All of KarolinaSarek's Comments + Replies

Hi Cecilia! 

We offer up to 2,000 USD per month for the duration of the program. 

The amount may vary from person to person, with some participants choosing not to take a stipend (e.g., those who would take paid time off from work to attend the program) to others taking the maximum amount (because they have to quit their job to attend). 

If you think that amount would not be sufficient to cover your cost of living, please contact us, and we can discuss this on a case-by-case basis. 

I agree (of course ;) ), and that’s what we've noticed as well. Particularly, there are some crucial research skills that are not being taught elsewhere but are commonly used in EA/when one aims to have a significant impact. For example, prioritization research, calculations of cost-effectiveness at different levels of depth, issues of moral weights, etc. We aim to address this gap as well as provide training in generalizable research skills for example literature reviews. If you know people, who are interested in such a training program, feel free to send them information about it. We would love to see applications from them.

We are still finalizing the list as some ideas come from CE (promising ideas we didn’t have the capacity to research in their respective years), but others will come from foundations interested in research that could affect their decisions. Some of the ideas will also be developed during the program as part of learning how to do idea prioritization, and some may come from other partner organizations.

If it helps, we expect that ideas may come from many cause areas CE is focusing on such as global health and development, biosecurity/health security, governan... (read more)

2
Vasco Grilo
9mo
Thanks for clarifying!

Thanks Shakeel! I think a big value of the program would come from applying learned skills to practical projects and getting a lot of feedback and guidance from expert researchers when doing so. With those sorts of skills, it is best to lean into learning by doing. That makes it somewhat harder to make “public goods” material that will bring a similar amount of value to the program. 

That being said, we are planning to write a research handbook similar to the one we have for the charity incubation program. We probably won’t publish version 1 developed ... (read more)

8
Shakeel Hashim
9mo
Makes total sense — thank you, and looking forward to the handbook!


Thanks Vaidehi! We have established two Theories of Change (ToCs): an initial ToC for the first, pilot program and another for the program's long-term implementation. With the ambitious goal of piloting this program this year, our priority is to ensure its high value before any potential scaling up, hence the difference between our short-term and long-term ToCs. We are focusing on getting the program up and running, but I will be happy to share the ToC diagram once we are done with the outreach and vetting sprint.

About the expected roles, our curriculum fo... (read more)

I also wanted to quickly check it out while in the office. I played the first 1.5 minutes and it already moved me to tears. I'll have to wait until I get home to watch the whole movie. Thank you soo much Aaron for sharing it! 

EAGxIndia was wonderful! I went to many conferences over the last couple of years, and I have to say that EAGx in India had the warmest, kindest and most comfortable, and welcoming vibe; and all of that on top of being impactful. Huge congratulations and gratitude toward the organizers! :) 

Unfortunately, it is not possible to apply that to past applicants as it relays on filling out the assessment that we only created and implemented now. However, If you are interested, you can apply to the program now (the deadline is on the 10th of November), fill out the R1 test and just make a note that you want to get feedback. We wouldn't like people to do it massively as it really makes our job harder to know who is actually applying vs who is there just for the assessment but in a couple of cases, it should be fine. :) Another thing that we do is com... (read more)

Needless to say, when you're surveying 7 people they have reason to be concerned that they'll be identifiable from their responses. I will be abstaining from providing details shared with me from the past charity starter including their main concerns because I'm not in a position to judge if they'd be identifiable from that, but would encourage you to collect such feedback. I think it's safe enough to say that they weren't from the most recent cohort

That makes sense - if you could encourage them to reach out to me we would be extremely interested in their ... (read more)

5
Pseudonym101
1y
Great points well made

Hi Maith! We implemented a new system that gives every applicant automated feedback in the form of a short report. That happens after the first round of application. This feedback will be automatically generated based on the responses you gave in the assessment. We are still figuring out how we can give feedback to applicants at the later stages of the application, but basically this system ensures that everyone who applies gets some info on how they scored on each trait, what that means, and occasionally gives some guidance on how to improve those as well. 

1
MaithGopalan
1y
Thank you for the quick reply, Karolina! I am glad to hear that going forward everyone who applies gets some feedback. I do wish that was the case earlier when I applied. If there's any easy way to cull that automated feedback from round 1 for past applicants which can be shared, I would be very interested in receiving that! I am happy to send an email/note if that would help process that. Because rounds 2 and 3 entailed significant time commitments, sharing honest/quick feedback after those stages of the application process is even more important than the first rounds in my opinion. I would encourage your team to continue engaging with this as you proceed. Good luck! 

We have had founders from outside the EA community. “EA-ness” isn’t something we explicitly filter for, rather we look for traits such as being impact-focused, ambitiously altruistic, having strong epistemics etc. Those traits are, on average, more common in EA candidates, but if someone who is not part of the EA movement has those traits they will do well in our process. The only exception was when we had a year on EA meta charities, then being involved and knowledgeable about EA was necessary.  

The people that Steve refers to in the quoted sent... (read more)

Hi! Thanks for the feedback and for sharing your concerns. I agree that it is a good idea to get a sense of the program from past incubatees. Our incubatees often attend EAGs, so that is a good opportunity and we always encourage that. That being said, I’m surprised by what you say. To explain why, I copied results from a survey conducted after the most recent program in 2022:

Charity Incubation Program:

Foundation Program:


As you can see, people are generally very positive about the experience. When we analyze the reasons why someone applied, one of the most... (read more)

0
Pseudonym101
1y
Thanks for the reply. Needless to say, when you're surveying 7 people they have reason to be concerned that they'll be identifiable from their responses. I will be abstaining from providing details shared with me from the past charity starter including their main concerns because I'm not in a position to judge if they'd be identifiable from that, but would encourage you to collect such feedback. I think it's safe enough to say that they weren't from the most recent cohort Re non discriminatory hiring, I don't think the 'we have neurodivergent staff' angle is the way to go (ala 'my best friend is black' response) - you might just be selecting for neurodivergence in the same direction. I think the fact your hiring process specifically seeks out peoples ability on your selection tests is the problem, because that gauges skills without the broader context of a persons life, where they may be able to adapt to disability and other circumstances. For that reason, there is merit in say deferring to a resume and work experience which can illustrate that sometimes. Other times, selecting people more generously then ensuring you have good enough training systems to develop them up to do a good job is what you should focus on - suddenly apparent talent bottlenecks looks like a training capability skills gap.

Unfortunately, we don’t have the data compiled yet in a format that is easy to share, but I will put that on our list of things to publish in the future. But a couple of specific indicators: 

  • There is no significant correlation between age of the participant/experience and charity success. 
  • When we surveyed incubatees who had prior experience to establish how much they apply/use their prior knowledge vs how much they apply what they learned during the program or during running their charity, they say much more often that they regularly apply the ch
... (read more)

We would be excited about people creating another CE. We think that creating a more effective organization is extremely impactful and would be happy to see more organizations working on it. In those few efforts that have been tried by the EA community, we were happy to advise and share our knowledge, and we will be happy to do it for others.  

To my knowledge, there is no EA-aligned nonprofit incubator that provides comprehensive support similar to CE. The closest was Longtermist Entrepreneurship (LE) Project, but they discontinued after a year of scop... (read more)

1
Thijs Jacobs
1y
Thanks for such an elaborate response!  This kind of info is helpful to slowly get more mature in this space. 

As we mentioned in another response: 
We start with ~3000 applications and only accept a small number. It may seem like the odds are low, however lots of people apply via the initial form, but after  that the odds become more reasonable and you would find yourself up against numbers closer to 300. The stats for EAs are also pretty high (about 5x more likely to be successful relative to non-EA applications). If you get to interview one, you may be among 50-100 other people. At test task two, among 20-50. We’ve tried to make the first two rounds val... (read more)

We start with ~3000 applications and only accept a small number. It may seem like the odds are low, however: 

  • Lots of people apply via the initial form, but after that the odds become more reasonable and you would find yourself up against numbers closer to 300. The stats for EAs are also pretty high (about 5x more likely to be successful relative to non-EA applications).
  • If you get to interview one, you may be among 50-100 other people
  • At test task two, among 20-50.

We’ve tried to make the first two rounds valuable and worth the effort even if you don’t p... (read more)

Hi Larks! A lot to unpack here but in general, we only decided to start a family planning organization after we concluded that it also has a positive near-term effect on human well-being, and when it comes to long-term, very uncertain flow-through effects, we don’t strongly take them into account for any of the interventions we evaluate because they are too uncertain, but we gladly will when more evidence is available. I will address your specific points below. 

In 2018 you published a report (now deleted from the internet) that advocated for redu

... (read more)

Depends what you mean by median core EA, but defining it as “someone we could bump into at EAG multiple years in a row”, I would say:

  • We think there are limitations to what desktop research can uncover, especially in more neglected areas where evidence is more scarce. Therefore, we are time-capping stages of our research process and putting a lot of attention into making it more and more efficient over time (e.g., experimenting on and evaluating the research process itself and iteratively improving it). We think that some parts of research & strategy wo
... (read more)

The process to arrive at a co-founder and charity idea is very much participant-driven. In the first five weeks, you will work on two charity-relevant projects per day, in pairs. Initially, you will get to know every participant. Each week, you submit your preference in terms of ideas and co-founders. This will influence project assignments for the coming week. Towards the end of the five weeks, each participant ends up with a few favorite co-founder/idea configurations. The CE team will make a recommendation on charity teams based on participants’ prefere... (read more)

1
Sumaiya Taqdees
1y
Thank you so much for the detailed response. Very helpful!

Hi Ewelina! Thanks so much for asking. In general, feel free to translate any piece of content that we produce now and in the future as long as you mention CE. 

It will be nice to read something about it in my native language. :) There is no need to send it to us ahead of time; I will read it after you post it. 

3
Ewelina Hornicka
1y
Thank you, Karolina! You can read the article here: https://efektywnyaltruizm.org/blog/program-inkubacyjny-ce/. Please let me know if you find anything misinformative. It would be great to illustrate the text with some graphic material, so if you wish - we can happily add some illustrations from CE.  I want to make sure: are we also allowed to translate whole articles from CE's blog page and post it on our own, as long as we cite and link to the source? We would be happy to use this opportunity.

If you are interested in translating  Peter Singer's books to Polish, I highly recommend Elżbieta De Lazari. 
She is a professional translator and linguist, knows Singer personally, and has previously translated i.a. The Life You Can Save and The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter. 
If you're interested, I'm happy to reach out to her, asking whether she is interested and make an introduction. 
 

6
Eli Rose
2y
Thanks, really appreciate the concrete suggestion! This seems like a good lead for anyone who wants to supervise Polish translation.

I would hire her for any translation to Polish (if she has time), but especially Peter Singer's. The quality of her translations is superb (I read both English and Polish versions of Singer's books for my PhD, so I know she is just excellent). She translated 3 of his books I think,  and would be the best person for translating EA stuff as well if she has time and availability - worth checking and booking her time in advance because she always works on some books.

Out of curiosity, I looked up a list of EA-related organizations and checked their Glassdoor reviews:


Infrastructure

Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE)- 2.6 (2 reviews)

Charity Entrepreneurship- 5.0 (1 reviews )

 Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA)- 4.1 (10 reviews)

Founders Pledge- 4.8 (8 reviews)

GiveWell- 4.5 (6 reviews)

Open Philanthropy Project- 5.0 ( 3 reviews)

Rethink Charity- 5.0 (1 review) 

The Life You Can Save (TLYCS)- 4.6 (3 reviews) 

 

Animal Advocacy

Albert Schweitzer Foundation- 4.0 ( 1 review) 

Anima International- 4.0 ( ... (read more)

CE has been incubating around 5 charities per year (with plans to scale in the future), so far the success rate is as follow:

  • 2/5 estimated to reach or exceed the cost-effectiveness of the strongest charities in their fields 
  •  2/5 make progress, but remain small-scale or have an unclear cost-effectiveness
  •  1/5 shut down in their first 24 months without having a significant impact

I spoke about it briefly in this post and would love to find the time to elaborate more. 


 

[EDITED] Thanks for support! If all things lined up go through, the request is covered. 

[UPDATE] Thanks for support! If all things lined up go through, the request is covered. 

I have a donation opportunity that from a quick judgment, seems very neglected, potentially important and tractable; it also needs donations ASAP (the earlier the donation, the higher the impact). It is a higher risk and a higher reward; not everyone will be interested. Please message me if you are interested, and I can explain on a quick Signal call. 

5
Catherine Low
2y
Thanks Karolina!  I talked with Karolina and chose to donate - it seems unclear how likely my donation will help (things are so uncertain in general!) but I know and trust Karolina's judgement and since very large donors might not be able to help with this, it seemed like a reasonable use of my small donation budget. 

[Update 27.02.22, 01:12 am CET] For now things are on standby. Everyone is relatively safe. I’m dealing  with incoming request from community members and others as they come. Feel free to keep them coming. 

[Update 26.02.22, 3:40 pm CET] Things are moving. For now, everyone seems to be relatively safe and in contact. If you know anyone else (EA or non-EA) who need any sort of support, please connect me directly with those people.
___
I'm Polish and I'm in Poland right now and helping a couple of people to get out from Ukraine. I'm also in conta... (read more)

-13[comment deleted]2y
2
Charles He
2y
Karolina has updated this comment and I thought I would comment to "bump it". This activity seems important, maybe this should be a sticky post or something? Moderators?

Thanks, Alex! 

If you or anyone else has questions about participating in the program when you have or are expecting children or have other dependents feel free to reach out to me, we can discuss your situation and what support we offer. 

"Visions" - another song he released in 2021 gives me very strong EA vibes. Lyrics include:

Visions
Imagining the worlds that could be
Shaping a mosaic of fates
For all sentient beings
[...]

Visions
Avoidable suffering and pain
We are patiently inching our way
Toward unreachable utopias

Visions
Enslaved by the forces of nature
Elevated by mindless replicators
Challenged to steer our collective destiny

Visions
Look at the magic of reality
While accepting with all honesty
That we can't know for sure what's next

No, we can't know for sure what's next
But that we're in this toge

... (read more)

How has the EA fund grown over the years?

You can check the donations made through all the funds on our website. Below I pasted a graph illustrating AWF’s growth over the last three years: 

Do you have a sense of what percentage of overall EA Animal Welfare giving is being done through the fund as opposed to direct donations from EAs to orgs?

I’m not aware of any comparison data of that sort, but a couple of sources (mainly EA Survey) may give us some approximate answers.

EA Survey 2019 Series: Donation Data quotes the following amount of donations made b... (read more)

7
erikaalonso
3y
Karolina, Re: the 2019 EA Survey donation data, I think ACE was categorized under Meta? If you take ACE out of that list above the data looks more accurate (~$330k for Animal Welfare).

Similarly to LTFF, we solicit applications via an open process advertised on relevant sites, Facebook groups, and by individually reaching out to promising candidates. Additionally, we create an RFP and distribute it accordingly, which I believe LTFF decided not to do. Although similarly to LTFF, at AWF applications are initially triaged, rejecting applications that are out of scope or clearly below the bar for funding, we reject <5% instead of 40% of applications at that stage. The remaining applications are assigned to a primary and secondary fund man... (read more)

3
MichaelA
3y
Thanks! It seems to me like you might now be like 80% of the way to a write-up like the LTFF's one with this comment of yours, haha. Maybe it'd be easy enough to just lightly edit that into a google doc framed as "what AWF does" rather than "how AWF differs from LTFF", and then link to that from the fund's page or future posts?  (I don't really have a stake in this - just sharing a thought that occurred to me.)

I would expect that people with deep expertise in software engineering may have a better understanding of how they can apply those skills than a person without such background. We are always keen to hear people's ideas, so you can encourage others to think of an impactful project and apply to the fund! 

One example of an idea we funded in this category was a prototype algorithm that identifies the exact location and number of animals in each Iowa egg farm based on Google Earth data developed by Charles He. 

One of the projects I would be keen to se... (read more)

We had aggregated the data from 2017 (when the fund started) to 2020. 

One caveat is that it doesn't represent the ideal distribution of funding that we are aiming at. For example, if we had received more applications from groups working in Asia, the amount granted to that region would have likely increased as well. Additionally, the difference in cost of running a program in various parts of the world also makes the amount look slightly disproportional, so I outlined the amount and number of grants made in each region. 

The current breakdown looks... (read more)

There are multiple benefits I see:

  • More time for in-depth evaluation, therefore increasing the average ROI of grants, 
  • Increased capacity for active grantmaking. Previously we were mainly evaluating applications submitted through the application form. Now we have more time to create RPF, individually distribute it to potential grantees, and help with coordinated efforts. As a result, we may be able to create uniquely impactful opportunities that wouldn't have existed counterfactually, 
  • Enabled more specialization and therefore even more informed dec
... (read more)

That's right, there is growing support for invertebrate welfare work.

  • For the EA Animal Welfare Fund, it is a matter of the availability of new opportunities. Historically we have been limited by the applications we received and the talent pool for active grantmaking in this space—both of those increased over time, corresponding to greater support of such initiatives from the fund.
  • We can already see growing interest from animal advocates. Outside our last funding round grantees, we can see groups like Material Innovation Initiative working on silkworms or C
... (read more)

One point that I feel that we haven’t communicated well enough on is that cost of $27,000 per farm we have in the CEA doesn’t literally mean that we will pay the farm $27,000. As mentioned in the post, “this aims to set a conservative minimal threshold for cost-effectiveness. A high-scale, lower cost strategy (e.g. outreach through farmers associations) could further increase cost-effectiveness.”.  We want to test in our CEA the worst possible scenario and it doesn’t mean that this will be the strategy. I will make a note to structure our reports diff... (read more)

Hi Gordan! Happy to respond more in-depth but first, I have two clarifying points.

This intervention is for egg-laying hens, not broiler chickens. Egg-laying hens are not used for meat, but I could address your question from the perspective of egg quality. Is that fine? 

Also, are you making an argument that feed fort will specifically be more prone to “humane-washing” compared to, e.g. cage-free/broiler campaigns or that all welfare-focused interventions that aim to improve the conditions on the farms are prone to “humane-washing” and therefore may be net-negative in the long term?

Hi Jamie! Thanks for engaging with the research. 

  • On flock size, yes you are understanding this correctly. You make a good point, although the model doesn’t rely much on this factor so I wouldn’t expect it to greatly alter the endline cost-effectiveness. But to double-check, I went back to our model and replaced the current estimate of flock size in 2019 with a range from 25,500 to 59,000 hens (capturing the possibility that flock sizes remained the same as in 2007 and all hens were placed in new farms, as well as the possibility that no new farms were
... (read more)
7
JamieGittins
3y
Thanks for the response Karolina. Great that you've looked at the policy change route and that legislation would be the long-term goal of this.  In relation to your second response point: Looking at the published conversation notes from the interview with the animal advocate who raised the concern, they do not appear to be concerned about cage-free in the same way that they are about this intervention. These quotes show that the advocate thinks that cage-free does not suffer from the same concerns as the feed fortification intervention: "Feed fortification would not increase prices to the same extent that fundamental infrastructure change, such as cage-free would" "Although the animal advocate understands that these problems could also be problems for the cage-free campaigns, they think that cage-free is a better ask because it tackles one of the underlying issues of intensive factory farming (confinement), where feed fortification doesn’t." I think the second quote identifies my main concern with the feed fortification intervention. It seems likely that it would increase profits in the Indian egg industry by paying for something (at an estimated cost of $27,000 per farm according to the model) which will likely increase the overall profitability of farms. This leads to concerns with increased egg production and more overall hen suffering. My worry would be that this intervention seems to clearly benefit factory farms without imposing any particular costs on them. It would be interesting to see some discussion of whether the downside of this outweighs the upside of the welfare benefits provided by feed fortification. Obviously, if improved feed fortification can eventually become adopted in legislation due to the work of this proposed charity then the intervention seems more promising. However, I couldn't see any mention in the report of how the initial work with individual farms could be translated into policy change. I'd be interested to see this sketched out

Hi Tobias, thanks for your questions! 

My sense is that the producers are fortifying the feed a little bit, but to maximize production rather than for better welfare. What is optimal for those two goals diverges. A couple of reasons for that:

  • Feed cost is the largest single item in poultry production and accounts for 60 to 75% of the total production cost. So producers fortify the minimum amount possible that will still make the calculation of cost and benefits positive for them to make a profit, but not necessarily what would make a hen more healthy an
... (read more)

Thanks for the question! I generally believe that it is hard/impossible to reliably compare CEAs done using different methodologies and approaches. For example, Saulius’ CEA has a different goal than ours and takes into account the overall, average cost-effectiveness of all historical work on cage-free campaigns. In contrast, we look at the marginal, future cost-effectiveness of a feed fortification ask. Naturally they will differ a lot. I would expect that marginal cage-free $ would be lower impact than average historical cage-free $. 

It’s more infor... (read more)

3
lukasj10
3y
This is great stuff, Karolina! Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this. 

Hi Dan! Our CEA is built off the theory of change for this intervention that focuses on the animal welfare effects. We will likely add more cross-cause calculations to our CEA when the results of our work on moral weights by Rethink Priorities come back. Although human welfare doesn’t feature in our CEA, we do consider it in our report more broadly. We believe that this intervention could be a win-win, improving the lives of shrimp and of farmers. For example, an expert informed us that farmers would be keen to work with such an organization, since the int... (read more)

Thanks, Aaron! I read quite a lot of papers of this type, so I will consider posting more summaries or excerpts.

What are some of the most common misconceptions EAs have about Open Phil grantmaking? 

In each cause area, what are high-quality funding opportunities/project ideas that Open Phil would like to fund but that don’t currently exist? 

A follow-up question: What would this chart look like if all the opportunities you want to fund existed? In other words, to what extent does the breakdown of funding shown here capture Open Phil’s views on cause prioritization vs. reflect limiting factors such as the availability of high-quality funding opportunities, and what would it look like if there were no such limiting factors?

Thanks for adding this, Marcus! Indeed, Vicky - primary author - worked with Daniela Waldhorn from Rethink Priorities while researching this topic. We both cannot wait to read the final report and see your tentative conclusions.

Once your report is published, I will link it in this post to ensure that people can read more from a different angle and see where our research differs.

One thing to note is that CE plans to follow up our shrimp welfare report with an implementation report that looks more at the practicalities, which may lead to some changes in next steps.

Really impressed by your work so far, thanks for sharing this. 

Hey Edo, I'm glad to hear that you find our work useful.

I'm curious about how you are using multiple researchers for this. Most steps can be done in parallel, but I wonder- how much do you rely on multiple views on the same analysis, and how do you go about it? 

We have one lead researcher for each cause, responsible for conducting comprehensive research in their area; this way, they become experts in their respective fields. But we also want to capitalize on the fact that w... (read more)

Also, is there anything that the EA community can do to assist the research process? If so, what could be the most valuable?

Thanks for this question and for facilitating this research group! It seems like a fascinating project, and I cannot wait to see updates from it.

Researching marginal ideas on our priority list would be most valuable (ideally using the same process so it is comparable). Ideas that almost made it to our priority list probably have the highest odds of being better than the idea we recommend, so researching them might change what charit... (read more)

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