I overstated this, but disagree. Overall very few people have ever heard of EA. In tech, maybe you get up to ~20% recognition, but even there, the amount of headspace people give it is very small and you should act as though this is the case. I agree it's negative directionally, but evasive comments like these are actually a big part of how we got to this point.

There's a lesson here for everyone in/around EA, which is why I sent the pictured tweet: it is very counterproductive to downplay what or who you know for strategic or especially "optics" reasons. The best optics are honesty, earnestness, and candor. If you have explain and justify why your statements that are perceived as evasive and dishonest are in fact okay, you probably did a lot worse than you could have on these fronts.

Also, on the object level, for the love of God, no one cares about EA except EAs and some obviously bad faith critics trying to tar you with guilt-by-association. Don't accept their premise and play into their narrative by being evasive like this. *This validates the criticisms and makes you look worse in everyone's eyes than just saying you're EA or you think it's great or whatever.*

But what if I'm really not EA anymore? Honesty requires that you at least acknowledge that you *were.* Bonus points for explaining what changed. If your personal definition of EA changed over that time, that's worth pondering and disclosing as well.

I think people overrate how predictable the effect of our actions on the future will be (even though they rate it very low in absolute terms); extinction seem like one of the very few (only?) things that seems like its effects will endure throughout a big part of the future. Still buy the theory that 0-1% of possible value is equally valuable to 98-99%; just about tractability

Donated. 

I've been hugely impressed by the NT fellows and finalists I came across in my work at 80k and it seems like NT was either their first exposure to EA ideas or the first meaningful opportunity to actively apply the ideas (which can be just as important). I imagine uni groups are well in your debt for your role in helping finalists/fellows connect ahead of starting university too.

You've decided to give mostly to established institutions (GWWC, 80k, AMF, GW) – why those over more hits-based approaches (including things that wouldn't be a burden on your time like giving to AIM or deputizing someone else to make risky grants to promising individuals/small orgs on your behalf)? 

How do you think about opportunity costs when it comes to earning to give? Are there roles at other firms or in the US where you would expect to make substantially more (including downside risks), but pass on those for personal reasons? 

Same for roles where you might make less but pass on those for ETG reasons.

I think earning to give is the correct primary route to impact for the majority of current EAs and a major current shortcoming of the movement is failing to socially reward earning to give relative to pursuing direct work. I worry that this project, if successful, would push this dynamic further in the wrong direction. 

The short version of the argument is that excessive praise for 'direct work' has caused a lot of people who fail to secure direct work to feel un-valued and bounce off EA. Others have expanded their definitions of what counts as an impactful org to justify themselves according to the direct work standard when they could have more impact ETGing in a conventional job and donating to the very best existing orgs. 

All the EA-committed dollars in the world are a tiny drop in the ocean of the world's problems and it takes really incredible talent to leverage those dollars in a way that would be more effective than adding to them. Finding talent to do that is critical (I do this), but people need to be well calibrated and thoughtful in deciding whether and for how long to pursue particular direct work opportunities vs ETG. I think hurling (competing!) solemn pledges at them is not the way to make this happen.

The trailer for Ada makes me think it falls in a media no mans land between extremely low-cost, but potentially high-virality creator content and high-cost, fully produced series that go out on major networks. Interested to hear how Should We are navigating the (to me) inorganic nature of their approach.  

Sounds like Bequest was making a speculative bet on high-cost, fully produced – which I think is worthwhile. When I think about in-the-water ideas like environmentalism and social justice, my sense is they leveraged media by gently injecting their themes/ideas into independently engaging characters and stories (i.e. the kinds of things for-profit studios would want to produce independent of whether these ideas appeared in the plot). 

Not thinking very hard. I think it's more likely to be an overestimate of the necessary disparity than an underestimate. 

There are about 500m humans in tractably dire straits, so if there were 500t animals in an equivalently bad situation, you might be very naïvely indifferent between intervening on one vs the other at a million to one. 500t is probably an oom too high if we're not counting insects and several ooms too low if we are. 

I think the delta for helping animals (life of intense suffering -> non-existence) is probably higher (they are in a worse situation), tractability is lower, but neglectedness is way higher such that careful interventions might create compounding benefits in the future in a way I don't think is very likely in global health given how established the field is. 

You'd have to value animals at ~millionths of humans for scale and neglectedness not to be dispositive. Only countervailing considerations are things around cooperativeness, positive feedback loops, and civilizational stability, all of which are speculative and even sign uncertain