All of arrowind's Comments + Replies

I wouldn't assume that the people making large donations to GiveWell charities or TLYCS' members are EAs are dedicated EAs. Equally I wouldn't say there are tens of thousands of people very interested in EA on the basis of unique website views (do the figures you gave refer to visits or visitors?)

Neat... so anyone can 'join' .impact by getting involved in EA work and communicating about it with other EA's in the .impact slack?

there's thousands of dedicated EAs, and tens of thousands of people very interested in it.

What are you basing these estimates on? I'd be interested to find out what the best estimates of them that we have are.

How specifically would you try to reach secular people? Eg would you recommend EA's try to get articles into major secular websites and magazines?

What is the ".impact slack" and how do you join it?

I heard TLYCS might be making one, and they seem uniquely well placed to doing so.

I thought EAs were mostly consequentialists

I think the survey of EAs from the start of the year picked up a few hundred non-consequentialists. It had a high %age of consequentialists, but emphasized this figure shouldn't be taken as covering all EAs out there.

Any chance of a breakdown? What were the Vox and slatestarcodex articles?

Do EA's generally think we have an obligation to take the action which will do the 'most' good?

Isn't that a common distinction among philosophers? I recall that there's a technical name for it.

Welcome Allison, it sounds useful to have someone with such relevant experience volunteering!

Have you thought of updating that? I remember, or think I remember, you doing a version for individuals which I found especially interesting, which could perhaps be rolled into one periodically updated page (updateable by anyone?) rather than a series of blog posts.

I don't have any good suggestions in particular, so maybe donation-announcement threads would work. Can you think of any possible alternatives?

Again this is just a list of CEA organizations and a pitch for continually growing funding. But I'll go with that and ask you to expand on the track record: what are the best examples of someone trying to make the strongest case for and strongest case against it? When I've heard people make the case against, it's that people counselled (at least in the northeast megalopolis and London) have been EA's before.

Looking at Charity Science, they do talk about spreading the word about evidence-based charities but reading between the lines they appear to be quite different from movement building/GWWC in that they focus on fundraising, with 'spreading the word' perhaps partly a more acceptable face to present to the fundraised-from. And I couldn't quickly see any references to the effective altruism movement on their website, so I don't think they'd be a good choice for someone following your argument for the absolute priority of movement-building.

OK I'll own up. I downvoted in a blip of initial irritation that you hadn't answered my question, just talking more about CEA, making it look like your argument for funding movement-building might (to be direct) be primarily motivated by self-interest as one of GWWC's salaried Directors. I've now retracted the downvote given I've clarified with this comment though it would still be good to see the argument applied to funding things other than further growing CEA.

Yes I think the claim is that on the current margin and point in time movement building is under-resourced.

Do you think this applies to anything or anyone besides CEA and the people involved in it?

One good outcome would be if people who sold one certificate were incentivised to do some more good to get another. These could well be the people with the strongest incentive, as they'll be most convinced they have a chance of selling a certificate for future impact. However do you think they'll be enough funding in the future to allow for this?

Does that article deserve the title you gave it? It only would if the movie were presenting itself as a credible economic scenario, but its more like Swiftian satire.

This sounds like the movie In Time: "In a future where time is literally money, and aging stops at 25, the only way to stay alive is to earn, steal, or inherit more time. Will Salas lives life a minute at a time, until a windfall of time gives him access to the world of the wealthy, where he teams up with a beautiful young heiress to destroy the corrupt system."

It'd be an interesting experiment to see how much this raised.

The biases which Peter Hurford discusses in his classic post Why I'm skeptical about unproven causes (and you should be too) seem to be relevant here.

Thanks for the reply. That's interesting that there was an even split, though an unrepresentative response is as you say an issue. That could cut either way though as as someone said in reply to Jess, members may feel uncomfortable disagreeing with a proposal. Unless you press a lot of members for answers, including ones who aren't very into the online community, it's hard to tell what they're comfortable with as a whole.

I would feel somewhat better if the branding/vision/mission kept a focus on the case for giving some of our money to help those in extreme poverty. I may send an email about having a Skype, or at least an email exchange.

OK that's reassuring to hear, I think my impression that this was going to happen regardless came from this being reposted here without much discussion of all these negatives. I certainly appreciate the effort to make sure that members are happy with this.

I remember that GWWC management asked us this in the pledgers' Facebook group, and that a lot of us expressed unhappiness about it, saying that it'd be a big rebranding, change the organisation from the one they joined, be unproductively vague, and we'd "perceive it as a big loss", etc. So I'm a bit surprised and disappointed to see the apparent determination to push this through regardless of our wishes. (I apologise if I'm wrong to perceive this, and there's a chance that GWWC will stay focused on the global poor.)

Update: spotted this featured in the sidebar of the https://www.facebook.com/groups/EffectiveAnimalActivism/ making it a good go-to place for animal welfare donors for sure.

Impressive, how did you raise that sort of sum?

Is the idea that buying is significantly more cost-effective than renting, so this'll let you donate more in the future? I believe whether thats true depends on which property market you're in.

(derail on voting)

Out of interest, where have you ended up giving so far?

That would be great, but I feel as if a thread isn't the best venue for it - it would get samey, and people would feel inhibited by the bragginess of it.

Yes, being able to say "I'm part of a group who's pledged to give 10% of their money to global poverty charities" is really clear, which makes it more approachable to say - partly because you don't have to get into a complex explanation. 10% is a clear total similar to tithing, and the concept of and case for giving to global poverty charities is pretty well known.