Tl;dr: I need feedback and ~$2,000 for prize money to start an EA essay competition.
Update: The project is funded now! Feedback is still very welcome!
Hi!
I’m Hauke, the new Director of Research at Giving What We Can.
Similar to Tyler’s recent blog post, I’ve an idea to get more people engaged with EA.
I’ve a spreadsheet with the contact details of the administrators of the the world’s top 100 universities master’s programmes in Global Health and Development. I think that some of the students in these areas would be very receptive to effective altruism (at least in terms of global poverty eradication).
I want to email all these contacts and and give them a good reason to forward the email to all their students in the department in order to introduce them to effective altruism and Giving What We Can and deeply engage with EA ideas.
The idea is to have an essay competition for these students.
The benefit would be threefold:
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The students and potentially the scientific field of Development might be nudged to think more in terms effectiveness
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This might also translate into more engagement with EA (GWWC pledges etc.) as some of the students are naturally aligned with our cause
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The best ideas might undercover very effective interventions
Here’s a very rough draft of the essay prompt:
“How can one be an effective altruist? To which organisation should one donate their money to, in order to do the most good for the global poor? Which is the most effective, but currently underfunded global poverty intervention that is already done or could be implemented soon?
The essay ideally clarifies the following issues:
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Intervention effectiveness:
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What is the scale of the problem (global burden of disease in DALYs) and thus scalability of the intervention? See Global Burden of Disease Study.
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What is the cost-benefit analysis of the intervention ($ Dollars per DALY averted)? See Disease Control Priorities Project.
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Neglectedness/crowdedness:
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Is there an organisation that is currently doing this intervention work and could use our donations?
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Is there room for more funding in this area which would mean that additional donation to this intervention would have high impact? Or is this area currently already sufficiently funded and our marginal impact is low?
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Tractability:
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Is this a feasible intervention that could realistically implemented soon or are there any barriers to this intervention being implemented (e.g. cultural, political, technological barriers)?”
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Word limit: 900 words excluding references.
The prize money could be distributed as follows:
|
1st Prize |
$1,000 |
|
|
2nd Prize |
$500 |
|
|
3rd Prize |
$250 |
|
|
4 |
$50 |
|
|
5 |
$50 |
|
|
6 |
$20 |
Bookprize |
|
7 |
$20 |
Bookprize |
|
8 |
$20 |
Bookprize |
|
9 |
$20 |
Bookprize |
|
10 |
$20 |
Bookprize |
|
11 |
$20 |
Bookprize |
|
12 |
$20 |
Bookprize |
|
13 |
$20 |
Bookprize |
|
Overall Prize money in US Dollar |
$2,010 |
The idea here is that the first prize sounds like a lot (4 figures) and there are still quite a few more prizes. The books would of course be EA books (e.g. Peter Singer's or Will's book).
The grading could be crowdsourced if there are too many submission for me to judge by myself.
Feedback on this idea is very welcome.
If you want to fund this project, you can also email me at: hauke.hillebrandt@givingwhatwecan.org
This is a fantastic idea Hauke, nice one! I also like they way you've set out the objective and rationale clearly. Thanks!
The primary objective is to engage students right rather than get ideas?
Social policy, economics, epidemiology and public health DPhils / masters people might also be really good for this if you can get the mailing lists etc. (could that be tacked on to Tyler's task for nearly EA group contact details at universities?)
Again, wonderful idea and all the best!
Yes, good idea- I'll try to get in touch with those students as well! Thanks Tom for the feedback!
You might want to include a link to some EA sites, books, or articles to clarify that effective altruist has a specific meaning. People not already in the EA movement, especially those who have not encountered it, might not realize the level of intellectual rigor and roughly consequentialist reasoning expected.
Seconding this. I think people might underestimate this.
Yes, that's a very good point! I'll include links and flesh this out a bit.
Late question, but what plans are in place (if any) to measure the impact of the essay contest?
Great question!
The impact measure will work through two different ways:
First, we'll track how many visitors to the page we get through the email and how many sign the pledge. Second, we'll track how many submissions we get and what the quality of those submissions is.
Great idea! I like that you give particular suggestions for reading that aren't inside-EA information sources. Still, though, I would worry that people can quickly read up on the general EA platform and might then expect that toeing the GiveWell line is their best strategy for winning. That would at least get people to think about that information enough to summarize it, which is useful. But it might be useful to explicitly ask for consideration of interventions that differ from any of the major program types recommended by GiveWell/TLYCS/etc.
(I don't know why this would matter, but it also occurs to me that the most serious contestants are probably reading these comments. Hello!)
Yes, that's actually an important consideration. I think I'll link to Givewell and give AMF and SCI as an example, so that people know that they will probably not win if they just write about bednet distributions or deworming.
I'm confident someone will fund this fully, but I'm also nervous everyone will think that and no one will fund you. Not sure what to do about that.
I guess I'll ask -- how's your funding coming along?
It's fully funded! :)