It looks like we had a pretty massive bot attack last night, with over 600 accounts logging in and messaging users about an iPad scam. Please don't click on any of their links. The scam looks like this:
We'll remove the accounts, and karma-gate messaging to 10 karma so that this cannot happen again. Sorry everyone - and thanks so much to everyone who reported this. I can't respond to all of you, but thank you.
Me and @Fran are co-hosting a podcast, The World Can Be Better! (hosted on Substack, also on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube)
In our first co-hosted episode we interview @finm about better futures, the intelligence explosion, and Fin's underrated post 'No ghost in the machine'.
We'll be recording more episodes soon. We're aiming to a) keep it accessible to an interested but non-specialist audience, and b) to talk to cool people who are working on making the world better. This is on top of full time jobs for both of us, so we're not promising weekly uploads or anything too fancy.
LMK in the comments or dm if there is someone you'd love to be a guest on our podcast! The ideal guest is a) doing good effectively in an interesting way and b) is down to joke around a bit.
Oh perfect, I’ve been looking for a podcast that fills exactly this niche :)
I listened to your most recent episode and really enjoyed it, thanks for producing it!
Thanks James, that's really cool to hear :)
very exciting!!!
Podcast episode with @Fran and @NickLaing is here! Turns out Nick's a great guy in real life as well as on the Forum.
We talked about how One Day Health manages to set up a clinic for $4000, how AI might help One Day's nurses diagnose better (correct diagnosis rates were surprisingly low, even for a limited list of conditions), and much more. Transcript is here if you prefer to skim.
PS- if you listened, I'm personally keen on getting feedback (Not speaking for Frances here, so via Forum DM please). Also, suggestions for guests are always welcome.
Since we've got so many good entries to the Cluelessness Critiques Competition, I'm currently planning not to feature any of them (even those that would otherwise qualify). This'll mean that you can escape the cluelessness conversation by toggling to the featured page.
Alternatively, on the 'new and upvoted' page, you can customise your feed to hide the Cluelessness Critiques Week tag.
Me and @Fran are interviewing @GraceAdams🔸 tomorrow evening. Is there anything you'd like us to ask her?
Why is Australia not an EA ‘hub’ in the same way even lesser less-hubby-than-the-UK European countries like Germany or the Netherlands are?
Hey who you calling lesser?! ;)
Tbh I don’t think there’s much of a difference in hub status between the Netherlands and Australia, but I haven’t been to Australia so that’s a low confidence take
Curious what Grace thinks but I'll chime in that Australia has a similar number of EAs and overall population across a landmass 186 times larger than the Netherlands. 2/3 live in Melbourne and Sydney, which are a 10 hour drive apart. IMO a geographic hub where it's easy for people to congregate is one of the determinants of hub success. Not to say Australia isn't a hub, but IMO its less of a hub than EU countries with similar number of EAs.
I interpreted Huw’s question to be more about the region being a hub (or not) rather than there being a hub in the region. Although of course population density helps with general hub-y-ness
Lots of questions about her views on EA marketing and communications please! How much effort does she think we should be spending on it, what sort of stuff we should be doing (beyond what we’ve already seen her do at EAA), etc. Would also like to hear her takes on why some orgs are reluctant/struggle to increase their investments in this area
Absolutely! Those are most of my questions, but I don't think I have one about relative priority (i.e. are community-building teams spending too much/ enough/ not enough of their effort on marketing). I'll add something.
Excellent! Would be nice to get down to brass tacks as well. E.g., we’ve been spending 6-10% of our budget on this the past couple of years, and substantial staff time.
Just under a month until the Cluelessness Critiques Competition deadline. How's it going? Any hints on what people are writing about?
Man, I was just re-reading the 'why I donate' posts while compiling the Digest. Some really beautiful sentiments in there.
I grew up in a deeply ironic and uncaring culture (i.e. I went to an all boys school). I didn't like it! It means a lot to me to be in a community now where people can write such heartfelt and authentic posts.
Some of my favourites:
Yeah I've never seen such an abundance of "heart warming" on the forum. I feel like this topic opened that opportunity a bit too.
Thank you! Quick note that "money not being yours" is not what I personally believe or wanted to convey in the post. I (sometimes) think my money is my votes, and I want to use them to vote for the things I think are most valuable.
I think it was Amrit's great post and others that mentioned things like "I don’t think there’s an especially important sense in which “my” money is mine"
Fair point Lorenzo, that was sloppy phrasing. I'll amend the original. I wasn't sure what to pull out - I honestly just loved the post overall.
Yes I and I think one other post? had something along similar lines too :).
Yeah you literally wrote:
"Under my Christian worldview, nothing I have is really 'mine' anyway, and part of being a good human is to pass on what I've been handed, and even better multiply it if possible."
I think how I see it feels a bit different because I see money more as tool to use than as a resource to share. I think it should be used to help improve the lives of others, but it does importantly feel that it's my responsibility that mine gets used that way. Not sure if that makes sense.
Just a reminder that anyone can set off a Forum debate! I'd love to see more of these.
Wow you can even make polls in a comment!
If you work in an office with other EAs/ interesting and interested people, consider putting the debate slider from our upcoming debate on a big whiteboard. It can lead to some interesting conversations, and even better, some counterfactual forum posts.
PS- I'm aware this looks a bit 'people selling mirrors'
I'm recording a podcast (TWCBB) with @Lauren Gilbert [edit: we had to reschedule so I can still collect questions]. If there's anything you'd like us to ask her, comment here.
Too late, but I would ask her to make the best case against immigration haha (much like you did with me and BINGOs 😅)
She had to delay so it's not too late, but I already included that exact question :)
FYI, next week we will be highlighting the first batch of articles from In Development, @Lauren Gilbert's new global development magazine.
Lauren and most of the authors will be on the Forum to answer your questions throughout the week. More info to come on Monday, but I figured I'd mention in case anyone wanted to read the articles in advance (they are here, and all authors apart from Paul Niehaus will be around to answer questions).
I'm looking forward to the discussion.
The RSPCA is holding a "big conversation", culminating in a citizens' assembly. If you have opinions about how animals in the UK are treated (which you probably do), you can contribute your takes here.
A lot of the contributions are very low quality, so I think EA voices have a good chance of standing out and having their opinions shared with a broader audience.
There have been a lot of posts over the last couple of weeks, and when I've been putting together the Digests, I've seen several which seem criminally underrated.
I'm quick-taking to remind you of the 'customize feed' feature. The link is at the top of the frontpage - click it to decide how your frontpage weights posts on different topics. If Forum readers used this more, there would be less underrated posts (I think!).
Good advice! I solve it by clicking "All posts" every day.😁
Anyone know any Earn-To-Givers who might be interested in participating in an AMA during Giving Season? If a few are interested, it might be fun to experiment with an AMA panel, where Forum users ask questions, and any of the AMA co-authors can respond/ co-authors can disagree.
Why? Giving Season is, in my opinion, a really great time to highlight the earn-to-give work which is ongoing all year, but is generally under-celebrated by the EA community. + Earn-to-givers might have good insights on how to pick donation targets during the donation election, and Giving Season more generally.
What is an AMA in this context?
An Ask Me Anything event- sorry for jargon!
Thanks, Toby!
Doesn’t CEA know any?
Didn't realise I might be implying we didn't by posting this- makes sense! Collectively, CEA does have a great network- writing a quick take was a way to cast the net a bit wider, and gauge enthusiasm.
Londoners!
@Gemma 🔸 is hosting a co-writing session this Sunday, for people who would like to write "Why I Donate" posts. The plan is to work in poms, and publish something during the session.
I can’t join this Sunday (finals season whoo!), but this is a really good idea. I’d love to see more initiatives like this to encourage writing on the Forum—especially during themed weeks.
Also, I’m always down to do (probably remote) co-working sessions with people who want to write Forum posts.
You guys overused the button... so we're putting Bulby on bed rest for a bit.
Look at the poor guy:
Probably for the best. Nearly fell off a motorcycle taxi yesterday when a bunch of bublys exploded into my face :D
To be clear - which some people appreciate:
The banner will only be visible on desktop. If you can't see it, try expanding your window. It'll be up for a week.
If you’d like to delete your entry, click the cross that appears when you hover over it. It will be deleted for everyone.
Anything that qualifies as good news relevant to the world's most important problems.
For example, Ben West’s recent quick takes (1, 2, 3).
Avoid posting partisan political news, but the passage of relevant bills and policies is on topic.
All submissions are displayed without your Forum name, so they are ~anonymous to users, however, usual moderation norms still apply (additionally, we may remove duplicates or borderline trollish submissions. This is an experiment, so we reserve the right to moderate heavily if necessary).
Ask any other questions you have in the comments below. Feel free to dm me with feedback or comments.
The banner looks lovely. Great work.
FYI, there is at least one bit of false/inaccurate information on the banner. The bit about universal right to vote is referencing a database that considers Chinese people as having the right to vote since the late 1940s. While there is some voting that occurs in China at the local level with candidates that have to be pre-approved by the ruling party, it strikes as pretty inaccurate to claim full adult suffrage for China. It appears to references a dataset from this research paper, and I'm not sure why that dataset has this miscategorization.
(sorry to be nitpicky. I don't want people to read that almost everyone in the world lives in a democracy when in reality about 20% of people don't)
Just want to say that I love it and it made my day. Awesome idea!
Thanks Jakub!
I can't stop checking the EA forum now....
Loved it as well
Thank you!
We (especially @Agnes Stenlund 🔸, @Ollie Etherington and @Will Howard🔹 ) have made a fancy page to showcase the Marginal Funding posts.
Check it out, and please also consider sharing it (on social media, or with friends/ family). We've designed it to make more sense/ be more navigable to readers who aren't used to the Forum. I.e. we hope it's the page you can send to your Mum.
Let me know if it successfully leads to any donations! It'll stay live throughout giving season.
I'm running a session on 'writing on the EA Forum' at EAG London at this moment, and participants are going to reply to this quick take with ideas for Forum posts.
Please encourage any ideas you'd like to see written up as full posts!
[edit: the forum went down halfway through the activity, there were many more great ideas in the session]
Applying Systems Thinking to EAG 1-on-1 Scheduling: My Triage & Prioritization Method
How Human Rights Experience Can Strengthen Animal Advocacy in the Effective Altruism Movement
As someone who transitioned from a career in human rights law to animal advocacy, I’ve seen first-hand how much untapped potential exists at the intersection of these two fields. This post would reflect on that transition, why I made it, what I’ve learned, and how others from similar backgrounds might contribute to improving animal welfare in high-impact ways.
Why this feels important:
The EA community values neglected and cross-cutting cause areas, and I believe the human rights–animal welfare nexus is both. Skills from human rights law, such as litigation, policy reform, and strategic advocacy, are highly relevant to advancing animal interests but are underutilised in current animal advocacy work.
How to write in a communications / marketing plan into your funding application and know how to attribute your marketing activities to your objectives
A proposal for a third way for animal advocacy. In animal advocacy I broadly see two groups: (1) people who strongly want to end animal farming, but whose actions are unlikely to make that happen; (2) people who prioritise reducing animal suffering in the short term within existing systems. The interesting thing is, BOTH of these groups want to end animal farming (or at least factory farming), but neither group is going to make that happen. What would happen if more people embodied a third way: Visionary Pragmatism. An approach which starts with our end goal (e.g. end animal farming), and then gets into the hard work of figuring out the incremental steps needed to get there. What could this approach look like?
The role of guilt and perfectionism in EA, and how EA as an environment focused on efficiency and doing the very best we can can lead to difficult mental hangups, and be more demanding than more traditional ways of doing good. (Traditional ways of doing good are often more focused in feeling good and feeling altruistic, which is useful for the good-doers wellbeing but suboptimal for actual amount of good done.)
might be good reading to refer to previous contexts
Hi from the session! Thank you for running it.
Defensive Democracy (democracy that has laws and institutions in place to defend itself against antidemocratic movements), why the idea is great, and why it doesn't work
Reminder: if you represent an organisation and you'd like to take part in marginal funding week on the Forum - let me know and I'll send you the details.
Just wanted to publicly thank @Sudhanshu Kasewa, @Matt Beard, @Simon27, @Rockwell, @Lorenzo Fruscella, @Tom Rowlands 🔸, @Conor Barnes 🔶 , as well as other users who chipped in on the Ask Career Advisors Anything event. A lot of thought and time went into those answers, and I felt very grateful reading them. The careers week would have reached (and helped) far less people without this aspect of the event. Thank you all!
I'd love it if someone wrote a thoughtful review of Rethink Priorities' new moral parliament tools (see Hayley Clatterbuck's last 4 posts). For example, I can imagine someone using one of the tools on a decision they need to make, and writing up the result.
Thanks to everyone who voted for our next debate week topic! Final votes were locked in at 9am this morning.
We can’t announce a winner immediately, because the highest karma topic (and perhaps some of the others) touches on issues related to our politics on the EA Forum policy. Once we’ve clarified which topics we would be able to run, we’ll be able to announce a winner.
Once we have, I’ll work on honing the exact wording. I’ll write a post with a few options, so that you can have input into the exact version we end up discussing.
PS: Apologies for the delay here — in retrospect, I should have checked on adherence to our policy before allowing voting. In the now very likely event that we cannot have the highest karma discussion on the EA Forum, I’d remind you that this is not the only place for EA-related discussions on the internet — Substack and Twitter do not have our politics policy.
I think allowing this debate to happen would be a fantastic opportunity to put our money where our mouth is regarding not ignoring systemic issues:
https://80000hours.org/2020/08/misconceptions-effective-altruism/#misconception-3-effective-altruism-ignores-systemic-change
On the other hand, deciding that democratic backsliding is off limits, and not even trying to have a conversation about it, could (rightfully, in my view) be treated as evidence of EA being in an ivory tower and disconnected from the real world.
I'm a bit surprised by this decision. This is the EA forum and this is an emerging area which could be important to discuss (personally I'm super skeptical of tractability but keen to hear ideas). It doesn't seem very "EA" to censor topics because they might be difficult - heck I've been downvoted for suggesting that at time before.
If the topic is specifically about "countering democatic backsliding" vs. other long termist concerns, I think we could (almost) discuss this without violating the forum norms tooooo much. And you even say at the bottom of the page
"we reserve the right to make exceptions in exceptional circumstances. For example, if the favored candidate of the "Destroy Human Civilization" party is leading the polls in a nuclear-armed nation, that seems to merit a Frontpage post about how to stop them". We're not there right now, but things are starting to look a bit hairy ;).
And if it turns nasty or into partisan debate, you could just shut it town and say "I told you so" ..
As the person who led the development of that policy (for whatever that's worth), I think the Forum team should be willing to make an exception in this case and allow looser restrictions around political discussion, at least as a test. As Nick noted, the current era isn't so far from qualifying under the kind of exception already mentioned in that post.
(The "Destroy Human Civilization Party" may not exist, but if the world's leading aid funder and AI powerhouse is led by a group whose goals include drastically curtailing global aid and accelerating AI progress with explicit disregard for safety, that's getting into natural EA territory -- even without taking democratic backsliding into account.)
Thanks Toby. The winning topic was, "Countering democratic backsliding is now a more urgent issue than more traditional longtermist concerns"?
I feel like this doesn't violate your rules, because it's discussing something "directly connected to cause EA areas". Democracy isn't a top three cause area, but it's not not a cause area. In any case, in my opinion the rules are obviously well-intentioned and mostly helpful, but at the end of the day it would be fine to bend them here.
Thanks for the comments @Clara Torres Latorre 🔸 @NickLaing @Aaron Gertler 🔸 @Ben Stevenson. This is all useful to hear. I should have an update later this month.
Nice one @Toby Tremlett🔹 . If the forum dictators decide that the democratically selected topic of democratic backsliding is not allowed, I will genuinely be OK with that decision ;).
More funding for charities: Last year, the donation election and surrounding events moved a lot of money. In our squiggle model, we get this distribution:
Also, maybe you just want to get these sweet sweet rewards.
I'm writing a retro for the AGI & Animals debate week. Do you have any feedback, positive or negative?
I'll use it to improve the next debate week, and I don't get that much feedback, so the chances of me actually changing how I run the event based on your comment are relatively high.
I think you ran it fine, I think it was just less interesting than other debate topics as there's just so much uncertainty and so many assumptions made to make progress. It feels more like a topic which one can muse on, rather than a meaningful debate where you can make strong arguments and counterarguments. I read as couple of the articles and found them interesting, but couldn't really strongly agree or disagree because any article about AI and animals will be based on tenuous assumptions.
That 2 topics were excluded after a vote was also a bit of a downbuzz for me at least. Just didn't feel like exactly what the community here was keen to get stuck into at that time.
If you are going to run a poll, I think it's best to run with the top polled topic. Otherwise perhaps just canvas ideas and decide the topics as a forum team
I've had a couple of organisations ask me to clarify the Donation Election's vote-brigading rules. Understandably, they want to promote the donation election amongst their supporters, but they aren't sure to what extent this is vote-brigading. The answer is- it depends.
We want to avoid the Donation Election being a popularity contest/ favouring the candidates with bigger networks. Neither popularity, nor size of network, is perfectly correlated with impact.
If you'd like to reach out to your audience, feel free, but please don't tell them to vote for you. You can explain the event, and mention that you are a candidate, but we want the votes to inform us of the Forum audience's opinions of marginal impact of money donated to these charities, not to the strength of their networks.
I'm aware this exortation won't do all the work- we will also be looking into voting patterns, and new accounts (made after October 22, when the election was announced) won't be eligible to vote.
Reminder that if we reach $15K, we'll run a debate week of the Forum's choice.
You can now save comments, as well as posts, to your Saved & read page.
If you want to save a comment, just click the three dots on the top right of a comment, select save, and you’ll find the comment at the bottom of your Saved & read page.
Thanks to the LessWrong team for adding this to the codebase!
We've passed the deadline for the essays on longtermism competition! Thanks to everyone who took part. I'm getting to work with the judges now, and we should have the results in a couple of weeks. If you were drafting something and missed the deadline, please do consider posting regardless, with the competition tag. You won't be eligible for a prize or judging, but you might be included in summaries/ a best-of sequence (and I'd very much like to read your essay).
For those among us who want to get straight back to business - I've tagged (I think) all the april fools posts, so you can now filter them out of your frontpage if you prefer by adding the "April Fools' Day" tag under the "Customize feed" button at the top of the frontpage, and changing the filter to hidden.
SummaryBotV2 didn't seem to get more agree reacts than V1, so I'm shutting it down. Apologies for any inconvenience.
[edit: Tonight], me and @Fran will be recording with @NickLaing for The World Can Be Better.
What would you like us to ask him?
Not sure how to articulate concisely so here's the braindump-y version. Nick has argued for "funding solutions not projects", e.g. AMF, New Incentives, OneDay Health, etc. I wonder what Nick thinks about funding people instead of specific solutions, in particular directly responsible individuals (DRIs), especially in more "complex systems change-y" GHD contexts like policy, market reform, health systems strengthening, etc where it might be very unclear which specific interventions are most impactful, and figuring this out requires not just "more research" but just trying -> failing -> sense-making -> reorienting -> trying differently etc, so it might make more sense to bet on people with track records of doing that. Concrete GHD-related examples for and against would be much appreciated :) don't think there are simple answers here.
Super interesting topic. It's a bit of a nitpick but perhaps I'm more in favor of funding for organizations that do one solution (or a small handful) really well, than I am finding a "solution" persay.
I'm not sure there really are clear examples of funding "DRIs" in global health. At least not that I know of. The global health world moves around organizations more than people. Often when you bet on a smaller org and their solution you are basically betting on their CEO but it's still indirect. @Mo Putera did you have any examples on this?
I was hoping you would have good examples for me to learn from! I don't know of any GHD ones.
I think of you as a DRI who "owns the problem of people not having access to high-quality healthcare". You did say you selected ODH's intervention based on your thesis, but actually executing is another matter entirely and you've been hitting it out of the park, and I also get the sense that if the v1 approach didn't work out you would've done the sense-making -> reorienting -> trying differently thing and still ended up "finding product-beneficiary fit" instead of just abandoning ODH (correct me if I'm wrong).
A hypothetical example: suppose you were considering seed-funding a policy advocacy org to encourage governments to institute national action plans that include cost-effective interventions to mitigate violence against women and girls. This is pretty systemic change-y, and I wouldn't be at all certain that the specific intervention idea (advocacy for NAPs) would work out, but there might still be a good case for seed-funding the org if the founder is an obsessively committed DRI-type who "owns VAWG".
I guess I'm generally wondering how to think about doing and supporting systemic change-y GHD interventions, so as to potentially use leverage to help even more people, at the cost of sacrificing confidence grounded in RCT evidence and MEL feedback. "Find and support DRIs, trusting they'll work it out" is the only proxy I can think of.
I appreciate that @Mo Putera but Im not at all that. Your 100% right that I'm sold out for getting good healthcare to everyone, but there are probably >5000 people in the GHD world who both have a better track record and more power to move the needle on access to high quality healthcare than I. You probably get the wrong idea from me posting too much on the forum :D :D :D , I run a smallish growing org that rolls out a decent model that may or may not get more traction.
Even our One Nurse in One room model as great as I might think it is, is only likely to be useful and perhaps the "best option" to provide remote healthcare in a handful of countries. Many Sub-Saharan African countries already finding (or have found) their own way to solve the problem which is great - even if its less efficient.
I think there are surprisingly few examples of "DRIs" who really own an issue in Global health. I actually wish there were more. There is the odd huge name like the late Paul Farmer would be the best example of what you are talking about. He helped move the needle and policy on a lot on many things, such as
- MDR TB treatment rollout
- TB directly observed treatment (along the lines of what Spiro - New TB charity raising seed funds does.
- Community Health worker normalisation
On your systemic change question, I think systemic change in Global health is a multifaceted long-term grind. It takes a lot of effort, money, people working hard and good long term relationships and connections with the WHO and governments to make lasting change. The community Health worker movement is one of the best examples of successfully driven systemic change. It took 20+ years had a LOT of big names behind the campaign to get serious traction. This included Paul Farmer who I mentioned, plus big time advocates like President Sirleaf from Liberia. Plus tens of other people who are sold out spend their whole life on the issue. And they have a great advocacy org CHIC who co-ordinates and advocates led by another great woman Madeleine who recently posted here on the forum. There was no one Directly responsible" person - instead perhaps 20-50 hugely capable people co-ordinating and making this happen.
What I don't think can work to create large-scale meaningful systemic change is funding a 3 year project through a big NGO which tries to do just that. Better to fund movements or organisations that already have committment and momentum. In some ways similar to your "DRI" idea, but unfortunately not as simple as funding 1 person.
Your "VAWG" example is a good one, because like with the community health worker movement there are hundreds of founders working on that issue who are dedicated to their work and as far as I know no one person who stands out as a clear leader of the movement Many of them are obsessive and brillian, but they won't be directly responsible for the field in general. Maybe in their country or for their specific intervention, but not for the entire field.
I don't know much about this field and I could be wrong, but I feel they haven't yet co-ordinated and built a "coalition" of groups working on it with a super capable leader can be key to creating more systemic change
And I might be missing what you really mean by "DRI" here, but I'm just not sure that the principle applies outside of a handful of very niche interventions like the no-more-lead crew.
Very much appreciate the pointers and candour (and sorry for mistakenly calling you a DRI), much for me to chew on. In any case I was hoping you'd answer this on the podcast! But I suppose it just wasn't a good podcast question.
Here's how Holden Karnofsky describes the DRI idea just for your interest, I don't have any other substantive thoughts on it, just "shouldn't there be more DRIs in GHD?" (there's more, I just picked the parts that struck me most):
"DRI" is a Silicon Valley acronym - "directly responsible individual" - referring to the idea that if you want something done well, you should designate a DRI for it. This person isn't necessarily the person who is "in charge of it" from a power perspective (though Daniela and I think it usually should be, and in fact often dislike the term "DRI" in corporate contexts for this reason - we think DRIs should be owners/managers), but it's the person who is "directly responsible" in the sense that the thing going well or poorly is on them. I chose this term even though I often dislike its use, just as an evocative shorthand.
The DRI-centric worldview in a nutshell is:
- Serious impact in domain or task X is nearly always the product of a person who is obsessed with X and has spent a lot of time on X (relative to other people, and ~always over ~1000h even for very green-field X).
- The rough mechanism is that any impact on the world requires understanding and dealing with a large # of little things. You need someone who is sharp and adaptive, but most importantly puts in the time and focus to deal with all of these things.
- So if you are trying to have impact on X, you'd best either become that person or recruit/develop/manage them; other things are unlikely to work. If you're noticing that X isn't going as well as you hoped, your first and possibly last question should be whether the right person (or people) is working on it.
- The game of figuring out who is a fit for what is a contender for "best thing to be good at." This is a great thing to think about and build knowledge of.
...
- The DRI-centric worldview advocates for a bit of an obsessive, often beyond-what-seems-reasonable dedication to the idea that everything that matters should have an unambiguous point person, usually someone who has a heavy concentration of both power and responsibility w/r/t whatever X they are working on. (This person is then held directly accountable for how things go.)
- Interacting with tech founder types, I've often found it almost surreal the way they automatically go "Well X is in charge of Y and I'm not going to second guess them - we are going to do what they want." It's hard to say why it feels so surreal without actual examples, but like ... a lot of times it seems really obvious that the person is crazy and doing a certain kind of thing wrong ... and yet over time I feel like their attitude gets vindicated.
- The DRI-centric worldview is really obsessed with commitment. Anytime someone seems like a sure thing to obsess over X for the next 10y of their life, the DRI-centric worldview is tempted to bet on them to succeed. Anytime someone seems like they've got one foot out, the DRI-centric worldview is like "This is going to suck." (An exception would be when a person is on the way out of something they've already mastered - like a CEO leaving a company - and is helping transition.) I think the DRI-centric worldview is less surprised than other worldviews by how little mark various brilliant, competent, scattered people have made on the world.
- The DRI-centric worldview really doesn't like the idea of trying to "have an idea" that one hands off to another person to execute. It likes the hybrid visionary/executor.
In general, I feel (in a way that I couldn't substantiate well without more work) that I've had a lot of surprises in my life that have updated me toward the above points. There are lots of times when other worldviews, and basic internal logic, is excited about some project because the idea seems so good. But when the key ingredients outlined above are lacking, it generally ends up bad.
Nan Ransohoff's There should be ‘general managers’ for more of the world’s important problems is on my mind too:
There’s a surprisingly big category of problems that are ‘orphaned.’ By ‘orphaned’ I mean: you can’t point to a specific person or organization who thinks it’s their responsibility to deliver the outcome in its entirety. Lots of people talk about the problem, and often many work on slices of it. But if you asked: ‘is there a hyper-competent person waking up every day feeling accountable for making sure this gets solved?’—the answer is very often, ‘no.’
These problems exist across domains and at a variety of ‘altitudes.’ Indeed, some are perhaps better described as ‘things we want to be true’ rather than ‘problems.’ In any event, a few examples that have been on my mind recently:
- Can we prevent infection from all respiratory pathogens (including the common cold)?
- Can we make every new building in SF both serve its function and be beautiful?
- Can we permanently fix the American west’s water problem?
- Can we halve X risk?
- Can we eliminate single-use plastic globally without making convenience trade-offs?
- Can we make childcare costs so low that they’re a non-factor in deciding whether to have kids?
In my opinion, there should be ‘general managers’—GMs—for problems like these. These are founder-types who feel personally responsible for delivering a specific outcome (vs field-building generally); hyper-competent leaders who will pull whatever levers necessary to achieve the defined outcome. Most companies wouldn’t let an important initiative go unmanned or without a ‘directly responsible individual’ — why are we OK not having GMs for even more wide-reaching problems?
Nan gives the historical examples of D.A. Henderson "owning smallpox eradication" and Evan Wolfson "owning marriage equality". I honestly forgot about this article yesterday, but your remark at the end there reminded me of it.
On this question "‘is there a hyper-competent person waking up every day feeling accountable for making sure this gets solved?’ for many Global health issues there are 30-50 people like that. Only with newer more niche ones like lead might there be 1 or a handful.
These are great examples from the past. I love the old-school "heros" you mention and wish we had more today. Even with those "DRI's" you meantion of the past, I would imagine they were reall ymuch more part of a bigger global team, and in many cases the public figurehead rather than "the" responsible person.
2. How has becoming a father changed how Nick thinks about his long term goals and bandwidth as an ngo director?
3. Who should global health minded EAs be engaging with (that they aren't engaging with enough right now?) what forums, groups, Institutes
I've made a public Forum Events calendar, which you can add to your Gcal. Hopefully, this will give people longer to think about and write for events like Debate Weeks or Theme Weeks. Let me know if you have any issues adding the calendar, or have suggestions for other ways to track Forum events.
I'm starting to put together plans for this year's Giving Season events (roughly, start of November to end of December). If you remember the events last year, it'd be cool to know:
1- What was memorable to you from that period?
2- Was anything in particular valuable for you or for your donation decisions?
3- Is there anything you would expect to see this year?
4- What would you hope to see this year?
Thanks!
I've added this sentence to the top-level description of the Essays on Longtermism competition: "Your essay must show deep engagement with the book, or one particular chapter"
I've seen a few early submissions which don't seem particularly related to the contents of the book. This is to be expected, but I wanted to make this extra clear just in case someone was putting serious time into an essay which is an 'essay on longtermism' but isn't responding to 'Essays on Longtermism'.
As described in the announcement post - I'll only send plausible winners along to our judging panel.
Hi Toby — sorry if this is an annoyingly specific (or not!) question, but do you have a sense of whether the following would meet the bar for "deep engagement"?:
ETA: Or this?:
Hey Anthony. Very reasonable question! Replying at length to a sub-section from one of the essays would definitely constitute deep engagement. The second idea is less obviously related to the collection, but I did say that you could write on a 'theme from across the collection' so it would likely qualify. If you want to be extra sure I'm happy to look at a plan or something.
The motivation with the quick take is mostly to underline that this isn't an essay competition about longtermism, it's an essay competition about a specific book about longtermism. You clealry get that, so I'm not concerned :)
In late June, the Forum will be holding a debate week (almost definitely) on the topic of digital minds. Like the AI pause debate week, I’ll encourage specific authors who have thoughts on this issue to post, but all interested Forum users are also encouraged to take part. Also, we will have an interactive banner to track Forum user’s opinions and how they change throughout the week.
I’m still formulating the exact debate statement, so I’m very open for input here! I’d like to see people discuss: whether digital minds should be an EA cause area, how bad putting too much or too little effort into digital minds could be, and whether there are any promising avenues for further work in the domain. I’d like a statement which is fairly clear, so that the majority of debate doesn’t end up being semantic.
The debate statement will be a value statement of the form ‘X is the case’ rather than a prediction 'X will happen before Y'. For example, we could discuss how much we agree with the statement ‘Digital minds should be a top 5 EA cause area’-- but this is specific suggestion is uncomfortably vague.
Do you have any suggestions for alternative statements? I’m also open to feedback on the general topic. Feel free to dm rather than comment if you prefer.
after EAG conversations, my current best guess for the debate statement is "the future will be worse if we create artificial sentience"
I really like your suggested post-EAG debate statement, Toby!
Other suggested debate topics:
1. Digital Minds will possess sentience or moral status
2. It is a moral obligation to develop protections for digital minds
I've just given $1000 to the Donation Election Fund.
I'm really excited about the quality of the organisations and the discussion this year, and I think a larger fund will raise the stakes for the donation election. If you feel the same, please consider donating!
Also, it feels a bit lame to draw myself a bad animal. Would anyone like to volunteer to draw one? I'd like a monkey on a computer.
BTW there is still a bunch of our matching fund left - it runs out when we hit 10,000 on the counter on the banner.
We've decided to add another $5000 match for the last stretch of the Donation Election (you can see how much of it is left on the banner). This is in addition to the first $5000, which we already matched. I know that the word shouldn't be used loosely, but this match seems genuinely counter-factual to me- based on the pace of donations so far, I put low odds (20%) on the full match amount being reached. That is, unless potential donors suddenly see the value of Bulbys exploding from Forum buttons.
The Marginal Funding posts were really valuable this year, and it's been great to have so many candidates, and see so much effort going into them. We had some money left in our 2024 events budget, and we wanted to make sure that the event is worthwhile to our candidates, and that they are excited to take part next year.
Thanks to those who have donated, voted, and commented so far!
The Donation Election will end, at a specific yet undisclosed time, on December 3rd.
If you're at EAG BA this weekend, me and @Sarah Cheng are doing:
I've also got some 1:1 slots left, and it'd be great to talk to anyone with feedback on the forum experience/ forum events or the EA Newsletter.
There is still plenty of time to vote in the Donation Election. The group donation pot currently stands at around $30,000. You can nudge that towards the projects you think are most worthwhile (plus, the voting system is fun and might teach you something about your preferences).
Also- you should donate to the Donation Election fund if:
a) You want to encourage thinking about effective donations on the Forum.
b) You want to commit to donating in line with the Forum's preferences.
c) You'd like me to draw you one of these bad animals (or earn one of our other rewards):
NB: I can also draw these animals holding objects of your choice. Or wearing clothes. Anything is possible.
I mentioned in the Essays on Longtermism competition announcement that we would hopefully expect the winners to the competition to be announced on November 4th. In fact it now looks like I'll be announcing them during the week of 10-16 November.
Apologies for the delay. It isn't the judges' fault, they're doing great. I'll be on a CEA wide retreat next week and I want to make sure I have time to write a proper post to celebrate the winners.
Linking this from @Andy Masley's blog:
Consider applying to the Berggruen Prize Essay Competition on the philosophy of consciousness, and donating a portion of your winnings to effective charities
TLDR:
The theme is 'consciousness' and the criteria are very vague. Peter Singer won before.
More details on the berggruen website here.
Rob Wiblin is interviewing Will MacAskill for the 80K podcast - this time on the better futures series. You can leave your questions for the interview in the response to this tweet.
Heads up! I'm planning a Draft Amnesty event (like this one). I think the last one went really well, and I'm pretty excited to run this.
The Draft Amnesty event will probably be a week long, around mid-march.
I'll likely post some question threads such as "What posts would you like to see someone write?" (like this one) and "What posts are you thinking of writing?" (like this one), and set up some gather.town co-working/ social opportunities for polishing posts/ writing up drafts in the build up.
I'm also brainstorming ways to make draft amnesty posts appear as a different genre to Forum users (such as a different font for the title, a different page for draft posts, or a visible "draft amnesty" tag that can be seen from the frontpage list view), and let them opt out of seeing them. This should ameliorate concerns about the frontpage being full of lower-standard content (though fwiw I think this is unlikely because of the karma system), and also to take some more pressure off the posters (I don't want people to not post because they worry their draft isn't polished enough!)
I'll put up a proper announcement soon, with more of a plan, but feel free to use the comments of this quick take to share any things you would be excited to see, ideas, concerns, or questions.
I'd be really interested to see what posts people want to see. I'm happy to devote some time and effort to creating posts if I thought it would be useful to people. Especially if it's in my skillset. Sometimes it can be hard to tell what's useful beyond getting inbox messages after the fact.
Dear Toby, thank you for this idea!
I have an idea that is burning and makes me loose sleep, but its too big for one person so more eyes on it is better.
The theme is mindful hacking.
A hack is a clever trick, a sort of thing a trickster archetype would do. One thing about tricksters is that it often bites them back, so when hacking one must be mindful about the ethical considerations of their hacks. In particular the recent bestseller A Hacker's Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society's Rules, and How to Bend them Back, suggests several hacks that seem odd - there is nothing wrong with them on the surface but I have a hunch it will come bite back if one would attempt them in the real life. So the work on this piece would be mostly in the above mentioned book critique and coming up with a better representation: one that is easier to read and that highlights the tradeoffs and the dilemmas associated with the non-trivial hacks.
Thank you and let me know what you think!
Reminder that you can check out your post stats (for individual posts and overall). I personally find this very cool - I get a lot more readers on the Forum than I do on Substack.
PS- LMK if there are stats you'd like to see that you can't currently access. Can't promise to add anything in particular, but we'll consider.
I'm at EAG NYC right now, and as part of our Forum writing session, we're asking participants to respond to this quick take with their Forum post ideas.
Encourage ideas you'd like to see! It's Draft Amnesty next week...
Post idea as an ex-USAID advisor: I’ve been struck by how little overlap there is between the USAID/GH world and the EA community at EAG NYC. I've met maybe three others from USAID out of ~800 people at the conference, and with so many talented folks now in transition, it feels like the right moment to ask where they might (or might not) fit in EA spaces.
Love this idea!
Probably EA was not overlapping with USAID causes, because they were not neglected. USAID was covering those needs. With USAID gone, EA should reevaluate neglectedness in previously covered areas and probably shift interest towards the newly neglected areas.
Thanks for bringing this up, Camille! Noting that we at Probably Good would be happy to speak to you or others like you transitioning from USAID on where you might best use your talent and experience
I may be posting two:
1- Increasing EA effectiveness by finding opportunities to leverage resources that are currently not accepted into EA roles. This could be its own short draft placeholder post.
2- Disagreement on longtermism reasoning (considering future impact on some interventions while ignoring the long term impact of current interventions). This would be a reply to a current post/chapter
Some ideas I had:
Love the meta-analysis idea. What's pantheon?
Pantheon is a show that ended up on Netflix recently and covers a singularity caused by uploads. I think it gives really good intuitions on what a fast AI takeoff might look like.
Post idea: a history of my time as a volunteer organizer of EA NYC. I am talking through the right presentation format for this. Potentially a brief post with some history and possible topics / request for opinions on items to expand upon
Do we need a yearly strategy paper of the EA movement?
I'm not there, but yes, I would support this idea!
Idea: write a blogpost about why research is a distribution so it seems a bunch of EAs often forget that this framework of “useful”/“not useful” work is (haha) not useful and we should be looking at EVs. EAs know that but often acts as if they don’t. (A.k.a: empirical people still seem to criticize theory saying it’s useless when actually in the face of short timelines, I don’t really see how some random specific circuit is going to save us from ASI)
We should make a hedge for the possibility that AI safety in the US could become polarized in the future and might be seen as a left only issue. So maybe we should consider making AI Pause and give it right wing branding for a hedge.
Book review of sovereign individual, and an update on its core thesis given China managed to prevent sovereign individuals from becoming more powerful than the state
Always looking for more book reviews. Does this have relevance to effective altruism? I think it could - for example, I wonder what it might say about controlling power-seeking AI/ AI companies.
Do you use the Forum Digest more than once a month?
I'd love to know, either in the comments here, in a <30 min user interview (which you can book on this link), or optionally anonymously via this form:
Thanks!
I use it to see if I’ve missed anything significant, esp. since I’ve started looking at lesswrong more (uh, apologies about that? More of a cause specific thing with ai and getting more into rationalism)
I don’t think I click on that many links typically, but I might leave the digest unread in my inbox until I give it a complete read through. I could imagine myself reading through it and seeing some post that makes me go down a rabbit hole and by the time I get back to the email tab I need to just mark unread to review again, for instance. Wouldn’t be surprised if this had occurred, that is.
Idk much more, I like the setup and do actually use it as described above as a sort of, well, I guess newsletter, huh.
Haha no need to apologise for hanging out on lesswrong!
Thanks for your feedback :)
A bit of a change for next week's debate week... When you vote on the banner and leave a comment, that comment will appear in a discussion thread. When it does, it'll display your vote, so that readers can put your comment in context, like so:
Let me know if you have any questions - and see you for debate week next week!
On Friday I gave a talk to the APART research fellows, about writing on the EA Forum. The talk included a few tips on writing a banger Forum post. The corresponding section from my handout is below - LMK if any of the advice is useful, or strikes you as wrong:
Be Engaging
Be Honest
Be Clear
Common Mistakes
I'll take this post off the frontpage later today. This is just a quick note to say that you can always message me (or use the intercom feature - chat symbol on the bottom right of your desktop screen) if you'd like to make suggestions or give feedback about the EA Forum.
I can attest that I message @Toby Tremlett🔹 quite a bit and he's always really nice, even when my suggestions are kind of stupid or a little emotional.
Actually he's polite and nice even when they're really stupid or extremely emotional as well.
I've loved seeing all the Draft Amnesty posts on the Forum so far! Some really great stuff has been posted (and I'll highlight that when I write a retrospective)
Posting this quick take as a reminder that people who are considering posting for Draft Amnesty can run a draft past me for quick feedback. Just DM me.
I wasn't as clear as I'd like to have been about deadlines for admission to the donation election, so I'll make things clearer here:
Reminder: The deadline for the 'Essays on Longtermism' competition is this coming Monday (specifically the end of October 20th, anywhere on earth). If you've been thinking of entering, this weekend is your chance! Consider nudging any friends who mentioned wanting to enter. $1000 top prize, many wonderful judges.
Also a reminder that anywhere on earth may mean that the deadline is on Tuesday for you (as it is for me). Maybe more simply - the deadline is 12pm Tuesday UTC.
There have been a few valid critiques of the debate framing, so I'll make some points to respond to each of them. A general point before I start is that you should feel free to use the discussion thread to outline your opinion, and/or, your interpretation of the debate statement. I.e. "I strongly agree with the debate statement, because I think 5% of EA Funding over the next decade is the right amount to allocate to this cause area".
1- @Jason brings up the ambiguity of the term "unrestricted" in footnote 2. I was thinking of unrestricted funding as all funding which is being allocated according to (roughly) impartial consequentialist reasoning, i.e. (roughly) EA principles. I'm contrasting that to restricted funds, for example, funds from a foundation that supports aid charities which happen to be given to an EA aid charity.
2- @finm makes a very fair point in this comment: over what timescale are we allocating 5% of the EA funds? This seems like an oversight rather than an accidental ambiguity- if I were to write this again, I might have chosen the next decade, or the next year. Given that 340 users have already voted, I won't change something so substantial now, but again, feel free to clarify your vote in the discussion thread.
3- @NickLaing argues that 5% of funding might be too high a bar to simply be labelled an "EA priority". I think this is a good point, and maybe the more accurate phrasing would be "Top EA Priority", or the entire statement should have been relative, for example: "AI Welfare should be more of an EA priority" and the footnote could clarify this means that a strong agree = we should triple the funding and talent going into it. Again, I won't change the phrasing now because it doesn't seem fair for earlier voters, but I can see the case for this.
Thanks for the feedback and meta-debate, very EA, keep it up!
Looks like the refactor led to a few days of analytics data getting a little messed up. If you've been checking your analytics and seeing zero reads on your post for the last few days, this is why. Should be fixed from now.
During the Donation Election (i.e. right now) is a great time to work through our cruxes around cause prioritisation, and tactics within causes. If you want to help cause more discussion on the Forum, consider writing a poll post, highlighting some key crux (like policy change vs research work in AI Safety, or funding farmed vs wild animal welfare). You don't need to include much background info besides the poll, but linking out to a few readings on each side of the debate is always a bonus.
The Debate Week banner is under construction... get your takes ready for Monday morning!
In the mean time, you can brush up on the reading list in the announcement post, or respond to this post with ideas for posts you'd like to see next week.
If you're currently at EAG London and you still see this quick take, you're exactly the person we'd like to meet:
EAG London Meetup: EA Forum readers and writers | Saturday 5-6pm at Meeting point G
Some members of the EA Forum online team are holding a casual meetup for EA Forum readers and writers to get to know each other (and us). Join us if you'd like to find a co-author, meet someone who can give you feedback on your draft, or make suggestions to the EA Forum team. We'll meet at meeting point G, unless otherwise stated.
The Draft Amnesty banner, and other tweaks to differentiate the posts, are a bit delayed and should be up later today. There will be in-post banners, and little topic pills that you will be able to see in the frontpage list. This will all be applied retroactively, so feel free to post your Draft Amnesty posts whenever, as long as they are tagged with the Draft Amnesty Week tag.
I'm interviewing Rob Mather, founder and CEO of AMF this evening at 6pm UTC. I'm asking him the questions from the comments on this AMA post.
Let me know, on that post or here, if you have any questions which you'd like to ask him.
You'll be able to watch the event live (on a link I'll post here and on the AMA post before the event at 6pm UTC), or as a recording before the end of the week.
[Edit: It will not be before the end of the week. Sorry about that! Happy Holidays everyone, expect this in the new year].
Link for our live call at 6pm UTC is here.
Listened to this episode of the Dwarkesh podcast yesterday - Dwarkesh mentioned that book reviews are a great way to produce useful content, even when you don't have something to say yourself. I'm mentioning this because I think the Forum could benefit from more book reviews (or paper reviews, or podcast reviews).
Is anyone reading a book they think the Forum audience would benefit from reading? Fancy writing a review of it?
I'm firming up some plans for pledge highlight week (December 16-22) at the moment. These include (multiple) AMAs, but also posts I'd love to see people write.
If you want to help make this week more lively, consider whether you or a friend might like to write about:
Feel free to dm me if you are thinking about posting during the week, and would like feedback, or have questions. Cheers!
It looks like you might have to wait till tomorrow for a 'Donation Election Winners' post (though you can see the final votes on the banner). Until then - here are the anonymised votes to play with.
This is just a quick note to let you know that polls-in-posts weren't just for DIY debate week. You can use them at any time.
More about the feature, and how to use it, in this post.
Heads up that the symposium event will be happening in the comments of this post, starting at 3pm (UK time).
Now's a good time to leave questions or key considerations in the comments of the post, for Will MacAskill, Tyler John, Andreas Mogensen, Greg Colbourn and Michael St Jules to respond to.
Just a reminder that AI Welfare Debate Week on the EA Forum is next week! If you're writing a post and want some feedback, dm me. If you have feedback on the event, or any questions about how it will work, comment here (or, again, dm).
Glad to be working with Kuhan!
Topics (AKA wiki pages[1] or tags[2]) are used to organise Forum posts into useful groupings. They can be used to give readers context on a debate that happens only intermittently (see Time of Perils), collect news and events which might interest people in a certain region (see Greater New York City Area), collect the posts by an organisation, or, perhaps most importantly, collect all the posts on a particular subject (see Prediction Markets).
Any user can submit and begin using a topic. They can do this most easily by clicking “Add topic” on the topic line at the top of any post. However, before being permanently added to our list of topics, all topics are vetted by the Forum facilitation team. This quick take outlines some requirements and suggestions for new topics to make this more transparent. Similar, more polished, advice will soon be available on the 'add topic' page. Please give feedback if you disagree with any of these requirements.
When you add a new topic, ensure that:
Not fulfilling these requirements is the most likely cause of a topic rejection. In particular, many topics are written with the aim of establishing a new term or idea, rather than collecting terms and ideas which already exist on the Forum. Other examples of rejected topics include:
Technically there can be a wiki page without a topic tag, i.e. a wiki page that cannot be applied to a post. However we don’t really use these, so in practice the terms are interchangeable.
This term is used more informally. It is easier to say “I’m tagging this post” than “I’m topic-ing this post”
The Donation Election will close (no more voting or donating) at an undisclosed time today... could be in ten minutes, could be in ten hours... get your final votes in soon just in case!
Voting has now closed! Thank you to everyone who voted, discussed and donated. And of course to all the organisations who wrote marginal funding posts!
Stay tuned for a post about the winners tomorrow.
With the debate week discussion thread getting so long, it is now a community service (even more than usual) to sort the comments by "new" and upvote/ downvote or comment. Let's not let quality content get buried!
could we get some way to see people's vote when viewing the discussion thread? Usually you can guess based on the comment roughly where they fall, but it would be nice to have a number/visual to quickly see.
This was suggested in CEA slack as well- It'll be on the list of possible improvements (I think it's a good idea).
Reminder that the symposium kicks off in an hour! If you want to help the conversation go well, you can write up particular considerations, cruxes or questions you have as comments on the symposium post. Invited guests and other participants will respond to them later.
After the initial experiment period, we've decided to keep the featured page.
One of the key graphs in making this decision is below:
Now that the featured page is likely to stick around long term, I'd like to start collecting ideas for V2[1]. Do you use the page? Do you pointedly not use the page? I'd love to get any and all feedback, in the comments here, or via this form.
Please share small things like aesthetic tweaks as well as larger issues such as a disagreement on the kind of posts that get featured, or how featuring is done. Happy to answer questions too.
I.e., the current version is a prototype, and I'm ready to do a full redesign if necessary. Because of some protracted OOO I might have to take soon - V2 might land near the end of September, or even early October.
I’ve really stopped engaging with the EA Forum as much since the change, if helpful feedback. I’m not sure what to do about this, but I’ve found I no longer have a clear sense of “where conversation is actively happening”, and while I guess I can tell from the tab names if I’m in New or Featured, in reality I don’t pay enough attention and miss a lot of things. E.g. today I realized there was a post that didn’t get much attention that I never noticed that was relevant to me a week ago, and generally, I have a sense of “I can’t really tell what’s recent conversation” anymore, so I’ve stopped looking at the Forum as much because I don’t have a clear sense that I’ll see new and interesting things.
I see the upside of the change, but personally have found it hard to navigate the site since the change in a way that’s decreased my engagement.
Thanks for all you do to experiment and try to make it better! Appreciate how much you all do here to make the Forum useful!
Thanks Abraham, that's good to know! FWIW the new & upvoted page is just the Forum frontpage as it was before, so if you just ignore the featured page, your forum experience shouldn't change at all.
Also we did feature that post - so if you check the featured page you'd have been more likely to see it overall than previously (when something niche but impactful like that was likely to get low karma and sink off the frontpage pretty quick).