2022 September EA Updates
Top Links
What We Owe The Future is now out, with Will MacAskill arguing for longtermism
Giving What We Can and Longview Philanthropy have launched the Longtermism Fund, for donors looking to support longtermist work
GiveWell with changes to their top charity recommendation criteria
Froolow with a critical review of GiveWell's 2022 cost-effectiveness model
John G. Halstead - Climate Change & Longtermism: new book-length report
Rose Hadshar - What happens on the average day?
Michael Cassidy and Lara Mani with a paper in Nature arguing that we should prepare for huge volcanic eruptions
Benjamin Todd - Do recent breakthroughs mean transformative AI is coming sooner than we thought?
Martin B looking at a referendum in Switzerland on whether very strict regulations should apply to agricultural animal husbandry
Events
16th-18th September - EAGxBerlin
23rd-25th September - EA Global: Washington, D.C.
September to December - Prague Fall Season
November to January - Mexico EA Fellowship
4th-6th November - EAGxRotterdam - Applications now open
2nd-4th December - EAGxBerkeley
Virtual Events
4th September - Giving What We Can Meetup joined by Leah Edgerton
8th September - Fauna Connections: Using Data to Help Animals
13th September - Do the Rich Pay Their Fair Share? - a debate with Peter Singer and Bryan Caplan
13th September - How To Get Your Project Funded - A talk by Joey Savoie from CE
19th September - Animal Advocacy Course - Sign up by September 18th for this 9 week course
EA Virtual Programmes - Apply by September 25th
21st-23rd October - EAGx Virtual
Meta
Kelsey Piper - Caring about the future doesn’t mean ignoring the present
Tyler Maule - Historical EA funding data
Dylan Matthews looking at the critiques of billionaires within effective altruism
Pia Voltz - We need more recruiters in EA
Scott Alexander - Effective Altruism As A Tower Of Assumptions
Peter Wildeford - Notes on how prizes may fail and how to reduce the risk of them failing
Anya Hunt and Katie Glass - Gaps and opportunities in the EA talent & recruiting landscape
Allen Bell - EA Culture and Causes: Less is More
Zoe Williams has started weekly summaries of EA Forum and Less Wrong posts
Falk Lieder and Joel McGuire - Finding before funding: Why EA should probably invest more in research
Julian Hazell - We are still in triage
Peter Hartree - Some core assumptions of effective altruism, according to me
Jack Lewars - EA in the mainstream media: if you're not at the table, you're on the menu
Julian Hazell - Why I view effective giving as complementary to direct work
Hailey Dickson - Driving Education on EA Topics Through Khan Academy
CEA have made a new intro to EA
James Ozden and Sam Glover - Protest movements: How effective are they?
Sam Coggins - Should we call ourselves 'Effective Altruists'?
If you are interested in contributing to China-related global priorities outreach you can find out more here
CEA are looking for feedback on the updated EA Handbook
David Janku with an update on what Effective Thesis have been up to
Sid Efromovich with a post suggesting we should fund more infrastructure support for impactful giving
Kirsten - 4 Ways to Give Feedback to Job or Grant Applicants
Freedomandutility - EAs underestimate uncertainty in cause prioritisation
Owen Cotton-Barratt - How and when should we incentivize people to leave EA bubbles and explore?
Peter Elam - What a Large and Welcoming EA Could Accomplish
Dan Epstein - Leveraging Defaults and Social Norms in EA giving
Kat Woods and Amber Dawn - An EA guide to hiring
Megan Jamer - EA Giving Tuesday will likely hibernate in 2022
Freedomandutility - Prioritisation should consider potential for ongoing evaluation alongside expected value and evidence quality
Kendrea Beers asking if there is too much EA advertising
New Projects
Effective Altruism Psychology Lab, a team of researchers focused on empirically studying the psychology of EA
The Tarbell Fellowship - A one year programme for early-career journalists intent on improving the world. Apply by 9th October
Davit Jintcharadze has set up the Opportunity Center, aiming to help Georgian students to work on the world's most pressing issues
The Atlas Fellowship India has been set up for Indian students who want to help change the world
James Ozden has started the Social Movement Digest, a monthly roundup of social movement related content
There is a new community for data science/ML/AI people interested in EA
Giving What We Can are running charity elections again this year, for school students to vote on impactful charities to donate to
Julian Hazell with a call for people to summarise EA content
Yonatan Cale and Soof Golan have created a new view for the 80,000 Hours job board
A post introducing Squiggle, a programming language for probabilistic estimation
Radio Bostrom: Audio narrations of papers by Nick Bostrom
SEADS - a data science consultancy that offers services to EA organisations
Fellowships, Programs & Scholarships
Economics of Ideas, Science and Innovation Online PhD Short Course by the Institute for Progress - 6th September
Effective Institutions Project - Fellowship - 9th September
Center for AI Safety Philosophy Fellowship - 7 month fellowship for philosophy Ph.D. candidates and graduates - 30th September
Open Philanthropy Biosecurity Scholarships - 11th October
Careers
Toby Jolly with a post looking at how to have impact in the UK civil service
Charity Entrepreneurship have started their own career coaching service
Mark Xu - How to do theoretical research, a personal perspective
Lukas Jasiunas and Isaac Esparza - A subjective account of what it's like to join an EA-aligned org without previous EA knowledge
Pia Voltz with a job profile for people considering recruiting as a career
Nat Goldthwaite - How avoiding drastic career changes could support EA's epistemic health and long-term efficacy
Kevin Wei and Saad Siddiqui - A review of the Schwarzman Scholars program for EAs
Molly - Military Service as an Option to Build Career Capital
If you're seeking operations roles in EA in the next 1-6 months you can list yourself on the new EA operations database
Probably Good with the career profile - Civil Service Careers in Low- and Middle-income Countries
Community building
Kearney Capuano - Why You Should Give a TEDX Talk
Philip Hall Andersen - Red teaming introductory EA courses
Advice the CEA groups team gives to new university group organisers
Sofya Lebedeva - Workflows: an experimental alternative to introductory fellowships
A post announcing the EA Gather Town Event Hall as a global hub for online events
Eli Rose - Open Philanthropy is still seeking proposals for outreach and community-building projects
Julia Wise - The community health team’s work on interpersonal harm in the community
Open Phil is seeking bilingual people to help translate EA/EA-adjacent web content into non-English languages
Critiques
See all the entries to the Criticism and Red Teaming contest here
Rhodri Davies - Why am I not an Effective Altruist?
Erik Hoel - Why I am not an effective altruist
TheOtherHannah - demographics and power structures in EA
Aaron Bergman - Most Ivy-smart students aren't at Ivy-tier schools
Joseph Lemien - Should EA shift away (a bit) from elite universities?
Parth Thaya - Effective altruism is no longer the right name for the movement
Carla Zoe Cremer with a Twitter thread critique on the lack of institutional safeguards in EA
A post critiquing EA on the lack of expertise generally, and the 'Risks from Nuclear Weapons' series by Luisa Rodriguez specifically
Julian Hazell - The EA community might be neglecting the value of influencing people
Clearer Thinking podcast with Michael Nielsen and Ajeya Cotra - Critiquing Effective Altruism
Freddie deBoer - Effective Altruism Has a Novelty Problem
Wei Dai - Questioning the Foundations of EA
Richard Y Chappell - The Nietzschean Challenge to Effective Altruism
Étienne Fortier-Dubois - Aesthetics as Epistemic Humility
Hamish Huggard - Crowdsourced Criticisms: What does EA think about EA?
Grants
Open Philanthropy have made 112 grants recently, with a value of $132 million
$47,300,000 - Farm Animal Welfare
$25,000,000 - The Humane League
$6,000,000 - Anima International
$3,000,000 - Albert Schweitzer Foundation
$3,000,000 - Food and Agriculture Research - Keel Bone Damage Reduction
$37,700,000 - Human Health and Wellbeing
$13,600,000 - New Incentives - Nigeria
$4,600,000 - University of Connecticut Health Center - Syphilis Vaccine Development
$4,000,000 - International Vaccine Institute - Hepatitis E Vaccine Trial
$2,500,000 - International Vaccine Institute - Cholera Vaccine Clinical Trial
$2,500,000 - Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur - Rural Air Quality Monitoring
$1,000,000 - Center for Global Development
$14,300,000 - Effective Altruism Community Growth
$7,000,000 - Effective Altruism Funds - Re-Granting Support
$4,250,000 - 80,000 Hours
$1,600,000 - Charity Entrepreneurship
$600,000 - Giving What We Can
$8,900,000 - Potential Risks from Advanced AI
$2,700,000 - Rethink Priorities
$5,700,000 - Other Areas
$5,500,000 - Metaculus
$5,400,000 - Longtermism
$3,000,000 - Kurzgesagt
$500,000 - Longview Philanthropy - Nuclear Security Grantmaking
$3,600,000 - Criminal Justice Reform
$3,100,000 - Land Use Reform
$2,500,000 - Macroeconomic Stabilisation Policy
$1,900,000 - Biosecurity & Pandemic Preparedness
$1,300,000 - Scientific Research
EA Long-Term Future Fund made 34 grants worth $2,100,000
$305,000 - EA Switzerland/PIBBSS Fellowship
$250,000 - Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative
$250,000 - Kristaps Zilgalvis
EA Animal Welfare Fund have made 25 grants with a value of $2,200,000
$400,000 - Wild Animal Initiative
$250,000 - Rethink Priorities
$185,000 - Southeast Asia Farm Animal Welfare Fellowship
$130,000 - Cambridge Effective Altruism CIC
Global Development
GiveDirectly with a response to the top charities update from GiveWell
Shakeel Hashim - Should GiveWell still recommend GiveDirectly?
Dylan Matthews on the rise of GiveDirectly
Lucas Lewit-Mendes - Economic losers: SoGive's review of deworming, and why we're less positive than GiveWell
Siobhan McDonough with an article on USAID and how they are evaluating impact
Matt HR - The Case for Funding New Long-Term Randomised Controlled Trials of Deworming
Karthik Tadepalli - Inequality is a (small) problem for EA and economic growth
Joel McGuire, Samuel Dupret, Michael Plant - To WELLBY or not to WELLBY? Measuring non-health, non-pecuniary benefits using subjective wellbeing
Animal Welfare
The Animal & Vegan Advocacy Summit will take place in Washington, DC on October 20th-23rd, with speakers including Peter Singer, Bruce Friedrich, Leah Garcés and Lauren Mee
The neoliberal podcast spoke to Lewis Bollard about reducing animal suffering
Rose Hadshar - What’s alive right now?
Kenny Torrella looking at a new study that suggests bees can feel pain
Brian Katemen - Conservation Biologists Need To Start Caring About Actual Animals - Not Just Species
Clearer Thinking podcast with Alene Anello discussing human bias in the definition of intelligence
Saulius Simcikas - Lobbying governments to improve wild animal welfare
Animal Advocacy Careers have launched a volunteer referral program
Rachel Norman and Meghan Barrett - Research summary: brain cell counts in Black Soldier Flies
Toby Tremlett - Philosophical Argument Isn't Enough In Animal Ethics
Animal Ask - Maximising impact: the case for research to support animal advocacy efforts
Biosecurity
CEA have a new service to connect people interested in using their careers to mitigate global catastrophic biological risks with people who work in the field
Hear This Idea podcast with Kevin Esvelt and Jonas Sandbrink on risks from biological research
A post suggesting that antiviral photodynamic therapy seems underfunded
Existential & Catastrophic Risks
Gregory Lewis - Most* small probabilities aren't pascalian
A post introducing the Existential Risks Introductory Course, an 8 week programme
The 2022 Future of Life Award winners have been announced, for 8 people who reduced 'the risk of nuclear war by developing and popularizing the science of nuclear winter'
Luis Enrique Urtubey - Superforecasting Long-Term Risks and Climate Change
Will Aldred - Feedback I've been giving to junior x-risk researchers
Eli Lifland - Prioritizing x-risks may require caring about future people
Catherine Brewer - On the Vulnerable World Hypothesis
David Thorstad - Existential risk pessimism and the time of perils
Kurzgesagt Video - Is Civilization on the Brink of Collapse? (with 6 million views already)
A new paper from CSER exploring catastrophic climate change scenarios
Matthew Allcock - Cosmic rays could cause major electronic disruption and pose a small existential risk
HTC - What if states don't listen? A fundamental gap in x-risk reduction strategies
Matt Boyd & Nick Wilson - Islands, nuclear winter, and trade disruption as a human existential risk factor
Improving Institutions & Metascience
Tyler Cowen - Will open science matter?
Stuart Buck - Advice For New Scientific Funders (ARPA-H, ARIA, NSF TIP, Etc.)
A study looking at whether international treaties have been able to produce their intended affects
Alisha Lewis - How should we invest in democracy as an EA-adjacent issue? Some early thoughts
Ilan Gur and Matt Clifford in The Economist explain innovations at the new research agency Advanced Research and Invention Agency
Environment
Bryan Walsh - What could a nuclear war do to the climate - and humanity?
An article in the BBC arguing for more studies on catastrophic climate change
Gideon Futerman - What 80,000 Hours gets wrong about solar geoengineering
Erola Pons - The case for Green Growth skepticism and GDP agnosticism
Longtermism
Will MacAskill writing in the New York Times with the case for longtermism
Future Matters Newsletter - AI timelines, AGI risk, and existential risk from climate change
Matthew Yglesias - What's long-term about "longtermism"?
Christian Ruhl - Explaining a Small Patient Philanthropy Fund Grant on Nuclear Security
Sam Hilton - Some concerns about policy work funding and the Long Term Future Fund
A collection of articles from a recent symposium on longtermism and the law, including contributions from Christoph Winter, Jeff Sebo, Renan Araújo and Leonie Koessler
Richard Pettigrew - Longtermism, risk, and extinction
Tyler Cowen - Eternal economic growth and Effective Altruism
Dwarkesh Patel - Response to Tyler Cowen on eternal growth
Maxwell Tabarrok - The Most Important Century Is Not Unlikely
A post with a proposed tweak to the longtermism pitch
Siméon Campos & Amber Dawn Ace - Longtermists Should Work on AI - There is No "AI Neutral" Scenario
Jordan Arel - How I Came To Longtermism On My Own & An Outsider Perspective On EA Longtermism
WWOTF Interviews And Reviews
Longtermism Critiques
Magnus Vinding - Critique of MacAskill’s “Is It Good to Make Happy People?”
Pablo Rosado - A critique of strong longtermism
Robert Wright - The case for Shorttermism
Roh - A Quick Qualitative Analysis of Laypeople’s Critiques of Longtermism
Brian Lui - Against longtermism
A post with several arguments against longtermism
Benj Azose - We’re really bad at guessing the future
AI Policy
Haydn Belfield and Shin Shin Hua - How can EU competition law influence AI development and help ensure that its future development is safe and beneficial?
Cullen O’Keefe, Jade Leung and Markus Anderljung - How technical safety standards could promote TAI safety
Matthijs Maas - The History, Epistemology and Strategy of Technological Restraint, and lessons for AI
Jan Leike on the windfall clause
Markus Anderljung and Charlotte Siegmann - The Brussels Effect and AI: How EU AI regulation will impact the global AI market
Technical AI
Open AI with 'Our approach to alignment research'
Katja Grace - What do ML researchers think about AI in 2022?
Jacob Hilton - Common misconceptions about OpenAI
Nuño Sempere - A concern about the “evolutionary anchor” of Ajeya Cotra’s report on AI timelines
Richard Ngo - The alignment problem from a deep learning perspective
Thomas W, Dan Hendrycks and Oliver Zhang have created an introduction to ML safety course
José Luis Ricón with an in depth post attempting to clarify his thoughts on AGI risks
Will Aldred - AI timelines via bioanchors: the debate in one place
The Center for AI Safety is announcing a $20,000 bounty for the best publicly-understandable explainers of topics in AI safety
Other AI
Benjamin Hilton with a new 80,000 Hours problem profile on preventing an AI-related catastrophe
Kelsey Piper - There are two factions working to prevent AI dangers. Here’s why they’re deeply divided
Bryan Walsh looking at recent breakthroughs in AI and what good it can do
Jamie Harris - The History of AI Rights Research
Neel Nanda - Concrete Advice for Forming Inside Views on AI Safety
Alex Lintz - Three pillars for avoiding AGI catastrophe: Technical alignment, deployment decisions, and coordination
Olivia Addy - Why does no one care about AI?
Matthew Barber - Could realistic depictions of catastrophic AI risks effectively reduce said risks?
Holden Karnofsky -
Cause Exploration Prize
You can see all of the cause exploration prize entries here
Global Development
Rosie Bettle - Oral healthcare in LMIC is a promising new cause area
Lee Crawfurd and Susannah Hares - The Economic Benefits of Promoting and Protecting the Rights of LGBTQ+ Communities in Developing Countries
Vastav Ratra - Reducing Judicial Delay in India
Jamie Simonson - Internal Migration: A Cost-Effective Method for Raising Wages, Improving Living Standards, and Promoting Economic Growth
Kristof - Tobacco harm reduction
Alex Hill - Maternal morbidity
Denise Melchin - Preventing stillbirths
Gavriel Kleinwaks, Alastair Fraser-Urquhart and Josh C Morrison - Indoor Air Quality to Reduce Infectious Respiratory Disease
Michael - Occupational Health and Safety in the Developing World
Jeffrey Mason - Economic Growth and State Capacity
Jackson Wagner - Radio Ads Against Cousin Marriage in LMIC
Shen Javier - Child and Adolescent Mental Health in LMICs
Kelly Geddes - Transnational Surrogacy
Ben Stewart - Organophosphate pesticides and other neurotoxicants
Arushi Gupta and Jendayi - International Macroeconomic Policy
Johannes Haushofer - Large-scale International Educational Migration: A Shallow Investigation
Sarah H and Ben Williamson - Family Planning: A Significant Opportunity for Impact
Mental Health & Biology
John Boyle - Short-sleeper genes
Karolina Soltys - Improving diagnosis and treatment of bipolar spectrum disorders
Milan Griffes and Sandra Sobanska - Jhana meditation
Tim Farkas - Mind Enhancement Cause Exploration
Courtney Colston - Potential Risks of Advanced Gene Editing Technologies
Hauke Hillebrandt - Developmental Cognitive Neuroepidemiology
Animal Welfare
Other
Anna Harvey and Stuart Buck - Social and Behavioural Science R&D
Markus Over - Distribution of Information Among Humans
Jeremy R - New cause area: Traffic congestion
Sbhemer - Shareholder activism
Ben Yeoh - Advanced Market Commitments for public goods
Em Walz and Iska Knuuttila - Resilience & Biodiversity
Sebastian Joy - The importance of Intercausal Impacts
Benj Azose - Fix Prison Telecom
Minh Nguyen - Social Relationships: A Neglected Factor in Wellbeing
Marcus Ogren - Voting Methods
Sam Abbott and Nikos - Training experts to be forecasters
Other Causes
Luis Mota and Charlotte - Justice and Global Priorities Research Reading List
80,000 Hours podcast with Samuel Charap on key lessons from five months of war in Ukraine
Benjamin Hilton with an 80,000 Hours problem profile - Risks from atomically precise manufacturing
Charlie Dougherty - Peacebuilding and Violent Conflict
Geoffrey Miller - Could a 'permanent global totalitarian state' ever be permanent?
Ruth Grace on the abundance agenda movement
Nathan Barnard - Intelligence failures and a theory of change for forecasting
Elias Au-Yeung - The Possibility of Microorganism Suffering
Robert Long - Digital people: biology versus silicon
Philosophy
Luis Mota with a moral progress reading list
Lukas Gloor - Population Ethics Without Axiology: A Framework
Luca Stocco - The repugnant conclusion is not a problem for the total view
Jared Riggs - Why I Hope (Certain) Hedonic Utilitarians Don't Control the Long-term Future
Levin - Common-sense cases where "hypothetical future people" matter
Jason Crawford - Against population ethics
Cold Button Issues - Toby Ord’s The Scourge, Reviewed
Stijn - Avoiding the demandingness of total welfarism with rights-based discounted welfarism
Applied Divinity Studies - The Repugnant Conclusion Isn't
Sanjay with an attempt to solve Pascal's Muggings
Productivity
Ben Kuhn - Some tips for good one-on-ones
Abi Olvera - An Exercise in Speed-Reading
Other Links
Dylan Matthews - How effective altruism went from a niche movement to a billion-dollar force
The Economist - What to read to understand “effective altruism”
Adam Steinberg - Using expected value when donating to charity - and day-to-day
Florence - Let’s not glorify people for how they look
Tyler Alterman - Effective altruism in the garden of ends
Nuño Sempere - Introduction to Fermi estimates
Anna Stadlerova - Translating The Precipice into Czech: My experience and recommendations
Rob Bensinger - Have faux-evil EA energy
Duncan S - The danger of good stories
Michael Dickens - Philanthropists Probably Shouldn't Mission-Hedge AI Progress
Michel Justen - Psychological Obstacles to Doing Good (Better)
Clearer Thinking podcast discussing the use of stories for impact with Cate Hall, co-founder of Alvea
Kat Woods - The most important lesson I learned after ten years in EA
Simran Dhaliwal from Longview Philanthropy on the Giving What We Can Podcast
Rosie Bettle on why she switched from academia to Founders Pledge
Podcast with Joey Savoie on making it easier for great charities to exist
Tweets & Social Media
Alexander Berger with a thread on what he learned from What We Owe The Future and key questions about longtermism that are unresolved
Julian Hazel with 100 EA-related takes as a way of reflecting after ~2 years in the EA community
Kelsey Piper with over 200 opinions on EA and it's critics
Jess Whittlestone with thoughts on the difficulty of learning from criticism, inspired by recent critical discourse around EA
Raquel Kasham Daniel on her experience with the intro to EA virtual programme
Surbhi B with reflections from her first EA conference
Tony Senanayake with 10 reflections from the first EA India retreat
Hayley Worsham - How to Survive EAG: San Francisco FOMO
Bhagyashree Prabhutendolkar with her experience of the Leaf EA course at Oxford
Great work as always. I liked the descending pattern of your links on WWOTF - art and designin EA, who knew ;-) - Also there were good set of interesting cause exploration ideas, I wonder if anyone will have time to collect the abstracts, as I guess OP will only pick the very best for them.