All of ludwigbald's Comments + Replies

Good post!

Personally, my involvement with EA has been important for increasing my moral ambition. I have learned that I can both live a good life and contribute meaningfully to the world.

One thing that changed is that nowadays I'm much less certain about the correctness of opinions that are mainstream in EA. EA's focus has shifted away from rigorous RCTs towards counting neurons and funding speculative AI Safety interventions.

I interact with EA as a community of friendly ambitious nerds, but I also find enjoyment in public sector nerds, burners, the tech scene, etc.

I agree, generalist EA content is kind of boring to me now.

I never quite know how to engage with sociological analysis of this sort. It attacks longtermism not by its arguments as a philosophical stance, but by its function as a social group.

This is however, how the world works. If someone powerful proclaims an altruistic motive for a move that just happens to increase their power (like Elon entering MAGA and trying to reduce the power of government), alarm bells should be going off.

Moreover, Longtermism should not be central to our society. Longtermism provides a convenient justification for all sorts of monstros... (read more)

This post invites the old critique of earning to give:

You just tell yourself that, because you want to feel good about actually acting selfishly.

The correct conclusion from this premise would be, if it is even tru, to donate even more capital to those in need via GiveDirectly .

My view on this: I think governments do foreign aid for a variety of reasons, some are selfish (like providing contracts for domestic companies), some are more altruistic (though a more developed Africa benefits us all through better market access and more efficient use of resources, as well as fewer global health crises and political crises to deal with).

And a different way of looking at it: Some amount of foreign aid is going to be directed towards altruistic goals. Anyone should want that money to be used as effectively as possible.

That's right, but in the original meaning of the word, it's actually not against EA at all. Us too would prefer sustainable interventions that lead to a better system and that do not have hidden costs. And I think rigorous RCTs that measure general markers are a good tool to find such interventions.

One of EAs anti-examples, Play Pumps, failed because it turned out not to be holistic at all.

I feel like effective aid policy is at a similar stage to what animal well-being was at a few decades ago. People would agree that animal well-being is good, but they wouldn't feel it's important.

Maybe we need an org that does targeted public campaigns on how a certain aid organization is wasting money, combining that with pushing them to a commitment to more effectiveness. This approach has worked with some meat-intensive companies, and it might also work for non-profits if it can threaten their donor base.

What advice do you have to other filmmakers who are trying to spread ideals of effective charity on YouTube? What should they focus on?

Thanks for the great video! I think it did a great job at bringing the usual MrBeast emotional content to a charity whose impact is difficult to film.

Where does Beast Philanthropy get its funding from? Is it just revenue from BP videos (incl. Sponsors), or money from MrBeast, or also other philanthropists?

I have too many EA T-shirts from conferences. What should I do with them?

On further googling, there is actually an active proposal by the Commission!
The proposed directive introduces a new type of legal form (the "European cross-border association"), which will make it a lot easier for non-profits to operate across the entire EEA.

However, at this stage, the issue of taxation is not addressed. The European Parliament is expected to work on the proposal before the election next year, so now may be a good time to call further attention to this :)

I looked into this for a few hours a while ago - it's crazy to me that Cross-Border commerce is so easy in the EU, but tax-deductible cross-border donations are not.

I think there should be a push for harmonizing EU rules on tax-deductibility. Two scenarios:

1. You could make anything that's deemed a charity/public benefit in an EU country automatically deductible everywhere.
2. Or, if member states can't agree on criteria, create a new legal status for some orgs that means they are automatically deemed public benefit by any EU country. Ideally, this status would also be available to non-EU entities.

I would like to make this happen, but I have no idea how.

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

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.

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 ... (read more)

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

I'm happy to see that the increased community focus on gender diversity seems to be paying off, that's a healthy increase!

There's still quite a way to go to gender equality though. If you want to forecast on where it will go, I have a market: https://manifold.markets/LudwigBald/in-2025-what-percentage-of-eas-are It currently predicts 36% non-male survey respondents by 2025

Community notes are great, even though they are (still?) restricted to the US. The good thing is that they seem to work fast enough so most tweet impressions are actually annotated.

Hey, there's a new university around!

EAs have long floated the idea of starting or buying a university, but a group of sustainability activists and experts has actually done so. It's privately funded, accredited in Germany, offers bachelor's, master's and MBA degrees. Teaching is online-only, I suppose for cost savings and global inclusivity.

What do you think?

tomorrow.university

EA Germany board members are voted into office by members (aka the community). The board is formally responsible to ordinary community members, and they need to explain their actions. So the remaining board members would at the very least face questions. It's not a complete fix of course, but I think it could have helped.

As a community member, reading this kind of marketing language being applied to me is kind of uncomfortable. I want to be enabled, not persuaded.

This general approach still makes sense, so I think it should still be applied when doing outreach or planning events. But please don't forget there are people on the other side.

It's important that community members feel valued even if they don't seem likely to have massive impact!

I'm not familiar with your work so far, but there definitely is room for developing and advertising "EA for Normal People". I think there's value in addressing the very practical problems of doing EA: it's weird, it can be expensive, it's hard to stay motivated, the community is brainy, people won't believe your motivations, you have many existing commitments already.

I think the book might benefit from focusing on a target audience.

As a prolific writer of blogs, you seem to be in a very good position to also write a book. Good luck!

Is this the time to bring up better governance again? Why do we allow CEA to be part of a foundation, controlling community assets without community oversight?

If there was functional community oversight (like e.g. EA Germany has), we would know exactly why SBF was forced out of EVF (then CEA) board.

I think this is broadly a correct take. Longtermists care about expected value. Instead, classic EA is about following the evidence.

I perceive this as a very good and thoughtful collection of criticism and good ideas for reform. It's also very long and dense and I'm not sure how to best interact with it.

Hi, I think this is an interesting experiment, but I want to remind readers that this is not a sustainable strategy for learning. You should not compare your typical work day to a well-prepared cramming session.

I think, on the forum, there should be a clearer distinction between people speaking privately or on behalf of their organization.

Maybe org updates should always be posted by an org account.

I thought the video was really good, and I encourage everyone to watch it, if you're interested in how to operate with power.

I also recently started reading "How to Hack your beaurocracy", which seems like a pretty good guide to getting things done in a complex organisation.

I totally agree and I think EA should be less totalizing.

EA indirectly asks us to devalue our own direct communities in order to more effectively help others globally. For most people, this creates a big problem.

I want to see more focus on a version of EA for Normal People.

I have not come across serious abuses of trust, which is surprising even in a high-trustworthiness environment.

For example, actual Fraud can't be at 0% when there's so much money around.

The only example I can think of, SBF, seems thoroughly extradited from EA.

I just want to say that I have been very impressed by your response to my post! I agree, I should have done more fact checking before posting and I should have used more charitable language. This has shaped the debate in a combattive way I didn't intend. I already learned from this and will hold myself to a higher standard in future interactions with the community!

Thanks for holding me to a high standard in return, you have been nothing but nice. This has increased my trust in you personally!

I think that's a good analysis, and I think we should strive to be a high-trust community.

But: you can't just tell people to shut up and simply trust. Trust needs to be earned. One effect of democratic processes is that candidates demonstrate their trustworthiness, so after the democratic process, people can trust them.

Right now, you would ask any new EA community member (and most EAs are new) to "just trust other EAs", on no other basis than "past EAs have been trustworthy".

I can imagine a few things that important figures can do in order to increase thei... (read more)

I think you're spot on on one disagreement. Let's phrase it even more explicitly: You trust EVF to always make the right calls, even in 10 years from now. I don't.

I believe I have good reasons to assume that even if they have good intentions, they might not act in the community's favor.

I'd disagree. Probably Good, a direct competitor to 80k, is overall supported by the community, though it gets less support than 80k.

CEA goes out of their way to solicit competition in their new update. But probably a competitor to CEA would not end up being fiscally sponsored by EVF, and would receive less support than EVF.

However, I think instead of starting new orgs, the EA community should first try to improve the ones we have today.

This is exactly why I wrote this post. GWWC feels like an innocent community. But GWWC itself states at the bottom of their website that they are "a project of EVF". This is fact, at least in a legal sense.

GWWC is a marketing project, and here's why: GWWC tries to get people to donate more. They try to influence people's spending so more of it goes to effective causes. To me, that's the definition of marketing. The product they are selling is a Donation to EA Funds. It's still marketing if a charity does it.

I don't think the GWWC community is unhappy with ... (read more)

Yeah, I contend that this is only my personal view, and others might be fine with it. From my perspective, GWWC is a marketing project by EVF that builds and shapes a community centered on donating to EA causes (including EVF itself).

Structurally, this is the same type of user community that many for-profit companies cultivate. I do not join such communities, because I refuse to be a marketing vehicle.

More community involvement would lead to decisions that primarily represent the community.

In my view, the correct strategy as a community is to organize, discredit extremists, and trying to keep growing.

I'd like to bring up a further question: What would happen to 80000hours' budget if CEA were to go bankrupt? What would happen to donated money being held by EVF through EA Funds?

Hey, Thank you!

I don't think EA Germany should process donations itself, I'm very happy with the current arrangement. To be fair, this took longer than I expected, but I'm happy that it got done :)

(I'm a voting member, but do not speak for EA Germany e.V.)

Hello,

Thanks for your work and this reply.

1. Yes, seems like an unsupported belief I had. I added a pointer to your comments to the beginning of the post. At the very least, the board continues to uphold their influence over the community and EVF suborgs.

2. That's great to hear! I did not expect them to use their power, but they clearly are able to, if they wanted to.

3. In my view, if GWWC wants to be a community organization, it should be controlled by the community. From a governance perspective, GWWC is as much a community as IKEA's members program. Of course, the GWWC community exists socially, but it does not empower members to shape the organization.

Hello Michael,

thanks for the thorough reply! I apologize for not contacting you for comment before publishing this post.

You're right, GWWC mentions conflicts of interest on the other page. Sorry for overlooking that and misrepresenting the facts. I don't believe the organizations actively hide their relationship. I'd like to see it mentioned more prominently anyways.

I'm looking forward to the Longtermism Fund's report, glad to hear that it's coming!

On governance/independence: I don't believe GWWC is currently facing significant pressures to act against the... (read more)

Good catch, thank you. EVF/EA Funds asks a huge amount of trust from their donors. I don't think I would recommend donating to them.

I think this largely depends on what you're good at. Studying Biology is a very different experience from studying Bioinformatics.  You can also consider studying public health, which is again very different. Maybe you want to apply to 80000hours.org/speak for counseling :)