All of Brendon_Wong's Comments + Replies

I had a great chat with Quinn who shared some excellent insights about the space! I'm continuing active work on Cosmic, although it'll probably be at least several months before the alpha is ready, and longer for community features to arrive. We're excited by lots of use cases. Since you run a directory project, one relevant use case is creating organized, interoperable, and collectively updated collections of structured community knowledge, like all of the EA orgs, projects, etc. in existence.

Seems like both of you are working on similar things to what I'm working on at Cosmic and with a few other projects, will send some DMs!

Thanks Yonatan! Perhaps I should have made it clear in my comment, but I have already performed or am in the process of performing these steps, and am aware of this associated validation toolkit (which is one of many possible toolkits to follow when validating an idea) in my roles as an entrepreneur and product manager.

A few other examples in addition to the ones I listed are the Pineapple Operations talent directory and the EA Mental Health directory. I believe that going to publishers first, rather than users, is one way to overcome the network effects, ... (read more)

I believe that the users of this idea have repeatedly popped up, e.g. the many lists of everything that people spend many hours creating (coaches, AI safety organizations, etc.). The issue seems to be that the current tools to manage these things are not adequate. For example, all of these lists are not in a universally discoverable place so it's difficult for people to find. They are either uneditable, or editable by anyone, and both setups are not helpful. If it's uneditable, the content cannot easily be kept up-to-date, and if anyone can edit it, this i... (read more)

Speaking for the US:

My understanding is that books and payroll/finance can in fact be outsourced, and this is common practice. In the US, there are charitable accounting services (like Jitasa) that do all books and file most/all required financial filings for charities (this still requires some work on the charity’s end). There are PEOs (like JustWorks and Insperity) that in some cases run all of HR (and are legally responsible for it). To my understanding PEOs can be used with charitable organizations.

I think there may be some efficiency gains from centra... (read more)

I agree! As one example, there are large opportunity costs that arise from how savings are being managed: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/vuG9x6PNemhCzaMZb/how-you-can-counterfactually-send-millions-of-dollars-to-ea

I'd posit that non-technical entrepreneurship can also be a great way to learn operations, especially at a startup that is operating in some formal capacity (at minimum, is incorporated). A lot of the responsibilities perfectly overlap with operations; you start doing everything from filing corporate taxes, to setting up task management systems to track what everyone should be doing, to getting an ATS operational.

In addition to the four listed areas of mindset & interest, multitasking & detail orientation, learning quickly & thinking in particu... (read more)

Your impression of the default framing aligns with what I've heard from folks! In addition to the benefits of changing humanity's trajectory, there's also an argument that we should pursue systems change for the factors that are driving existential risk in the first place, in addition to addressing it from a research-focused angle. That's the argument of this article on meta existential risk!

Hi Inga, thanks for commenting!

First: I like the framework and the fact that you help to make impact vesting a viable option for the EA space. It indeed might open more opportunities for entering a multitude of markets and funding. Having a streamlined standard EA-aligned framework for this in the Global Health and Wellbeing Space could make the investment process more attractive (smooth), more efficient (options clearer and better comparable), and lead to better decisions (if the background analysis is high-quality). 

Thanks! I personally think that i... (read more)

I believe that governance is a technology. Thus, while there may be no "perfect" governance system, humanity's knowledge on it will improve greatly over time. That will improve the default governance models used (right now, representative democracy is a very common default with company shareholders, most developed countries, etc.) as well as humanity's ability to customize governance models to particular situation. Since representative democracy is so commonplace, I think making default models better will produce most of the benefit, rather than the adapti... (read more)

It's so cool seeing articles that align with what I've been wanting to see for years! Holden also recently wrote about governance but with a more external-to-EA lens (for example, to responsibly govern AI companies) rather than using better governance to solve issues in EA causes and within EA itself.

This work is very aligned with what Roote is working on (one of the organizations I help run) and our work on meta existential risk (although we don't explicitly name collective intelligence as a potential part of the solution for this problem). We think that ... (read more)

Antigravity Investments Public Impact Log

This is an interim post sharing examples of Antigravity Investments' impact over the years. Organizations that have not explicitly consented to being named have had their details anonymized (we only asked CEA due to time constraints).

August 2022: One example of my ongoing correspondence with the EA operations team member is that I identified that an AI research organization with $6 million in cash could access yields of ~2.5% instead of 0% at their existing bank, which would generate another $150,000 for the organiz... (read more)

This is a great article! Agree that the EA space doesn't have well-developed models for this. The two major organizations I am founding, Better and Roote, are both highly involved in this space.

Better is working on identifying, verifying, and distributing high-impact “informational interventions" for people and organizations, which corresponds to the theory of change of your BOTEC of people having better lives and organizations having higher effectiveness if they have access to optimal information. We're also developing knowledge management/collective inte... (read more)

My Journey in Effective Altruism

My journey in effective altruism started after I stumbled across The High Impact Network (THINK) online in 2012. At the time, I was 14 and a first-year in high school. I reached out to THINK and interned at its parent organization for a week in summer 2013 and was invited to the very first EA Summit that summer. Due to a twist of fate, I had an international trip planned and couldn’t attend, which in retrospect might’ve resulted in my experience in EA going in a very different direction. After the summit, I was very shy and ... (read more)

There is a section in the article that says:

Submissions must be posted or submitted no later than 11:59 pm BST on September 1st, and we’ll announce winners by the end of September.

(I nearly missed this as well)

Sjir, you may be interested in Roote's work on meta existential risk!

Seeing this late, but this is a wonderful idea! Will Roderick and I worked on "GiveWell for Impact Investing" a while ago and published this research on the EA Forum. We ultimately pursued other professional priorities, but we continue to think the space is very promising, stay involved, and may reenter it in the future.

I think that’s a good idea to reduce groupthink! Also, I think it can be helpful to uncover if specific individuals and sub-groups think a proposal is promising based on their estimates, since rarely will an entire group view something similarly. This could bring individuals together to further discuss and potentially support/execute the idea.

I think this is an excellent idea and one that I’ve wanted to exist for quite a few years now! My interest in this area stems from wanting to surface compelling strategies and projects that don’t receive sufficient attention because they’re not currently “trending” in the movement. By explicitly laying out theories of change and crowdsourcing estimates for each part of those theories of change, this makes it much easier for people to to understand proposals, identify how various people and groups in the community think about a proposal, and compare the ex... (read more)

I've been interested in the area of improving governance for a long time! On a societal level, there are some organizations and efforts in the space like One Project and RadicalXChange. Unfortunately I'm not aware of research that evaluates the efficacy of various governance models. I've been thinking about doing that for quite a few years. Doing that research is a high priority on Roote's backlog. We haven't tried getting funding for it yet, but it is somewhat related to our funded Civic Abundance and Web3 & Society initiatives. For example, for Web3 ... (read more)

Sweet! So originally I was trying a non-CFTC mechanism to launch a real-money prediction market, but then Kalshi got CFTC approval, and then it felt less impactful to launch a second real-money market whether via the CFTC or via other methods I was considering. Although Kalshi might not be launching markets around social impact questions so there’s probably still a social impact opportunity there.

Also, I looked into the costs and complexity, and it seemed pretty high. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to commit to doing it and ended up deciding on working on other projects that also seemed impactful like “GiveWell for Impact Investing.”

This is about intangible characteristics that seem really important in a grantee. 

To give intuition, I guess one analogy is hiring. You wouldn't hire someone off a LinkedIn profile, there's just so much "latent" or unknown information and fit that matters. To solve this problem, people often have pretty deep networks and do reference checks on people.

This is important because if you went in big for another CSET, or something that had to start in the millions, you better know the people, the space super well. 

I think this means you need to communi

I agree! I was trying to highlight that because we're not sure that centralized funding is better or not, it would be a high priority to test other mechanisms, especially if there's reason to believe other mechanisms could result in significantly different outcomes.

I recall reading that top VC's are able to outperform the startup investing market, although it may have a causal relationship going the other way around.

Yep, there's definitely return persistence with top VCs, and the last time I checked I recall there was uncertainty around whether that was due to enhanced deal flow or actual better judgement.

That being said, the very fact that superforecasters are able to outperform prediction markets should signal that there are (small groups of) people able to outperform the average, isn't it?

I think that just taking ... (read more)

There's evidence to suggest that decentralized decision making can outperform centralized decision making; for example with prediction markets and crowdsourcing. I think it's problematic in general to assume that centralized thinking and institutions are better than decentralized thinking and institutions, especially if that reasoning is based on the status quo. I was asking this series of questions because by wording that centralized funding was a "hypothesis," I thought you would support testing other hypotheses by default.

Cool, I considered a project in this space before in 2020! You mention "Prediction markets can allow traders to legally put in real money." Are you aware that the CFTC has permitted Kalshi to operate a real-money prediction market? I ended up considering launching a second version of Kalshi for real-money forecasting for impactful areas (including various paths to either go through the CFTC or bypas it with various mechanisms), so people would have a direct financial incentive to participate. This mechanism is one of several I considered if someone wanted ... (read more)

Isn't there a very considerably potential opportunity cost by not trying out funding systems that could vastly outperform the current funding system?

I agree with the issues related to centralized grantmaking flagged by this article! I wrote a bit about this back in 2018. To my understanding, EA has not been trying forms of decentralized/collective thinking, including decentralized grantmaking. I think that this is definitely a very promising area of inquiry worthy of further research and experimentation.

One example of the blind spots and differences in theories of change you mention is reflected in the results of the Future Fund's Project Ideas Competition. Highly upvoted ideas like "Investment strateg... (read more)

I see, just pointing out a specific example for readers! You mention the "hypothesis that relatively centralised funding is indeed best shouldn't be discarded prematurely." Do you think it's concerning that EA hasn't (to my understanding) tried decentralized funding at any scale?

Do you have any evidence for this? There's definitely evidence to suggest that decentralized decision making can outperform centralized decision making; for example, prediction markets and crowdsourcing. I think it's dangerous to automatically assume that all centralized thinking and institutions are better than decentralized thinking and institutions.

Separate from any individual grant, a small number of grant makers have unity and serve critical coordination purposes, especially in design of EA and meta projects, but in other areas as well.

There are ways to design centralized, yet decentralized grantmaking programs. For example, regranting programs that are subject to restrictions, like not funding projects that some threshold of grantmakers/other inputs consider harmful.

Can you specify what "in design of EA and meta projects" means?

Most of the hardest decisions in grant making require common culture a

While it's definitely a potential issue, I don't think it's a guaranteed issue. For example, with a more distributed grantmaking system, grantmakers could agree to not fund projects that have consensus around potential harms, but fund projects that align with their specific worldviews that other funders may not be interested in funding but do not believe have significant downside risks. That structure was part of the initial design intent of the first EA Angel Group (not to be confused with the EA Angel Group that is currently operating).

I haven't used Polis before, but from looking at the report, I believe that Groups A and B (I don't seem to see C) are automatically generated based on people with similar sentiments (voting similarly on groups of statements). It seems like Group A unconcerned about money and thinks more of it is good (for example, only 31% agree with "It's not that more money is bad, but is a bit unnerving that there seems to be so much more of it" compared with 88% in group B), and Group B is concerned about money, which includes everything from a concern around a small ... (read more)

I was going to write a similar comment for researching and promoting well-being and well-doing improvements for EAs as well as the general public! Since this already exists in similar form as a comment, strong upvoting instead.

Relevant articles include Ben Williamson’s project (https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/i2Q3DTsQq9THhFEgR/introducing-effective-self-help) and Dynomight’s article on “Effective Selfishness” (https://dynomight.net/effective-selfishness/). I also have a forthcoming article on this.

Multiple project ideas that have been submitted a... (read more)

Out of curiosity, what is the inclusion criteria for frontpage posts? Ignoring the broader global well-being considerations, if this is a "meta intervention" to increase the well-being/effectiveness of EAs, would that be "relevant to doing good effectively" which is the stated description for frontpage posts?

These are great points! FYI, jh is Jonathan Harris who runs TPP.

I'll preface my response by saying that I'm not an expert in this area; Will and I mostly focused on the impact investing side of things, and Hauke or someone on the Mind Ease team could likely provide a better response.

My understanding is that most popular apps (e.g., Headspace, Calm) offer free versions to people [including people in low- and middle-income countries]. I suppose MindEase would have an edge if it offers the full (premium) version for free, but it still seems quite difficult to

Hi Robert, Foster's analysis currently isn't publicly available, but more details from Foster's analysis are available in TPP's full report on Mind Ease. To my knowledge, it was not stronger evidence that resulted in a lower efficacy estimate from Foster's research, but skepticism of the longer-term persistence of effects from anxiety reduction methods as well as analyzing the Mind Ease app as it is in the present—not incorporating the potential emergence of stronger evidence of the app's efficacy, as well as future work on the app. As one would expect, Mi... (read more)

Thanks Sam! Great to hear this could be a valuable framework through which to view Dozy's impact from a philanthropic and investment perspective.

Hi Akash! Yep, I think Mind Ease's ability to attract users is certainly an important factor! I think of it as Mind Ease's counterfactual ability to get users relative to other apps (for example, since Mind Ease is impact-driven, they could offer the app for free to people living in low-income countries which profit-driven competitors are not incentivized to do) as well as Mind Ease's counterfactual impact on users compared to a substitute anxiety reduction app (for example, data in the cost-effectiveness analysis section of Hauke's report pointing Mind Ea... (read more)

Thanks for commenting! Our point is not only that VC markets are inefficient and thus the EMH may not apply, but also that the EMH is only a statement on the pricing of assets, and does not in fact imply that all available assets will be funded. Thus, it is possible for investments that offer market-rate returns to go unfunded and for the EMH to still hold.

Interestingly, in VC, investors and founders can actually negotiate the pricing for an investment round. Thus, it may be possible for most/all startups to produce market-rate returns if the valuation is ... (read more)

Thanks Hauke! Yep, at https://derisked.org/.

There's also James Norris at https://www.upgradable.org/.

This is very exciting! Great to see the EA Infrastructure Fund is funding work in this space. I've been working on a similar venture called Better (your project is most analogous to our research division). Feel free to reach out if you'd like to hear about my experiences or discuss collaboration!

It would be interesting to see which areas of life/well-being you will evaluate. We have a breakdown on our website! And also your prioritization method. We've created one which we're calling ABCD—audience, (net) benefits, certainty, and difficulty—which involves e... (read more)

I completely agree, I've thought this ever since I joined the EA movement in 2013, and think this space (among others) is exceptionally neglected.

Some public examples of work I've done in this space include thinking about how to improve funder, project, and volunteer/team coordination as well as providing specialized services to the community. Given that this is a neglected area with little time and money available for people to make progress on it, I think it's no surprise that the space has "a large 'graveyard' of untried proposals or projects." I think ... (read more)

I didn't know this was possible because the bio doesn't display when you are logged in and viewing your profile page, so perhaps displaying the bio itself with a button to edit it would be more obvious to users.

If the funds are disbursed directly from the charity on project expenses (a charitable purpose), rather than to the person for their general use (not a charitable purpose), it is possible to avoid taxes. For example, EA charities hiring personal assistants for academics.

It could even be Altruistic Living and Building - Altruistic Labs! I feel like that name embodies what the organization does within it (enabling people to test various generally early-stage approaches to altruism) which would be a good idea whether the proposed name is an acronym or not.

Looking at similar organizations inside and outside EA (like Berkeley REACH) for naming inspiration also seems like a good idea.