All of jared_m's Comments + Replies

Done, re: following on Twitter.

My main contact at Pau and Marc Gasol's Gasol Foundation (focused on "research, holistic, data-driven" work to eradicate childhood obesity) appears to have left. They are a thoughtful group, and may be worth writing in the 10-20% chance they evolve into HIA supporters — or can be helpful in another way.

This is a great point. The good news is your concern is shared by CEA and others. It's very exciting to see the work that Jessica  McCurdy at CEA (and others) are doing to support the growth of EA groups at economically diverse R1 universities and smaller colleges, etc. 

EAIF has also funded a small project to try and support groups at so-called "Public Ivies" in the U.S., with a special focus on public honors colleges that can contribute to socioeconomic diversity in EA. Feel free to DM if you're interested in this broader opportunity area, wheth... (read more)

Thank you for the reminder to watch Bending the Arc. There were also some moving  tributes to him (with excerpts of his interviews) on Twitter after he passed, such as this one from Ava DuVernay.

Thank you for writing up this series, Finan!

One note regarding the sections excerpted below: those who are worried about the quantity of food they are able to keep on hand might spend a few minutes reviewing credible intermittent fasting resources from Harvard,  Johns Hopkins, and elsewhere.  For example, Hopkins describes the 5:2 approach this way: "the 5:2 approach... involves eating regularly five days a week. For the other two days, you limit yourself to one 500–600 calorie meal. An example would be if you chose to eat normally on every day o... (read more)

Didn't realize Participant had produced Contagion, as well!

Reviewing the list of Participant films , I realize that I saw three of the four 2005 movies they were involved in (the trio that doesn't include Murderball) in theaters or shortly after they came out. All three had a lasting impact on my thinking re: ethics, society, etc.

An EA version of Jeff Skoll's Participant film production company seems like a worthwhile investment.

Participant funded An Inconvenient Truth, and other films that seem to have had an outsized impact on policy discussions and (perhaps as importantly) the career decisions of the young and impact-minded.

1
elteerkers
2y
Yes! Will actually also mentioned Participant media in his chat. He mentioned it in relation to them funding the movie "Contagion".

Thanks for sharing your thinking, @Tyner. Will DM you, but had one thought related to these two bullets:

  • All  of the jobs I've seen listed at non-profits pay pretty poorly.  Does it really make sense to take a 70% pay cut?

...

  • A few times I have helped friends or family with work issues and generally done a really good job.  Like, my friend spent maybe 40 hours struggling with getting a database to do what she wanted and I solved her issues in less than 2 hours.  If I can really be 20x more productive then average then I really am awesome
... (read more)

Thank you for strong EAGs in 2020 and 2021, in ultra-challenging circumstances! Re:

  • The virtual side of the event underperformed, although it still added around 1,500 connections; it was positively received by attendees, but we did not optimize it.
    • We are reconsidering running hybrid conferences in the future, and might run separate virtual and in-person conferences in order to give more attention to each side.

Sharing across one data point that I found the virtual event and a few subsequent connections very valuable. Conflicting October travel meant I wouldn... (read more)

Thanks for bringing this up. I appreciate the inclusion reasons to run virtual events. In practice, I think the virtual side of hybrid events is significantly worse than a fully virtual event; lots of in-person attendees or speakers who would want to interact with people who are attending virtually are too busy with the in-person conference, the organizers are split between the two sides (and largely focus on the more involved in-person side), and there's a bit more confusion about how everything works. The upsides (simultaneous attendance at a big event) don't seem to outweigh the downsides. But please let me know if you disagree!

So what I'm most excited about is having separate virtual and in-person conferences.

It mostly helps when there are rule-bound matching funds available. Let’s say you think CATF is a very effective charity when it comes to issues you care about, and that Good Food Institute is somewhat less effective. Person B has the exact opposite perspective.

If there’s an Every.org style matching opportunity, and you give $200 to CATF, Every.org will only match $100 of that ($300 total for CATF). Likewise for Person B and GFI: her $200 becomes $300 for GFI. If you find each other through the EA Forum and coordinate to split your $200 personal gifts and ... (read more)

Answer by jared_mDec 26, 20216
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Agree with Lukas: better to book the flight. Not least because a 100 USD donation to Founder's Pledge or CATF can likely be doubled by various matching 2022 opportunities. Every.org's promotion is an example.

A slightly similar choice came up for us when we bought a car in 2020. (A new job required one.) We would've preferred a used EV/hybrid. During the peak of the pandemic, a dealer was willing to deliver a used non-hybrid vehicle to our door for many thousands of USD less. That allowed us to invest a bit more while asset prices were in the doldrums. In t... (read more)

3
Xing Shi Cai
2y
Why does trading donations help? And how can I find people to trade donations?

Agreed. Chiming in that the microCOVID Project's calculator and work has been invaluable to our family since 2020. I don't know Rachel, Larissa, or others involved in the project - but they're in our personal pantheon of pandemic heroes. We lost one family member in NY to COVID. It's easy to imagine we and others would have experienced more loss, absent their work.

Could not pass up this opportunity to thank them publicly, and note how excited we are to watch any videos they produce as a result of this funding.

Similar to David, I don't have a definitive answer. I would agree with reviewing the links he shared and add one more.

The Founders Pledge Research Team are engaged in Effective Environmentalism efforts. They have some very recent/timely write-ups of grants they have made in the climate space. These are informed by current global political and technological dynamics. If you find their analysis persuasive, you might consider adjusting your work to align with the opportunities they call out - or (as I've been doing) donate to those groups while remaining in your current role.

Thank you for carving out time and attention for this course, Anton. Thanks also to the EA Long-Term Future Fund for investing in the project. The timing is perfect, as many of us curtail December/January travel plans and look for more-productive alternatives to watching Omicron case counts rise.

Signed up, and I'm a few videos in already. Will share with others who have an economics bent!

2
akorinek
2y
Thank you so much!

Agree that honors college students are an attractive organizing opportunity. One could look at U.S. public flagships that reel in a disproportionate share of National Merit Scholars (UF, University of Minnesota, etc.) for their honors programs as starting points. These, and other talent-dense schools like Penn State, are very promising. To your point here:

I think the capability is there (and perhaps less entitlement).

EA might gain more mindshare at public honors colleges. Students at those schools strike me as a bit scrappier/more focused than students at ... (read more)

This strongly aligns with my thinking around high school outreach opportunities:

TL;DR: Specifically targeting STEM, logic, debate, and philosophy competitors with short outreach could increase high school outreach effectiveness.... This would give these individuals more time to think about career choice and enable them to start building flexible career capital early and might make them more open to engaging with EA in the future. 

Participating in ISEF, mock trial, and Science Bowl (and following others who did through their careers) makes one realize ... (read more)

1
ChanaMessinger
2y
I have a similar model to you about these students. How in touch are you with current high schoolers doing this kind of thing?

Thanks for sharing these, Jeff!

Had not seen the air purifier cubes before - and will keep an eye out for them.

3
Jeff Kaufman
2y
They're quite easy to make: https://cleanarair.com/ https://www.homedepot.com/p/Nordic-Pure-20-x-20-x-1-Allergen-Pleated-MERV-12-FPR-9-Air-Filter-12-Pack-20x20x1M12-12/312515532 is the best deal on filters I've seen.

Yeah, I was similarly uncertain about how much AFP’s policy serves to “defend the 20th century status quo of nonprofit operations” (which much of EA is challenging, for good reason) versus good-faith efforts to make the field operate well — putting aside fundraisers’ personal economic interests. The balance is a bit murky…

1
Arepo
2y
Do you think there are good arguments against this kind of compensation even within an EA context?

FWIW: in the 2010s I remember being surprised to learn that the Association of Fundraising Professionals opposed percentage-based compensation for full-time nonprofit fundraisers. 

I don't have a refined view on pros/cons of variable compensation structures like this in certain nonprofit contexts, but am sharing this primary document in case valuable as food for thought. Some excerpts are below.

AFP holds that percentage based compensation can encourage abuses, imperils the integrity of the voluntary sector, and undermines the very philanthropic values

... (read more)
5
Arepo
2y
Thanks, that's interesting. I think some of their reasoning seems reflexive: in particular their first and third stated reasons only state possible downsides without weighing them against the comparable upsides of incentivising work that supports the charity's outputs. The rest doesn't seem like it would apply to the model we're thinking of, in which all staff would receive a percentage of all donations. Eg: This doesn't seem to apply if it's not just the fundraising staff (and to be clear, we don't have anyone for whom fundraising is more than a tiny fraction of their role). And This doesn't seem to apply if staff were getting a percentage of all donations. Their fourth point - that nonprofits do better when they 'actively involve' volunteers is unsubstantiated and, IMO for most nonprofits, false. See eg these discussions on the subject. On their last remaining reason: That's part of what I hoped to find out by posting here. I would hope that specifically EA donors would be actively in favour of the idea if it seemed to improve incentives, though if the discussion around the question so far is representative it seems not...

The prominent Aussie-American economist Justin Wolfers at the University of Michigan has been promoting Leigh’s book this week.

Given Wolfers’ broad following in the U.S., he may be introducing more economists/others to the idea of existential risks here: https://mobile.twitter.com/JustinWolfers/status/1465074869750702096

Also thanks, Matt, for your write-up!

The "Looking for people who live in the same obscure geographic area as you" use case is a super-promising one.  One example is Florida, the third most-populous U.S. state with 21 million people. While the Forum map doesn't list any Floridians, several dozen have joined this (admittedly sleepy) Facebook group since late 2020. 

A number of them live in Gainesville, and a smaller number are in Orlando. Those cities feature two of the four largest universities in the U.S.  I'm not in either city so have been unable to support meetups in those ar... (read more)

2
Ben_West
2y
Thanks! This is a helpful example
2
ElliotJDavies
2y
Community building is the lowest hanging fruit! - It's fruit hanging around everywhere! Pick your impact points (or fruit!) while you still can!   This is probably because 1) it requires psychological/social risks and effort (i.e. rejection can be hard 2)  people who are willing to take these risks are in short supply in EA (3) It's hard to scale it well  Small groups have (very) high retention rates, and people in small groups are very likely to become "highly engaged".  Organising a meetup is crazy simple 1) pick a venue (maybe call ahead) 2) post a facebook event 3) invite people personally (Send them a pm!). If you're not sure people will turn up, that's fine! Just take a book - worst case scenario you get to have a little read and some time to yourself.  If anybody is considering running an event or starting a group, you can always ask from advice from Catherine Low!  I would  also be super happy to meet you (#impacthasnoborders)! 

Several EAs have accurately updated prominent individuals' bios (e.g., the profile of Michael Kremer) to highlight their founding roles in Giving What We Can — or other notable EA affiliations. 

I can't take credit for those additions, but think they are smart, consistent with the spirit of Wikipedia, and worthwhile.

Anecdotally, the match did lead a non-EA friend of mine to make a BTC gift she otherwise wouldn't have. So it could still lead to more 2021 giving to GD overall.

Ah, well - you can see how even the agreeable Forum norms you aren't directly responsible are enhanced by association with you!

Hope your final 1.5 Forum-wrangling weeks are smooth ones.

Agree that GAP is a great cause for small U.S. donors! Their team is approaching the opportunity in a sophisticated way. 

We've given to GAP twice this fall, and expect to give more this winter / next year.

Empathetic, welcoming — and a lively, wise writer. Even Aaron's commenting guidelines (↓) are warm and concise. 

Your guiding voice will be missed here, Aaron. We look forward to cheering your EGQ and OP work next year!

Thanks, Jared!

To clarify: The guidelines on this post are the default guidelines for all posts, which I think were written by someone on the LessWrong team before the Forum existed.

Completely agree with the thrust of this post. 

I do have one small phraseology  suggestion here:

I’d especially encourage ‘medium’ donors (e.g. people who might donate $200k - $2m per year) to think seriously about making ‘angel’ donating a significant focus e.g. choose an area to specialise in and spend 1-2 days per month on research...

You might reconsider labeling this group as 'substantial' donors (rather than 'medium' donors) given the historic average of <$10K/year for EA donors. That survey data suggests the $2M donor level is likely clos... (read more)

2
WilliamKiely
2y
Ben never used the term "medium" again so he could have just written "I’d especially encourage people donating $200k - $2m per year to think seriously..."

If you are looking to donate to CEA, the Every.org donation matching program still has $60K in matching funds available (for a 1:1 match up to $100 [USD]). 

No time like the present to convert 100 USD for CEA into 200 USD! The link to CEA's giving page on Every.org is here.

For those interested in the work Michael Kremer (Giving What We Can member and 2019 Nobel Laureate in Economics) and his spouse and fellow GWWC member Rachel Glennerster have done on COVID-19 vaccine supply, our team profiled one of their co-authors this week — Juan Camilo Castillo of UPenn. An excerpt is below / the link is here: https://innovationexchange.mayoclinic.org/market-design-for-covid-19-vaccines-interview-with-upenn-professor-castillo/

###

JCC: Michael Kremer had worked on groundbreaking pneumococcal vaccine research in the past. Early in 2020, h... (read more)

Cute animal cards never hurt. We bought a mug last winter with the logo of the cause we gave the most to in 2020. It has been a nice reminder of that giving, and well worth the price. (Proceeds from the mug also went to that cause.) 

A few other "end-of-year ritual" thoughts:

1. Outdoor rituals, paired with giving: holiday walks (or kicking a soccer ball around) have made our holidays more memorable. We live near a beach, so giving to environmental and animal welfare charities over coffee feels more meaningful right after watching chipper coastal birds ... (read more)

5
AppliedDivinityStudies
2y
Ohh mugs are a great idea! I just found (ACE top charity) the Humane League's gift shop: https://thehumaneleague.org/shop Water bottle and mug are pretty compelling.

+1. This was fun, it was a great excuse to bring up some EOY giving by a month — and your instructions were ultra-clear. Thank you, William!

Congratulations on the launch, Jan-Willem!

Good luck in the final months of 2021 and the new year - and if/when you expand to the Americas, feel free to drop me a line. Would be happy to chat and share any resources that may be helpful.

Thank you for sharing this, Peter. My old organization brought Hauser’s and Green's group — The Management Center — in for a training session in 2019. It was excellent. TMC also has plenty of free resources on its website, for those who are interested. I'll check out the book this winter.

Will be interested to see if Training for Good (which sounds very promising) also adopts any of TMC’s free resources. TFG looks like it’s mainly focused on EMEA audiences and time zones, while I’m not sure if TMC is well-known outside North America. There may be potential ... (read more)

2
Jan-Willem
2y
Thanks Jared for thinking about TFG! We will make use of existing resources as much as possible. Never heard of this but just got the book . Our focus on EMEA is temporary and dependent on the kind of programs. E.g. our program for policy makers is aimed at EMEA because of substantial differences with the US market

FWIW my personal opinion having both taken the course and read the book is that reading the book is much more valuable (and much less expensive) than taking the course. I think this is also the opinion of other people I know who have done both, but I'm not sure.

Agreed: I also started with the CATF episode today, and look forward to moving on to the 80K, GWWC, and Singer episodes in the weeks to come!

Thank you for sharing this question, more better!

As someone whose day job involves some work at the intersection of climate change and public health, I’m curious to learn more about your work. Would you feel comfortable sharing a bit more about your / your group’s work and goals for the coming months and years?

Thanks again for kicking off a great question and discussion.

1
more better
3y
Hi Jared,  Thanks for your response. Glad to hear you're working on this too.  I updated the original post to mention that for personal reasons, I am currently trying to maintain a modicum of anonymity, so for the moment, I want to remain somewhat vague about my organization and myself.  That is hard, because I really appreciate and want to engage on a more personal level with many of the great people on this forum, but until I have a better sense of personal trajectory, it feels important. Thank you for your encouraging comment.

On another global health note, eligible U.S. residents may be interested in these 10+ newly posted roles on USAID's COVID-19 Task Force. The Task Force has some fantastic people on it — and a friend at USAID has enjoyed the pace at the agency under Samantha Power.

Roles and application instructions here: https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/614447700

Thanks for sharing this write-up, and I look forward to learning more at the 10/12 call.

I also chipped in via the ActBlue link —  and would encourage other U.S. citizens thinking about their 2021 and 2022 effective giving to do the same. Contributions also have a greater impact earlier in the election cycle (e.g., in fall 2021 versus fall 2022) so there's no time like the present.

2
Guarding Against Pandemics
3y
Thanks so much, Jared! Happy to have your support. Be sure to sign up for updates on the GAP homepage.

Our Mayo Clinic team featured Charity Entrepreneurship alumna and Giving What We Can member Dr. Lucia Coulter and the Lead Exposure Elimination Project on our blog several weeks ago. 

Links here, for those interested!

5
jared_m
3y
On another global health note, eligible U.S. residents may be interested in these 10+ newly posted roles on USAID's COVID-19 Task Force. The Task Force has some fantastic people on it — and a friend at USAID has enjoyed the pace at the agency under Samantha Power. Roles and application instructions here: https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/614447700

Congratulations, Aryeh! 

Look forward to following your work.

Thank you for this post!

Would add this plug for ex-consultants interested in GCBRs and global health interventions: consider opportunities at well-resourced academic health systems. Examples in North America  include Cleveland Clinic, Mass General Brigham (the umbrella for many of Harvard Medical School's teaching hospitals),  Mayo Clinic, UCSF, and UHN in Ontario.

To pick one institution: if you go to this Jobs page and enter "strategy" in the keyword search, a number of roles oriented toward ex-consultants and/or those with MBAs and other busine... (read more)

Coming out of this interview, I really look forward to seeing the work Open Phil pursues around air quality in Asia. Those interested in this topic may enjoy following:

... (read more)

This is a great and comprehensive write-up!

My interview experience is ~13 years old at this point, but would briefly+1 that Case in Point was invaluable. I'm certain I would not have received a job offer if I hadn't bought a copy.

2
Peter4444
2y
In my experience (interviewed 2020/21), Case In Point is no longer useful, except perhaps to skim through for some ideas. My understanding is that, when consulting firms started using case interviews, they could get away with using a handful of standardised formats (profitability diagnosis, M&A, etc.). Case In Point provides rigid frameworks to apply to those standardised formats. But the firms have got wise to this. They used these frameworks to test thinking but got 'framework monkeys' using canned frameworks, so now they often give cases that don't fit those frameworks and/or expect candidates to produce better / more specific insights. I think the most helpful resources are those that focus on developing the skills being tested in case interviews. In my opinion, improving at the actual skills firms look for is a robust way to do well, is more fun, and is more useful for consulting and life. I'd recommend the free course and articles from craftingcases.com, as well as casecoach.com. (BCG London gave all interviewees free CaseCoach access.)

Thank you for sharing these — I may pick up the Clarke book as summer reading!

I continue to think that jobs in government, academia, other philanthropic institutions and relevant for-profit companies (e.g. working on biotech) can be very high impact and great for career capital.

 

Those looking to work at the intersection of academia, biorisk, biotech, global health/infectious disease, and philanthropic institutions may wish to look at roles at leading academic medical centers. A few years at Charité; Cleveland Clinic; one of the Harvard  affiliates (e.g., the Brigham or MGH);  JHU;  Mayo Clinic; Toronto General; &... (read more)

I'd love to hear more about your trajectory and work!

This interview with Reuben Munger is one of my favorite discussions with an energy/infrastructure financier who is having an impact on renewable energy markets in North America — it certainly led me to consider his corner of finance a fairly EA-friendly career path — in case it's interesting to you or others: https://capitalallocators.com/podcast/private-capital-perspective/

Thanks for this post! The spring college semester when I didn't have a laptop (it had shattered in late '07, and I didn't replace it until I needed one for a summer '08 job) was by far the most productive and intellectually richest semester I had on campus. 

This was before most students had smartphones — so that also helped — but chiming in that effectively not having internet in one's home can work nicely and lead to more reading and better sleep, if you have access to a good library/computer lab when you need one.

3
Kevin Kuruc
3y
No laptop! That's even better :)  And yes, to build on your caveat, I meant to add one of my own recognizing 'voluntarily having no connectivity because you have a nearby office, library, computer lab is much different than not having the option to be easily connected.'  

Matt Levine's newsletter is a delight to read, and I'm happy others here enjoy it!

The report on the Challenger disaster also chalked the loss of life and failure up to poor risk (and conflict) management. Experts the night before the launch raised serious concerns about the safety of launching under certain temperature conditions... and were basically over-ruled by managers who didn't want to pull the plug on such a high-profile launch that had been so long in the making.

We recently enjoyed this documentary on Wirecard's failure. The firm's auditors at E&a... (read more)

Completely agree. Here are a few case studies of ESG investing career paths that some might find interesting (originally posted here). 

===

Those interested in this path might enjoy interviews with Lauren Taylor Wolfe — and reading about the work of Québec's pension plan, John Kerry and Mark Gallogly, and Mark Carney to drive more effective ESG investing and governance norms.

Those interested in this path might enjoy interviews with Lauren Taylor Wolfe — and reading about the work of Québec's pension plan, John Kerry and Mark Gallogly, and Mark Carney to drive more effective ESG investing and governance norms.

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