All of Prof.Weird's Comments + Replies

Very interesting concepts! I have one comment and one contact offering which may be helpful in adding a new perspective to your core assumptions (primarily that systemic solutions, such as empowering the next generation of African economics students to help change legislation, would indeed be effective altruism):

  1. I performed a broad and rather unrigorous quantitative overview of the strategic qualities of the top charities of GiveWell's top ten (OpenPhil, which is a major pioneer of bit-based giving, donates the most to GiveWell's suggestions), GiveWell'

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I know this is a bit contrarian but I'm asking just out of interest as opposed to critique. What's your thoughts on Neartermism and might it also require formalizing in order to provide a clear opposing theory to strength both Longtermism and Neartermism research?

1
Michael_Wiebe
2y
I think of neartermism vs longtermism as disagreements over (a) tractability and crowdedness of longtermist interventions, or (b) time preference. (Though I don't think many EAs agree with nonzero pure time preference.)

Two quick thoughts...

  1. My biggest concern is EA’s community of self assurance and potential lack of cultural integration when performing outreach (though not specifically related to Israel, more so what I’ve seen from a myriad of members and a lack of corrective advice from the head theorists of EA). Id hope for EA members and theory to approach from a ‘what do you believe and how do we integrate EA into it’ perspective rather than a ‘we know the best solution and here it is’ perspective.

  2. Thank you for writing this and added the links at the end! Though

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Also, your charity is an inspiration, thank you for being part of the global solution, Peter!

There’s a potential to have the Charity Entrepreneurship Incubator program documented from the perspective of the participants. I’m currently in one of the last rounds and if I do go through I’ll see if the CE team like the documentary idea. I figured it would be helpful to have some EA document it’s involved if that goes through (if I don’t get in, I still intend on passing this idea into the CE team and any expressions of interest from EA documenters).

However this is just a convenient potential documentary given the incubator is starting soon. I’m curren... (read more)

I found this fascinating but, as someone who found it too hard to read, memorise and utilise it all. Are some principles most important to prioritise in your opinion and some principles hardest/rarest to practice? Also, do you feel reading this book genuinely changed much in your life?

After speaking with a few charity entrepreneurs related to EA, it seems this book is the white whale of charity leaders; highly sought after but far too big to take on. Any summarising thoughts would be awesome to hear!

7
Aaron Boddy
2y
Hey there! I've only recently finished the book, so don't have much advice regarding putting the principles into practice unfortunately... though hopefully someone else does and can comment here too :)   A lot of the Principles relate to managing a bigger organisation than mine... Having said that I am trying to implement more robust decision tracking etc. in my org based on the ideas of thinking of your organisation as an optimisation "machine" to achieve a goal (and some of the suggestions he has in the book of how to do that) The reason I pulled this out as a list though is that I find it really valuable just being able to see the key 20 principles as the section headers, then I can dig down into the sub-principles if I need a reminder Happy to chat more but please don't think of me as the Principles guru, just someone who wanted an on-the-go reference/refresher :)

What progress is being made on any of these areas for improvement? Would be excited to help out!

If there's not much in the way of projects currently, it would be awesome to select just one of the concerns to start with and see if there's some systemic way within he EA community to tackle it. 'Reinventing the wheel' as an example would be a fascinating challenge to try and tackle. Solving it could mean more trust, investment, cohesion and effectiveness of the EA community.

I'd be keen to lend my statistical abilities to track and test some changes in the EA ... (read more)

I have a simple list of powerful actions you can take right now. Because I'm in the same boat, even though I study psychology in uni, I have been thinking of how to do more good every day. I think the EA Forum can get a bit theoretical and I hope to change that because, indeed, we need practical activities to do in order to effectively be altruistic.

  1. What does a charity/person need? Can you give it to them?

It seems like another lame piece of advice, but if you ask what the biggest challenges a charity/person faces, you can attempt to do some legwork for... (read more)

My personal suggestion is to spend those five hours as a freelancing nomad by giving unsolicited support to any charity, business or individual which can provide career capital or simply philanthropic results from your work.

A project which both does good while also allows for the flexibility of reconnoissance and growing career capital. It sounds like you might be best freelancing. The book Surrounded By Idiots puts forth four professional personality types (https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/2019/jul/surrounded-by-idiots-personality-types-at-work.html - a... (read more)

I truly want Effective Altruism to flourish, but I am concerned with the EA handbooks, the backbone of the EA community, being too theoretical. Donating and volunteering aside, there are be driving principles of EA which are not summarised as daily practices, and thus the EA community merely the theorise about them. Práctica principles such as decision making ratios between income, expense and donations or the exact tenants of thinking globally and acting locally (such as being aware of what actions will/won’t make positive/negative change). These are acti... (read more)

Suggestions? Any shortcuts past the barriers to entry in humanitarian volunteering? It seems like a catch 22 to need experience to get experience. I’m studying for a bachelor's degree but in the meantime want to provide value to awesome causes!