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All of yboris's Comments + Replies

How accurately does anyone know the global distribution of income?

An interactive chart comparing incomes between and within countries:

Accomplishments Open Thread - August 2016

I've been primarily focused on improving my programming skills this month. Two small EA-related contributions are helping Intentional Insights (InIn) with creating designs for bumper stickers promoting charitable giving, and creating a website for Theron Pummer, a lecturer in philosophy at St Andrews University who promotes effective giving TheronPummer.com.

Gleb_T

Thanks for helping out with the bumper stickers :-)

Promoting Effective Giving at Conferences via Speed Giving Games

yboris8y3

Thank you for being so transparent: writing up your thoughts, plans, costs, execution, and results. I suspect this article will help others think through and plan similar events.

At Rutgers University, our local Giving What We Can chapter has run the Giving Games several times during the annual Rutgers Day (sorry we never wrote about it). Our situation is slightly different: as a University club we get the table for free, and have dozens of people stop by (larger audience). Unfortunately, the crowd isn't as well-targeted as in your case; but as a plus-side,... (read more)

ChrisCundy

For anyone interested in learning more, I'm giving a whole workshop about how to do really well at this sort of tabling / large audience set-up at EA Global, at 9am in the Mandrone; I'll be writing up the whole thing later.

Gleb_T

Thanks, and never too late to have some group members write up the Rutgers event. I think some student groups can use your experience to help inform their own events. More broadly, having these sorts of guidelines is an important component of the EA Marketing Resource Bank project, so if they write it up, the guidelines will have a long shelf life :-)

Accomplishments Open Thread - March 2016

yboris8y11

Thank you Gleb for encouraging of sharing; I find it inspiring to read what others have done. It particularly helps as I'm no longer interacting with other effective altruists in person.

I don't have much to report other than my continued adherence to my 10% Giving What We Can pledge and my first step (of starting learning) last week towards becoming a programmer (to earn better income in the future and thus give more to cost-effective charities).

Gleb_T

Great job keeping up the 10% pledge, and much luck in learning programming :-) I think it's especially hard to continue being a member of the EA movement when one does not have a community dedicated to EA around you, so kudos for keeping up your efforts, and glad that the online forum here and on FB provides a virtual community for you.

yboris8y4

I don't know how much the following argument works, but it's possible that making people care about animals will increase their concern about the welfare of the world's poorest people. The specific study that makes me think this could be true is The Brain Functional Networks Associated to Human and Animal Suffering Differ among Omnivores, Vegetarians and Vegans (source).

Accomplishments Open Thread

yboris8y1

Thank you for the kind words. I think I got lucky with being invited to give a talk at Rutgers - the professor contacted me (I'm not sure exactly why he reached out to me, though he was directly aware of the GWWC:Rutgers chapter and I was a president for two years).

Accomplishments Open Thread

yboris8y5

Haven't done much, but here are a few highlights:

I gave a talk at Rutgers to an Introduction to Ethics course (50 students) about effective giving (sharing various moral arguments including ones from Peter Singer, Thomas Pogge, and Toby Ord).
Gave 10% of my income to AMF and towards the Giving What We Can operations fundraiser.
Continuously promoted EA stuff on Facebook through various pages (several GWWC & EA chapters) and personal posts.

Gleb_T

I've seen you promoting EA stuff on FB and have been impressed with your social media activism. Nice to know what you're doing behind the scenes, too! How did you arrange for the talk at Rutgers? This might be something useful for other EAs to get involved in doing, and your experience might give a good template for folks.

The Effective Altruism Newsletter & Open Thread - 23 November 2015 Edition

yboris8y3

Not sure if this is the proper place to post. This is one of the best philosophy papers I've read in my life:

"The Possibility of an Ongoing Moral Catastrophe" by Evan G. Williams.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10677-015-9567-7

Abstract: "This article gives two arguments for believing that our society is unknowingly guilty of serious, large-scale wrongdoing. First is an inductive argument: most other societies, in history and in the world today, have been unknowingly guilty of serious wrongdoing, so ours probably is too. Second is... (read more)

Nekoinentr

I think it'd be a good place to post; it's an open thread!

open_access

Protip: To access academic articles that are behind a paywall, try adding "sci-hub.io/" to the beginning of the URL: http://sci-hub.io/http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10677-015-9567-7

Squark

I think that most people here will tell you that we already know specific examples of such wrongdoing e.g. factory farming.

TLYCS Pamphleting Pilot Program

yboris9y2

There was an "Effective Altruism Brochure" thread on Facebook's Effective Altruists group. Might be a good starting template to use for a handout: see here

jonathonsmith

Pretty sharp! If I had seen this before, I definitely would have passed it along to our designer as something to work from.

You have a set amount of "weirdness points". Spend them wisely.

yboris9y1

I found the reference! It might originally have come from another excellent book: Change of Heart by Nick Cooney, in the early part of the book where he talks about self identity (no page reference because I'm looking at an eBook version). This is entirely unimportant, but in this book the words are:

"Are you willing to cut your hair and put on a suit for the environment?" :)

Christmas 2014 Open Thread (Open Thread 7)

yboris9y2

Sorry if this is the wrong place to do this, but I'm trying to encourage more people to give to AMF this year, so I created a $1,000 matching drive. Only the first $50 of any donation are matched and it's meant to encourage people to give to AMF who otherwise wouldn't.

If you know people who you'd like to encourage to give to AMF, please share this link: $1,000 Matching Challenge: December 2014. Please share widely :)

Peter Wildeford

Have you thought about joining all the people doing Christmas Fundraisers? Charity Science provides donation matching for all the donations made through those fundraisers, and the page is prettier. (Though the fee for processing a donation is a little higher, at 4% inclusive of other fees.)

Frugal living without sacrifice

yboris9y0

I think you're exactly right that having a set altruistic and personal budget is the best strategy for EAs. I compiled the above list at a workshop we held at Giving What We Can: Rutgers some years back; I think this particular suggestion is a helpful reminder for students (with little spending money) that they are able to make a difference in the world with their donations.

One possible time this technique can be helpful is if you feel you're being suckered into a purchase you really don't want to make; you can just commit to giving the price you would hav... (read more)

Spitballing EA career ideas

yboris9y-1

There are many things to say about it. Pyramid schemes are illegal in the US. And it all depends on the business plan (compensation plan) the company offers. Some companies will allow you to earn a decent income if you just get people to buy products. If the products are good, I see no harm.

There is a harm if you lie and promise people riches (that seems unethical); there is harm if you let people believe they will become rich (lie by omission is still a lie in my 'book'). There is harm if you lie about the products. The last harm seem identical to one present if you just become a car salesman (or any kind of salesman).

Why is effective altruism new and obvious?

yboris9y1

Small spelling correction: "Carol Dweck" (not Dweick).

ps - her research on Growth Mindset is, I think, the most cost-effective educational intervention out there at the moment.

One month in - it's time for more introductions

yboris9y2

Hello, Boris Yakubchik here. 29 year old, residing in New Jersey

Finished Rutgers University (New Jersey, USA) with a BA in Mathematics, MA in Education. Started a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology. Joined Giving What We Can a few months after it started. Quit my Ph.D. program 2 years aiming to devote more time to EA stuff (I wrote about it here). Worked as a math teacher in high school, first year giving 50%. Subsequent years worked only part-time so went back to giving at least 10%. Currently a full-time math tutor, still aiming to follow the Earning to Gi... (read more)

Productivity 101 For Beginners

yboris9y3

Re: Step Two: Track Your Time!

If you spend a lot of time on the computer, the best software I have found is ManicTime which automatically tracks all your tasks, allows you to tag the time you've spent, and shows you fine statistics about what you spent your time on (which pages, which document, how long/each, per day, per any time period).

Open thread 5

yboris9y1

There is a brochure created by Fox Moldrich that I edited (he shared the Adobe Illustrator file with me). Here is a PDF of it: Trifold

Please contact me for the *.AI file and/or directly contact Fox.

Open thread 5

yboris9y2

I thought that the voting system is beneficial primarily because it allows others to "upvote" something as important. When I glance at comments, I am unlikely to read dozens of comments (limited time), but the upvotes are a simple way for me to tell which comments are more likely to provide something of value.

Upvotes are not a true demonstration of value, but they help. Consider if a comment gets 100 upvotes - that suggests there is something there that others like and I would do well to at least glance at it.

The points you raise are worth considering, though I think the benefits outweigh the concerns you have. Do you think otherwise?

Austen_Forrester

If someone thinks that the better comments have higher votes, then certainly for him the points system would be helpful, especially for long threads. I don't find that's usually the case, which is one reason why I'm not fond of it. I find that people “like” (whether that means clicking a button on your computer, or agreeing to someone in person) things that validate their pre-existing feelings, rather than open them up to new ideas they hadn't considered before (most respond with fear to the latter). I heard on the radio a few months ago that studies show that problem solving meetings are more productive when the people there have opposing perspectives, come from different fields, etc. IOW, the perspective you don't want to hear is probably the one you need to. Having said that, even if the points system doesn't correlate with the most helpful comments it could still be net positive for other reasons: encouraging more participation than it discourages, providing support/validation for those interested in EA, being normal (since most sites have voting now, people might think it was weird if CEA didn't). Another thing, that just occurred to me yesterday, is that the posts on the forum seem mostly geared to people who are already involved in EA, when it could be more productive to write posts that are geared to new people learning about EA (both in terms of content and writing style). TLYCS/GWWC blogs are more like that, although they are only for poverty.

Spitballing EA career ideas

yboris9y-1

I've been meaning to contact 80,000 Hours with a suggestion they look at (and hopefully write something about) Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) as a viable career option. I have first-hand experience and can thus share a bit from my point of view.

Basics. MLM is a different way for companies to sell their product: rather than having stores display their products on their shelves, they ship directly to customers. Customers who tell others about the product can receive money from the company as a "thank you" for word-of-mouth advertising.

Income. My paren... (read more)

Larks

How do you address the criticism that MLM schemes are essentially pyramid schemes, that rely on constantly recruiting more gullible people to sign up?

You have a set amount of "weirdness points". Spend them wisely.

yboris9y2

I heard this too. There is a similar thought expressed from p30-31 of The Animal Activists' Handbook by Matt Ball (http://animaladvocacybook.com/). Quotes from the two pages:

"After re-evaluating his priorities and choosing a more mainstream appearance, he noticed that the quality of his conversations improved, and the respect of his listeners increased. Consequently, he became more effective an influencer of change" (p30).

"All of us who are working for things that might be seen as going against the status quo should make sure our appear

yboris9y6

First off, you can view vegetarianism as a gradient and the goal is to decrease meat consumption, not “avoid it at all costs”. With this approach, you can, when significantly inconvenient otherwise, consume some meat. Problem solved – right? I hope you’re not fighting a straw-man of “you must be a strict vegetarian at all costs” because THAT is a very weak position to hold.

I feel a lot of what’s at stake pivots on just how inconvenient (empirically) decreasing meat consumption for yourself is. It can surely seem inconvenient to anyone who hasn’t chosen to ... (read more)

Owen Cotton-Barratt9y11

In your argument you mention that going vegetarian is like “donating to a random developing world charity because it relieves the suffering of an impoverished child more than foregoing $5 increases your suffering.” To make the analogy with vegetarianism more appropriate, you would also have to be the overwhelming cause of that child’s misery unless you gave the $5.

Katja actually already grants this point, in a roundabout way. She lists "You consider the act-omission distinction morally relevant" as a reason you might be vegetarian even grantin... (read more)

Owen Cotton-Barratt

Most people enjoy having choice, so there is a cost to restricting your number of choices. I certainly know vegetarians who complain about the lack of choice of vegetarian options in restaurants. If you are constrained to eat food that you don't like, that's liable to draw away attention in the moment (although so can eating food you really like!), and may also increase the amount of time you need to spend doing other things to feel properly mentally recharged.

Owen Cotton-Barratt

There is a spectrum here, but the question is where you should stop. Katja's argument suggests that even relatively insignificant inconveniences should be enough to allow you to consume some meat. Note that from the direct impact of consumption choices, it seems like it would make a lot of sense to focus more on eating a little bit less meat. For a typical meat-eater, cutting the first 20% of your meat consumption is likely to be pretty painless compared to the final 20%. So it seems odd that so many more conversations are about vegetarianism (which I'd interpret as 'almost never eat meat'). Is this because it's a natural Schelling point?