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"I also find it easier to stay motivated when I think about the fact that people around the world are getting better off, and how that’s often down to the hard work of others." This is definitely helpful and motivating for me atm, thank you for posting this today :)

Cost-Effectiveness of Vaccines: Appendices and Endnotes

JoshP6y0

Haven't read all of it- but I believe there's an error in the first line, which says this is the "second of three parts", I think it means third. Sorry my engagement isn't more interesting :P

Peter Wildeford

Fixed. Thanks!

JoshP6y1

Good article in lots of ways. I'm perhaps slightly put off by the sheer amount of info here- I don't feel like I can input all of this easily, given my own laziness and number of goals which I feel like I prioritise. Not sure there's an easy solution to that (maybe some sort of two three top suggestions?), but feel like this is a bit of an information overload. Thanks for writing it though Darius, I enjoyed it :)

Joey6y13

Personally, if I were to simplify this post down to top 2 pieces of advice 1) focus on doing good now 2) surround yourself with people who will keep encouraging you to do good long term.

Announcing the Effective Altruism Handbook, 2nd edition

JoshP6y10

I just spent a very exciting hour going through every link (yes, I clicked all of them) in the handbook, and I think I have a definitive list of mistakes in the links (if there are others, may they remain mistakes ever more :P ): p.47, Engines of Creation p.77 expected value link p.77 Risk aversion and rationality , Use http://fitelson.org/seminar/buchak2.pdf instead p.80 – scope insensitivity p.80- Luke Muehlhauser has commented p.127 “our profile on the long-run future” Footnote 43, p.137, link 2, related to diarrhoea p.142, “animal welfare profile” P.... (read more)

MaxDalton

Thanks so much for this!

Announcing the Effective Altruism Handbook, 2nd edition

JoshP6y1

I think there's a mix of working and non-working, having just checked myself. Some don't go through to anything when you click on them; some go through to a 404 error; and some go through to the correct website.

Bizarrely, this will depend on the copy I have downloaded. I have downloaded it more than once, and it works differently each time. The first one I have downloaded (I downloaded more than once in different tabs) works in every link I check. The second one doesn't- and this remains true when comparing certain links like for like. I'm not really sure why. Bit bizarre.

MaxDalton

Edit, this should be fixed now, let me know if there are still problems. (Sorry, I don't have time to reply to all of the comments here today.) Sorry about this! Not sure what's going on here, but does this version work better for you? [There was a link here] I'll try to get a full fix tomorrow.

Announcing the Effective Altruism Handbook, 2nd edition

JoshP6y9

A few quick comments, have skimmed through rather than a read in depth (have read a number of the articles in the past):

There's a format error on p.167- Under 1. Learn more, there is a spacing error in the paragraph, which bizarrely cuts the paragraph in two for no reason. [Edit: this is not a lone error, I've found another on p.142, there may well be others, I haven't gone through exhaustively]
I'd be interested how the relevant cause areas were agreed upon? There's a heavy emphasis on Artificial Intelligence and the Long-Run Future (three articles on A

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MaxDalton

1. Thanks for pointing that out, we'll fix that. 2. * Cause areas: Unfortunately we couldn't include everything. One of the core tenets of effective altruism is making difficult calls about cause prioritization, and these will always be contentious. We had to make those calls as we decided what to include. Our current best guess is that we should be focusing our efforts on a variety of different attempts to improve the long-term future, and this explains the calls that we made in the handbook. * Career paths: You're right, I'll make some changes to make clear that this is cause focused, and point people to 80,000 Hours for career focused advice. * Sorry that the article is not so helpful for non-Americans. Unfortunately this varies quite a bit between countries, and we couldn't cover them all. 3. That's a good point, I'll consider changing/adding those books. 4. That's another good point. I might include another section at the end on criticisms.

JoshP6y5

Interesting stuff, thanks guys. I wanted to discuss one point:

From conversations with James, I believe Cambridge has a pretty different model of how they run it- in particular, a much more hands on approach, which calls for formal commitment from more people e.g. giving everyone specific roles, which is the "excessive formalist" approach. Are there reasons you guys have access to which favour your model of outreach over theirs? Or alternate frame; what's the best argument in favour of the Cambridge model of giving everyone an explicit role, an

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Alex_Barry

To jump in as the ex-co-president of EA: Cambridge from last year: I think the differences mostly come in things which were omitted from this post, as opposed to the explicit points made, which I mostly agree with. There is a fairly wide distinction between the EA community in Cambridge and the EA: Cam committee, and we don't try to force people from the former into the latter (although we hope for the reverse!). I largely view a big formal committee (ours was over 40 people last year) as an addition to the attempts to build a community as outlined in this post. A formal committee in my mind significantly improves the ability to get stuff done vs the 'conspirators' approach. The getting stuff done can then translate to things such as an increased campus presence, and generally a lot more chances to get people into the first stage of the 'funnel'. Last year we ran around 8 events a week, with several of them aimed at engaging and on-boarding new interested people (Those being hosting 1 or 2 speakers a week, running outreach focused socials, introductionary discussion groups and careers workshops.) This large organisational capacity also let us run ~4 community focused events a week. I think it is mostly these mechanisms that make the large committee helpful, as opposed to most of the committee members becoming 'core EAs' (I think conversion ratio is perhaps 1/5 or 1/10). There is also some sense in which the above allow us to form a campus presence that helps people hear about us, and I think perhaps makes us more attractive to high-achieving people, although I am pretty uncertain about this. I think EA: Cam is a significant outlier in terms of EA student groups, and if a group is starting out it probably makes more sense to stick to the kind of advice given in this article. However I think in the long term Community + Big formal committee is probably better than just a community with an informal committee.

james

Thanks for the comment JoshP! I've spoken a lot with the Cambridge lot about this. I guess the cruxes of my disagreement with their approach are: 1) I think their committee model selects more for willingness to do menial tasks for the prestige of being in the committee, rather than actual enthusiasm for effective altruism. So something like what you described happens where "a section become more high-fidelity later, and it ends up not making that much difference", as people who aren't actually interested drop out. But it comes at the cost of more engaged people spending time on management. 2) From my understanding, Cambridge viewed the 1 year roles as a way of being able to 'lock in' people to engage with EA for 1 year and create a norm of committee attending events. But my model of someone who ends up being very engaged in EA is that excitement about the content drives most of the motivation, rather than external commitment devices. So I suppose roles only play a limited role in committing people to engage, but comes at the cost of people spending X hours on admin, when they could have spent X hours on learning more about EA. It's worth noting that I think Cambridge have recently been thinking hard about this, and also I expect their models for how their committee provides value to be much more nuanced than I present. Nevertheless, I think (1) and (2) capture useful points of disagreement I've had with them in the past.

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