ludwigbald
Participation3
- Attended an EA Global conference
- Attended an EAGx conference
- Attended more than three meetings with a local EA group
Posts 3
Comments80
I wonder what EV projects the money was dedicated for. Which project actually ended up with a budget shortfall?
I very much agree, and I believe the whole community needs to think about our values. Every local group or other EA group should agree on some values and live by them.
Charity Navigator has published a list of trustworthy, disaster relief organizations working in the area: https://www.charitynavigator.org/discover-charities/where-to-give/israel-hamas-conflict/
They only evaluated one organization for impact and gave it a perfect score, but don't show their work: https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/453782061
Knowing nothing else, you could select a few promising orgs from that bucket, but I wouldn't give them the label of being "highly effective". Maybe the best thing to do is even to support groups in Israel that advocate for a more humanitarian military response.
I really like this frame of "given these constraints, how can we do the most good?", and I think EA doesn't do enough of that.
Giving the standard EA answer: Usually, people in crisis situations are less neglected than the global poor, that also lack access to clean water and healthcare. Right now, millions of people are thinking about how they can help Palestinians. So you should still prefer donating to e.g. GiveWell recommendations.
However, that misses the point that there are cheap effectiveness improvements you can unlock by slightly improving your friends' decision making and having them select a better Palestinian org.
First, some terminology: cash transfers are an intervention within the Cause Area of extreme poverty.
Their effectiveness needs to be compared to other available interventions. GiveWell is an organization that does just that, and they found bednets much more effective than cash transfers. I suppose many EAs choose to follow GiveWell on these judgements.
While Give Directly is definitely awesome and more effective than most charities, they don't really put together a convincing argument that they are more effective than bednets in this post. In general, I do like their point that we should think beyond the marginal donation. However, this isn't a post about politics or how to influence large amounts of money. It's a post that wants to get you to donate to Give Directly.
The Problem isn't that they make money from their superior product. The problem, as I understand, is that they use an unethical business model to do so, heavily distorting the options available to doctors and locking them into using their product.
At the very least, I think they should openly justify their pricing strategy. The public and Danaher's customers should know about their profits, per-machine and per-test, so they can negotiate fairer deals.
I suppose the question then is: does EA bring out the best in people? If not, how can we empower community members to be their best self in an EA context?
For example, community members should notice when they're not being their best self, and have enough agency to change the causes for that.
Thank you for doing this important work! I especially like that you're proactively creating structures that decrease interpersonal risk.
I would like to be able to subscribe to notifications for sequences like this one: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/s/FxFwhFG227F6FgnKk
Do you have any takes on insect farming? There's a company that sells protein powder made from crickets, and they basically claim they feel no pain and are super efficient. Could that be on the same scale or even better than vegan protein powder, made from e.g. peas?
https://eatsens.com/pages/cricket-protein