CB🔸
Bio
Participation3
I'm living in France. Learned about EA in 2018, found that great, digged a lot into the topic. The idea of "what in the world improves well-being or causes suffering the most, and what can we do" really influenced me a whole lot - especially when mixed with meditation that allowed me to be more active in my life.
One of the most reliable thing I have found so far is helping animal charities : farmed animals are much more numerous than humans (and have much worse living conditions), and there absolutely is evidence that animal charities are getting some improvements (especially from The Humane League). I tried to donate a lot there.Â
Long-termism could also be important, but I think that we'll hit energy limits before getting to an extinction event - I wrote an EA forum post for that here: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wXzc75txE5hbHqYug/the-great-energy-descent-short-version-an-important-thing-ea
How I can help others
I just have an interest in whatever topic sounds really important, so I have a LOT of data on a lot of topics. Â These include energy, the environment, resource depletion, simple ways to understand the economy, limits to growth, why we fail to solve the sustainability issue, and how we got to that very weird specific point in history.
I also have a lot of stuff on Buddhism and meditation and on "what makes us happy" (check the Waking Up app!)
Posts 5
Comments345
Agreed, I'm always surprised by these low donations numbers.
I keep in mind that EA is one of the movements that helps animals the most in the world, especially farmed and wild animals, which are so important. This is great and much, much more better than the average.
But given that animals are so numerous and often live in terrible conditions, there still is be an important imbalance.
I see no rational reason to spend only 7% of donations on the vast majority of individuals in the world.
Thanks for the analysis, I really like the approach and transparency. This is better that what the vast majority of the charities in France ever attempted.
For reference, regarding the cost effectiveness, can you share what that means compared to Givewell charities ? These are the ones I'm familiar with.
I'm also surprised by the cost-effectiveness threshold of the WHO for high efficiency (one DALY per GDP per capita spent). Does that mean that spending the nations's entire GDP to increase life expectancy by one year (and only for this year) would be considered cost effective by the WHO ?
Great post ! Thanks for highlighting these concerns.
If the impact on animals, wild and farmed wasn't so uncertain and likely important, I'd probably be working on AI safety and would still be donating a bit to Givewell charities.Â
But right now, it seems less risky for me to donate farmed animals, at least to welfare reforms with much less impact on wild animals, like cage free campaigns.Â
More money to research on the wild animal field is also super important. Wild Animal Initiative seems to do very relevant work to remove some of the uncertainties.
I think this is for the best.
I appreciated what you tried initially, because it is important to have external reviews. And I upvoted you. Some of your points were valid and taken into account.
But I have been very unimpressed and disappointed with the way you handled things. Huw summed it well. Your approach was extremely adversarial and you made huge public accusations based on debatable evidence that could have been clarified with a call in many cases.Â
As such, it became very hard to trust you.
Blaming EA practices, as you are doing, is worrying. It sounds like you are pushing mistakes on others. But getting so many downvotes on the forum is rare. And you wouldn't have gotten them with a different, more measured approach.
 Hopefully you learn and improve from the experience.
I love this, what a fun read ❤️
And the opinion of the bot on Vasco is quite wholesome as well