NickLaing
Bio
Participation1
I'm a doctor working towards the dream that every human will have access to high quality healthcare. I'm a medic and director of OneDay Health, which has launched 53 simple but comprehensive nurse-led health centers in remote rural Ugandan Villages. A huge thanks to the EA Cambridge student community in 2018 for helping me realise that I could do more good by focusing on providing healthcare in remote places.
How I can help others
Understanding the NGO industrial complex, and how aid really works (or doesn't) in Northern Uganda
Global health knowledge
Posts 28
Comments1672
Thanks @mal_graham🔸 this is super helpful and makes more sense now. I think it would make your argument far more complete if you put something like your third and fourth paragraphs here in your main article.
And no I'm personally not worried about interventions being ecologically inert.
As a side note its interesting that you aren't putting much effort into making interventions happen yet - my loose advice would be to get started trying some things. I get that you're trying to build a field, but to have real-world proof of this tractability it might be better to try something sooner rather than later? Otherwise it will remain theory. I'm not too fussed about arguing whether an intervention will be difficult or not - in general I think we are likely to underestimate how difficult an intervention might be.
Show me a couple of relatively easy wins (even small-ish ones) an I'll be right on board :).
Thanks @ElliotTep that's all very reasonable. As a side question I was wondering what you mean by this exactly?
"I've spent a fair bit of time advocating for recommended default splits across cause areas based on feedback from a few Anthropic staff."
That's true, and that could well be the case. However his job is to raise more money for his fund, and discouraging others from lobbying could help him raise more money while increasing the power/influence of the fund he works for. This may well be an unfortunate coincidence, but a higher level lobbyist asking lower level people not to lobby invites at least a bit of scrutiny.
That all makes sense. You are right that all of these have been discussed before on one level, but there's so so much to get into I still feel we've barely scratched the surface of many of these
- The value of orgs that do one thing vs. those that do many (GiveWell funds both somewhat evenly)
- How AI will transform of GHD
- Growth/Development strategies vs. Randomista stuff
- Wellbeing vs. other measures
- "Hits based approach" vs. more solid research
- Support of Govt. vs. Vertical solutions
Yeah I agree I'd love to hear more from CE charities, they are surprisingly silent on the forum! Re solution 2, have changed the post on that one
Maybe its up to people like me to convince people like you that its still interesting, will keep that it mind :)
You say "I work at an organisation that recommends funds to Anthropic donors as our primary call to action". and "The org where I work, Senterra Funders, is largely pitching the animal advocacy movement via a few large regranting organisations".
It feels icky to me that there are fund lobbyists moving around trying to convince people who might become rich soon where to give their money. Outside of EA, when people get rich I doubt there are a bunch of charity lobbyists breathing down their necks? I feel like the Anthropic employees themselves should be able to choose who they reach out to, rather than being contacted and courted. Unless they've asked for a bunch of fund managers to make their case which would then make sense.
If you are acting as a cause-area lobbyist for animal welfare here I think that makes you part of a higher level collective action problem as well, if there are Biosecurity, GHD and AI safety funds lobbying too? You say there are "hundreds of orgs" that could stress out Anthropic employees but there are also thousands of foundations/funds in the world that would have as much right as you to lobby Anthropic employees, creating almost as bad a collective action problem as individual orgs lobbying.
Within GHD in EA, there are basically two big funds, Coefficient giving and GiveWell. I think both orgs are fantastic, but I wouldn't be comfortable with 100% of a huge tranche of new money given to them because I think that level of centralisation of power is dangerous, especially if say twice as much money came in than they currently have.
Unless there are bunch more funds going to appear I would probably agree with @abrahamrowe that if there are Anthropic individuals who feel comfortable making their own decisions about how to give, they should consider choosing who to give to themselves (or joining a funding circle, which I'm a big fan of) or even setting up their own funds.
Your conflict of interest here feels pretty significant (even if declared). Its hard to read this and not feel like it might be a bid to directly protect your own interests by asking others to not step into your turf here as a lobbyist. Which might actually fit with your job description?
GWWC doesn't need your giving to be "the most cost-effective... of all time" so I think your sacrificed earnings is well within the spirit of the pledge. I'm interested so many people disagree with @Neel Nanda here on that front as well!
Thanks for the update, and the reasons for the name change make s lot of sense
Instinctively i don't love the new name. The word "coefficient" sounds mathsy/nerdy/complicated, while most people don't know what the word coefficient actually means. The reasoning behind the name does resonate through and i can understand the appeal.
But my instincts are probably wrong though if you've been working with an agency and the team likes it too.
All the best for the future Coefficient Giving!