All of Jorgen_Ljones's Comments + Replies
I really like these kinds of write-ups that provide a rough calculation of the cost-effectiveness of altruistic actions! A point I would like to poke at is the conclusion that if there's a 1/3 chance of your blood being used in a (fatal) surgery, you should attribute 1/3 * your share of the blood used of a life saved. This isn't counterfactual reasoning, which I think is the best way to go about analyzing this. When deciding, on the margin, whether I should donate blood or not, I should try to figure out what the expected consequences are if I donate as co...
Some context for this initiative and how impactful it could be. I'm heading Gi Effekivt (www.gieffektivt.no) in Norway - the inspiration for Ge Effektivt (www.geeffektivt.se) in Sweden and now Giv Effektivt in Denmark. We've been up since 2016 and fundraised NOK 32 million (~$3.5 mill) to GiveWell recommended charities so far.
Creating national EA donation platforms with localization of content and payment methods should be a no-brainer in my opinion. People seems to have a much lower barrier for donating to a registered, transparent charity in their own co...
Aren't OpenPhil? https://www.openphilanthropy.org/giving/how-to-apply-for-funding#Can_I_apply_for_a_grant
They specify that they have low expectations for unsolicited proposals, but it's possible to contact them about it.
One argument against the effectiveness from mega charities who does a bunch of different, unrelated interventions is that from the Central Limit Theorem (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_limit_theorem) the average effectiveness of a large sample of interventions is apriori more likely to be close to the population mean effectiveness - that is the mean effectiveness of all relevant interventions. In other words, it's hard to be one of the very best if you are doing lots of different stuff. Even if some of the interventions you do are really effective, your average effectiveness will be dragged down by the other interventions.
Thanks for pointing out these unclear sentences. I've made some changes in this paragraph to make my point more clearly.
The first part of the sentence remains; in some views, it is not right that a giver of gifts get any privileges on other benefits. But in a pure utilitarian view, this might be the case in some sense. If one party provides a gift to another, otherwise equal party, this will create an inequality that decrease the total utility. A pure utilitarian view will demand that a redistribution of benefits should follow to restore the equal situatio
...This made me think of backing up online EA content. It's not that hard to automatize backing up the content on the EA Forum, the EA Hub and the websites of CEA, GiveWell and other organizations. Not all movement collapse scenarios involve loosing access to online content and communication platforms, but it may be part of both internal conflict scenarios and external shocks.
Is the EA Forum regularly backed up, Aaron?
Regarding the question about the preferred resource allocation over the next five years, I would like to see someone take a stab at estimating the current allocation of resources over the same categories. My guess is that many of the cause areas are far from these numbers and it would imply a huge shift from status quo to increase or decrease the number of people and/or money going to each cause area.
The 3.5% allocation to wild animal welfare, for example, is 35 of the most engaged EAs contributing to the cause area and the money that goes with it. Or more
...You're estimating there are ~1000 people doing direct EA work? I would have guessed around an order of magnitude less (~100-200 people).
FWIW, I was a stem cell donor in March this year.
Here in Norway you can sign up after donating blood at least three times, they take a couple of extra blood samples for the stem cell registry and then you wait for the call. Most people on the list are never matched with anyone. I understand that the registry is an international collaboration, so the patient could have very well (most likely) been from a different country than Norway. I don't know where the patient lives that received my stem cells.
Here's a database of countries and agencies that take part
...It seems to me like you and Halffull (previous comment) puts more weight on the goals we didn't achieve than was our intention with this report. I would like to note that we did not conclude the conference to be a failure and that the results are more nuanced.
It is true that we mostly failed at reaching the specific goals of engaging "inactive" EAs with the conference as we defined it. But the results report also show that there was a 10 percentage points increase in interests in applying for an EA Job and also an increase in interest of being responsible
...Sorry we're late to reply, but we hope it's still valuable.
Thanks for our detailed post and willingness to be transparent about our plans! Regional and national EA groups in Germany seems like potentially a very valuable initiative.
Based on our experience building the national EA group in Norway, we want to echo the feedback previously given here by EAF, Michelle and Aaron. Especially the notion of not planning too much in advance, as reality will always be merciless to any plans. Adopting an agile approach with rapid feedback cycles is really important. W
...Thank you for an interesting comment. Would you say that we should expect more impact from the fact that we are identifying and referring strong candidates, and providing them with a strong signal of their competence, motivation and EA understanding, than from any learning and experience they might build during the camp?
Hey Jorgen,
That would honestly be my guess. Some people would call this cynical, but I think the amount of skills you're going to impart in 4 days, or even with a very long ~5 week camp, are pretty limited compared to the variation in people's innate dispositions, and the experience gained in their whole lifetime beforehand.
Thanks for your comment. In our previous posts we explored the nature of the operations talent gap, and among other things surveyed EAs working in operations roles about what traits and skills they believed to be important in their job, and how these skills could be acquired.
From our previous post [part 2]:
..."...work experience with operations, running logistics at events and workshops, and project management are mentioned as ways in which the respondents gained some of their skills. Furthermore, internships, volunteering and doing independent side project
That's great! Thanks for the offer! We'll add your name to a list of resources we'll consider for the camp. That being said, developing the content is not a priority in the next month.
As of now it is quite low effort. We got a website that works like a donation portal providing information about GW orgs in Norwegian, general arguments for why one should give effectively and transparent information about the Effect Foundation. The main value here is the information is provided in Norwegian and that we support Norwegian payment methods. These payment methods are no or low fees so there are some savings in transaction cost by donating through us rather than directly.
In addition to the website we use Facebook to promote the organizations an...
I'm interested in hearing how the fundraising drive went and what the current situation of EA London is?
What happend to this post? Is it retracted? The autor seem to be deleted or something. I was interested in learning how others with insight in this topic would respond and follow the debate.
I would love to see more of the same kind of overview for other careers like computer science, consulting and economics. 80.000 hours should consider integrating such concrete, practical guides for choosing sub-fields.
In order to be eligible for tax deduction you mean? No, they have to be registered inside the EEA, though.
EDIT: Ah, you meant for sending in videos. I don't know actually. Will try to find an answer.
EDIT again: Yes, the charities have to be "nationwide" and they are stating that they want to promote "ideal organisations and the voluntary work in our country". This is from the larges commercial TV station, but I think the same goes for the smaller media channels as well.
Great with all the tips for a successful birthday fundraiser! But I've got a couple of questions that I would like to see your thoughts on.
I) People you meet on a regular basis, like your best friends of nearest family, do you include them on the email list? Isn't it like texting people while you talk to them? A bit weird and too formal?
II) I imagine you want to do this again next year, but could you send the same email again? Do you think people will think differently about the email and you contacting them with a fundraising call every year?
I'm thinking of giving "Giving games" for Christmas this year.
Family and friends gets a envelope with two cards. A nice Christmas card saying they now have x NOK to give on a charity of their choosing. Then it presents some interesting recommendations and encourage them to look more into them if they want to. When they have decided they have to write it down on an accompanying empty (but postaged) card addressed to me and when I get the card after Christmas I will donate the money.
Have somebody else though of something similar? Do you have any ideas that could make it more interesting or better in any way?
We are planning to do a survey of a representative selection of students at NTNU, our university in Trondheim, Norway. There are about 23 000 students across a few campuses. We want to measure the students':
... basic knowledge of global development, aid and health (like Hans Rosling's usual questions)
... current willingness and habits of giving (How much? To what? Why?)
... estimates of what they will give in the future, that is after graduating
And of course background information.
We think we may use this survey for multiple ends. Our initial motiv...
Yes, are hoping to have him over spring of 2015. The plan is to book the student hall (about 800 seats) at the weekly mass meetings. His excellent videos online is quite known at the university, so I think we will have good chances of a high turn up!
Hi! I'm Jørgen (or George for English speakers who find the ø difficult) and I study industrial engineering at the Norwegian University for Technology and Natural Sciences (NTNU) in Trondheim, Norway.
About 9 months ago I gathered a few classmates and we founded [Effektiv Altruisme NTNU] (www.facebook.no/ea.ntnu) as the first EA organisation in Norway. In just these few months we have had great success in building the organisation, networking and planning our [launch event] (www.facebook.com/events/1464757957116665) this Thursday. We have already third mos...
I want to raise another argument against donating to mega-charities, in favour of those who we are confident are highly cost-effective. Mega-charities, by their nature, run many programs, in many locations. In effect, they draw multiple times from the distribution of interventions by effectiveness. By the Central Limit Theorem, the average of any such samples, if not heavily conditioned on high cost-effectiveness, will be closer to the average of the underlaying distribution. The larger the sample, the closer to the average we can expect. For an individual... (read more)