EA Updates for February 2021

Upcoming Virtual Events

• 2nd February - EA Consultants Coffee Chat - Join the Facebook group to find out more details
• 4th February - Charity Entrepreneurship Q&A with Joey Savoie
• 7th February - Giving What We Can Meetup - With guest Michelle Hutchinson, Head of Advising at 80,000 Hours
• 13th February - Climate Change Icebreakers - Organised by Effective Environmentalism
• 17th February - Effective Giving Open Forum with GWWC
• 20th February - Introductory EA Fellowship - Applications close 7th February
• 20th February - Legal Topics in Effective Altruism - Virtual reading group running until 10th April
• 20-21st March - EA Global: Reconnect - Virtual conference, applications open mid February
• 26-28th March - EA Fellowship Weekend
• 29-31st October - EA Global: London 2021

Meta

• Joey Savoie and Vaidehi Agarwalla with a post on what they think are the top 3 charity ideas in the EA meta space
• The EA Consulting Network has set up a newsletter for consultants interested in effective altruism
• 80,000 Hours podcast with Ajeya Cotra on worldview diversification and how big the future could be
• An update from the Centre for Effective Altruism on their work in the fourth quarter of 2020
• CEA with an overview of areas they are not focusing on
• Founders Pledge with an overview of their research in 2020
• Michelle Hutchinson looking at possible gaps in the EA community
• There is a new calendar for virtual EA related events around the world
• CEA's strategy for 2021
• Shay Ben Moshe has written up their career decision making process to help others making similar choices
• A post looking at how effective altruism was promoted at a large tech company
• The EA Forum now has a page for new users to help them get more involved
• Fabienne with a post asking 'Can I have impact if I’m average?'
• The 10 most viewed posts on the EA Forum in 2020
• An Ask Me Anything with Ajeya Cotra, researcher at Open Philanthropy
• Eli Nathan with thoughts on on operations careers at effective altruism related organisations
• People are coordinating on Project for Awesome to raise funds for potentially impactful charities
• EA organisation updates for December 2020
• Open Philanthropy on their approach to recruiting a strong team
• Richard Ngo with the post "Lessons from my time in Effective Altruism"
• Michelle Hutchinson with a post looking at training bottlenecks in EA
• Arden Kohler with a critical summary of Meacham’s "Person-Affecting Views and Saturating Counterpart Relations"
• Jack Malde looking at which concepts are important to know when deciding between causes

Grants

• Open Phil have made 18 grants recently with a total value of $22,620,000
  • $15,900,000 - Scientific research
    • $5,500,000 - Atherosclerosis and Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension Therapy
    • $5,300,000 - Strep A Vaccine
    • $2,500,000 - In Vitro Fertilization Research
    • $2,000,000 - COVID-19 Testing Platform
  • $2,390,000 - GiveWell — General Support
  • $1,356,000 - Farm animal welfare
    • $1,228,000 - Compassion in World Farming — Farm Animal Welfare in Asia
  • $1,000,000 - International Refugee Assistance Project
  • $780,000 - Biosecurity and Pandemic Preparedness
  • $695,000 - Criminal Justice Reform
  • $500,000 - Land Use Reform
• The Global Fund signed 157 grants for a total of $8,540,000,000 for HIV, TB and malaria programs and to strengthen systems for health

Global Development

• A case study on the intersection of U.S. foreign aid and EA
• The African Continental Free Trade Area has opened aiming to bring together 1.3 billion people in a $3.4 trillion economic bloc
• Africa Insiders with an overview of upcoming elections this year
• Founders Pledge with a podcast on "Solving problems for small businesses in Africa with Daniel Yu, Founder & Global CEO of Sokowatch"
• Devex with a report on a new white paper outlining China's development past and future
• Care International looking at which humanitarian crises were most ignored in 2020
• Derek Foster on improving preference-based health metrics
• A post asking if foreign aid is effective
• Exemplars in Global Health looking at how Ethiopia decreased their under-five mortality rate by 56 percent in 15 years
• Coverage of the work by Sella Nevo and Google AI to improve global flood forecasting

Animal Welfare

• The Effective Animal Advocacy community have a new updated community directory
• Ville Sokk has created a new online calculator to look at how consumption of different animals affects climate change and animal welfare
• Animal Advocacy Careers with an overview of their effective animal advocacy bottlenecks surveys
• Richard Parr with a post on how the 'veggie burger ban' was defeated
• Jennifer-Justine Kirsch, Tom Billington and Haven King-Nobles from Fish Welfare Initiative have formed a partnership with Gramodaya Trust to expand higher welfare production methods to at least 50 new farms per year

Existential & Catastrophic Risks

• Nuclear Weapons is a new resource hub for people who want to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons
• The World Economic Forum with global risks for 2021
• The Future of Life Institute have a podcast with Beatrice Fihn on the total elimination of nuclear weapons
• Toby Ord has a section on existential risks in the UN's Human Development Report 2020 (Page 120)
• EA Global Transcript - Noah Taylor: Developing a research agenda for bridging existential risk and peace and conflict studies
• Jenny Xiao with a post looking at "International Cooperation Against Existential Risks: Insights from International Relations Theory"
• Michael Andregg with a new infographic based on The Precipice

Improving Institutions

• A post looking at quantifying the value of evaluations
• Nuño Sempere with an overview of forecasting in 2020
• An Ask Me Anything with Elizabeth Edwards-Appell, former State Representative in New Hampshire

Environment

• A write up with concerns about Giving Green, with their response in the comments
• EA Global Transcript - R. Daniel Bressler: Climate change deaths increase the social cost of carbon

Longtermism

• Fin Moorhouse with an introduction to longtermism
• The Legal Priorities Project have released their research agenda
• Richard Fisher on the importance of existential hope
• A podcast with Sean Carroll on consciousness, physicalism, and the history of intellectual progress

Emerging Technology

• The Centre for the Governance of AI with their 2020 annual report
• Jade Leung was on Matt Clifford's Podcast looking at the history of emerging technologies
• Metaculus with a forecasting tournament dedicated to predicting advances in AI
• Charlotte Stix & Matthijs M. Maas with a paper looking at bridging the gap between AI researchers with near-term and long-term concerns
• Toph with the post "What does it mean to become an expert in AI Hardware?"
• 2020 survey of artificial general Intelligence projects by the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute

Other Links

• Andreas Fazekas and Nate Golden with posts on why they have taken the Giving What We Can Pledge
• The 2020 Future of Life award has been bestowed upon William Foege & Viktor Zhdanov for their critical contribution to eradicating smallpox
• The Qualia Research Institute with an overview of their history & 2021 strategy
• Richard Ngo with a post on "Scope-sensitive ethics: capturing the core intuition motivating utilitarianism"
• Peter Singer and Agata Sagan on making a moral plan for 2021
• A podcast with Simon Beard on Parfit, climate change, and existential risk
• Clearer Thinking with a new tool to help people achieve their goals
• José Oliveira on doing the most good as an artist

Good News

• Germany has approved a draft law to end mass culling of male chicks
• The U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons entered into force on the 22nd of January