All of TimothyTelleenLawton's Comments + Replies

I want to see more retrospectives on the FTX incident so I really appreciate you taking the time to write this.

I like all your categories of things that we wish we had said more. Also, I basically disagree that:

We should not beat ourselves up for not knowing about the fraud or extent of the lies,

To use your metaphor, lets imagine that 90% of all priests are moral and do what it says on the tin, and 10% of all priests are evil and they pretend to be moral priests while also preying on children. Do you think that when the moral priests find out that 10% of t... (read more)

I like the distinction of cause-first vs member-first; thanks for that concept. Thinking about that in this context, I'm inspired to suggest a different cleavage that works better for my worldview on EA: Alignment/Integrity-first vs. Power/Impact-first.

I believe that for basically all institutions in the 21st century, alignment should be the highest priority, and power should only become the top priority to the extent that the institution believes that alignment at that power level has been solved.

By this splitting, it seems clear that Elizabeth's reported... (read more)

What do you mean by moral imperative?

I notice that I "believe in" minimum moral standards (like a code of conduct or laws) but not what I call moral imperatives (in X situation, I have no choice if I want to remain in good moral standing).

I also don't believe in requiring organ donation as part of a minimum moral standard, which is probably related to my objection to the concept of "moral imperative".

Yes, I would even say that the original comment (which I intend to reply to next) seems to suffer from ends-justify-the-means-logic as well (e.g. prioritizing "shutting up and multiplying" such as "shipping resources to the best interventions" over "being honest about health effects").

Here's some thoughts from DM with Luisa. She said she agreed with these and suggested I just post these now in comments. So here goes!

It might be dangerous to talk too much about 'the good things imposter syndrome may be trying to protect' unless/until we have sufficiently crushed imposter syndrome (ie convinced the readers that it doesn't serve where it doesn't serve). So I think the fact that the intuition to add this section came up for me is a sign that I feel like your article crushed it!

In my mind, the purpose of this section would not be to be a cou... (read more)

Luisa, I'm so glad you wrote this. I somehow found tears coming to my eyes when you turned towards better epistemics as the solution. Maybe some part of me was expecting you to surround yourself with a lot of positive and true thoughts and people (which would also be good but... not as powerful and awesome?).

Extra joy as I check the byline before leaving this comment and see that this was written by you, a friend from the GiveWell chapter of our journeys!

One section of your article that I was really hoping to see and didn't:  The good things that Impo... (read more)

Since college I've updated away from the importance of planning out my career, and toward the importance of finding a thing that deeply excites me.

In particular, I've noticed that when I have jobs that seem good on paper (e.g. from an EA perspective) but I'm not excited about the day-to-day work of them, I tend to underperform. On the other hand, when I find something that really nerdsnipes me, not only do I tend to use it to do my job better, but I also tend to find an even better job next (with bigger EA impact, even if that application w... (read more)

I am quite curious to understand the funding situation among 'EA startup projects' better. Perhaps the survey Jade Leung recently conducted as part of her incubator project will help shed light on this.

My questions/confusions include:

• How many EA projects that 'should' get funding don't—and for that reason don't happen? (ie What's the 'false negative' rate for our community answering the question, "Should X startup project be funded?")
• What are the biggest costs of funding too many such projects?

CFAR's local bank sent out the following email to its clients a few minutes ago. I thought some of you might find it useful to know, especially the part where they claim no one will be getting these loans before next week.

Clients of Community Bank of the Bay,

The SBA issued its Interim Final Report on the Paycheck Protection Program (“PPP”) on Thursday evening at about 6:00 est.  Since then, we and other SBA Preferred Lenders have been reviewing the guidance, and have gotten clarity on some issues and found that others still remain u

Update

• I've posted the audio from my last interview with The Chapter here.
• I received this update from The Chapter January 10th:

• we are in the process of signing an agreement with [an organization that has agreed to transfer the funds], should be finished in about a week / then they can accept the transfer (attached)
• they have a bit nonsense fee structure, so they want 8% of transfers under 25k USD, and 5% over 25k. I asked for a discount, but they decided against it: so it would be actually cheaper if you send us 25 thousand USD, pay 1250 fee and we s

They are not planning to hire the outgoing director as that person has already started a new job in a different city.

I've posted an update about my donation plans in the comments of the post that Carl linked above.

I’d like to give a quick update on my plans for the 2016 Donation Lottery winnings.

Of the $45,650, I’ve decided to give $21,000 to the Czech Association for Effective Altruism so they can hire one full time staff (or equivalent) for one year to manage the organization. I have not yet transferred that money, nor decided how to allocate the other $24,650.

I decided to support the Czech Association for Effective Altruism because I am impressed with their ability to execute difficult projects, I believe their projects have the potential to make a large positive... (read more)

Does anyone like "skeptical altruist"?

I didn't end up getting enough karma so I posted it in LW: http://lesswrong.com/lw/lgy/how_much_does_consumption_affect_production/

Hello, I'd like to post an article but I need 10 karma to do so and I haven't been posting comments so I don't have any. If you don't mind up-voting this comment to allow me to do that, please do!

If it helps, the post I've drafted is about some of the altruistic eating arguments I've seen:

• Benquo's recent article on suffering per calorie of food
• peter_hurford's Why eat less meat?
• Compassion, by the Pound
• ACE's Effects of Diet Choices on Animals

I use one neoclassical economic and one intuitive appeal to argue that they could all be simpler and more accu... (read more)