All of MasonHartman's Comments + Replies

I think this is awesome. However...

There does seem to be a lack of transparency re: pricing/fees. I got all the way through sign-up without any mention of fees, and had to click the itty-bitty "Support Center" link in the footer to find any information on pricing.

There I found the Pricing & Plans FAQ, which only mentions the 2.5% transaction fee and a monthly fee incurred after $5000 is raised. I still don't know much that fee is.

1
Joey
9y
Hey Masson, Its hard to fit everything that everyone wants to know on a small introduction page. The monthly fee is $50 and paid by donors who support Charity Science directly. If you want a system with no fees we recommend using AMF's system which is fee-less although a little harder to set up and a little less visually appealing.

I think it's worth considering avoiding jobs/careers that are somewhat likely to be automated in the near future. Pharmacy and accounting seem like they probably fall into this category. Most jobs in transportation will probably be gone in the next two decades.

3
Nina Boxberger
10mo
In regards to automation in pharmacy (or rather pharmaceutical industry), I agree that preclinical drug discovery is already being highly automated. There is a lot of human capital required though in other subareas that I think will continue to be required. From pharmacists (while more is sold online, selling drugs is highly regulated and requires a specialist for consultation), people who conduct clinical trials, in regulatory affairs, medical affairs and marketing etc.

I think one of the major problems with this proposal is that nobody actually does it. 0% of the people I've heard propose it (three, if I haven't forgotten any) actually donate (or make any measurable changes to their behavior at all) based on their animal product consumption.

I've seen a few folks argue that by eating animal products they're making gains in somewhat-hard-to-measure areas like mood or productivity, and by making those gains they're either more effective in their EA jobs or end up earning more to give. I don't know of anyone who has actually... (read more)

1
Kaj_Sotala
9y
I spent a few months doing this, so that if I spent X euros on animal products, I would donate X euros to animal welfare charities at the end of the month. I plan to resume doing so once my monetary situation looks better (also making a bigger one-off donation to "pay off" the time during which I didn't maintain that practice). I downgraded from full vegetarianism (and an attempt at full veganism) due to the amount of willpower and occasional well-being it was costing me, especially when battling with depression at the same time.
1
Larks
9y
I know at least one person who does - or at least did when we discussed it.
5
RyanCarey
9y
I've met a couple of people who donate to effective animal welfare charities so that they can eat meat.
6
Owen Cotton-Barratt
9y
To the extent that switches to lifestyle take attention and willpower, I think it's often a question of whether those attention and willpower had opportunity costs. I agree that this is hard to test, so we should fall back on experience/theory/common sense. You seem to be asserting that there won't be opportunity costs, which seems prima facie surprising. (This is an argument against pushing people to switch to vegnism; it doesn't provide an argument for pushing people to stop being vegn.)

The point Jacy was contesting was about the happiness of free-range chickens whose eggs could feasibly be subsidized. He didn't pull that quote out of thin air; he was responding to a specific proposal about commercially-raised chickens. Pet chickens are not in any way relevant to the question of whether commercially-raised "free-range" chickens live neutral, positive, or negative lives.

I hope this was an oversight rather than a purposeful red herring.

0
Larks
9y
A reasonable supposition, but it's easy to find less gruesome videos of large-scale chicken farming. For example, this video of reasonably happy looking commercially farmed chickens was trivial to find on google. So even if we interpret his argument in that way he still can't have looked very hard.

I can say with ~95% certainty that those hens are pets or are living on a "hobby farm." I've kept chickens in similar conditions; there's just no way it could be profitable as a commercial project. There are a handful of independent farmers using "chicken tractors" to raise their hens on pasture (e.g. Grazin' Angus), but their eggs are extremely difficult to find and run up to $10/dozen.

If you want to understand how commercial animal products are actually produced, Googling "happy chickens" is not going to be helpful.

1
PeterMcCluskey
9y
Eggs from pasture-raised chickens are not very hard to find in Berkeley. Their nutritional advantage over grain-fed eggs was enough for me to switch to them. Yes, they cost $8 to $10 per dozen.
2
Larks
9y
I think you misunderstand my point. * Jacy said he couldn't find any less gruesome footage * I spent about 10 seconds and found some less gruesome footage * Suggesting he didn't search very hard. Yes, there are other arguments one could make. Certainly googling "happy chickens" is not a reasonable way to get an unbiased estimate of chicken happiness. But when someone makes patently false claims about lower bounds, it is an appropriate response.

Request: Quotes and/or brief statements that convey EA ideas in an interesting and accurate manner. Looking for the sort of thing I can mix into an image meme and use to start conversations on Facebook/Reddit.

1
Tom_Ash
9y
Relevant: the Facebook group thread with image memes.
2
RyanCarey
9y
Note that Mason has done this VERY well before. http://prettyrational.com/

That's a good point. I don't just think in terms of money when I talk about "donations" and "resources," but there's not really a very concise or clear way to talk about the very broad array of actions people can take that are consistent with EA goals.

X-risk and animal welfare are still pretty marginalized across the entire population, not just among the religious - and Christians have a very convenient existing infrastructure for collecting money. It might be that there are other reasons not to worry too much about them (e.g. an unmovable hierarchy that controls where the money goes), but their lack of concern for some (or even most) EA target causes doesn't seem like it should bear much weight.

I worry a bit that the way EAs communicate/market their ideas might be putting off a much larger segment of the population that relies largely on what Singer calls "emotional empathy" when making altruistic decisions.

I think it would be worthwhile to:

(1) look very carefully at the anti-EA hit pieces that occasionally pop up and try to understand the motivations/concerns behind the (usually not very well-argued) criticisms of EA;

(2) experiment with pitches similar to those employed by very popular and well-funded mainstream charities.

Speaking ver... (read more)

2
cflexman
10y
I've heard from several of my friends that EA is frequently introduced to them in a way that seems elitist and moralizing. I was wondering if there was any data on how many people learned about it through which sources. One possibility that came up was running tv/radio/internet ads for it (in a more gentle, non-elitist manner), in the hopes that the outreach and potentially recruited donors would more than pay back the original cost. Thoughts?
2
Pablo
10y
I agree with what you say, except for this: There are multiple effective paths to impact, and only some of these involve making or giving money. I think it's important to be clear about this: there are already critiques of the EA movement out there which foster this misconception (see e.g. the RationalWiki entry on EA), and this may be turning away people that would otherwise be receptive to our ideas.

I'm looking for more concrete suggestions that orgs could (and would hopefully be willing to) A/B test. Most of the charities EAs are encouraged to support do help sick/suffering children/animals, but I don't think they're taking advantage of it in the same ways the mainstream orgs are (nor are the meta-charities/evaluators that are pitching them).

About five years ago, a family member donated to SmileTrain on my behalf. I received a sheet of before-and-after photos of a child who'd had the cleft palate surgery with his first name and the date of his surger... (read more)

1
Evan_Gaensbauer
10y
I understand what's going on: * Evoking warm fuzzies from others rather than feelings of guilt or being overwhelmed probably works better. * Effective altruism doesn't work best by mechanically telling others 'look how effective this altruism is!'. Promoting effectiveness among donors is important as well, and doing so with positive reinforcement could be more effective than what we're currently doing. * Effective altruists should run experiments with this to figure out what works best. Mason, yours is a worthy concern, and it's not enough to have it buried in a comment thread. The problem isn't getting solved, so let's make an open call for effective altruists to experiment. I'll write a post about this. If anyone wants to get involved, or provide feedback, send me a private message.

I'd like to see more work done on "warm fuzzies," e.g.: How can our charitable organizations be competitive with non-EA charities in producing positive feelings in donors? How can our message be framed such that they don't lead to feelings of guilt or a sense of being overwhelmed by the scope of the problems we're trying to tackle?

1
Evan_Gaensbauer
10y
Cause areas such as global poverty, public health, and animal advocacy already have sick children, and cute baby animals, for charities to tell donors they're heroically saving. That gets lots of warm fuzzies. Lots of other charities engage their donors, especially larger and more regular donors, and the general community they're in touch with. This includes fostering a sense of community, expressing gratitude, and evoking positive imagery for them being involved. Effective altruist organizations that I'm aware do this are the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, the Center for Applied Rationality, Giving What We Can, and The Life You Can Save. One effective altruist organization I wish would do more and better community engagement is 80,000 Hours. For more abstract cause areas, like helping huge populations that exist in the far future, Brienne Strohl of the CFAR and Leverage Research wrote a guide for Explaining Effective Altruism to System 1 in each of our own brains. Figuring out how to induce an affect like this in donors across multiple mediums of expression could be useful. I don't know how to do that, so maybe try contacting Ms. Strohl about it.

I'm extremely pleased to see mental illness and addiction considered.

So far, I’ve just been trying to argue that effective altruists take cosmopolitanism too much for granted, and should more see cosmopolitanism as something distinctive about themselves.

True. I recall somewhat recently being surprised to find that a somewhat influential friend of mine believed strongly in a purely local approach. To paraphrase him at a recent event: "We're helping people right now, right here - not halfway around the world." The audience responded with massive waves of applause.

I worry a bit that "cosmopolitan" is a term that has "elitist" connotations.

4
Geuss
10y
"I worry a bit that "cosmopolitan" is a term that has "elitist" connotations." Why do you think that? (curious)