Note: This post was crossposted from the Coefficient Giving Farm Animal Welfare Research Newsletter by the Forum team, with the author's permission. The author may not see or respond to comments on this post.
Subtitle: On vegan advocacy, effective altruism, and FIFA
I turn 40 today. Here are some hot takes.
On factory farming
1. Our biggest challenge is salience. If factory farming led the evening news, it wouldn’t last lo...
When speaking to candidates who are considering working with us at 80,000 Hours, I often hear people worry about replaceability.
The familiar version of the worry is about whether the organisation will hire someone else in your place. If it will, then the difference you make by taking the job is only the difference between you and them.
There are a couple of well-known answers to that. The person hired in your place probably cares about the world too, and would go on to do somethi...
> TL;DR: No, but you might, if you leave it too late: We’re hiring for seven roles, and the people who join now will shape what a much bigger AIM becomes. The first step is cheap -- an expression of interest form.
My worry
I rejoined...
In addition to wreaking havoc with USAID, the rule of law, whatever little had been started in Washington about AI safety, etc., the US government has, as you all know, decided to go after trans people. I'm neither trans nor an American, but I think it's really not nice of them to do that, and I'd like to do something about it, if I can.
To some extent, of course, it's the inner deontologist within me speaking here: trans people are relatively few, arguably in less immediate danger than African children dying of AIDS, and the main reason why I feel an urge to do something is because explicitly wanting a certain group to be removed from society feels morally worse than letting them die just because you don't want to spend money on them.
But still: anyone has a good guess at what would be the most effective way for me to allocate a little bit of my time and money to this problem?