All of Clifford&#x27;s Comments + Replies

AMA: Ed Mathieu, Head of Data & Research at Our World in Data

Thanks Joseph! I’ll check out Massimo Pigliucci.

I like your concrete examples. Would be curious if other people have principles which guide how they act in response to those questions.

Joseph

I'm coming back to this after more than a year because I recently read the book Wild Problems: A Guide to the Decisions That Define Us. I found it to be a better-than-average moral guide to good behavior. It leans toward virtue ethics rather than deontology or utilitarianism. I recommend it. It felt very practical (in the sense of how to approach life). It isn't practical in teaching you a specific/isolated skill, but it is practical in that this nurtures a mindset, an approach, a perspective that will lead to better choices, better relationships, and a better life. To the extent that one's life is like a garden that needs nurturing and cultivation, I think that Wild Problems is a pretty good does of care/water/sunshine.

Clifford's Quick takes

Clifford3y12

What do you use as a guide to “common sense” or “everyday ethics”?

I think people in EA often recommend against using EA to guide your everyday decision-making. I think the standard advice is “don’t sweat the small stuff” and apply EA thinking to big life decisions like your career choice or annual donations. EA doesn’t have much to say and isn’t a great guide to think about how you behave with your friends and family or in your community.

I’m curious, as a group of people who take ethics seriously, are there other frameworks or points of reference that you ... (read more)

Yonatan Cale

1. Abadar: People shouldn't regret trading with me. 2. Keltham: Don't cause messes just because nobody is policing me, which causes an incentive to police me more. I felt this thread needs some extra trolling, sry

Linch

Something I try to use sometimes but not very consistently is something like: Where by "a good character" I mean morally good/nice, and not interesting or complex. This heuristic isn't perfect because it likely overweights act/omission distinctions and as you imply, is a bad choice for big life decisions (Having a direct impact on individuals is likely a bad compass for altruistic career choice, grant decisions should not be decided by who has a more compelling story). I also think everyday ethics overvalues niceness and undervalues some types of honesty. But I think it's a decent heuristic that can't go very wrong as a representation of broad societal norm/ethics, which are probably "good enough" for most everyday decisions.

Judit Covarrubias G

I personally stick to the golden rule, it has many iterations and for good reason, my personal favorite being the Mosaic version: “Whatever is hurtful to you, do not do to any other”. Very simple, very helpful.

Patrick Liu

I like this framework - "The Lazy Genius guide to nearly everything, but I'm too lazy to count". It says to decide once for all the small stuff (like what to wear to the store or what to order for lunch) so you can enjoy the moment.

Joseph

I don't have any great answers for this, but my not very well thought-out response is to say that virtue ethics tends to be helpful (such as the ideas of stoicism, for which Massimo Pigliucci's book is a decent introduction). I think about the kind of person I want to be, how I want others to see me, and so on. There are some ways in which ideas of stoicism have some overlap with Buddhism (mainly Buddhist psychology) in the area of awareness of our reactions, what is/isn't within our control, and recognizing the interconnectedness of things. However, but since I know so little about Buddhism I'm not sure to what extent my perception of this similarity is simply "western pop Buddhism." My impression is that much of "western pop Buddhism" is focused on being calm and being cognizant of your locus of control (Alan Watts, Jack Kornfield, and everything derived from Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction[1]). As a white American guy who lived in China for a decade, I'm also very aware of and cautious of the stereotypes of westerners seeking "Eastern wisdom." If I push myself to be a little more concrete, I think that being considerate is really big in my mind, as is some type of striving for improvement. I generally find that moral philosophy hasn't been much help in the minutia of day-to-day life: * how do I figure out how much responsibility I have for this professional failure that I was involved in * at what point is it justified to stop trying in a romantic relationship * how honest should I be when I discover something that other people would want to know but which would cause harm to me * how should I balance loyalty to a friend with each individual being responsible for their own actions * to what extent should I take ownership of someone choosing to react negatively to my words/actions * how responsible am I for things that I couldn't really control/influence/impact * what level of admiration/respect should I have for a person who is very productive and in

Clifford3y10

What report / data set that OWID has produced do you think has been most impactful in retrospect?

EdMathieu

Thanks for the question! It depends significantly on how we measure impact, which has always been tricky. As Lizka guessed below, there are multiple ways we can do this, as our impact can consist of influencing the general public (for some of our most viral pieces), "influencers" (journalists, book writers, or anyone with a significant social media presence), teachers, policymakers, etc. These can be very different paths to impact. Some are pretty easy to measure (the general public can be roughly measured by raw pageviews). In contrast, others are much harder; influence on policymakers can be somewhat measured through mentions in things like government reports, but a lot of it happens behind closed doors (thankfully, we sometimes hear about this too, e.g., someone on our team getting a text message by a friend who works in government, saying our charts were shown in a critical meeting). If we measure impact purely in terms of media mentions, paper citations, significant re-use, views of our charts, etc., nothing comes even close to our work on COVID-19. Both on our site, but also because it was the underlying data used by many national media on their site, the number of eyeballs on this data was quite crazy, and the rest of our content isn't within the same order of magnitude. A second way to answer the question would be to examine which of our articles or charts keep popping up in books, learning materials, online conversations, etc. In that regard, I think that Hannah Ritchie's articles "You want to reduce the carbon footprint of your food? Focus on what you eat, not whether your food is local" and "What are the safest and cleanest sources of energy?" are probably the articles that have the highest cumulative impact over time. If we zoom out, a third way of measuring impact is to ask which of our pieces seem to have shaped other people's worldviews. In that way, Max Roser's broader essays such as "The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can b

Lizka

Also relatedly, do you have a guess for what pathway most of your impact flows through? E.g. is it stuff like "voters are more informed, which means we get better policies"? Or something more like: "Policymakers can use OWID resources to make informed decisions?" Or not policy-related: "OWID resources inform people who want to start or contribute to impactful projects, improving their prioritization or problems and the quality of their work"?

Sharang Phadke

Relatedly, how does OWID prioritize what to focus on next in a way that prioritizes impactful research?

AMA: Luke Freeman, ED of Giving What We Can (GWWC)

Clifford3y15

What are some semi-plausible, but unlikely-to-happen projects you could imagine GWWC pursuing in 5 years time?

AMA: Luke Freeman, ED of Giving What We Can (GWWC)

Clifford3y16

What are some effective giving orgs you'd like to see get started? Any nearby gaps that you don't expect GWWC to fill?

Luke Freeman 🔸

Great question, Clifford! There are certainly areas I'd love to see further developed. It would be fantastic to see the rise of more specialised fundraising organisations that cater to particular segments where there's existing leverage or a network. This can be particularly productive if the model can be adapted from an existing organisation. For instance, the Jewish Effective Giving Initiative might spark the creation of more faith-based fundraisers, and High Impact Athletes has already motivated Artists of Impact. It's also simpler for us to aid specialist organisations in their fundraising if they're raising money for our existing recommendations. In this way, we can assist with donation processing in various countries and impact tracking, leaving them to concentrate on their community and fundraising efforts. Currently, we're (almost) well-equipped to support the launch of new national organisations that wish to use our brand/product/community. It's much easier to get them up and running, especially as we complete our localisation efforts. In terms of evaluation and grantmaking, there are certainly gaps we'd like to see filled. We'll have a clearer picture of this as we progress with our 'evaluating the evaluators' initiative. I'm keen to see an advisory service for high net worth individuals (HNWI) or ultra-high net worth individuals (UHNWI) that focuses on global health and wellbeing, and perhaps a broad "effective giving" specialism. We might consider taking the latter on ourselves in the future, provided we can do it effectively and rely significantly on specialised advisories. I also believe there's a gap between ultra-high net worth individuals (UHNWI) and HNWI, specifically for donors who give between ~$50k-$1m annually. We may consider addressing this gap by exploiting some of the low-hanging fruit such as connecting people to existing funding circles and advisors. We could also improve communication and product solutions to provide a customised ex

Thread: Reflections on the AGI Safety Fundamentals course?

Clifford3y9

I feel like I have a much better sense of what the current approaches to alignment are, what people are working on and how underdeveloped the field is. In general, it’s been a while since I’ve spent time studying anything so it felt fun just to dedicate time to learning. It also felt empowering to take a field that I’ve heard a lot about at a high level and make it clearer in my mind.

I think doing the Week 0 readings are an easy win for anyone who wants to demystify some of what is going on in ML systems, which I think should be interesting to anyone,... (read more)

Books — what do you recommend? What are you looking for?

Answer by CliffordMay 10, 20237

People often ask me how to get started with user interviews. Lean Customer Development by Cindy Alvarez is unusually practical and helpful (particularly chapters 4-6).

Life in a Day: The film that opened my heart to effective altruism

Clifford3y6

This was a great pitch Aaron. I've started watching and really enjoying it.

Design changes & the community section (Forum update March 2023)

Can anyone reassure me about EA work culture?

It’s now possible to hide the community section on the homepage entirely (so that you don’t see the collapsible version).

You can also turn it off and on by going to your account page --> Site customizations --> Hide community section from the frontpage.

Lessons learned from Tyve, an effective giving startup

This matches my experience working at CEA and Founders Pledge. I used to work at a startup and a bunch of my friends work in startups and the experience seems similar.

I agree that it mostly depends on the role, the culture of the org and individual but it’s very possible to not work evenings and weekends.

anotherEAonaburner

Thank you, Ben, for your reassuring two cents!

Lessons learned from Tyve, an effective giving startup

Sorry I meant it as two separate things.

1. I'm not sure tech will help you fundraise more at work.
I spoke to one traditional payroll-giving fundraiser and he raised more for charity in a day than I did in several months. His method was to go round each table in an office, pitch them for 5 mins on the tax benefits of signing up and ask them to sign up on a piece of paper to give to a charity close to their hearts.

2. I'm not sure EA will help you fundraise more at work.
As in the above example, people are happy to give to charity regardless of the EA pi... (read more)

Lessons learned from Tyve, an effective giving startup

Thanks Craig - I'm glad to hear it. Like I said in the piece, I'm sure there are some opportunities and angles here but I think that's a decent summary.

Lessons learned from Tyve, an effective giving startup

Glad to hear Jan.

That's right re: PMF. We were very open about what causes people could support but I think you could be right that leaning into e.g. climate change could have helped. My sense was that companies in the UK preferred other ways to contribute to these causes because:
1. Donating money feels less direct than interventions like recycling, not using plastic, vegetarian catering
2. HR didn't want to be seen to ask people to give their money away (this felt awkward for some)
3. There are activities which are more visible, feel-good and cheaper to signal support (e.g. charity fundraisers).

Lessons learned from Tyve, an effective giving startup

Thanks Henrith!

It would take me some time to get good numbers for these. Here are some thoughts off the top of my head in the meantime.

1. Rate of enrollment at companies.

I think this averaged 25%. We had a couple of enthusiastic companies of around 50 people where we got 35-40% . But it wasn't uncommon to have more like 6%.

2. Average donation amount.
The £15,000 number includes company matches. The average monthly donation is £75 and the average company contribution is £25. Some companies offer very generous matching e.g. topping up donations by £50 regardl... (read more)

Lessons learned from Tyve, an effective giving startup

Thanks Yonatan. I like your version of "should exist vs people want this to exist". I've also seen and been tempted by proposals for "lists".

Thank you Larks!

Out of curiosity, what would the post be about?

Will Howard🔹

The angle is "maybe existing rich people becoming EAs is better than the other way round". You can probably guess the argument...

Wow. I hadn't realised Jaan Tallinn was a billionaire.

Thanks Dewi!

Yes, if you click "New Post" - you can turn this off in the normal way by unticking the checkbox: "This post may appear on the frontpage".

New Threads will only appear in the subforum.

Vaidehi Agarwalla 🔸

It would be useful to add some info text boxes for those because I don't think it would be intuitive that the post / threads have different rules.

Where are you donating this year, and why? (Open thread)

Clifford3y14

Pre-commitent: I will reply on this thread with where I decide to donate by New Years Day.

I’m planning to meet up with a friend and decide where to give my donations on New Years Eve. I often find I put my giving off so I'm using this post as a commitment device.

1. If anyone wants to join me, feel free to comment with the date you plan to donate by.
2. Does anyone have any suggestions about how to structure your thinking on where to donate? I’m planning to spend a couple of hours on this with a friend.

Michael Townsend🔸

Really cool that you and your friend are meeting up on NYE to do this :)! RE how to structure your thinking, Giving What We Can's recommended charities page and the donation platform contains a few additional charities and funds. We also generally recommend giving via funds (though I think there are some benefits to trying to do your own research!).

Clifford3y8

Thanks for this candid answer! I really appreciate hearing your thinking and more emotional motivations behind the decisions.

Where are you donating this year, and why? (Open thread)

Ask Charity Entrepreneurship Anything

Thank you Bruce! If it's easy to share, how did you decide on these nonprofits?

bruce

Sure - admittedly I don't put as much thought into these as I probably should, and have deferred a reasonable amount to GiveWell. At a high level I generally donate to GHD causes because I'm more risk averse with my donations than my personal time (i.e. I'm very happy to think and contribute to things that are potentially high payoff but more speculative in my work time, but I prefer my donations to be making tangible, measurable impact with short feedback loops, even if that means "only" getting ~$100/DALY). More specifically, I chose Malaria Consortium (MC) over AMF because MC is marginally more cost effective at the moment, and because there was a recent paper about the benefits of combined chemoprevention alongside the recently released RTS,S malaria vaccine. I chose New Incentives because it's also similarly cost-effective, and I have a soft spot for improving vaccine coverage. I chose GiveDirectly because that seems "best-in-class" in terms of optimising for preferences of recipients / beneficiaries. I don't have fully formed views about the extent to which we should defer to recipients VS prioritise other measures, but until I do, I opt to donate a bit to GiveDirectly for this reason despite it being less cost effective by GiveWell metrics. And then I chose my local women's refuge because I think sexual assault / intimate partner violence (IPV) is terrible (I get pretty riled up by abuse of power / trust generally), and I care a lot about it for other reasons that I won't get into here. I'm mindful that this probably means I'm not maximising DALYs averted in expectation, but I'm okay with this because doing so appeals to the less maximising / less utilitarian parts of me. I donate to the local refuge instead of some LMIC version that might have higher EV in part because it's more convenient to, in part because NZ have among the worst domestic violence / IPV rates in the developed world, in part because I care about my local community, and in part because

Clifford3y23

What are the main advantages of having entrepreneurs start separate organisations vs running the projects inside a larger organisation? You could imagine a world in which entrepreneurs are employees of CE and this would have benefits.

Joey🔸3y23

This in many ways is the default path for how many NGOs grow. I think there are quite a few reasons why CE overperforms relative to this. Decentralization broadens the risk profile that each charity is able to take, and smaller organizations move far, far quicker. I suspect the biggest factor though, is not structural but social. The level of founders we get applying are really strong relative to an organization like CE hiring program directors. Due to the psychology of ownership they work far more effectively for their project than they would as an employee of a larger organization.

Ask (Everyone) Anything — “EA 101”

Answer by CliffordOct 05, 202272

Does anyone know why the Gates Foundation doesn't fill the GiveWell top charities' funding gaps?

Henry Howard🔸

This is a great question, and the same should be asked of governments (as in: "why doesn't the UK aid budget simply all go to mosquito nets?") A likely explanation for why the Gates Foundation doesn't give to GiveWell's top charities is that those charities don't currently have much room for more funding (GiveWell had to rollover funding last year because they couldn't spend it all. A recent blog posts suggests they may have more room for funding soon https://blog.givewell.org/2022/07/05/update-on-givewells-funding-projections/) A likely explanation for why the Gates Foundation doesn't give to GiveDirectly is that they don't see strong enough evidence yet for the effectiveness (particularly in the long-term or at the societal level) of unconditional cash transfers (A Cochrane review from this year suggests slight short-term benefits: https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD011135.pub3/full)

Hauke Hillebrandt3y14

One recent paper suggests that an estimated additional $200–328 billion per year is required for the various measures of primary care and public health interventions from 2020 to 2030 in 67 low-income and middle-income countries and this will save 60 million lives. But if you look at just the amount needed in low-income countries for health care - $396B - and divide by the total 16.2 million deaths averted by that, it suggests an average cost-effectiveness of ~$25k/death averted.

Other global health interventions can be similarly or more effecti... (read more)

Hauke Hillebrandt3y14

I wrote a post about this 7 years ago! Still roughly valid.

Have you ever made a valuable connection with someone via the Forum?

Have you ever made a valuable connection with someone via the Forum?

Thanks for sharing!

Announcing a new introduction to effective altruism

Useful to know, thanks. I think that’s an interesting way to think about it.

Announcing a new introduction to effective altruism

Thanks Oscar! I've updated the sentence in the essay now to read: "The result would be an enormous transformation, perhaps of a significance similar to or greater than the industrial revolution in the 1800s."

Clifford3y3

Good question - I think there are a bunch to choose from but perhaps not one winner. We cover this in one of the FAQs (copy and pasting below).

What resources have inspired people to get involved with effective altruism in the past?

Some examples of resources that have inspired people to get involved in effective altruism (but don’t necessarily represent its current form) include:

Doing Good Better, by Will MacAskill
The 80,000 Hours career guide, by Benjamin Todd
The Precipice, by Toby Ord
Taking Charity Seriously, by Toby Ord
Our top charities, by GiveWell
Ratio

Announcing a new introduction to effective altruism

Great to hear Andre! :)

That's really cool to see - thanks for sharing Patrick!

Some updates in EA communications

Thanks Jay! @Quinn, this is what I intended it to mean.

Some updates in EA communications

Good point, thanks.

Thanks Eddie. We're planning to make some design tweaks and some edits in the coming weeks including a table of contents. I'll post in the forum when this is done. To be clear, I wouldn't recommend sharing widely until then.

I would definitely encourage collecting 1 on 1 feedback by having people new to EA read the content in person and speak their thoughts out loud.

We have done exactly that in the process of writing this essay!

Thanks for the feedback on the image preview - I hadn't spotted that.

Agree!

Clifford4y5

Thanks Denis. I am a fan of the variety of this list! :)

Dawn Drescher

Whee! Thanks!

Awesome, thanks Eli.

1. Yeah something like this!
2. Great, thanks. I've added you to the google form but I think it will work better if other people who comment add their calendly so that people don't have to go through me.

Have you ever made a valuable connection with someone via the Forum?

Thanks for pointing this out - I’ve updated this now.

Apologies to anyone who weren’t able to complete the form.

Cool Offices ?

Answer by CliffordMay 21, 20224

Kind of obvious list, but things that I’ve enjoyed about other offices I’ve worked at:

Interesting/fun people. Good water cooler conversation can provide me a lot of energy.
Ambitious/hard-working people. Lunch time conversations with people working on cool projects and seeing people work in the evenings can be inspiring.
Natural light.
Large kitchen/congregation area, separate to people trying to work for conversation.

Have you ever made a valuable connection with someone via the Forum?

Very helpful - thanks a lot Ivy!

Have you ever made a valuable connection with someone via the Forum?

Awesome. Thanks for sharing.

Is there a good summary of EA's impact to date?

Interesting, thanks! I'd be curious to ask about the connections you have made on slack etc. I'll message you.

Clifford4y6

Relatedly, this uptick is kind of wild to me.

Is there a good summary of EA's impact to date?

Thanks - I'll correct that.

Answer by CliffordMar 31, 20226

Good to see this question Garrison! I'm working on effectivealtruism.org and planning to add a section like this to the website.

This is a decent existing page for this but very tricky to find: https://www.effectivealtruism.org/impact

Garrison

Great, thank you! This is definitely out of date, at least for GiveDirectly, where I used to work. GD has moved over $500M to people in poverty, though some substantial fraction of that (>$200M if my memory serves) was to people in the US. The Impact site says $100M.

Ben_West's Quick takes

Clifford4y7

I think I agree with this. Two things that might make starting a startup a better learning opportunity than your alternative, in spite of it being a worse learning environment:

You are undervalued by the job market (so you can get more opportunities to do cool things by starting your own thing)
You work harder in your startup because you care about it more (so you get more productive hours of learning)

What psychological traits predict interest in effective altruism?