katriel
Posts 1
Comments20
Presumably the people running these charities seek funding from EA sources, despite knowing that counterfactually the bulk of that money would otherwise go to AGF/GHDF/et al.
This presumption isn't always true. In 2019, at CSH we made a deliberate decision not to continue seeking funding from sources that would counterfactually donate to GiveWell top charities.
On an earlier discussion of Nonlinear's practices, I wrote:
I worked closely with Kat for a year or so (2018-2019) when I was working at (and later leading) Charity Science Health. She's now a good friend.
I considered Kat a good and ethical leader. I personally learned a lot from working with her. In her spending and life choices, she has shown a considerable moral courage: paying herself only $12K/year, dropping out of college because she didn't think it passed an impact cost-benefit test. Obviously that doesn't preclude the possibility that she has willfully done harmful things, but I think willfully bad behavior by Kat Woods is quite unlikely, a priori.
I would also like to share my experience negotiating my salary with Kat when I first joined Charity Science Health, i.e., before we were friends. It was extremely positive. She was very committed to frugality, and she initially offered me the position of Associate Director at a salary of $25K/year, the bottom end of the advertised salary range. We exchanged several long emails discussing the tradeoffs in a higher or lower salary (team morale, risk of value drift, resources available for the core work, counterfactual use of funds, etc.). The correspondence felt like a genuine, collaborative search for the truth. I had concluded that I needed to make at least $45K/year to feel confident I was saving the minimum I would need in retirement, and in the end we agreed on $45K. Subsequently Kat sent me a contract for $50K, which I perceived as a goodwill gesture. My positive experience seems very different from what is reported here.
At a very quick skim, I am confused about whether this post is arguing that:
- if fake meat were better than real meat in terms of each of price, taste, and convenience, many consumers would still buy real meat, or
- if fake meat were as good as real meat in terms of PTC overall, many consumers would still buy real meat.
(2) seems obvious intuitively. (1) would be surprising to me but it makes sense to point out any gaps in our evidence against it.
I worked closely with Kat for a year or so (2018-2019) when I was working at (and later leading) Charity Science Health. She's now a good friend.
I considered Kat a good and ethical leader. I personally learned a lot from working with her. In her spending and life choices, she has shown a considerable moral courage: paying herself only $12K/year, dropping out of college because she didn't think it passed an impact cost-benefit test. Obviously that doesn't preclude the possibility that she has willfully done harmful things, but I think willfully bad behavior by Kat Woods is quite unlikely, a priori.
To me, the core EA principles that I refer to when talking about the community and its ideas (and the terms I use for them) are:
I like CEA's explicit highlighting of "Scope sensitivity" - I will embrace that in future conversations. But I'm writing this post to highlight outcome commensurability too. I think it is the one principle that most differentiates EA-aligned international development practitioners from other international development practitioners who have a firm grounding in economics.