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Great post! I think you're one of the first uni groups I've seen who's particularly selective with their fellowship - I wouldn't have initially agreed with that strategy, but you give convincing reasons for doing so and it sounds like it paid off. :) Congrats on a successful fellowship round!

Sure, but if you only award prizes for the latter, I think people will gradually recognize the difference.

Maybe your point is that the opinions of loudmouths like myself will be overrepresented in such a scheme? Allowing for private submissions could help address that.

As a consequentialist I care about the outcomes (i.e. welfare impacts) of collective decision making, not how democratic the decision making process is. It seems like some other commenters are saying that voting system reform increases human utility by satisfying voter's preferences, but I think that assumes that voters know what's good. I don't think they do. Am I wrong that this assumption is being made? If it is being made, could someone point me to a good argument for it?

Perhaps a more promising project is focusing on changing what gets voted on, not on the exact voting system. For example Futarchy changes what gets voted on from "what policies to implement" to "what measurable goals to pursue".

For a more familiar example, the USA's First Amendment (and the cultural-political edifice that supports it) prevents the political process from enacting many things even if they have majority support, and it would continue to do so regardless of the voting system.

I'm not sure what the accepted term for this type of reform would be, maybe "constitutional reform"? Are there any organizations pursuing this type of reform? If not, is it because it's been evaluated and found lacking along EA criteria?

Thanks!

I don't think I would have the patience for EA thinking if the spread weren't big. Why bother with a bunch of sophisticated-looking models and arguments to only make a small improvement in impact? Surely it's better to just get out there and do good?

Tanya at FHI first took the position of executive assistant to Nick Bostrom. She explained in the 80,000 Hours podcast how very, very valuable this has been for Nick Bostrom's research - and after that, for FHI operations.

I have, in some ways, did some PA work in the past year. I do think that some tasks are really helpful to take on some mental load off a busy researcher, such as helping with scheduling, answering emails, and choosing between different opportunities. Over time, this PA function becomes more and more those of a "project manager", with the delegation of some important projects for the researcher and the organization. I believe that for some weeks, I have saved about 10 hours of work per week. I also made possible some high-value projects that wouldn't have been done otherwise, measured in above $50K of value.

I think being a PA to someone at the top of their fields (or to someone just doing generally doing extremely high-impact work) is indeed a very high-impact path. It also gives amazing organizational, communication, and analytical skills. If you become a PA, you should probably aim to become a top-notch one ("The Chief of Staff/The Executive Officer"). It is a tough and high-impact job, that is often undervalued compared to what the person brings.

I don't think being a PA (not in the sense of "research assistant", but in the sense of personal assistant) is for anyone as it requires specific skills and personality traits: organization skills (being super organized with everything), communication skills (notably being excellent at emails), analytical skills (decide to say yes or no to opportunities), and being a generalist ready to roll up their sleeves on many different topics. It is also a role where you are in the shadow and let the other person shine, though there are also plenty of opportunities to grow a skill you're specifically focused on.

It's not surprising that many organizations are looking for PAs (80K, CSER, etc) as this is truly an impact maximizer, and it's hard to find people that are really excellent PAs.

I would be very excited if more EAs took on this kind of role! If you're interested, I would strongly recommend doing a few short and longer tests to see if you like the kind of tasks the job entails. As I said, it's really high-impact but it's also a tough job and I expect not that many people would be a great fit. Also, anyone reading this: please contact me by PM if you want to talk more about it.

Thanks for your response and the link to your newer post and the Ord and Hanson refs. I'll just add a thought I had while reading

This is why I explicitly noted that here I was using MVP in a sense focused only on genetic diversity. To touch on the other "aspects" of MVP, I also have "What population size is required for economic specialisation, technological development, etc.?"

It seems fine to me for people to also use MVP in a sense referring to all-things-considered ability to survive, or in a sense focused only on e.g. economic specialisation...

This all makes sense, but sounds to me like to be at risk of leaving out the population/conservation biology perspective (beyond genetic considerations). A large part of what motivated me to write my original post is that I do think it is indeed valuable to use frameworks from population and conservation biology to study human extinction risk - but it is important to include all factors identified in those fields as being important; namely, environmental and demographic stochasticity, as well as habitat fragmentation and degradation, which could pose much greater risks than inbreeding and genetic drift.

"The greater the degree of spread, the more you’re giving up by not searching." This makes sense. But I don't think you have to agree with the "big" part of premise 1 to support and engage with the project of effective altruism, e.g. you could think that there are small differences but those differences are worth pursuing anyway. The "big" part seems like a common claim within effective altruism but not necessarily a core component?

(You didn't claim explicitly in the post above that you have to agree with the "big" part but I think it's implied? I also haven't listened to the episode yet.)

I've seen people suggest Urgency as an additional dimension. I wonder if anyone has tried to integrate it into an ITN evaluation

This isn't much more than a rotation (or maybe just a rephrasing), but:

When I offer a 10 second or less description of Effective Altruism, it is hard avoid making it sound platitudinous. Things like "using evidence and reason to do the most good", or "trying to find the best things to do, then doing them" are things I can imagine the typical person nodding along with, but then wondering what the fuss is about ("Sure, I'm also a fan of doing more good rather than less good - aren't we all?") I feel I need to elaborate with a distinctive example (e.g. "I left clinical practice because I did some amateur health econ on how much good a doctor does, and thought I could make a greater contribution elsewhere") for someone to get a good sense of what I am driving at.

I think a related problem is the 'thin' version of EA can seem slippery when engaging with those who object to it. "If indeed intervention Y was the best thing to do, we would of course support intervention Y" may (hopefully!) be true, but is seldom the heart of the issue. I take most common objections are not against the principle but the application (I also suspect this may inadvertently annoy an objector, given this reply can paint them as - bizarrely - 'preferring less good to more good'). 

My best try at what makes EA distinctive is a summary of what you spell out with spread, identifiability, etc: that there are very large returns to reason  for beneficence (maybe 'deliberation' instead of 'reason', or whatever).  I think the typical person does "use reason and evidence to do the most good", and can be said to be doing some sort of search for the best actions. I think the core of EA (at least the 'E' bit) is the appeal that people should do a lot more of this than they would otherwise - as, if they do, their beneficence would tend to accomplish much more.

Per OP, motivating this is easier said than done. The best case is for global health, as there is a lot more (common sense) evidence one can point to about some things being a lot better than others, and these object level matters a hypothetical interlocutor is fairly likely to accept also offers support for the 'returns to reason' story. For most other cause areas, the motivating reasons are typically controversial, and the (common sense) evidence is scant-to-absent. Perhaps the best moves are here would be pointing to these as salient considerations which plausibly could dramatically change ones priorities, and so exploring to uncover these is better than exploiting after more limited deliberation (but cf. cluelessness).

 

That's really interesting, thanks! Do you (or someone else) have a sense of how much variation in priorities can be explained by the big 5?