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Joey has answered this before elsewhere

I haven't been able to find it. Do you remember where you read it?

Should I donate my kidney or part of my liver?

Also, donating will help with persuading people to be more altruistic in general. In psychology you have this concept of a costly signal, which causes people to take your (related) ideas much more seriously.

Are you confident about this?

Donating an organ might seem quite extreme, possibly making the average person view you as 'very weird,' which could have the opposite effect.

defun's Quick takes

defun24d46

Animal welfareShow more

The meat-eater problem is under-discussed.

I've spent more than 500 hours consuming EA content and I had never encountered the meat-eater problem until today.

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/topics/meat-eater-problem

(I had sometimes thought about the problem, but I didn't even know it had a name)

BrownHairedEevee23d13

Animal welfareShow more

I've been thinking about the meat eater problem a lot lately, and while I think it's worth discussing, I've realized that poverty reduction isn't to blame for farmed animal suffering.

(Content note: dense math incoming)

Assume that humans' utility as a function of income is $U (c) = ln c$ (i.e. isoelastic utility with $η = 1$ ), and the demand for meat is $Q (c) = A c^{ε}$ where $ε$ is the income elasticity of demand. Per Engel's law, $ε$ is typically between 0 and 1. As long as $ε < η$ , $U^{'} (c) > Q^{'} (c)$ at low incomes... (read more)

saulius23d21

Also, you can argue against the poor meat eater problem by pointing out that it's very unclear whether increased animal production is good or bad for animals. In short, the argument would be that there are way more wild animals than farmed animals, and animal product consumption might substantially decrease wild animal populations. Decreasing wild animal populations could be good because wild animals suffer a lot, mostly due to natural causes. See https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/topics/logic-of-the-larder I think this issue is also very under-discussed... (read more)

saulius23d36

I think the reason is that it doesn't really have a target audience. Animal advocacy interventions are hundreds of times more cost-effective than global poverty interventions. It only makes sense to work on global poverty if you think that animal suffering doesn't matter nearly as much as human suffering. But if you think that, then you won't be convinced to stop working on global poverty because of its effects on animals. Maybe it's relevant for some risk-averse people.

Podcast idea: interview low-key people doing direct work

defun2mo3

will be finding these people

Finding them should be easy, no? Just checking the employees of interesting orgs on LinkedIn.

Maybe convincing them will be harder.

I’m Offering Free Coaching for Software Developers in the EA community

defun1y3

I exchanged some messages and had a call with Yonatan some time ago, and I highly recommend it.

He truly changed my mind on the importance of personal fit, which I had been underestimating prior to our conversation.

I often ask myself, "What would Yonatan think about this?"

Momentum 2022 updates (we're hiring)

defun2y2

Do you have an exit strategy? If you don't, how did you convince VCs?

arikagan

We've explored a number of different exit strategies, although we don't really need to flesh out all of the details until later rounds. Some ideas we've thrown around: - There's a lot of for-profit interest in fintech from groups like Intuit, Blackbaud, etc. We'd obviously need to be careful from a mission alignment point of view, but the ultimate goal (as with any social enterprise) is to bake our theory of change into the way we make money so that it is genuinely valuable from a for-profit point of view to push our mission forward. This is harder with effective altruism than simply with broader social impact, as it adds additional constraints, but the process is similar (and we believe it's achievable). This is something I've spent a lot of time thinking about from a product point of view, and it's actually one of the main reasons we think it's so important to hire an EA product manager (more than for many other roles). - There are more creative setups we've seen work, like separating profits from decision making, so investors earn a higher percentage of profits while having a lower percentage of voting rights. There's also a concept called Steward Ownership that we're pretty excited about: https://medium.com/@purpose_network/whats-steward-ownership-14efc6caf9e7. You could also imagine exiting to a foundation, although this would bear other risks (e.g. reconsolidating decision making under the very mega-donors you were trying to diversify from). I actually don't think we have this fully answered yet, and I expect to spend significantly more time down the line exploring exit options that maintain profitability while advancing our mission.

Momentum 2022 updates (we're hiring)

defun2y13

Superb post! 👏👏👏

Have you considered applying to YC?

nickfitz

Thanks! We applied and had the final in-person interview with them in 2019 and didn't get in, and then it no longer made sense after the first round.

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