All of Tom Billington's Comments + Replies

Cool! Would be keen to sign on to a mailing list :)

Strong agree. 
And I understand why this is a problem. It can be hard to independently create contacts in these spaces from scratch, and there is an aspect of not knowing what you don't know at play. I'm almost certain I am committing the same mistake in multiple places in my work.

Would be interested to think about solutions here. Like perhaps a group such as Consultants For Impact could take on a role of knowledge dispersal, doing things like getting project management experts to give a talks at EAGs?

For sure!

I would say that EAs are missing large parts of M&E, including:
- The formal setting of key questions / assumptions that form the basis of what you will focus on trying to answer
- Creating formal monitoring frameworks (e.g. a log frame) that takes these questions / assumptions and identifies practical indicators and a method of measuring them
- I think EAs don't use the full diversity of M&E tools. In my experience we tend to over-index on surveys (vs., say, interviews, focus group discussion, or observational data)
- I think considering the ... (read more)

Congrats on launching!
Excited to follow your work.

My advice for EAs who want to skill up in a neglected area:

1. Get a good mentor who broadly aligns with EA values but already has the skill. I’ve had three of these relationships (with experts in fish welfare, M&E, and agricultural development). In each case, it was symbiotic: I could offer EA knowledge and connections in return for them teaching me their skillset.
2. Book calls with as many relevant people as possible in the field. Shamelessly ask for help, even from people only tangentially related to what you’re trying to learn. The more you snowball conta

Glad it's helpful!

Have some level of scepticism that the total "util count" from life on earth will be net-positive. I'm also in general wary of impact that is too long-term speculative. 

That’s the one! 
Weird that I remember it being half the size.

Anecdotal evidence, but I would attribute at least part of the reason I ended up in an EA career to a 2 day event of ~12 people hosted by EA London.

Hey, Tom from Fish Welfare Initiative here.
We really appreciate the time and thought given to evaluating FWI and the fish welfare space more generally from a current cost-effectiveness lens. Of course, we are aware that FWI's programming as it currently stands is not as cost-effective as cage-free or broiler campaigns, we understand that this is the prioritization of some donors, and so we think this is something that is important for potential supporters to understand (see our best arguments against donating to FWI).

Our general stance on the value of Fish... (read more)

Great news! Thanks so much for this awesome work 🙂 I’d be interested to hear:

1. What convinced farmers to sign up?

2. How long is the expected timeline to full transition to cage free? Will this be supported by The Animal Welfare League?

3. Is the commitment legally enforceable? or is this more of an MOU (memorandum of understanding) style of agreement?

4. Do you have plans for monitoring farmer’s progression on the commitment? Do have any expectation on follow-through rates?

Just noting though that this would be a false dichotomy.

I agree that we shouldn’t have a universal ban on co-living and that bureaucracy is bad all else equal. But this doesn’t seem like the only option available. As Xavier_ORourke said above: “we can all contribute to preventing [the bullet pointed actions] by judging things on a case-by-case basis and gently but firmly letting our peers know when we disapprove of their choices”

I feel that our tendency as EAs to think of ourselves as analogous to one org where we can “ban” something is an issue within its... (read more)

Thanks for this, gavintaylor!

I've currently been compiling a list of lessons EA has that seem applicable over a wide array of cause areas/ charities. It seems like it is relevant to this post, so here's a link:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/18phuLs60GGlNIRh85D0y4YA3BXTLfy_1m0D2jj7SZDo/edit

(as of now it is still in it's infancy, but I'm planning to continue working on it)

Interesting question! I have upvoted. A (very) minor issue (and it perhaps is just me), but you may want to consider adding in what 'ACE' stands for, took me a minute to realise that Animal Charity Evaluators hadn't gone completely off the wall.

A well written post with a good level of depth into an important topic. Thank you! If I were to give a suggestion, I would say that I don't find the title a very good flag of the content.

--

This isn't a Task Y (at least it doesn't obviously fulfil your outlined components), but a small-scale interaction with EA not currently mentioned would be the 80,000 Hours careers guide emailing scheme. This sends you a part of their careers guide each week for you to read and interact with. This supposedly takes 180 minutes to complete over 12 weeks. Thi... (read more)

Here are some individual podcasts I would recommend as being especially good sources of conversation for podcast discussion meetings:

From The 80,000 Hours Podcast:

• #45 - Prof Tyler Cowen's stubborn attachments to maximising economic growth, making civilization more stable & respecting human rights
• #25 - Prof Robin Hanson on why we have to lie to ourselves about why we do what we do
• #24 - Stefan Schubert on why it’s a bad idea to break the rules, even if it’s for a good cause

Also,

• Sam Harris' Waking Up - #44 - Being Good and Doing Good with Will MacAskill

Here are some of the notes I thought would make good discussion points from our event on the 80,000 Hours' podcast episode. 25 'Why we have to lie to ourselves about why we do what we do, according to Prof Robin Hanson':
- Are we at university just to show off?
- Should we all cave to religion for practical reasons? If it is practically useful, why isn't everyone religious?
- How does EA incorporate for people wanting to show they care? Wear badges?
- Showing we care vs big-headedness
- Are we EAs to show off?
- Should we be saving all our m... (read more)

Interesting concept! A few considerations on your impact calculation, though:

The 500 users would all need to be non-EAs (as EAs probably would've given similar if not the same amount to effective charities anyway, perhaps only using the app for its UI, progress tracking etc.). Also, I don't know if you have already considered this, but the 500 members would have likely counterfactually given money to (albeit probably less effective) charities anyway, and so you would need to consider this in an accurate estimation of your impact.

Another thing to ... (read more)

Interesting post. It is a shame that people have to travel so far to get to one of the ea hubs. I was interested in the offices in Oxford you referenced. What offices were these? They sound like a fantastic place to get do some work done on an ea project!