All of ChrisSmith's Comments + Replies

(I don't lead on the air quality work, so be more careful with this comment that the others that I've left here).

India wasn't picked as an example to illustrate the importance and neglectedness of air quality work. Rather, India has been the dominant setting for Open Philanthropy's air quality work to date - it even has its own updated web page. You can read more about why Open Philanthropy launched the work on South Asian air quality here and here. Santosh Harish, the Program Officer who leads that work, recently gave an excellent interview to the 80,000 ... (read more)

The $5-10M figure is inclusive of $5M per year from that grant, which was recommended by GiveWell but funded by Open Philanthropy.

The $5-10M for alcohol work is indeed LMIC only - GiveWell document from 2021 here. I think the main funder missed from that is the DG Murray Trust in South Africa, whose alcohol harms reduction work is exclusively South Africa oriented.

There isn't a development assistance for health estimate from the IHME for alcohol policy work, lead exposure, or suicide prevention through means restriction in the way that there is for tobacco. One reason for displaying these funding estimates as a range is that they are very uncertain and vulnerable to questions of what... (read more)

Yes, we do consider the benefits of alcohol, including that many people enjoy it. 

James Snowden put together a short document discussing this when he made the largest current Open Philanthropy alcohol grant in 2021 (the grant was recommended by GiveWell but funded by Open Philanthropy; any extension / renewal will sit within Open Philanthropy). At the time GiveWell / James applied a 10% reduction to the (implicitly net) burden of alcohol harm on this basis.

I'm reviewing this issue in greater detail now.

Thanks for sharing! I occasionally worry that I'd struggle emotionally to go back to E2G/most of my impact being via donations, so this is a helpful anecdatum.

For me, mostly weak evidence. 

It does not. There are a small number of co-funding situations where money from other donors might flow through Open Philanthropy operated mechanisms, but it isn't broadly possible to donate to Open Philanthropy itself (either for opex or regranting).

This comment is an agree vote for Client Earth and a disagree vote for anyone arguing the case for endocrine disruptors as an issue that EAs should spend lots of time or money on

Oh classic, she already appeared on the podcast in 2021. I no longer endorse this suggestion, since I don't think the context for SRM has changed enough since she last appeared.

Thanks for sharing Justin! 

I'd recommend anyone who's ever worried about our ability to make global progress against big problems read the annual updates from UNAIDS in the late 1990s/early 2000s and compare to more recent updates.

Drawing on your lessons above, what are the PEPFARs we should be pushing for today?

This is a really helpful post - thank you! It does blow my mind slightly that this isn't more broadly practiced, if the argument holds, but I think it holds! 

I don't know enough about the market for academic papers, but I wonder if you'd be interested in writing this up for a more academic audience? You could look at some set of recent RCTs and estimate the potential savings (or, more ambitiously, the increase in power and associated improvement in detecting results) 

Given that the argument is statistical rather than practical in any way that is ... (read more)

The basic idea is that we mostly pay for drugs based on volume (e.g. if a manufacturer charges $50 per insulin vial, they want to sell lots of vials), but that mechanism is inappropriate for novel antibiotics, since there are major societal benefits to not over using new antibiotics but retaining them as last resort drugs. This means that it is ~impossible for developers of novel antibiotics to be economically viable. A subscription model de-links payment and volume - the provider is paid for having created and made the drug available, irrespective of volu... (read more)

GiveWell / Open Philanthropy have funded CHAI.

I think there's value in some organizational diversity / having multiple shots on goal, and I'm excited to see what comes out of both CHAI's ongoing work and efforts by Charity Entrepreneurship and others to create effective non-profits.

Thanks for writing this Nick, I'm sympathetic and strongly upvoted (to declare a small COI, I work at Open Philanthropy). I will add two points which I don't see as conflicting with your post but which hopefully complement it.

Firstly, if you're reading this post you probably have "EA resources". 

You can donate your own money to organisations that you want to. While you can choose to donate to e.g. a CEA managed EA Fund (e.g. EA Infrastructure Fund,  EA Animal Welfare Fund) or to a GiveWell managed fund, you can equally choose to donate ~wherever ... (read more)

Hi Nick, thanks for engaging.

Part of the rationale for the Regranting Challenge was that it might be possible to identify funders who already have the infrastructure to deploy funding effectively at scale, rather than creating duplicative philanthropic infrastructure. In 2021, Open Philanthropy recommended ~$400M of grants with an average staff number of ~40 (so ~$10M / FTE). To compare, the Gates Foundation granted $6.7B with a staff of 1,736 (so <$4M per staff person); Wellcome Trust moved £1.23B with a staff of ~800 (so <$2M per staff person).* No... (read more)

I am grateful for this post and think it demonstrates bravery that Rohit didn't need to show. He's a thoughtful, accomplished professional who has approximately no personal incentive to writing this out. 

I hope readers who wish for a healthy community around the ideas of effective altruism, and who want thoughtful engagement from people exploring similar questions that effective altruists consider important in good faith, reflect on the damage that the discourse of the past few days (and the incident that kicked it off in terms of Bostrom's poor state... (read more)

Small suggestion - could you include some text on the front page about who you think the survey is for (e.g. is it everyone who self-identifies with the term effective altruist? anyone who considers themselves part of the EA community? someone who has read a book / listened to a podcast about effective giving / longtermism / farmed or wild animal welfare?). 

I appreciate that the sampling frame here is extremely difficult and I'm supportive of trying to survey ~everyone of relevance, but the way it's set up now it's not clear to me who you're trying to... (read more)

[Context - I managed the Cause Exploration Prizes]

Thank you Gavriel for taking the time to write this out and thank you again for your original submission on ways that philanthropic funders can help address indoor air quality, which I encourage others to check out. I'm really sorry to hear you felt burnt out after completing the entry.

Although essay prizes and contests are quite prevalent in the EA community, this was very much an experiment for global health and wellbeing cause prioritization team at Open Phil. A major objective of the lower value prizes ... (read more)

Thanks for writing this, it's an excellent first forum post and a great note on an important topic that is slightly under the EA radar. 

You identified the $20M (IRC) and $7M (ALIMA) grants Open Philanthropy made in 2021 through GiveWell for the treatment of malnutrition. I wanted to draw your attention to another series of grants that the Open Philanthropy Science team have made to improve the formulation of Ready to Use Therapeutic Food. 

My quick answers to your questions are that RUTF and other high impact malnutrition work is plausibly cost-ef... (read more)

Hi jserv! I'll aim to say a bit more about the nuts and bolts of the process in an update before the end of the year, but prize selection was dominated by blind, independent review. I'm following up with you privately on tuberculosis.

Hi Siebe - thank you again for your entry! Unfortunately we don't have capacity to provide feedback on every submission. There were many useful and interesting pieces of work that didn't receive a prize.

Hi arghya - sorry I missed this post. Just as a reminder, we're paying $200 for the first 200 submissions made in good faith, so don't feel put off submitting something if you don't think you have time to write something that you think will be competitive for the top prizes.

We suggest my colleague Lauren Gilbert's shallow on civil conflict as an example of a shallow investigation of a potential cause area. She's also published one more recently on telecoms in LMICs. There's also the guidance page of the Cause Exploration Prizes website. 

Looking forwar... (read more)

I enjoyed reading this, thank you for writing it. Two things:

Firstly, I wondered if you were aware of this recent GiveWell scoping grant to Precision Development (PxD) which explores something very close to what you're suggesting - it's asking them to come up with an evaluation design (which could by an RCT) for their work on providing information to smallholder farmers, which GiveWell is then open to funding ("we think there's a 70% chance we will provide a grant to fund implementation, and evaluation of PxD's agriculture program...40% chance we'll provid... (read more)

Suggestions of scientific research and lobbying / advocacy, or other activities where cost-effectiveness are hard to measure are all potentially valid suggestions and would be eligible for prizes (and the $200 participation awards). For each of these I'd say that costs are relatively estimable based on what individual research projects costs, current research spending in an area, the cost of comparable advocacy campaigns etc. I agree that the chances of success are more difficult, but they can be estimated to at least some extent based on comparable base r... (read more)

All of those things are ok. Open Phil staff shouldn't be listed as co-authors since they are not eligible for the prizes. A brief acknowledgement section is welcome if you've had substantial input from others who are not co-authors. 

If you are submitting an unpublished piece of writing which you've already produced, please make sure it is answering a question that we've put forward and is geared towards the perspective of a funder (see our guidance page for more detail)

Yes, a broader proposal on scientific reproducibility as a potential cause area would be appropriate for this. Your proposed project could be an example grantee, but it would be great idea to explore other ways that a funder could help address the problem as well (even if you conclude that something like I4R is the most cost-effective opportunity)

Thanks for spotting - this should now be fixed

This is a good question, and it's certainly something that could be clearer on the website. The closest thing to what you're asking for is here but the page is slightly dated and is due to be refreshed soon. Some of the focus areas are also at a very high level of abstraction (e.g. global health and development) which should not be read as meaning we don't want suggestions for opportunities within those focus areas.

On the page for the new cause area prompt it specifies deliberately that we are open to suggestions for new problems to work on,... (read more)

Yes - this fits within our GHW portfolio. From the FAQ page:

Can I write about non-human animals?

Yes. Open Philanthropy is a major funder of work to improve farm animal welfare. If you want to write about a potential new cause area where the primary beneficiaries are non-human animals, please use the open prompt.

Sorry to hear! I think you might have clicked it during the split-second I was updating that page. Please could you give it another try and send hello@causeexplorationprizes.com a screenshot of whatever error you're getting if it doesn't work

I was about to delete my post (thanks Gleb_T for the quick change of name) but noticed a downvote. Could that person come forward and explain why they thought my post was unhelpful?

I don't particularly object to the content of the post, but could you please consider rewriting the title?

"Overcoming emotional resistance" honestly sounds like something deeply unpleasant pick up artists write about coercing women into unwanted sex (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickup_artist#Practices)

I really enjoyed reading this post, and I'm pleased to see an effective altruist making a case for family planning as an effective cause. You sound particularly well informed about development issues - have you laid out your personal or professional background somewhere? I've asked to join your Effective FP facebook group

My guess for maximising salary would be something which is going to make you into a quant trader or financial engineer. There is a useful discussion on this site: https://www.quantstart.com/articles/Why-a-Masters-in-Finance-Wont-Make-You-a-Quant-Trader

Strongly urge Trinity.

It will be easier to get a job in almost any sector with a degree from Trinity rather than a degree from Galway (particularly outside Ireland), you will probably meet more interesting/driven people there, and you can try to make your PPES degree more quantitative if you want through particular choices (eg the econometrics option in third year economics or quantitative methods in fourth year economics), although it is certainly too early to be making specific choices about modules at this stage!

As others have said, it will also keep your options broader, which is valuable for all of us but particularly those of us who are still trying to work out what we are particularly good at.