All of Tyner🔸's Comments + Replies
I'm having a hard time understanding what you're saying with these graphs. Are these for self-identified ETG people, or for everyone in your survey? Donation_w shows something like 60% (no y scale so not sure) of population don't give at all, is that right? And around 10% give $20K or more? Thanks.
The internet has massively increased access to art.
Thirty years ago (and prior), if you wanted to hear a song you could hope that it would play on the radio, or you could look for it in your local record store (who may not have it) and buy the record, cassette or CD.
Now, anyone with an internet connection can listen to any song ever recorded, at any time, at virtually no cost.
- How much lawsuits of this type typically cost
- What the base rate for success is for this kind of work
- How long this kind of work typically takes to get traction
The Nonhuman Rights Project provides a possible point of comparison. From 2013 to 2023 they raised $13.2 Million. As far as I know, they have never won a case.
>>Why present 50% as the “maximum typical”?
>>Arguably someone earning $1M+ annually should be encouraged to give a lot more than 50%
In the US tax deductions cap at 60%, so that could be a sensible place to draw a line.
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/041315/tips-charitable-contributions-limits-and-taxes.asp
Toby - I appreciated reading your updates based on the events of the last 5ish years.
I'm am wondering if you have also reconsidered the underlying analyses and assumptions that went into your initially published models? There's been a fair amount written about this; to me the best is from David Thorstad here:
https://reflectivealtruism.com/category/exaggerating-the-risks/
I would really value you engaging with the arguments he or others present, as a second kind of update.
Cheers
I would really appreciate further analysis of family planning as an intervention. Some specific questions I’d like to see tackled:
- What is the cost effectiveness of these interventions/organizations when looking at a variety of metrics (e.g. preventing maternal deaths, preventing obstetric fistula, increasing subjective well-being, increasing wealth etc.)?
- Some framework for tallying these benefits.
- Do these interventions lead to a permanent reduction in family size, or a temporary one?
- What is the impact to farmed animals (i.e. does this intervention be
>What I personally think is that those who are pledgees should consider donation matching as part of a prospective job's compensation as it is a permanent cost. (also would incentivise negotiation in that direction)
I'm not sure I understand. Are you suggesting that GWWC should include the donation match in the denominator, but not the numerator? Or include in both? Or are you not talking about GWWC at all here?
I'm giving to the EA Animal Welfare Fund.
https://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/animal-welfare
I thought this was likely among the best giving opportunities around. And then was further persuaded by the investigation from GWWC.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hqYNZ9zJfe3D_nyJ4b21J0IJs210upAXTw8fPWnYJe8/edit#heading=h.kiw67f2s2v90
Do you have thoughts on giving now vs. later?
Investing to give e.g. (https://www.founderspledge.com/research/investing-to-give)?
If you got google stock options or grants from 2013 (I don't know if you did) then those would have increased in value about 800%, so could your giving go much further if delayed to take advantage of gain? Or do you think of it some other way?
Thanks.
Do you have thoughts on giving now vs. later?
The higher you think the risk of extinction is, the less valuable giving later looks: you probably do better giving now either to improve the lives of pre-extinction people or to reduce the risk of extinction.
Futures where we avoid extinction are likely pretty strange, and I think historical reasoning around growth patterns seems unlikely to apply well. I don't know how this goes overall, but it generally makes me more optimistic around capacity building (movement, governance, institutions, technology) than a...
Hi Tyner. This is one of the questions that I decided to not clarify in the article for the sake of conciseness, so thank you for asking.
Wild-caught fish die under human control. So working on killing them more humanely doesn't have any complicated uncertain consequences of WAW interventions that I discuss. Relatively to WAW issues, it is easy to research and is unambiguously good if we can do it right. To me, it is precisely the kind of intervention we should be focusing on first before tackling super complex WAW issues. So everything that I say abo...
Thanks for writing this.
- I don't think this is significant. The use of the word "consumption" is interchangeable with purchasing in economic contexts. The use of the word "marginal" is possibly superfluous. However, I think there's an interpretation that makes sense here, where an individual is increasing total suffering "at the margin" by virtue of their consumption. That is, they are not responsible for the whole of the suffering, but the marginal increase in suffering caused by their personal consumption. The language is unc
Does "calibrated probability assessment" training work?
In "How to Measure Anything" chapter 5, Douglas Hubbard describes the training he provides to individuals and organizations that want to improve their skills. He provides a sample test which is based on general knowledge trivia, questions like
"What is the air distance from LA to NY?"
for which the student is supposed to provide a 90% confidence interval. There are also some true/false questions where you provide your level of confidence in the answer e.g.
"Napoleon was born ...
The reading time estimates on lesswrong crossposts seem to be wrong. For example, this says 1 but should be 5-10 (I would guess):
Doesn't really make sense to me and would lead to some very weird conclusions.
For example, I'm a manager and one of my staff talks to me and says this report takes a very long time because there are many manual steps, I believe we could automate these steps by using software X which I've used in a previous role and costs $Y. By the logic of this maxim I should ignore the proposed solution AND ignore the initial complaint.
Because they proposed a solution, now I should think it less likely that the report takes a very long time? Seems totally nonsensical (or I'm not understanding what you're actually saying).
Hi Fai, I agree with whoever encouraged you to post more. I always enjoy and appreciate your stuff even when we don't 100% agree.
The below sentence is difficult to parse, what do you actually mean? That it was economic reasons, or that it was not economic reasons, or something else entirely?
>Well, I personally did not have much hope in humanity's moral progress, until I recently got moderately convinced that it’s less likely than not that we abolished slavery mainly for economic reasons. And in case you think that it is impossible to h...
Another organization that is spending some time on this is sogive.org They have impact assessments for groups like Planned Parenthood and Muslim Aid.
I can provide an anecdotal use case that is maybe not quite tackled in your write up. My mother-in-law is a retired dentist. She gives money to the American Dental Association every year. This strikes me as an ineffective organization mostly because US dentists are typically quite wealthy. If I told her "forget all that, give your money to Humane League/Helen Keller/Intelligence.o...
This is my favorite criticism contest entry. The amount of actionable information is really great. I would love to see various organizations move to incorporate these methods, where applicable. Very nice use of visuals as well.
I know you said in a previous post that you are not involved in EA. I hope you'll consider staying involved after this criticism contest. It seems you have a lot of value you could add.
I don't really know how giving works for a very wealthy person, but to me it seems unlikely that they or someone on their staff would just look at the GiveWell site and be done. It seems a lot more likely that they would have a conversation, with GiveWell staff or others, which would create an opportunity for more nuanced advice. So I really doubt it much matters for that scenario.
"If we had X amount of money we'd do this" page, with milestone targets?
That's a neat idea!
I took AAC online course in 2021. I thought it was great. I learned a lot about animal advocacy, existing organizations, needed skills, potential roles...and made a bunch of animal-relevant connections on LinkedIn. I have subsequently recommended it to anyone who is interested in finding a career in animal advocacy. If that is you, and you're not sure what steps to take, definitely do the course!
Very interesting post, thank you for the research.
Based on your model, should Open Phil etc. be aiming for 50% research in every year? Or should it be aiming for a very high level of research funding now, knowing that it can take actions on better opportunities in the future? Maybe the research percentage by year should be something like 100%, 95%, 90% etc?
Funding things you don't really believe in as a form of sabotage would damage the reputation and future trust of the funder and potentially EA as a whole.
Giving a larger platform (e.g. TV ads) to people with far right ideas could make these ideas more mainstream e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
Seems like a bad idea.
Hi Rosie, great post!
When I looked at this briefly a year ago I flagged two organizations that seemed promising:
https://www.globaldentalrelief.org/
Both are more holistic than the specific interventions you looked at. Did you happen to look at either of these in your research?
Thanks!
Thank you David, I understand much better now. It is indeed perplexing to hear that 38% of self-identified earning to give folks are giving $1000 or less, but I think your explanations do seem plausible. I guess there could also be people saving and investing now to do giving later, unless this category was a separate option in your survey.