All of JDBauman's Comments + Replies

What seems AI written about it? (I'm conscious I received a similar flag from you awhile back too, hah!)

Thanks Father Peter!

I was on it yesterday and thought "huh! 1200+ jobs is a lot!" Well done scaling this up!

Please do! This is perhaps the single-best resource to share with Christian friends interested in effective altruism.

We may translate to German. Need to check with the publisher

There's a shortfall of evidence around the topic of human trafficking, which my colleague explores in this report on human trafficking. Innovations for Poverty Action explores this in some new reports here, and here.

My sense from a cursory overview of the problem and tentative solutions: human trafficking is an important cause (comparable in scale (DALYs) to a problem like maternal disorders, but the solvability is of much lower confidence than for problems of similar or greater significance, such as malaria deaths. 

For instance, evaluators have stron... (read more)

Reminds me of Oliver, who lived in a van for 4 years to donate as much money as possible to the poor while earning to give at Google. He eventually moved to a studio apartment for better health / dating, and still gives away about just as much many many years later.

Oliver' story below:
 

Sent you an email!

Thanks for this! I agree the NT puts severe moral weight on care for the poor. Matthew 25 should make any “faith” that never expresses itself in works of mercy look suspect.

Where I think your post is slightly theologically dangerous is in treating salvation a bit like a checklist of criteria humans can meet. The NT is equally clear that none of us meets God’s standard: “None is righteous… no one seeks for God” (Rom 3:10–12), and Jesus’ demand is perfection (Matt 5:48). On that basis, no one is saved.

That’s why the cross matters: “While we were still sinner... (read more)

(I've been lurking your posts, inspired partially by Nick's high opinion of you, partially by my interest in helping animals as effectively as possible!)

Thank you for your generosity! What animals are you donating to these days? Or are you stocking up a kind of DAF-like instrument for dispursing later?

They don't have to be in conflict. But people feel like they are. Why else don't people give more? Most people just aren't as excited about giving as they are about spending that money on other things in life. 

Ideally giving springs from heart to hands. And the best way to motivate someone else is probably to point to the heart, and the excitement, not the obligation (unless it's an opening hook - the e.g. drowning child experiment is just really strong).

Thanks for the shoutout to EACH, Nick! 

I find myself bobbling between 

1) giving as obligation:
 "whoever has two shirts should give to him who has none" 
"sell your possessions and give to the poor." 
"imagine a child drowning in a shallow pond"

and 2) giving because its exciting
"God loves a cheerful giver"
"It costs just $4,000 to save a life"

It sounds like you've leaned more into the joy, and that's wonderful!

I expect we'll update this on an (approximately) yearly basis

One obvious answer here that hasn't come up yet -- they can take the 10% pledge! And, of course, hustle at their current job, work their way up, and earn-to-give or build management skills that can later be useful for jobs at direct work organizations

I'm not sure how many 1-1s EA UK does with people who are new to EA, but first timer 1-1s seem especially valuable at helping people who are very new to the movement who maybe didn't get into it through a typical university pipeline or randomly read about it online.

If EA UK existed solely as a lone, gifted community organizer who took a few hundred 1-1s with new members and sought value-adding connections and resources for the EA UK ecosystem, I think might well be worth a 100k yearly budget.

Seems like the commenter is hung up on this "Because afterlife, evangelism dominates" view.

Saving children's lives from malaria might have much greater eternal value than preaching a sermon. That's because preaching and evangelism plausibly aren't the only thing that influence the afterlife. It's commonly held that good deeds will be rewarded in the afterlife, even if only as memories (Matt 5:12). Any positive good experienced over an infinite timeframe is, of course, infinite. 

Recently, philosophers like Brian Cutter and Philip Swenson have written a... (read more)

What is the breakdown by religion? 

This looks really cool!

Thank you for posting this! There's a lot of wisdom here and surely plenty more Christians can (and should!) be doing to share about effective altruism with other Christians.

Super useful, tyvm for sharing.

Thanks for this. I wonder roughly how many hours of "disabling pain" or "hurtful pain" we estimate are diverted by saving 1 DALY. That would help me get a better sense of the tradeoff.

Anyone have a better sense? @NickLaing ?

Laura Duffy's analyses of this comes close to my view. On the margin, the question between global health charity and animal charity is something like GiveWell top charities *e.g. AMF) vs. ACE top charity (e.g. The Humane League), which is something like "Would you rather save 1 DALY or 40 years of hens from cages to cage-free.

I'm pretty split between the two and my donation habits reflect this; however, I don't think we know how to scale effective animal interventions past the current funding gaps in the low $10ms. For Global health, we do.

Edit: Learned th... (read more)

Thank you for the feedback on the EA Christian / Christians for Impact page!

I wasn't expecting folks to comb through the projects like you did. The fact that you did so encourages me and updates me towards being more public and forthcoming about project and funding proposals. 

Hi Aaron,

I direct EACH. Thanks for your interest - I'd be happy to have a chat anytime.

For a bit about us and our impact, you can read here, or see here for a directory of our linktree.

For Christians who have no interaction with EA, the careers website is a much better entry point, as is this excellent blog article related to effective giving. 

Thanks for this. My view is the same as yours. The first two strike me as "net positive." I'm also unsure about what pigs and dairy cows need. I wouldn't be hugely surprised if they have either "net positive" or "net negative" lives, but I think it's most likely (80%+ chance) they are "net positive."

(Qualifying discussion of net value of existence with " " because I find such valuations always so fraught with uncertainty and I feel I owe other beings tremendous humility in this!) 

I love that John Wesley was a motivation! "Earn all you can, save all you can, give all you can" is surprisingly rarely quoted among Methodists I know... FWIW this article on it at EA for Christians is actually the highest-performing one on the site!

Not sure if this is the place to post but I'll share. 

I took the pledge about 6 years ago but I hesitated for years. I think my reasons then were:

(1) Legalism
Pledges risk falling into "legalism" i.e. a habit of relying on specific commitments and stated duties at the expense of a broader, all-encompassing spirit of generosity. 

(2) Low Anchor
Related to (1), 10% sounded great but not so radical. Why set a lower bar for myself than I could handle? Speaking for myself, I thought then (and still do now) that I ought to be giving more than 10%. Plus, d... (read more)

I find this really interesting for personal reasons. I grew up in a Calvinist church (and also, for a brief period of time, considered myself a calvinist).  

Now, looking back, I find it fascinating that the church was successful in motivating itself to take evangelism still very seriously. 

It did so not on consequentialist grounds. No one ever said "evangelize because your effort actually might affect where someone spends eternity." 

Instead, people said things like "evangelize because you can share Good News of the hope that is within you" (... (read more)

Eric Sampson published a paper on this in Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion. See here. 

Abstract: Longtermist Effective Altruists (EAs) aim to mitigate the risk of existential catastrophes. In this paper, I have three goals. First, I identify a catastrophic risk that has been completely ignored by EAs. I call it religious catastrophe: the threat that (as Christians and Muslims have warned for centuries) billions of people stand in danger of going to hell for all eternity. Second, I argue that, even by secular EA lights, religious catastrophe is ... (read more)

This event is moved to April 7!

Thanks so much for sharing!

Thank you all very much for sharing!

Plenty of Christians would love more neartermist career content (and would be unlikely to engage with 80k as it's currently branded). So over the past year a group of Christian EAs created an advisory for this, under the direction of EA for Christians

See www.christiansforimpact.org

Thank you for this post.

I find the closing comment especially striking "So, I want a more synodal Catholic Church because I find secular communities like nerdfighters, like Effective Altruism⁹, like the Covid Tracking Project and yes, like some LGBT activists the church persecutes are running laps around the bishops on some of the most important issues of our time."

As far as I can tell (and as much as it disappoints me as a fellow Christian), your conclusion is correct. 

Thanks for writing this! A couple of random thoughts

1. I'm also surprised by the cost of these CEP retreats ($1,500+ per attendee). Assuming the organizer's salary is already provided for, I expected the cost for the average attendee to be closer to $300-$750. 
2. Also, I respect the establishment of a scoring system, but the weightings seem problematic. For instance,  "someone reports starting a project in an EA-aligned cause area" receives a score of 50, and "someone meets someone who inspires them to take an opportunity or cause area more seriously"

I appreciate efforts to get Christians on board about AI risks, but respectfully, Antichrist memes aren't generally taken very seriously. A fundamental issue seems to be that most people (Christians included) don't take superhuman AI as a credible threat. How then could it be a candidate for the Antichrist? 

Related to this thread, Rory Stewart is speaking on "Can EA convince governments to make international aid effective" at the EA Christian 2023 annual conference.

Excellent! Looking forward to seeing you there.

This looks excellent! I'm keen to support this in any way I can.

“Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime.”

Forget fish. Just send cash.

#1

Popular myth says "teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime".

But 200+ studies say "give a poor man cash, lift him out of poverty".

Let's stick to the research.

#2 

Teach a man to fish, feed him for a year (maybe).

Give a poor man cash, lift him out of poverty.

Thanks, we did!

I'm very excited to see this. EA for Christians is working with local EAs in Kenya and Nigeria to do grassroots outreach. We would love to see more EA community building in an African context, including outreach that builds networks to impactful careers that don't require difficult-to-obtain western visas.

Thank you for the post!

Are you aware of catholic institutes/seminars that discuss themes of AXR? Have you considered starting one?

I could connect you to other Catholics in the EA community who are interested. There's a vibrant community of Christians engaging with these themes.

Hi Sean,

I would be glad to connect with you to discuss EA and religion (especially Christianity!) Would you have time for a short call about this? https://calendly.com/jdbauman

Thanks for flagging this.

I've updated the language to "do the most good" to avoid any confusion.