! The top paper seems very relevant in particular.

I think this is a great post and makes a really important point. Thanks for posting

Thanks, i do think we have a basic disagreement here about design patterns but i appreciate you taking the time to defend and explain your choices.

I don't feel either of these reply's address my points very well (as a member who signed the pledge prior to 2014).

As far as I can tell you accept the first point I made and don't address it. Ok, me. I think the funds are fine you just haven't done the work of showing they are better than other donation routes at all.

In regards to the second point you get very fixated on the default slider setting being representative of the most engaged members of the community. I don't want yet more peer pressure to donate to what the most engaged members of think.(And

I would like to see a prize or incentive for the best comment on an article in the last month. Has that been tried before? Looking at the number of articles now submitted, I think the forum is doing well on articles. However, the comments and engagement with each submission is still often low. The winning 3 articles this month got only 9-2-2 comments respectively. If they are exemplary of the community and platform (which after a quick browse I have no reason to doubt) surely it would be worth encouraging a few more comments and a bit more discussion?

One complexity here may be in how members are treating taxation and tax deductibility in relation to their donations. "income" in your sample is self-reported and it is presumably pre-tax income. However, per GWWC: "While we have defined income as pre-tax in the past, after speaking with members in a variety of situations we believe there should be some flexibility here.

• If you expect to receive a tax deduction for your donation, we recommend basing your giving on your pre-tax income.
• If you expect to get little or no tax deduction, for exam

The title of this post is “Does EA need an underlying philosophy? Could Sentientism be that philosophy?” I would consider both of those points to betray a lack of basic understanding of effective altruism. There are lots of good resources elsewhere- perhaps it would be good to have a basic faq article / wiki that could be Linked in such cases?

i've deleted the post because I would like to make one on this issue with greater subtlety and nuance to do the complex topic of this saga better justice than my rather late night post did - thanks for your comment, I will take it into account.

Apologies I had it in my head that ACE was a CEA project

According to my facebook this topic has had 156 comments on the EA facbook group already. I don't want to repeat or diminish those comments here so what is the purpose of opening a parallel discussion here as this seems like a topic which has attracted a huge amount of EA discussion already?

One thing I am disappointed about is that this has just been announced - there was no public process or call for comment on the advisory council, its role or what criteria should have been used to choose its members - to the extent that happened all of that was in private as far as I can tell. So all of the power in this situation was held by the CEA and people close to you in informal networks. To get wider views you have chosen a team of 4- 3of whom are or have previously been employed by CEA.

To the extent this is about opening CEA to wider views I can't... (read more)

In the original facebook thread I was highly critical of intentional insights, I have not read all the followup here yet, but I would like to note that after that thread the next "thing" I saw from Intentional Insights was this post about EA marketing. I thought that was a highly competent and interesting contribtuion to the EA community. All of the ongoing concerns about II may stand - but there is clearly a few people associated with the org who have valuable contributions to make to the future of the community,

I have about ~2000 edits on wikipedia (alasdairedits) and have created a number of DYK articles (though not for several years). I have been thinking about getting back into wikipedia editing and this might be a good way to do so. I know that paid (i.e PR editing on wikipedia) has become a big issue recently though. I would like to know more about how your work interacts with the COI/NPOV guidelines and how you ensure your articles and offering to pay people remains within that scheme. Have you considered using the on site reward board (I don't know how active that is) which would get less related wikipedians involved

It would be good to get feed

9000 words - http://commons.pacificu.edu/eip/styleguide.html

I don't think it would be unfair to characterise your argument as: "I have a hunch based on my "tacit knowledge", a report written by a consultancy firm a decade ago and my background in a tangentially related field that the conservative party has been working in secret for 9 years on a bill of "economic rights and freedoms" which they are going to suddenly unveil and force through parliament in a few months attached to their public Bill of rights Proposals. This bill is going to cause all sorts of negative effects by making the co... (read more)

I think this is the way to go - but a CC attribtuion license is very different from an assignment of intellectual property (in a good way!) - you will need to provide attribtution on the about page and any subsequent usage of the entry for one thing (the whole point of an attribution licenese is to protect those moral rights!). so you should update your faq to reflect this.

Per above - CEA owns (is assigned) all the intellectual property of any entry. So posting your essay elsewhere without their permission would be a copyright violation.

• Obligatory EAish objection: Where is the $250 coming from? If it is just $250 from the CEA budget that would otherwise have been spent on EA causes that is not much of an additional incentive unless you have very strong opinions about which cause area is most important.

Dean Carlan has a long history of work on charity effectiveness and rigour long pre-dating EA. He has said on twitter that they took a lot of influence and inspiration from EA charity evaluators (esp Givewell). I think the best way of looking at this and much of his other work (for example Innovations for Poverty Action) is that it is EA-aligned organisation but not part of Effective Altruism as a "thing" since it comes from a different community and background and has a narrower focus ("are these charities effective at what they do" v "what overall is the most effective thing we can be doing")

I am surprised the number of people donating via the trust but who are not GWWC members is so high. This 80% seems like a fertile source either of new members or a worrying statistic about the number of people who become aware of EA ideas but do not wish to change their behaviour to the extent of signing the pledge and I am not sure which

Does REG not have any full time employees? I am very impressed in their progress if that is the case as I presumed they did!

I don't know about whether the NY declaration reduces the market by that amount itself. I more see it as an indication of the serious challenges and uncertainties that the DFS market faces in the US.

For example, one DFS operator has ceased US operations in all but 4 states where DFS has explicit state laws allowing it: http://www.legalsportsreport.com/5389/starsdraft-cuts-off-46-states-from-dfs/ (http://www.legalsportsreport.com/category/legal/ which i found on google has a lot more in depth look at the battles going on all across US on this)

It is clearl... (read more)

The analysis of the DFS market seems off to me

1. I don't think the conversion rate is likely to be the same. High earning poker players are to some extent mini-celebrities and seem to have strong image consciousness and network frequently with others. By contrast, high earning DFS players seem to be private people with no public image, working alone or in small teams and with limited contact with wider world. I think marketing to those people would be significantly harder than to poker "stars".
2. The New York declaration is a significant risk fact

I can believe your logo was designed by a professional (i don't like the colour but its kinda cool)! but i was commenting on your clothing not that in isolation. This? http://www.cafepress.com/intentional_merchandise.1650581204 That is someone with no design skills taking that logo and bastardizing it. Writing a slogan in a microsoft clipart font and replacing one letter with a bit of your logo is not a design. you use font choices that professional designers openly mock.

I love minimalist designs, but your designs are not minimalist in any sense of the ... (read more)

Ok, i don't want to be rude but there is no nice way to say this, so please just take it as feedback on this project not you as a person. Your existing merchandise is an ugly mess. My reaction to someone wearing an EA themed shirt of the same aesthetic level and quality would be cringing embarrasment not pride in a community.

EA merch as a tribal/signalling thing is a fine idea - but it needs to be of a much higher quality and design. As a bare minimum it should be printed by a higher quality producer than cafepress (like teespring?) and be designed by a professional designer.

reading again this was the bit i found wierd/creepy - For instance, to address the guilt people experience over their previous giving, to address cached patterns, and help people update their beliefs, it helps to use the CBT tool of reframing by encouraging themselves to distance their current self from their past self, and remember that they did not have this information about EA when they decided on their previous giving, making it ok to choose a new path right now. Another approach I found helpful is to encourage people to think of themselves as being ... (read more)

Too many thoughts all jumbled up, have to try and write more on this but:

1. Everyone is an emotional thinker, EA's have some strategies for avoiding worst pitfalls, but still easy and many do fall into them, and we have weaknesses as well which harm our work.
2. Different strategies needed for between raising profile & funding of highly effective causes and evidence strategies and creating more EA's - and we can do both.
3. Some of these ideas sound good, some sound weird and creepy and like we have all the answers and are concerned with manipulating people