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...
On October 22nd starting at 10:00am Pacific Time, Every.org is matching donations to select animal welfare organizations at a 2:1 rate, up to $2,000 per donor per nonprofit (so if you give up to $2,000, they will contribute up to $4,000 and the nonprofit will get up to $6,000). The first donation a donor makes to each eligible nonprofit will be matched, and donors can get the match for multiple $2,000 donations. So, you can get more than $2,000 matched by donating $2,000 one time to multiple...
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...
Question:
Is blaming EA for FTX like blaming Elie Wiesel for Bernie Madoff?
Background:
Elie Wiesel was a Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor who trusted his personal finances and his foundation's endowment to Bernie Madoff. Wiesel's foundation and personal finances were decimated when Madoff's Ponzi scheme fell apart. Madoff is famous for a Ponzi scheme that destroyed the finances of thousands of investors of tens of billions of dollars.
Question:
Is the analogy apt?
Unfortunately, it's probably a really bad look to imply that we're akin to Holocaust survivors.
I don't think this is apt. FTX was formed by a team of people who very much seemed to be EA-aligned and EA-inspired at the time of forming. Elie and Madoff had no such connection - Elie's only interaction with Madoff was as a victim.
You can quite reasonably make the claim that EA has very little blame, but certainly if you were going to rank both scenarios, we would at least be somewhat more at fault than Elie was.