EA Updates for August 2020

UPCOMING VIRTUAL EVENTS

If you're interested in finding out about events as they are posted, you can stay up to date with the EA Online Events Facebook group, and EA Events Google calendar.

Talk -Toby Ord on Existential Risk & The Future of Humanity
When: Thursday 3rd September
Organised by the Royal Society of Arts, Toby Ord is in conversation with Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the RSA

Ask Me Anything with the EA Animal Welfare Fund
When: Sunday 6th September
Giving What We Can are hosting this event with Karolina Sarek, one of the fund managers for the EA Animal Welfare Fund. Learn more about the fund and join them for an AMA with Karolina.

EA Virtual Meetup
When: Monday 7th and 21st of September
Join the newly-formed EA Virtual Group for their fortnightly virtual meetups

Charity Entrepreneurship Q&A 
When: Thursday 10th September
Organised by EA:University of Melbourne, a Q&A with the co-founder of Charity Entrepreneurship, Joey Savoie

Giving What We Can 5,000 Member Celebration
When: 3rd and 4th of October
To celebrate the 5,000 member milestone, GWWC are organising a global hangout day (in person and online) 
 

LATEST RESEARCH AND UPDATES

META

• 80,000 Hours and Will MacAskill with an article on common misconceptions about effective altruism
• Sam Hilton with "The case of the missing cause prioritisation research"
• Richard Ngo has created a list of reading lists on a variety of topics related to effective altruism
• Anne Ore has created a group for disabled and chronically ill people interested in effective altruism
• Women and Non Binary Altruism Mentorship have released career profiles of the people they have interviewed this summer
• Charity Entrepreneurship with their 2020 top charity ideas and a how-to handbook on how to start a charity
• Benjamin Todd on why they are placing more importance on global priorities research than they used to
• One For The World with new resources for people who want to set up their own chapter
• EA organisation updates for July
• Sam Deere on why donating effectively does not necessarily imply donating tax-deductibly
• EA Infrastructure Fund grants for July 2020, 7 grants with a value of $838,000
• Centre for Effective Altruism mid-year update
• Callum Calvert on why seed funding nonprofits could be a high-risk, high-reward approach

GRANTS

Open Phil have made grants recently with a total value of $11,710,000

• $4,861,000 - Scientific research
  • $2,531,000 - Coronavirus drug research
  • $2,000,000 - Antimalarial drug development
• $2,112,000 - Farmed animal welfare
  • $517,000 - We Animals Media
  • $432,000 - Animal Advocacy Careers
  • $260,000 - Charity Entrepreneurship
• $1,586,224 - Global catastrophic risks
• $1,465,000 - Macroeconomic stabilisation policy
• $947,000 - Potential risks from advanced AI
• $651,000 - Criminal justice reform
• $88,000 - Other areas

GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT

• The Centre for Global Development on ways the UK government could move in the direction of effective altruism
• 80,000 Hours podcast with Shruti Rajagopalan discussing what India did to stop COVID-19 and how well it worked
• Nathan Nunn discussing the history and future of global economic development with Tyler Cowen
• Angus Deaton in conversation with Amartya Sen on the past, present and future of welfare economics
• Michael Faye on the Founders Pledge podcast discussing his work with GiveDirectly and TapTap Send
• UNICEF with a report on how lead poisoning is affecting 1 in 3 children globally
• Devex on how stigma and discrimination can be more harmful than disease 
• ODI with articles covering the UK's new Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office
• Happier Lives Institute with a post on using subjective well-being to estimate the moral weights of averting deaths and reducing poverty
• Our World In Data on their collaboration with Exemplars in Global Health
• A paper on the twenty year economic impacts of deworming

ANIMAL WELFARE

• The Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that meat production dropped in 2019, and it forecasts a decline again this year
• Faunalytics with 2020 updates to their global animal slaughter statistics
• Neil Dullaghan with a report on whether countries comply with EU animal welfare laws
• Animal Welfare Fund grants for July 2020, 17 grants with a total value of $680,000
• Animal Advocacy Careers has a new career profile on politics, policy and lobbying
• Bella Forristal with a project investigating whether it would be net positive to reduce antibiotic use in farmed animals
• Kasia Wypy on why they donate to end factory farming

EXISTENTIAL & CATASTROPHIC RISKS

• 80,000 Hours with an article on how to use your career to help reduce existential risk
• Theron Pummer reviewing The Precipice
• SoGive with a survey of organisations tackling existential biological risks asking them how we should update our opinions on bio risks as a cause area in light of COVID-19
• Ben Snodin and Alex Holness-Tofts taking a critical look at the paper "Existential Risk and Growth"
• Victoria Krakovna on possible takeaways from the coronavirus pandemic for slow AI takeoff
• John Halstead, head of research at Founders Pledge, is on a podcast talking about existential risk and why philanthropists should focus on safeguarding the welfare of future generations
• A post looking at what FHI’s research scholars programme is like

ENVIRONMENT 

• J-PAL and King Philanthropies launch the King Climate Action Initiative to design, test, and scale solutions at the nexus of climate change and poverty
• 80,000 Hours podcast with Mark Lynas on climate change, societal collapse & nuclear energy

LONG TERM FUTURE

• 80,000 Hours on the emerging school of patient longtermism
• Max Daniel asking 'What are novel major insights from longtermist macro-strategy or global priorities research found since 2015?'
• APPG on Future Generations impact report - Raising the profile of future generation in the UK Parliament
• Michael Aird with a post collecting crucial questions for people interested in longtermism
• Tobias Baumann looking at the common ground for people interested in various versions of longtermism
• The Centre on Long-Term Risk with a list of their priority areas
• Brandon Shumway with a post addressing global poverty as a strategy to improve the long-term future
• EA Global Transcript - Tyler John: Representing future generations
• Henry Cooksley with a post looking at longtermism and politics

OTHER LINKS

• 80,000 Hours podcast with Jennifer Doleac on ways to prevent crime other than police and prisons
• A review of studies looking at what works to promote charitable donations
• An article in Nature on issues with replication studies and how to improve the process
• Founders Pledge with research on where to donate if you want to tackle homelessness
• Tom Chivers on the connection between deworming and AI safety
• Tim Underwood looking at when can writing fiction change the world
• Book Review: Deontology by Jeremy Bentham
• The Life You Can Save on how you can talk to your kids about philanthropy
• Sophia Cheng writing about her first big effective altruism test and where she's donating
• Neel Nanda with a blog post on the mindset of thinking in systems and routines, how to live a life on zero willpower
• Owen Cotton-Barratt with thoughts on what makes up "good judgement"

GOOD NEWS

• Africa declared free of wild polio
• Sudan has removed laws for apostasy and public flogging
• The incidence rate of dementia in Europe and North America has declined by 13% per decade over the past 25 years
• Early research suggests there has been no increase in loneliness since the start of the pandemic