All of AndyMorgan's Comments + Replies

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.

1
sapphire
1y
Can you make the case for AMAT?

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)

1
Zane Oberholzer
2y
So the project is not looking to target the genes that code for egg-laying. We are testing regulatory sequences for their ability to selectively suppress the expression of the gene DMRT1 in gonadal tissue, resulting in the development of ovaries instead of testes. In other words, we are causing male-to-female sex reversal by targeting a single gene: DMRT1. There is the possibility, however, that a gene on the W chromosome either promotes ovary development or ovulation. We do not know this for certain. The genetics of eggshell colour hasn't fully been elucidated. It involves several pigments and enzymes but the genes encoding them haven't been functionally tested and it's still uncertain how the pigments are synthesized, transported etc. So I think this approach would be very cumbersome and challenging. But I do agree, pursing a more straightforward solution will have the greatest chances of success.

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?

2
Davidmanheim
2y
Not that I'm aware of, and it definitely still seems useful. (And the results are probably roughly applicable to other domains like AI policy.)

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.

2
Aaron Gertler
3y
I'd be extremely interested in this, and it's the highest-karma comment on this thread at the moment!

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.

1
freedomandutility
3y
I'm not comfortable sharing an excerpt publicly on the forum since it could compromise my anonymity, but I'm happy to send it to anyone who's interested over the forum's messaging function.

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.

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.

0
mbennedsen
8y
Dear Andy, Thank you very much for your comment. That sounds like a pretty cool project! I will definitely be in touch (when I get a look at the above suggestions and get my own head sorted out). Cheers!
1
Sanjay
8y
Hi Andy, would be great to get in touch with you about what you have in mind - there may be scope for collaboration with SoGive too.
0
kbog
8y
There are lots of spammers on this forum, you may want to avoid posting your email

Oops, totally retracted my whole comment haha.

Will do, Sam! :)

0
Gleb_T
8y
Well, I'll reply to this since you retracted the comment. I think a Facebook plugin would be a very neat feature! Some way of gamifying and displaying donations would appeal to a certain segment of donors who want to be open about their donations and start conversations with others.

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)

\Hey everyone,

My recent accomplishment is that I've 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 b... (read more)

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2
SamDeere
8y
Hey Andy, I'm currently working on something very similar as an upgrade to Giving What We Can's My Giving dashboard. Did you want to shoot me an email at sam.deere@givingwhatwecan.org to discuss — either as an opportunity to collaborate or to work out if there's significant overlap? Sam

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

1
kbog
8y
It will never work, you have your head in the clouds.