DR

david_reinstein

Founder and Co-Director @ The Unjournal
3638 karmaJoined Working (15+ years)Monson, MA, USA

Bio

See davidreinstein.org

I'm the Founder and Co-director of The Unjournal;. W  organize and fund public journal-independent feedback, rating, and evaluation of hosted papers and dynamically-presented research projects. We will focus on work that is highly relevant to global priorities (especially in economics, social science, and impact evaluation). We will encourage better research by making it easier for researchers to get feedback and credible ratings on their work.


Previously I was a Senior Economist at Rethink Priorities, and before that n Economics lecturer/professor for 15 years.

I'm  working to impact EA fundraising and marketing; see https://bit.ly/eamtt

And projects bridging EA, academia, and open science.. see bit.ly/eaprojects

My previous and ongoing research focuses on determinants and motivators of charitable giving (propensity, amounts, and 'to which cause?'), and drivers of/barriers to effective giving, as well as the impact of pro-social behavior and social preferences on market contexts.

Podcasts: "Found in the Struce" https://anchor.fm/david-reinstein

and the EA Forum podcast: https://anchor.fm/ea-forum-podcast (co-founder, regular reader)

Twitter: @givingtools

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Project Idea: 'Cost to save a life' interactive calculator promotion


What about making and promoting a ‘how much does it cost to save a life’ quiz and calculator.

 This could be adjustable/customizable (in my country, around the world, of an infant/child/adult, counting ‘value added life years’ etc.) … and trying to make it go viral (or at least bacterial) as in the ‘how rich am I’ calculator? 


The case 

  1. People might really be interested in this… it’s super-compelling (a bit click-baity, maybe, but the payoff is not click bait)!
  2. May make some news headlines too (it’s an “easy story” for media people, asks a question people can engage with, etc. … ’how much does it cost to save a life? find out after the break!)
  3. if people do think it’s much cheaper than it is, as some studies suggest, it would probably be good to change this conception… to help us build a reality-based impact-based evidence-based community and society of donors
  4. similarly, it could get people thinking about ‘how to really measure impact’ --> consider EA-aligned evaluations more seriously

While GiveWell has a page with a lot of tech details, but it’s not compelling or interactive  in the way I suggest above, and I doubt  they market it heavily.

GWWC probably doesn't have the design/engineering time for this (not to mention refining this for accuracy and communication).  But if someone else (UX design, research support, IT) could do the legwork I think they might be very happy to host it. 

It could also mesh well with academic-linked research so I may have  some ‘Meta academic support ads’ funds that could work with this.
 

Tags/backlinks (~testing out this new feature) 
@GiveWell  @Giving What We Can
Projects I'd like to see 

EA Projects I'd Like to See 
 Idea: Curated database of quick-win tangible, attributable projects 

I agree with you Falk. But to steelman Chris' argument... perhaps a reputation for being critical of people who did so much good but failed to follow through on everything they promised could dissuade people from engaging with effective giving/pledges in the first place?

I still find this very useful, but I think the automation here is lagging a bit behind the technology in terms of realistic voices and pronunciation errors.

I've been hearing a lot better AI-generated narrations of books, news, etc., using the newest models. (I was even listening to an audiobook and didn't realize it was AI for about 15 minutes until it made a glitch).

Any chance this could be upgraded?

I think this is in the vein of what Jack Lewars is doing?

https://www.linkedin.com/company/ultraphilanthropy/

Any ideas for ways to make a positive outreach to the Buffet trust… praising their past giving and discussing their ideals and strategy?

I have doubts about whether digital or electronic information flows will yield valenced sentience, although I don't rule it out.

But I have much stronger doubts about whether we can ever know what makes these 'digital minds' happy or sad, or even what goes in what direction.

Sorry to hear about the lack of success.

I'd strongly caution against overlearning that 'this sort of thing cannot work'. The big thing that stands out to me is the issue of founder-fit:

Neither founder had experience from the development field, and spent the first many months learning the field and its many acronyms.

I have the impression that there are a lot of aligned people with this background and expertise looking to fill roles like this. Another attempt should be able to improve on this.

Sorry community tag was an accident. Will remove it.

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