All of Andy Morgan 🔸's Comments + Replies

Thanks for putting some numbers to this, its really useful. I bought a couple of 3M full face respirators (3M 6800) second-hand a couple of years ago for the same reasons you cite. I think I might also buy some 3M half-face mask for my other family members like you recommend. 

Great minds think alike! That's a great list of resources you've made. We should definitely look at ways to combine our efforts. I'll send you and Shrestha an email now.

Thanks for the post, Noah. I'm really glad to see this preliminary work being done. 

You should reach out to @MikhailSamin, of the AI Governance and Safety Institute, if you haven't already. I think he is doing something similar at the moment: https://manifund.org/projects/testing-and-spreading-messages-to-reduce-ai-x-risk

This is a great post and I've just signed up to your newsletter. Thanks, Garrison.

I'm in New Zealand and wrote a letter as well.

In the dis-spirit of this article I'm going to take the opposite tack and I'm going to explore nagging doubts that I have about this line of argument.

To be honest, I'm starting to get more and more sceptical/annoyed about this behaviour (for want of a better word) in the effective altruism community. I'm certainly not the first to voice these concerns, with both Matthew Yglesias and Scott Alexander noting how weird it is (if someone tells you that your level of seeking criticism gives off weird BDSM vibes, you've probably gone too far).

Am I all in favour o... (read more)

Thanks for this, Lizka. A great summary and a great reminder.

This is great to see and the backgrounds of your team members look impressive. I really hope someone will step in to fund this.

The way I see it the ‘woke takeover’ is really just movements growing up and learning to regulate some of their sharper edges in exchange for more social acceptance and political power.

I don't agree with this part of the comment, but am aware that you may not have the particular context that may be informing Geoffrey's view (I say may because I don't want to claim to speak for Geoffrey). 

These two podcasts, one by Ezra Klein with Michelle Goldberg and one by the NY Times, point to the impact of what is roughly referred to in these podcasts as "identit... (read more)

Yeah, I strongly agree with this and wouldn't continue to donate to the EA fund I currently donate to if it became "more democratic" rather than being directed by its vetted expert grantmakers. I'd be more than happy if a community-controlled fund was created, though.

To lend further support to the point that this post and your comment makes, making grantmaking "more democratic" through involving a group of concerned EAs seems analogous to making community housing decisions "more democratic" through community hall meetings. Those who attend community hall m... (read more)

I wish I had of written down my reasoning because I can't remember haha. I'll have a search around to see why I thought they were good to invest in and get back to you.

In terms of TSM, AMSL and AMAT, I'm investing in them at a 2:2:1 ratio.

Thanks for the post, sapphire. I'd also really like if EA had more of a 'taking care of each other' vibe (I was envious when hearing about early discussion on the LessWrong forum about Bitcoin and wish there was something similar in EA). I'll definitely be following you on Twitter.

On semiconductor stocks I've also gone for Applied Materials (AMAT), as well as TSM, AMSL, Google and SOXX.

My worry is that you're probably trying to identify then add/turn-on too much (i.e. all of the genes that code for egg laying).

I'm sure its probably not straightforward to change shell colour, which would be the best method of identification of chick sex (maybe shell development is determined by the hen rather than the embryo?), but there's probably still a couple of additions you could make to the Z and W chromosomes to ultimately achieve the same outcome. And a couple of additions would likely be at least an order of magnitude easier than identifying th... (read more)

This is really great to see and just wanted to quickly say that the website looks fantastic. Great design.

Comprehensive archive of career routes of people currently at the top of the biosecurity industry (mainly for useful stats gathering eg how many degrees on average does each person have, what age did they get to the position they currently hold). 

Is anybody doing this project?

Sweet, will do!

I work as a senior policy analyst in the New Zealand government, specifically in the area of genetic modification policy.  I can talk about how I got the job, and why I think I excel at it, despite not having a background in science, as well as what the work is like day-to-day.

Hi freedomandutility, I'd really like to hear more about this if you'd be happy to expand on it a bit and perhaps give examples etc. 

I tend to lose sight/forget the greater 'why' for why I'm pursuing certain things.

If 'Coordination for EA researchers' is considered by enough people to be a worthwhile project to undertake, I'd be interested in working on that (in a project design capacity).

And on a related note, I think combining this project with others like the 'EA expertise board' or 'Build a platform to match projects with people who can do them' would enable the platform to reach a critical mass of active users, making it really worthwhile for the community.

If the EA forum weren't (as far as I can tell) just filled with EAs, I'd agree.

I don't think we should necessarily be worried that, say, some journalist is reading this forum (which is what I take your comment to mean), so much that we should be worried that posts like this could potentially turn off people that are currently EAs or are considering becoming more involved in EA. Speaking personally, the suggestions floated in this post seemed a little dishonest to me.

Yeah, I agree with this.

Also, as a side note, I'd like to donate to MIRI in future but I'm currently based in Australia.

Thanks for the heads-up kbog, just changed my original comment.

Hey Mikkel,

Thanks for the post. This looks really interesting. I'm going to be making something similar in the next few weeks (an Angular2 web app with a simple RESTful API that tracks personal donation history), just as a personal project, so there could a bit of overlap and I'd love to contribute to the project if there's support for it. If you'd like, just flick me a message and we can talk some more.

Andy.

Oops, totally retracted my whole comment haha.

Will do, Sam! :)

Hey everyone,

So, I've recently completed building an API to anonymously record donations made to charities, with the intention of allowing organisations like Giving What We Can and EAHub to automatically update the donation records of their members and to measure their impact (I figured there must be an easier way than individuals manually entering their donations).

At the moment I'm going to start working on integrating it with those organisations, and charities that are the most popular with effective altruists, but I'd also really be interested to hear a... (read more)

Yeah, I really hope someone breathes some life into this issue.