All of ImmaSix's Comments + Replies
Does your direct work give you access to knowledge that others don't have? Even if you are not a professional grantmaker in your cause area, you might still have lots of expertise. If your current best-guess donation opportunity is based on that knowledge, it might be quite a good guess, and maybe better than many individual donors. That's why I like it that some staff members of open philanthropy project tell where they donate.
As someone who does not do direct work and wants to donate thoughtfully, domain knowledge is something I miss a lot. I cannot be a...
This is the post I most often refer to when talking about donating now versus investing to donate later. It provides a good summary of the main considerations and is accessible for non-expert donors. Having a back of the envelope model with real numbers is also really great.
Individual non-expert donors can defer to experts to decide where to donate by using charity evaluators and the EA Funds. But the question when to donate they have to make mostly themselves (except maybe in case of the Patient Philanthropy Fund).
Suggestions for follow-up posts.
- updatin
Low-cost lives are not something to celebrate. They are a reminder that we live on an injured planet, where people suffer for no reason save poor luck.
This is motivational quote that I keep reminding myself of. This is one way I see the dark world.
This piece is not part of the replacing guilt series but has the same vibe. It deserves the same credit as replacing guilt.
Focusing on tax-deductibility too much can be a trap for everyday donors, including myself. I keep referring to this article to remind my peers or myself of that.
One piece of information is not mentioned: At least in some countries, donating to a not-tax-deductible charity may be subject to gift tax. I recommend that you check out if this applies to you before you donate . But even then the gift tax can be well worth paying.
From a talk at EAG in 2019, I remembered that your approach could be summarized as empirical research in neglected areas (please correct me if I'm wrong here). Is this still the case? Do you still have a focus on empirical research (Over, say, philosophy)?
About funding overhang:
Peter wrote a comment on a recent post:
I'm optimistic we will unlock new sources of needed funding (Rethink Priorities is working a ton on this) so we should expect the current funding overhang to be temporary, thus making it important to still have future donors ready / have large amounts of money saved up ready to deploy.
You also wrote in your plans for 2022:
...Help solve the funding overhang in EA and unlock tons of impact by identifying interventions across cause areas that can take lots of money while still meeting a high bar
We'd expect to find new funding opportunities in each cause area we work in. Our work is aspirational and inherently about exploring the unknown though, so it's very difficult to know in advance how large the funding gaps we uncover will be. But hopefully our work will contribute to a part of work that overall shifts EA from not having a funding overhang but instead having substantial room for more funding in all cause areas. This will be a multi-year journey.
I have a very related job, as test engineer on a web application and have in some places very similar experiences. I might write my own post but this post already covers part of it.
Software testing is easier to transition into from an unrelated background and requires a somewhat different skillset and mindset. People who are more conscientious or more generalist may be a better fit for testing. Rather than working on a small part of the application, you work on the entire application (or at least a bigger part of it, depending on the product or company) an...
Much of your grantmaking goes to new and less established projects. There are many of those. Should we fear the (successful) programs get more funding-constrained once they have scaled up and therefore need more funding, but maybe they have lost the novelty for high-risk-high-reward-seeking donors? Or are other funders (individual donors, ACE recommendations, OpenPhil, other philanthropists) likely to take over?
What will the AWF look like in 5 years? What may have changed? What do you hope for? What challenges do you foresee?
Besides your request for proposals, do you do any active grantmaking? How much? If so, how do either of the two ways bring you good opportunities?
Thank you for recommending the cooling gel mat. If heat turns out a problem in my new bedroom, I might give it a try.
My recommendations (not sure how useful they are, I realize some are quite specific for my lifestyle):
cleanable earplugs for sleeping.
I sleep earlier than most people. With these earplugs at hand, I never needed to complain to my flatmates when they talk or watch movies next to my bedroom. Clean with handsoap.
noise-isolating headphones in the bad old days working in an open office.
I tried the noise cancelling headphones of my friends to sup...
How could individual donors best help in reducing suffering and S-risk? How should longtermist suffering-focussed donors approach donating differently than general longermist donors?
Strong-upvoted this question. Follow-up question: what kind of research could resolve any factual disagreements?
Sounds like a plan. Congratulations with doing your first donations!
How do you prioritize between the 5 charities that you mentioned?
Related: GiveWell's staff personal donations
I strong upvoted the post because I'm really happy to see a discussion about donating - this is an important and actionable topic.
This post gives an excellent description of some challenges of earning to give:
https://80000hours.org/2015/06/why-i-stopped-earning-to-give/
This post is from 2015, but I think the reasoning is still valid. The author stopped earning to give because he 1) performs better working for a cause he believes is important than for the business he used to work for, 2) does not see excellent giving opportunities and could have more impact by doing something else, 3) had different values than his colleagues.
I sort-of earn to give myself and have similar challenges,...
See also here for more suggestions: https://www.effectivealtruism.org/get-involved/
I don't think that anyone knows a clear right answer to your question (at least, I don't). What is 'easiest', I guess, depends on your personal situation. If you have enough money, donating is probably the easiest start. If you are early in your career, maybe read up on 80.000 hours.
[epistemic status: anecdotical] on not doing physics
If you want to build a resume in a non-physics direction, as Christopher suggests, and you are early in your career, don't wait too long to explore alternatives. I personally made a mistake by not exploring alternative options enough before I finished my master's degree (in Europe).
A possible note of caution for applied physics research or technology development in industry: you might want to take into account differential technological progress: develop safety first, before developing more powerful technologies (such as creating faster hardware). I assume that it depends much on your research field whether you should be concerned about differential technological progress. Does anyone have more thoughts about this?
We think that policy is an important area for effective altruism to develop into, and we feel we have had some significant success within policy so far. Recent developments in British politics mean that our plans regarding our policy work are currently in flux; depending on how this plays out, we could do considerably more or considerably less policy work.
What are the uncertainties involved? What sort of events would lead you to do considerably more policy work? What sort of events would lead you to do considerably less policy work? Can you say anything about that?
Getting tax-deduction in the Netherlands for donations to international EA charities is not straightforward. I've done some research made a write-up to explain how it works.
Summary: Some charities have a tax-deductible status (ANBI) in the Netherlands. If not, you can use Transnational Giving Europe or make a donation to Effective Altruism Foundation in Switzerland marked for regrant.
Mentioning the criticism by developmental economists on the EA's mainstream approach on poverty, however, triggers me to learn more.
GWWC would like to focus on the later stages of the membership pathway, like long-term involvement. What does GWWC do for people who have been a member for a long time? What is the relative importance of that, compared to involving potential members and new members? Is losing members a significant risk?
Could you elaborate a bit more about GWWC's comparative advantage in research? What is GWWC in a good position to do, and what could better be done by e.g. GiveWell or academic research?
I see deciding wisely about the unavoidable trade-offs between self-care and altruism as a skill that a person could build over the course of years. It is okay to feel a bit of stress or tension sometimes. It is okay to make a mistake sometimes too. (I made mistakes in both directions.)
Keeping a separate donation budget, and keeping track of my spendings, helped me a lot. I should maybe start something similar for volunteering time and mental energy. Any ideas?
Another factor is that the less connected people are often shy about reaching out to the busy, high-performing EAs they don’t personally know.
Most of the discussion here has been about the facilities, mostly online like EAhub, skillshare, LWSH, EASH, buddy systems, hangout events, and meetups. Even when the facilities are excellent, user-friendlly and findable, people might be too shy to actually ask.
Overcoming shyness is something different from creating tools, and probably more difficult. What could we do about that?
Some ideas (it would be great if y...
Small idea: a second regular Hangout workathon at a time that is more friendly for European or Asian timezones.
Somewhat bigger: organize an EA-coworking weekend. People from different countries/cities come to together for a few days in a central place to on EA related or personal projects, for example finding out the destination of your next donation. This would require people to travel, but it might be worth it. I won't have the resources to organize it myself in the next few months, but feel free to take over the idea.
Even bigger: organize more weekend c...
The possibility exists, but how many people have ever done this in practise?
Irrespective of how many other people do it (please don't worry about that too much), I would encourage everyone to overcome their shyness and actually ask for help, information or social support by whatever medium. Personally, I felt delighted when someone sent me a question. Even though I am quite busy, responding was probably well worth my time.
I'm afraid you are right.
If no other EAs live near you, you might consider to travel and couch surf in EA hubs. I've done this a few times in the UK, Switzerland and Berlin, and people were surprisingly welcoming.
Unfortunately I cannot reciprocate, because I live in a very EA-low area and will stay there in the future.
A lot of discussion is about web development, and most bootcamps focus on that. What other fields are particularly interesting? Most job descriptions I find are not about web development and data science. How much does the European job market differ from the US?
A concern mentioned on 8000hours.org is a possible oversupply due to bootcamps. MOOCs might also contribute to this - you can learn programming anywhere without formal education. To what extent is this true?
Good point. And North European countries are relatively rich, have a happy population, and a language related to English (English is relatively easy to learn). (warning: correlation, not necessarily causation).
I think the value of non-English EA groups is not their language, but mostly their location. In-person social support and discussion is not replaceable by any type of online communication even using the most modern technology.
It is worth noting that widely discussed EA actions and choices often have to be 'translated' to the job market and education system of the specific countries.
Can anyone think of small actions you can take to improve a specific skill? I am mostly looking for something concrete that you can do in one afternoon or less.
Examples:
- improve your rationality with module on clearerthinking.org. Is this actually effective? It looks useful.
- try out programming on code academy
A thought about the question whether to donate now or later: why would I invest money in myself or my own career, if the expected return on an investment in someone else is greater?
Total (altruistic) human potential might increase more if I donate to SCI which indirectly improves the education of many people, or to CFAR to pay for someone else's workshop rather than go to the workshop myself.
How and why could this thought be wrong ( or right?)
I have a similar experience for EA in the Netherlands. My post may sound somewhat negative, but I decided to continue writing it to reduce possible bias towards success stories.
We are a very small meetup group, and the most frequent attendees do not even live in the same city - the density of people interested in EA is very low. We meet near the train station in Utrecht, which is a city in the centre of the country. Convincing people from your local network to a meetup in another city is difficult (I managed twice). The large travel cost, low popularity o...
Does anyone know (from experience) good articles/books on not-necessarily-AI technology risks or non-AI technology risk?
Is "Global Catastrophic Risks" by Bostrom worth reading in this context? It's from 2008; my concern is that it might be outdated.
There is a lot of discussion about what to DO in the context of EA. But for everything I do, there is something else that I don't.
What have you decided NOT to do, because it has a (somewhat) lower priority than other things?
Things that I downprioritized:
some recreational activities: playing the guitar, cooking, baking cakes, reading novels.
I quit volunteering in an online education project. It was low time cost anyway.
meditating (would that increase productivity more than the time spent on it? I don't really care about the other benefits.)
keep an
This could lead to good habits, but it might also make you focus on details rather than the big picture. Thinking EA too much can be exhausting, make you feel more guilty than necessary or you could become estranged from the people you meet in everyday life.
On the thoughts you sum up, you might add:
- Is the small mistake I made today really bad?
- Is this small thing a good step in the way to a greater goal?
For example, I always forgive myself if I happen to spend a few dollars more in the supermarket than absolutely necessary in order to eat healthy, and...
To what extent would people turn off if I told them that I give an amount that is unreasonable in their point of view? Or that I sometimes choose to deny myself something because I think I can do much more good to people far away. Making priorities that are not optimal for your own happy and comfortable lifestyle seems to be socially undesirable even if the people near to you don't suffer from it. E.g. I tell I give $x per month, which they would not expect from any sensible person with a modest income and would definitely not see themselves doing. Would it be better if I did not mention any number?
Evan, I feel the same shyness about my giving behaviour. Ironically, is the social standard of being open about giving within the EA community that helps to overcome this.
(Somewhat unrelated to my other comment)
How clear are you on your cause prioritization? If you know your cause area, you might just defer to a charity evaluator. (It sounds boring and too easy for so much money, but it might be the best way to go for many individuals). Obviously this does not work if you don't know your cause area or your cause area does not have charity evaluators (yet!).