All of Clifford's Comments + Replies

Worth considering the Blue Dot course on AI Governance https://course.aisafetyfundamentals.com/governance

Just to say I took Joseph up on this and found it very helpful! I recommend doing the same!

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.

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)

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

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

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

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)

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

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.

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.

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)

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.

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).

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)

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?

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.

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

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

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.

Thanks for sharing!

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

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."

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

Great to hear Andre! :)

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

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

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!

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

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.

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

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

Very helpful - thanks a lot Ivy!

Awesome. Thanks for sharing.

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

Relatedly, this uptick is kind of wild to me.

Thanks - I'll correct that.

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:

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

Cool - thanks for engaging in this! Excited to see what you do in future.

Thanks for the reply.

I agree no correlation would be surprising but I wouldn’t be totally surprised if it was less predictive than say ”openness to new ideas” or something.

I wonder if you could learn more by interviewing people who are just starting to get interested in EA and seeing how their responses change over say a year? Interviewing people who have just started an intro to EA fellowship/virtual program could work well for this.

Fascinating, thanks for doing this research - excited to see more work in this area.

Is it possible that being E and A correlates with EAs who have been involved and absorbed EA ideas but wouldn’t correlate with EAs if you were able to survey them before they got involved in EA?

I found myself agreeing with the statements that predicted E and A but not sure I would have done before getting into EA.

I could also imagine someone who is very open to reasonable arguments but isn’t particularly E or A but comes to agree with the statements over time.

[sorry if I’ve misrepresented what you’re saying - I read the post a couple of days ago and may be misremembering]