This looks awesome guys. I spent a year in Vietnam about half of it in Da Nang. Much better air than Saigon! Most people rent a moped, which I think they call a motorbike or scooter. Plenty of young expats around trying to find themselves, a great chance to evangelize altruism. My dad lost a leg there in the American War, so I felt a weird bond over our shared history. I found the Vietnamese warm and hospitable at first, but hard to crack getting closer to, to do so I think would take years and fluency. So keep expectations in line. 

Another interesting thing and a potential project is that as a communist country they’ve never had a history of Civil Society, that "third sector" (same with China), so the idea of people banding together to address social ills just isn't a thing, that's the job of the government, and doing so in the past could get you killed or jailed because it would be offensive to the government, you're essentially saying, "Hey loser gov since you're not doing a good job we'll do it", something you just couldn't do in the past. 

When I was there in 2018 the government was more chill and seemed to be slowly evolving...but they still hadn't gotten around to creating laws to support Civil Society, like making donations tax deductible...something we so take for granted, but it's an actual thing a society has to decide to do. So it makes it hard on nonprofits because its much harder to fundraise without that very helpful tax deduction law. And just in general the population doesn't understand the idea of giving to charity. But I hear now, in mirroring China's moves toward harder authoritarianism (Something Vietnam is known for doing, following the lead of China), they have begun cracking down some on nonprofits, jailing some leaders, making life harder in general...so sad to hear. 

When I was there I spent time with some charities and life was hard for them, but now I hear it's getting worse. So my suggestion is to just have conversations with locals you feel some trust with about that whole thing, it will probably be a new thing to many of them, you can share the long tradition of charity work in most of the world and just educate them on it. I'd just be a bit careful on only bringing that up if you have trust...some people might be more nationalist and not want to talk about that, but probably those people wouldn't tend to want to talk to you as a foreigner anyways. 

Don't mistake the warm hospitality up front for openness to Western ideas, the Vietnamese are a very proud people, as you'll agree seeing their hard work and commitment to their homeland, so communicate new ideas knowing they exist in a competition for merit, not automagically correct because you're Western forbears told you so. When it comes to altruism, which is a form of love for strangers, the highest of human acts, it does win the competition over using power to control people, but you have to play the game with full offense and defense, not just expecting them to fold easily.  

Have a great winter.

Congrats to all of you for accomplishing a hard thing. Excited to see someone who's done it all at AIM become the best choice, so much easier to hit the ground running. Seems like your impact will be getting ever more ambitious, and your charity more entrepreneurable, or your entrepreneuring more charitable, as well as your science oh so charitable (and healthy).

On a scale from 0 to 100, how much do improvements in mental health translate into reductions in overall human suffering?

Currently depression is the number one health disability globally and on track to be the number one killer in the near future, killing more than cancer, heart attacks, hunger, etc. Now is the time to get ahead of it. Also diminishment of individuals and their communities and productivity on the path to death. For example, a depressed mother stops taking care of her family well…if they have to walk miles to take the kids to a health clinic, now that doesn’t happen and the children’s health goes down. Many of us weren’t paying attention as depression grew to now rival the top human killers. 

I hope you have a billion years to evolve your Welfareans. Since humans already have that behind us and our evolution has been going pretty good and faster in the last 200 years maybe in a hundred or so we’ll be getting pretty close to your imagination of Welfareans. 

My thesis is that the core driving bit of humans is love, but that most of what love is, has not fully unfolded yet, like a flower not yet fully blossomed. So we just keep pushing forward, especially on benefitting others (like EA) and the unfolding will continue. 

This is a heartening reply. I’m also glad you put yours in and got in. Let me ask you from your observations, when you say diverse, could you expand on that. Is it really all mixed up or is it mostly 25 year olds and one 37 year old. Was there anyone post 45? Your point about it being more doable for younger people is a good one, but I think we mostly are known about by young people. There’s plenty of 35-55 year olds in career transitions that if they knew would apply, and often they have some security so the transition is affordable. I’d love to hear more about how actively AIM pursues them. I’d be glad to update. 

Yes in publishing stories there’s plenty of suspect motives. But really I’m basing this on my own personal experience in seeing so many not obvious leaders blow everyone away and the obvious winners not at all so guaranteed to succeed. So many get into high level schools for reasons beyond their personal talent, and so many others blossom late. The pool of people enabled by society/parents to get into elite schools is much smaller than the huge pool of average grade, lower income people who didn’t give a shite about school when they’re were 18 and later blossom with their tough background giving them huge grit and ambition. EA tends to fail to see this to their diminishment. Spreadsheet criteria doesn’t capture grit and ambition. Mentoring pipelines do.  

I appreciate what you're saying. If you want to be EA orthodox. I'm talking about evolving EA and changing some things. 

It is most assuredly NOT expensive to run a mentoring program. It's a hugely significant pipeline of candidates coming in that you are getting a much deeper insight into than just a short application process, and it's value greatly exceeds its cost. All you have to do is spread it to all the members of AIM, rather than pay for a new department, ie. each member of AIM takes on mentoring a few people. That's great for the whole org and infuses it with exactly the culture a charity enabling org should have. 

As for the quota, isn't that self set, so the budget is there to choose 25 people. If instead you choose only 20 because your criteria rejected the rest, now you have a budget excess. Don't do that, it's far better to take a risk on the five you weren't sure of, because the budget is already there, and if even one of them turned out to be a hidden gem, you got them instead of losing them. 

In hits based thinking, which is an EA staple, that's what you do, you sign 25 bands and only a few make a hit record, but that's enough to support the whole process. The point is that the researcher's in AIMs back room choosing the cause priorities are most definitely not the arbiters able to pick the best hits. They can't do it alone, they never will, and it was a fools errand to think they could. Everyone knows there's no magic formula for picking a hit record, you just have to sign a bunch of bands and let them go crazy and see what happens. EA is effectively saying, "No. We think we can use science and spreadsheets to pick the hit songs". Nope. Doesn't work (world too big). But most definitely get some people in the back room working on that (Go researchers, we love you!), just don't let that be the only thing you do...you also have to go out to the clubs and see what the kids are dancing to. (ie. bring in more veteran field workers into the process, have a mentoring pipeline, change your criteria a lot to include more and reject less, rather than just researchers in the back room). 

Both in science, in music, in movies, nobody knows where the next hit will come from, so get broader and accept more. 

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" as some. I've maintained being fully public 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”, both the new one's and the ongoing list of past one's. 

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 too 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 an intellectual arrogance. The world is too 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.