TLDR: Take the population ethics quiz here: https://mdickens.me/pop-ethics/
Population ethics is an oft-overlooked subfield within ethics. Many people hold views that they don't realize contradict each other, or that have strange implications that they wouldn't endorse if they thought about it more.
Not just that—population ethics is a BIG DEAL. A lot of ethical decisions hinge on how you think about changes in future populations....
A preliminary estimate, and a request for better ones.
Summary
I believe the standard literature estimates for the number of DALYs attributable to a case of stunting are too low, largely because they don’t account for the long term effects. This means that childhood nutritional interventions that reduce the prevalence of stunting may be substantially more cost-effective than previously believed.
Epistemic status
Exploratory and back-o...
I’ve been feeling pretty shaken since the METR report about the Hugging Face incident came out last week. Over the weekend, I wrote up some thoughts on how lonely the AI situation sometimes feels to me. It’s more personal than what I’d usually share publicly, but I thought I’d post it here in case it resonates with anyone else.
I’m very grateful to the man...
I think that Coefficient Giving’s decision to donate more money to GiveWell is a bad one and I would like to see more discussion of its pros and cons as well as any resources folks have that explain why CG made this decision.
The short form of why I think this is a bad call is that I think that for a wide range of beliefs on other issues (AI, Bio Sec, US Democracy, Reproductive Tech, emerging farming tech) the 10 year expected return on donations is much higher than in global health. Maybe this has already been talked to death but I’d like to see a discussion on it and if anyone has resources to past arguments I’d love to see them.
Moskovitz confirmed that they are "surging budgets in 2026 across all categories"
https://bsky.app/profile/moskov.goodventures.org/post/3mrdb7fhfqs2w
I expect (most of?) their grantmaking in other areas will be less public, but unprecedentedly massive.
E.g. Dustin Moskovitz is personally aiming to donate ~$5M to Lightcone Commons
Thanks for that link, it’s good to hear that they are surging across all categories.
cG has a lot more money to give away than this, due to growth in Dustin's portfolio + pending Anthropic etc money, so it's not clear that the 1B commitment trades off much against all those other causes you listed.
That is good to know, I got a bit of sticker shock from the size of the increase. If in fact it is not trading off against other causes that makes me much less opposed to it. I can imagine an argument for Give Well as a good place to put large amounts of money that would be difficult to use well in the areas I listed, I just assumed it was trading off against those areas. Does CG publish an overview of all the money they have given in a year?
They used to as OP, but as cG they now only feature selected grants on individual Funds pages. https://www.eagrantsdatabase.org/ is your best one-stop shop at the moment.
Hey AI,vbiosec and American democracy makes sense but why a 10 year windowreproductive tech and emergingg farming tech?
I think these are underfunded and have great potential. I am also pretty pessimistic about global health funding so my bar is low for what tops it.
cG has written about this: https://coefficientgiving.org/research/worldview-diversification/
That’s helpful, do you know if they give any public details on how they split their money across the different worldviews?