Cool! For context, Malengo is helping students from Uganda attend university in Germany, and it also has a program to support students from French-speaking African countries [link in French]. I'm excited about this program not only for its economic benefits, but also for its potential to enable more people to live in liberal democratic countries, and in the long term, increase support for liberal democracy around the globe.

Maybe EA philanthropists should be invest more conservatively, actually

The pros and cons of unusually high risk tolerance in EA philanthropy have been discussed a lot, e.g. here. One factor that may weigh in favor of higher risk aversion is that nonprofits benefit from a stable stream of donations, rather than one that goes up and down a lot with the general economy. This is for a few reasons:

• Funding stability in a cause area makes it easier for employees to advance their careers because they can count on stable employment. It also makes it easier for nonprofits to hire, retain, and develop talent. This allows both nonprofits and their employees to have greater impact in the long run. Whereas a higher but more volatile stream of funding might not lead to as much impact.
• It becomes more politically difficult to make progress in some causes during a recession. For example, politicians may have lower appetite for farm animal welfare regulations and might even be more willing to repeal existing regulations if they believe the regulations stifle economic growth. This makes it especially important for animal welfare orgs to retain funding.

I just donated $65 to Shrimp Welfare Project :)

Well, if we allow complex numbers, a lottery over all negative utilities would result in a real geometric mean, but for a mixture of positive and negative utilities, we'd get imaginary numbers.

For example, consider lottery $A$ with Pr(-5) = 0.5, Pr(-3) = 0.3, and Pr(-2) = 0.2. Then

$G\left(A\right)=(-5{)}^{0.5}\cdot (-3{)}^{0.3}\cdot (-2{)}^{0.2}$.

The (-1)'s factor out, giving us

$G\left(A\right)=(5^{0.5}\cdot 3^{0.3}\cdot 2^{0.2})\cdot (-1{)}^{0.5+0.3+0.2}=(5^{0.5}\cdot 3^{0.3}\cdot 2^{0.2})\cdot -1$,

which is a negative number.

Now consider lottery $B$ where one of the utilities is positive - e.g. we have Pr(-5) = 0.5, Pr(3) = 0.3, and Pr(-2) = 0.2. Then we'd get

$G\left(B\right)=(-5{)}^{0.5}\cdot 3^{0.3}\cdot (-2{)}^{0.2}$

$=(5^{0.5}\cdot 3^{0.3}\cdot 2^{0.2})\cdot (-1{)}^{0.5+0.2}$

$=(5^{0.5}\cdot 3^{0.3}\cdot 2^{0.2})\cdot (-1{)}^{0.7}$

$=(5^{0.5}\cdot 3^{0.3}\cdot 2^{0.2})\left(\cos \right(0.7\pi )+i\sin (0.7\pi \left)\right)$,

which is an imaginary number. The magnitude is equal to the weighted product of the magnitudes of the individual utilities, but the argument (the angle it makes with the positive real axis on the complex plane) is $\pi$ times the total probability mass of any negative utilities. This makes comparisons impossible because the complex plane is an unordered set.

Hi team. How active is the Center for Space Governance currently? What are your plans for the next two years, if any?

I asked in public because I believe that multiple people could benefit from the answer and that's more efficient than multiple people asking the same question in private emails. Regardless, I don't care about the post's karma or what anyone thinks about my decision to ask publicly except for the EA Forum staff or the EAG organizers.

I suggested showing the April Fools' Day tag next to posts on the frontpage, like so: