david_reinstein
Bio
I am a Senior Economist at Rethink Priorities (https://www.rethinkpriorities.org/our-team), previously an Economics lecturer/professor for 15 years
I'm working to impact EA fundraising and marketing; see https://bit.ly/eamtt
And projects bridging EA, academia, and open science (esp. the 'Unjournal') ... see bit.ly/eaprojects
My previous and ongoing research focuses on determinants and motivators of charitable giving (propensity, amounts, and 'to which cause?'), and drivers of/barriers to effective giving, as well as the impact of pro-social behavior and social preferences on market contexts.
Podcasts: "Found in the Struce" https://anchor.fm/david-reinstein
and the EA Forum podcast: https://anchor.fm/ea-forum-podcast (co-founder, regular reader)
Twitter: @givingtools
Posts 39
Comments681
Topic Contributions9
Thanks for this!
I just wanted to add that we can evaluate work that is under review at a traditional journal. Also, having your work evaluated by The Unjournal does not prevent you from submitting it to a traditional journal (before, during, or after). The Unjournal gives you more feedback and a quantified evaluation sooner; it doesn't slow you down or limit your options.
But, as Ryan suggests, at this point in our trajectory we prefer to evaluate work early in the process, rather than work that is very close to being accepted in a peer-reviewed journal.
(Also, see our guidelines for evaluators for a view of the feedback and ratings/predictions we ask for.)
Wondering what the EA Mexico fellowship was like? I audio recorded some of my own experiences and chats, and I’m putting it into my podcast.
First episode: Turismo Eficaz, episode 1 (On the Podcast “Found in the Struce” … on all platforms)
This one has some discussion of AI safety areas and careers that people may find interesting and useful.
If there's interest I'll put up a couple more episodes from my audio, with some discussions about the fellowship and potential future initiatives.
The earlier EA Survey Donation post (and linked notebook/Bookdown chapter on this) may be helpful.
But I'm not sure which base group you are considering, or what measure you are considering
Base group: All people who identify as EAs, all US Americans, all people in the world, all people in the world with income above some value?
Metric: Top 1% in terms of absolute amounts given or in terms of share of income given?
I think you might be able tease out the answer to some of your questions from [this paper](https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Evolving-Distribution-of-Giving-in-the-United-Duquette/48b092a6436e213b45d86e090cce508ac16ab77d). Sorry I don't have the data/numbers to hand, I've worked on this before.
Project Idea: 'Cost to save a life' interactive calculator promotion
What about making and promoting a ‘how much does it cost to save a life’ quiz and calculator.
This could be adjustable/customizable (in my country, around the world, of an infant/child/adult, counting ‘value added life years’ etc.) … and trying to make it go viral (or at least bacterial) as in the ‘how rich am I’ calculator?
The case
While GiveWell has a page with a lot of tech details, but it’s not compelling or interactive in the way I suggest above, and I doubt they market it heavily.
GWWC probably doesn't have the design/engineering time for this (not to mention refining this for accuracy and communication). But if someone else (UX design, research support, IT) could do the legwork I think they might be very happy to host it.
It could also mesh well with academic-linked research so I may have some ‘Meta academic support ads’ funds that could work with this.
Tags/backlinks (~testing out this new feature)
@GiveWell @Giving What We Can
Projects I'd like to see
EA Projects I'd Like to See
Idea: Curated database of quick-win tangible, attributable projects