I have been a serious philanthropist since 2004 and part of the EA community since 2017. I am audaciously optimistic about ameliorating the global mental health crisis and I do EA capacity building through coaching and facilitation. I also support environmental and animal welfare causes. I am on the advisory council of Vegan Outreach and the Santa Clara County Behavioral Health Board.
I am a certified professional coach, with additional experience in crisis counseling and peer mentoring. I shifted to mental health and well-being after 25 years as a designer, manager, and director at Silicon Valley tech companies. I am passionate about helping others, and by guiding them to find their true calling, I amplify my impact on improving the world.
I'm looking for partners to work on a peer support group (PSG) program that will help alleviate the global mental health crisis. I'm especially interested in working with students at colleges and universities, or young adults in general.
Figuring out what to do next in your life for maximal impact.
Donât ask what the world needs, but ask what makes you come alive, because that is what the world needs: people who have come alive.
âHoward Thurman
Well, it's unfortunate, but the fundamental goal of Effective Altruism is rational investment, and that means, among other things, not investing based on emotions.
This is wrong; it's a black-or-white logical fallacy. Emotions are an important channel of data. Not factoring them into calculations leads to false conclusions. Check out bilateral amygdala damage or frontotemporal dementia.
EA discourages emotion-only or emotion-overweighted decision-making. However, if emotion were not a part of EA, we would simply give every dollar to bednets in Africa and ignore every other cause.
Maybe I'm misreading your argument, but you seem to say there are legitimate cases to be made for 100% investment in humans, at the expense of complete obliteration of the remainder of the animal kingdom. The whole ecosystem we rely on for survival would collapse.
I might agree with you that the planet would be better off long term if we devoted 100% to animals and, conversely, obliterated all the people. There are (at least) two things wrong with this other extreme scenario, though:
The "highest-lowest" game mechanic is a valuable lens when thinking about balancing investments. It's pretty clear the extremes are wrong (100% people, 0% animals, or the inverse). That means there is some middle ground that makes sense.
I trust the wisdom of the crowd. Some are drawn to human welfare, others to animal welfare. Some to both. The more we educate everyone on the issues and give them the agency to make their own decisions on where to invest resources, the more likely we are to come to a reasonable balance point.
'what does the community incentivise?' vs 'what does the community say?'
Reminds me of the quote from the Netflix Culture document:
The actual company values, as opposed to the nice-sounding values, are shown by who gets rewarded, promoted, or let go.
Thanks for putting this together! A few other considerations I didn't see in the article (correct me if I missed it):
Any organization [or system] is perfectly designed to get the results that it gets.
âArthur W. Jones, organizational design expert
So if you want different results, you must change the system. Expecting players to "be better" is not a viable path to lasting change.
Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.
âClay Shirky
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
âUpton Sinclair
The fortunate man is seldom satisfied with the fact of being fortunate. Beyond this, he needs to know that he has a right to his good fortune. He wants to be convinced that he deserves it andâabove allâthat he deserves it in comparison with others. Good fortune thus wants to be legitimate fortune. [a.k.a. system justification theory]
âMax Weber
Veil of Ignorance (a.k.a. Original Position) â a philosophical concept by John Rawls, which suggests that individuals should design the principles of society without knowing their own personal circumstances, such as their gender, race, or social status. This thought experiment aims to promote fairness and impartiality in decision-making, encouraging the creation of just and equitable societal structures.
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect. [a.k.a. Social dominance orientation]
âFrank Wilhoit (composer from Ohio)
There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
â William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Itâs easy to focus on or overweigh the negative things in the world. It could be argued that our bias towards âloss aversionâ primes humans to be this way. So, effort and training are required to look at data in an unbiased way. Just because we see more reports of something doesn't mean those things are increasing. It could be a reporting bias.
If I could add one requirement to the education system, it would be critical thinking skillsâespecially the ability to learn and spot logical fallacies. I think this is a foundational reason why democracies are slipping back towards fascism.
The only part of the Beast empire that is 100% charitable is his Beast Philanthropy channel. I do recommend people subscribe and watch those videos. He started with local food banks and has quickly moved to (what looks to me like) fairly effective humanitarian aid in LMICs. Some of his main channel videos cover his humanitarian efforts. But I think they are essentially marketing for his Philanthropy.
I subscribe to Hank & Johnâs newsletter and replied with the info on the P4G conference. Probably was read by an intern, but at least someone in the org is aware.
I recommend updating the title to something like "From Google to global health NGO".
At first glance, I thought this said "Google is founding a new global health charity."