All of Ben Yeoh's Comments + Replies

I advocate using an "Unconference" format such as Open Space twhich would help with this. I mentioned it to CEA previosuly and they use it in some other settings. As do other EA minded conferences I have heard of.

So this re: disabilty is mostly not very EA at all - but at the meta level - it's very interesting on "social movements" - which is basically EA - so interesting on the learnings from the disability rights movement -  cross post: https://www.thendobetter.com/arts/2023/6/5/david-ruebain-disability-protest-movements-law-equality-inclusion-interdependence-podcast

 

David Ruebain is one of the most thoughtful thinkers I know on disability, equality and the law. He is currently a Pro-Vice Chancellor at the University of Sussex with strategic responsibil... (read more)

Honestly, when I speak to friends in the wider disability community, the horror in which the Peter Singer viewpoint is taken (and I accept that the perception *might* be worse than what Singer is – I think – trying to say about his views on personhood and suffering; I’m not entirely sure) and the perception that Singer is a founding philosophical father to the EA movement means that EA is very much tainted by that.  Nathan has picked up on some of this in his comment.

So the empathy point that Nathan makes does overwhelm, and that’s not even before you... (read more)

Hi Ann, we recorded it but because of lots events, he wanted to re-record it and then he decided it would be better if we didn’t go public. So I’m sorry but it’s been kept private for the moment. I’m hoping we might revisit some time. Happy to discuss the issues with you some time if interested. (Sorry for slow reply as well as I haven’t logged in for a while).

Interesting.  Start a new institution and org working on this!

I'd love to hear any lessons learned, and even now good things you think about pods, and things we should avoid.

Ah. In that case, if you'd like the bounty, I think I'd need a little longer explantory write-up whcoh takes into account the carbon cost challenges, and answers some of the questions.. As the above only seems to take into account productivity time while travelling, and not the carbon cost challenge.  Also, I'd have to change for the train etc. so I am not sure I'd have any productivity gains, I'm mostly interested in the emissions cost. 

Thank that's very helpful to know. Thanks for the comment! 

3
NunoSempere
2y
To clarify, the above was meant in response to your 200GBP bounty.

Thanks that's my instinct as well, but if anyone wants to dig into the numbers more deeply would be happy for it.

he does mention this in the report, there's more tail risk at higher temps, and averages can be problematic,  and will see if this comes up. Thanks 

will try and bring this to the conversation,thanks for the thoughts. 

Great question, will try and weave it into the conversation.

Thanks. Tipping points is a good question.

I asked climate Scientist, Zeke Hausfather - who Halstead cites in his work - on this too: 

https://www.thendobetter.com/investing/2021/11/22/zeke-hausfather-state-of-climate-science-energy-systems-post-cop26-tipping-points-tail-risks-podcast

If you are interested.

Thanks!  I will link to a few examples in case of interest:

Larry Temkin with EA critiques: https://www.thendobetter.com/arts/2022/7/24/larry-temkin-transitivity-critiques-of-effective-altruism-international-aid-pluralism-podcast

Leopold Aschenbrenner, x-risk, EA: https://www.thendobetter.com/arts/2021/6/22/leopold-aschenbrenner-on-existential-risk-german-culture-valedictorian-efficiency-podcast

and many other random topics, for EAs, this one with Alex Stapp who thinks about the EA framework with his thinktank, Institute for Progress:

https://www.thendobe... (read more)

Thanks for the link. It is a good summary.

We might try a weekend for another UnConference, but feel free to come for a half day if that suits. 

I'm organising a meet-up. It's not only EA, but EA and EA-curious people come along. It's more about getting curious minded thinkers together. Thought i'd leave it here in short form.

 https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mingle-for-the-curious-tickets-407058341457

These meet-ups are a small experiment in having interesting chats across investing, arts, long-termism, progress, sustainability, life... it's a way of cross-pollinating ideas from arts, investing, sustainabililty, theatre, progress, long-termism....

This is the whole theory of change behind what the UK charity ShareAction do. While they rarely campaign on EA aligned topics (but cf. climate where they do), they have case studies where it can work.   Also, depending on the region/company you do not need much capital to propose a vote (although for some areas you do).    Check out here: https://shareaction.org/

Or, I also podcast with the CEO here: 

https://www.thendobetter.com/investing/2021/7/25/catherine-howarth-on-shareholder-activism-growing-back-better-and-change-makers-podcast

and... (read more)

I think this is a good idea. I feel there might be enough for EA adjacent to Progress Studies for this to be a field. I think Tom Westgarth was interested here too and in London you have a small progress cluster.

OK. That makes sense.  As new-ish to this forum and more EA people, I do not think people outside EA looking in get this impression.

For a counterpoint to much of this:

"avoid unstructured interviews, train your interviewers to do structured interviews"

I suggest reading Tyler Cowen / Daniel Gross's Talent.  They argue structured interviews might be fine for low-skill, standard jobs; but for "creative spark", high impact hires and, or, talent then the meta/challenging/quirky interview - which they talk about is superior.

They argue most of the academic research focused on low skill, standard jobs so not apply to "elite" or any creative spark type of job.

There is much much more - and w... (read more)

3
Joseph Lemien
2y
Thanks for mentioning Tyler Cowen / Daniel Gross's Talent. I'm upvoting this and commenting so that it gets high in the comments and so that there is an increased possibility of readers seeing it. While I haven't yet read the book Talent, it is on my to read list and it seems very relevant. (it is now a few ranks higher up on my to read list as a result of more than one person mentioning it in the comments on this post!) I also want to read it so that I can evaluate their arguments myself and judge how much I should update my opinions on hiring as a result. At face value, I do think that a lot of the research on hiring has been done on roles that are fairly standardized. That makes it hard to apply some of this research if you are hiring one operations manager at a small company, and the nature of the operations manager job is also very fluid. As a more general thought, one of the challenges/frustrations I feel with a lot of social science, and especially a lot of evidence-based management is that there seems to be so much variation depending on context, such as one thing working well for low-skill jobs and another thing working well for more complex jobs. I really wish that there were fewer complicating and confounding factors in this kind of stuff. 🤦‍♂️

Thanks that’s very useful context for me. So, eg, my reading if that many EAs would say art charity does not fall under EA thinking.

But, it would be part of wider charity.

You are saying that EA is not making any claims or efforts in wider charity but more specifically on maximising good.

But does EA think wider charity that does not maximise good eg art charity is therefore a waste or it’s not really in EA’s purpose universe so it’s not really relevant.

3
DavidNash
2y
I think it would be similar to the opinion people would have on the choice of film you choose to see at the cinema or which meal to buy at a restaurant.  I don't see EA as trying to maximise all donations, just maximise the impact of donations set aside for effective giving. And the donation side is just part of the larger set of actions we can take when trying to do good. Julia Wise has a couple of good posts on this topic - Giving Cheerfully and It's Okay to Feed Stray Cats.

I link to John in the orginal post (tho on his Fed counter though similar).  You can probably mitigate some of John's and Hester's (who I also link to) concerns, while still allowing for the data and disclosure part.

 

If you take the steel man version of those arguments the problem is that investors are not doing enough litigation. as

 

"

I. Existing rules already cover material climate risks.

Existing rules require companies to disclose material risks regardless of the source or cause of the risk.

"

They both argue that these disclosures are cover... (read more)

Re: influence of public

Typically, you are correct that individual comments have a low weight. But, I believe the general counts positive/negative are taken into account. Also i) even if there is only a small chance, say 9%, of any one comment have weight - given the cost of a comment is low, it’s still a good return and ii) I do think number of comments does have weight (say, a 79% chance this is true).

 

Re: TCFD

TCFD does not have legal weight (except where governments/regulators decide to use it as such) and is not as globally influential as the SEC..... (read more)

2
Ramiro
4mo
In case you're still interested in the subject: Consultative document - disclosure of climate-related financial risks (bis.org)  

As MaxRa suggest MattLevine has been speaking about this idea from time to time * and so I do think mainstream finance is at least some what aware.  

I feel sure you are aware, but in case not, Ellen Quigley has written about this alot (Cambridge centre for existential risks). (I didn't see her work mentioned as I read your paper, but I read it quite quickly).

eg. https://www.cambridge.org/engage/coe/article-details/5fadc442ad40b800113d6637

... (read more)

Climate regulation. Relevance to EA - if climate is a top 10 existential risk, and if SEC is a form of meta-regulator, then we should be ensuring this data and regulation does come into existence, as it would touch a lot / all the world?

In sustainability world. The SASB-VF-ISSB met and ISSB announced it will be working with GRI. All those acronyms… but essentially it means sustainability standards are progressing and many of the entrenched arguments - for instance between a “double materiality” view point or an “investor-centric” view point might be a litt... (read more)

Open Space Quadratic Voting Polis Citizen Assemblies and learning from Taiwan

 

I believe that 4 adjacent systems of idea generation and decision making, namely: (1) Open Space Technology (2) Quadratic Voting (3) Polis and (4) Citizen Assemblies have the ability to unlock decision making processes that are currently log jammed. 

We have proved use cases led by the work of Audrey Tang (Digital Minister) in Taiwan*, and many previous smaller examples. I judge the chances of success are high (68%) based on the Taiwan experience but chances of implement... (read more)

I was listening/chatting to the British philosopher, Jonathan Wolff on how to value life. We went through some expected value and cost-benefit theory as applied to philosophy and healthcare spending. 


 

We then came across the challenge of potentially incorporating “society preferences”. For instance, in the UK it seems - from surveys and outreach as well as policy practice - that much more money is spent on pre-term babies and also rare disease healthcare spend then woul dbe suggested by the  more “normal” quality adjusted life year (QALY) ca... (read more)