Yes there’s always going to be an Andres where it works out well. And everyone knows AIM has done well…but I think they could have done ten times better. EA could be five to ten times bigger if they would cure the ailment you so love. 

The difference between my view and AIM/EA broadly is the difference between on the ground real life experience in how humans are motivated and an attempt to figure out reality via spreadsheet & analysis in a room. Believe me I’m an EA and I love EA very much. I never digressed to hedging my love by being EA adjacent. I was always fully public an EA. I’m not rejecting EA’s core project to use science to be more effective in altruism,  I’m saying to modify it with some common sense. EA funding all sorts of new charities from 25 year olds with a napkin plan and not seeking veterans is one example. I love the 25 year olds with a napkin, but don’t only do that. Go find some veterans too. Don’t only do six causes each new round at AIM open it up and do “both and”. 

Some donors like EAs current narrow way, probably ten times more would like it to be far more pragmatic with deeply experienced field advisors and not only a few researchers in a room calling shots. Both and. EA is religious in its legalism. 

By the way, you do a good job here, I appreciate you. 

Yes that’s valuable, but I’d say it’s pretty easy to synthesize their cause priorities with founders own motivations. For example, keep the list going for every new round, so there’s 20-30 choices, all just as worthy as they were last year. Two orgs coming at one cause with different approaches is great. This same problem exists throughout EA when we imagine we can truly figure out what needs to be done based on the ITN framework. It’s a great framework, I love it, but the reality of making impact in the real world in a cause you’ve prioritized is that there are infinite angles to approach each one. Between two broad approaches are infinite degrees of adjustment to approach it. The world is to big to figure it out in advance, so allow founder interest to guide to which approach you will take. To imagine researchers in a room in the U.K., not in the field, having no personal knowledge of the cause overall and specific challenges on the ground, to be able to figure it out on paper is a height of intellectual arrogance beyond belief. The world is to big, you can’t figure it out. So be practical and let talent guide you. We can only do what we have the talent to do. Don’t muzzle your one pragmatic chance to do something. 

Given leadership literature is rife with stories of rejected individuals going on to become great leaders, and your current problem from this post. Wouldn’t it make sense to just recalibrate your criteria and accept more you might have rejected before? Maybe you’ve been off. Always accept enough to hit your quota. To miss your quota and still have many rejected applicants sitting there seems way too high confidence in yourselves and your criteria. Disrupt yourself. 

I call these the hidden gems, maybe you’re not good at identifying them. 

Also, why don’t you put out more open calls to have applicant’s come start any kind of animal welfare org they want, not just your four pre-imagined ones? This issue always seems so bassackward to me with AIM. Motivation arises within people’s own hearts and minds — not from an outside party who assigns them four choices. In a million years I couldn’t imagine rising with motivation to someone else’s idea rather than to my own. Certainly to modifying my idea, yes. (I’m a serial social entrepreneur and have mentored hundreds). 

It’s not just AIM, all of EA has been shooting its own foot since inception with its criteria for accepting people. Don’t follow their example. Find more experienced veterans. Don’t consider so highly academic backgrounds. Develop new creative criteria and testing like Facilitative Interpersonal Skills (FIS) screening to find highly socially gifted people, a major need in founders. 

Many people don’t mature enough to pursue high status colleges when young, later they might have, but it just wasn’t in them to bother with that at age 18, yet they became leaders of various things in their lower status college. Holding choices they made when having barely emerged from childhood against them and rejecting them because of it is insanity if you sanely want to mentor world changing leaders. Smart on paper but socially awkward works sometimes, other times the opposite is better, gems can go either way, you have to get better at sussing them out. Pairing them is good. Disrupt your own thinking and EA culture. 

Rather than just applications run a mentoring program and suss them out. The ones who aren’t founders might be operations champions or tech leads. Have two cofounders come out with an OPs/admin person, enlarge your budgets to accommodate. 

We are mostly Western in EA which is 15% of humanity. Add in a few non Western hot spots and around 25% of the world does almost all science, research and innovation. That means 75% of human brains are sitting on the sideline and not in the game. With all our existential and long term challenges, humanity is only deploying 25% of its resources. If longterm future humans could look back at us today, they’d be aghast. Deploying MORE of us is the only winning path, not rejecting more. 

Or don’t disrupt and carry on with the small EA we have which could and should be five times bigger. Einstein had something to say on this. 

ps. If you want to imagine and start more charities, the 75% is there ready to get in the game. That’s my gig. 

It is possible to rationally prioritise between causes without engaging deeply on philosophical issues

I think GiveWell's criteria of Effective Charities needing to be 10x better than direct cash transfers is greatly flawed for so many reasons. 

- We each might consider giving to local needs in our own neighborhood as well as top charities no matter how far away. Why? Because you can't allow your own neighborhood to decay while you optimize bang for buck elsewhere. the argument that only a few will optimize and plenty will give locally is good for adjusting your ratio, but you still are responsible for where you live. The other side is so many don't give at all, so you're needed locally. 

- it is a big gigantic reality we live in and all important considerations are not knowable, some hide in areas we are ignorant of, so balance with common sense that is purely subjective is our only recourse and it's kept humanity alive so far, we shouldn't abandon it. 

- following the above idea one might imagine there are many specific benefits of a particular cause area and specific charities within it whose impact is just not measurable by comparing it to the specific criteria's used to measure in current effective giving formula's and that it be 10x...what kind of random thing is 10x?? There just has to be more, and philosophy is part of that, but so is deep ancient wisdom and common sense. What about root causes that affect so much upstream? Maybe a root cause is vastly more important because of how it affects so much upstream and it can't be compared apples to apples with a 10X measurement. Maybe the criteria of how they're measuring is so missing this root issue multiplier at times that it is in reality way off. 

- giving to causes you care for has value. If we are to disconnect with our own emotional experiences and values we become not humans but robots optimizing on algorithms. Losing our humanity leads to things like FTX. Not optimal. 

- in the end there should be a balance that suits you. GiveWell should be a trusted source weaved in with others in the mix of your best balance. We should continually spread awareness of Effective Giving so others can add this to their balance. it's not either/or but both/and. If your best balance imbues you with a sense you are holding responsibility locally with optimizing globally and that injects some turbo into your engine, then you are going much faster and it feels great, which makes you more effective at everything in your life. If you are at all feeling anxiety about your contribution to good in this world, you might consider how your balance is, have certain pressures pushed you from what is best for you? Lots of EA's have suffered guilt at not doing enough...I'd suggest be both EA and other ways of thinking too. Balance. 

I think the reluctance toward confrontation may also be because of collective personality traits of STEMs, they tend to work in the backroom developing stuff. The frontroom people who are more creative and social and do sales and marketing are the one's more willing to be confrontational or persuasive. Tech has both rooms, EA only has a backroom to its diminishment (which you can notice by the utter absence of art/creativity/marketing). I wonder what the personality spectrum is in SMA? You can tell by the contrast of their focus and culture in the article they are likely more of a blend of science & humanities, while EA is pure science.

Hi Thanks Veronica, I fixed the link :)  Here it is again. 

Hi Veronica, Yes there are various EA art groups that kind of ebb and flow in energy, some are on the EA Anywhere Slack, which is the official Slack of EA, just search on there. The one I was involved in that was really great for a year has kind of ebb'd a bit now, after we all accomplished so much we got too busy (two charities got started, and a possible third) So I can't really refer you to one. The other thing is to be the art person in your local or university EA group. Offer your talent to EA orgs you appreciate. All of us who understand EA needs more art to be a normal healthy human movement, should always just be promoting that. We've done art installations at EAG's. Consider that. For that get in touch with local organizers or Center for Effective Altruism (CEA) which oversees them all. I'd love to see a meta movement encouraging EA orgs to have more art in their offices and publications. 

In a sense this would be like polling a random cross section of world humanity...most of them are mentally healthy. Currently 1 Billion people have a common mental disorder (CMD), like anxiety, depression, PTSD, as opposed to the Serious one's like Psychosis, Schizophrenia, etc. That makes it 1 of 8 humans, and puts depression as the no. 1 global health disability (all health). So if 1 out of 8 EA'ers responds to the culture with "impact obsession" -- guilt at eating an ice cream cone instead of grinding at their desk kind of thing then that is in line and is a serious thing...EA should work on those issues, make that a less common response to our culture and care for those ill affected, and I applaud Julia and all who do. And just as 1 of 8 EA'ers being depressed isn't helping the effectiveness of our altruistic goals, so the same problem exists in the whole world toward every good goal of humanity. We need to work on those issues. 

So EA should not only be concerned about EA meta health, it should be concerned about the world's mental health. Both. 

I agree that for most being in EA is better for mental health, I find it invigorating to be around a bunch of people interested in doing good for their fellow humans. But depending on various factors, like people self selecting to be in EA because they already feel guilty they're not doing enough, or a tendency to judge themselves and feel guilt, we still have to be promoting mentally healthy ways of being together on our particular mission. 

Here's a little suggestion for EA mental health, reflecting the Harvard study of adult development, an 85 year longitudinal study that said when all is said and done, it's having good relationships that accounted for people having better mental health; Rather than efficiently downing a Huel so you can stay at your desk and keep grinding, lean toward getting together with co-workers or friends for lunch, spend time talking and enjoying each other. Get your mind off work. Try twice a month to do something creative for lunch in the office, like get a bunch of groceries delivered, and have everyone cook a meal together, serve cool drinks to those standing around if there's not enough room in the kitchen for everyone, puts cutting boards out and get those STEM's choppin' broccoli. (like the famous Dana Carvey SNL skit). Spend time together—no talking about work allowed. Anyone who accidentally brings up a work issue, gets some funny punishment...like choppin' more broccoli. 

We are not robots optimizing, we are humans living in relationships, and ice cream always earns more than it takes. Consider more art too. It's basically human relationship in a different medium, proven over and over to improve mental health, and makes people visiting your office (and home) think you are cool. Robots don't need ice cream or art, if you also don't...hmmm...maybe some of you are already transitioning...or you're optimizing on robot criteria rather than human. 

This is such a great initiative ever since you published the EA MH map of all the various groups and people in the space, and now these flash talks & gatherings have been very fruitful. My organization has benefited tremendously already. Momentum is building and soon the main EA conversation about AI will be about how we're using it to aid therapists, language agnostically, across cultures!!