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All of Stens1991's Comments + Replies

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Gleb_T
Oh, nice post, thanks for that!
The Effective Altruism Newsletter & Open Thread - 15 December 2015
Stens19911
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Mass media articles about effective charity and the availability of GiveWell recommendations.

Seeding and supporting local groups, like GWWC has been focusing on.

Niche fundraising, like REG did for poker players.

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Josh Jacobson12
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I don't know that there's been that much downvoting, when on balance the score is -1, but it does say that it's been 55% downvoted, so that implies that before I arrived there were 4 up, 5 down, most likely. First, I'll say that the top link you provide is about encouraging more voting behavior, not discouraging downvotes.

Second, I'll provide my best guess on the reasons for downvotes.

This author has been posting... a lot. This is the third post in the last 48 hours, and the EA Forum often goes 48 hours without any posts at all. Furthermore, each post is a... (read more)

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Owen Cotton-Barratt
I didn't downvote, but something I didn't like was citing pieces in support of claims which are subtly different from the claims they actually make. [I do support allowing people to down vote without explanation, although of course explanation is better where possible.]
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mhpage
I see the downvoting trend as a symptom of some potentially problematic community dynamics. I think this warrants a top-level post so we can hash out what the purpose, value, and risks are of downvotes.
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Gleb_T
I'd also be interested to know that. I want to optimize what I'm doing, and the downvoting doesn't really encourage optimization - I don't know what people are reacting to. Comments are much more helpful :-)
Suggestions thread for planning and executing the 2015 EA Survey
Stens19912
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Firstly, we should use commercial software to operate the survey rather than trying to build something ourselves. These are both less effort and more reliable. For example, SurveyMonkey could have done everything this survey does for about £300. I'm happy to pay that myself next year to avoid some of the data quality issues.

It does seem clearly to be worth this expense. I'm concerned that .impact/the community team behind the survey are too reluctant to spend money and undervalue the time relative to it. I suppose that's the cost of not being a funded o... (read more)

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ChrisSmith
Great suggestion Stens! I'm happy to trial draft versions of the survey
Animal Charity Evaluators is hiring
Stens19910
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more research of that type is definitely needed, we're currently focusing our efforts in that direction on encouraging other people to do it.

Roughly how many resources (person days) have you put into this, and how many do you plan to?

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AllisonSmith
This is a very rough estimate, because we almost never put entire days into this kind of work, and because the boundaries between it and other work we do aren't clear - I'm not sure what things to count, in some cases. But I would guess on the order of 10 person-days last year, and hoping to slightly increase the amount of time we spend on it in the future. We don't have total control over how much time we spend on this, because other people need to also be interested in working with us.
Animal Charity Evaluators is hiring
Stens19911
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Does ACE place to run any more original studies life the leafletting-effectiveness study collaboration? Would that be what researchers potentially do?

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AllisonSmith
ACE does not have immediate plans of running more original studies; while more research of that type is definitely needed, we're currently focusing our efforts in that direction on encouraging other people to do it. Academic researchers and animal advocacy groups which perform the intervention under consideration as part of their usual activities seem to be better placed do do this type of study than ACE is, especially if both groups can work together. With more research staff, there's a possibility that we would again take on this kind of work, but it's not our first priority for what a new researcher would do. We would expect a new researcher at least initially to do most of their work on the kinds of things I've been spending most of my time on, which are more reading/interviewing/writing based. There are more details available from the links above, and the specifics would depend on the candidate and their skills and interests, but working on our charity and intervention evaluations would probably be a major part of the job.
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redmoonsoaring
I think they would do this if they had more funding. Not sure if they have enough this year, but maybe next year.
The AI Revolution [Link]
Stens19910
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What's been the general tone of the comments?

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RyanCarey
Mostly positive, and pretty shocked, but also a mixture of other responses.
What we learned from our donation match
Stens19911
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Have you thought about running future matching fundraisers through an organisation that focuses on fundraising, which in the EA global poverty world I guess'd be Charity Science? I imagine they'd be able to put extra time into promoting it, and'd have a comparative advantage in doing this, whereas you'd have a comparative advantage in earning to give.

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AGB 🔸
I considered ideas like this, but I'm not sure how much extra promotion in the broad sense accomplishes, especially from an organisation promoting lots of other similar things (my assumption would be that the circles it promotes to are saturated). As noted, the vast majority of the upside came in (a) flushing out EA-interested people and (b) a few large donations from people we know. New territory, in other words.