All of Castand's Comments + Replies
80,000 Hours' average cost per plan change this year was more like £300.
Approximately what is that £300 spent on? Is it staff time, and if so what is most of that staff time spent on? Talking to individuals and persuading them? Researching what careers would work for them and telling them? Or something competely different?
On second thoughts, "leisure time" isn't quite what I meant. I more thought that it would come out of other extracurriculars (e.g. chess society).
Based on other students I know who put time into rationalist or EA societies this seems right.
Three main founders, Peter Singer, William MacAskill and Toby Ord., lead effective Altruism, which was founded in approximately 2011.
Please can we avoid talking about "founders" "leading" Effective Altruism? Its a set of ideas and a social movement, not a startup.
I'd be curious to hear what Will, Toby, Nick, Amanda, Daniel, Geoff, Jeff and other philosophers in our group have to say about it at some point.
To give a minor bit of feedback: this use of unexplained first names rubbed me up the wrong way by making EA feel like a cliquish celebrity culture.
Is there an old Facebook or Forum thread where people describe how many people they've 'recruited' to EA (to some extent, and in some shape or form)?
Okay, will do, that makes a good deal of sense. Based on that page it looks like information on projects goes into one overall retrospective analysis but say if I'm wrong.
Thank you to Alison, that is useful. Should I throw out particular questions about your individual outreach efforts here, or wait for the update? Where I would I find updates on your activities? Do they all go into the overall update you mention, or do they get published individually throughout the year on some web page or blog?
the only thing that possesses, in and of itself, a tint in value whilst still being an entirely material quantity is conscious experience. This move assumes materialism/physicalism, which is mostly uncontroversial now among scientists and philosophers alike.
What're the arguments that scientists or philosophers use for it?
Presumably you wouldn't work out how much it costs you to produce a member (or $67,000 in donations that wouldn't have been made without you, which it sounds like is your current estimate per member) by dividing the number of new members per year by your budget? That doesn't speak to whether these members pledged or gave due to particular activities you spent money on. Where'd I find your latest calculation of this?
One marginal activity which we could do more of with more staff (and indeed we will be doing more of in the future) is individual outreach - writing to people who have shown some interest in effective giving but aren't gwwc members, seeing if we can answer any questions or concerns they have, as well as learning more about how people typically hear about gwwc, what kinds of things act as attractors and barriers.
That's very interesting, do you think you may have time to publish some of what you learn, and how "counterfactual" the 9 new members you found through it were?
A sharper way to put the question would be by how much this news should make us discount GiveWell's claims about a $1000 donation can do. (Also because not everyone's going to take the GWWC pledge of course. The key thing is simply that they donate and donate wisely.)