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Hey, I thought this discussion could use some data. I also added some personal impressions.

These are the results of the 2020 SSC survey.

For the question "How would you describe your opinion of the [sic] the idea of "human biodiversity", eg the belief that races differ genetically in socially relevant ways?"

20.8% answered 4 and 8.7% answered 5.

Where 1 is Very unfavorable and 5 is Very favorable

The answeres look similar for 2019

Taking that at face value, 30% of Scott’s readers think favorably of “HBD”.

(I guess you could look at it as "80% of SSC readers fail to condemn scientific racism". But that doesn't strike me as charitable.)

 From the same survey, 13.6% identified as EAs, and 33.4% answered sorta EA.
 

I should mention that the survey has some nonsensical answers (IQs of 186, verbal SATs of 30). And it appears that many answers lean liberal (Identifying as liberals, thinking favorably of feminism, and more open borders, while thinking unfavorably of Trump.)


A while ago, Gwen wrote [LW(p) · GW(p)]

“... If HBD is true, then all the existing correlational and longitudinal evidence immediately implies that group differences are the major reason why per capita income in the USA are 3-190x per capita income in Africa, that group differences are a major driver of history and the future, that intelligence has enormous spillovers totally ignored in all current analyses. This has huge implications for historical research, immigration policy (regression to the mean), dysgenics discussions (minor to irrelevant from just the individual differences perspective but long-term existential threat from HBD), development aid, welfare programs, education, and pretty much every single topic in the culture wars touching on 'sexism' or 'racism' where the supposedly iron-clad evidence is confounded or based on rational priors.”
 

I’m trying to imagine what global development charities EAs who believe HBD donate to, and I’m having a hard time.
Assuming this implies that some EAs (1-5%?) believe in this, I would reckon they're more focused on X-risks or animal welfare. It would be helpful to see how the people who identify as EAs answered this question.

Finally, from Scott's email (which I think sharing is a horrible violation of privacy), the last sentence is emblematic of the attitude of lots of people in the community (including myself).
Rationalists and EAs have. My Goodreads contains lots of books I expect to disagree with or be offended by (Gyn/Ecology, The Bell Curve), but I still think it's important to look into them.

Valuing new insights sometimes means looking into things no one else would, and that has been very useful for the community (fish/insect welfare, longtermism). But unfortunately, one risk is that at least some people will come out believing (outrageously) wrong things. I think that is worth it.

On a personal note, I’m black, and a community organizer, and I haven't encountered anything but respect and love from the EA community.

 

One of the key questions here that's been brought up is how difficult it would be to actually express one's utility function. 

I think this is the main problem. There are several reasons why it's difficult:

•  It's just hard to express
• People would be trying to game the algorithm

I think in practice though: 

• There are at least some domains where this is fairly easy. For example, if I call fire fighters, I expect my unique preferences to matter a lot less than "just do the job well".
• Things will get better over time (better data, better estimation  abilities)
• There are other benefits that we get that are worth some cost here. (You get to encode a utility function that's more preferable to your normal one; lower discount rate, and you get to be much more pro-social or coordinate much easier than you typically would)

The reason I made the model only have one thing to spend on pre-AGI is not because it's realistic (which it isn't), but because it makes the model more tractable. I was primarily interested in answering a simple question: do AI timelines affect giving now vs. later?

That's helpful context, thanks! There are definitely chances to be imaginative and creative in my role - but I think significantly less than in smaller, more agile organisations. New ideas are very much encouraged, but it can take more work to see them in to practice, as more steps of approval are needed, and they need to fit in to a large, well-established institution.

I received your request and sent access! Please let me know if you find it useful/what might make it better.

Sent you access...I hope you find the resources helpful! Feel free to send feedback so I can improve current and future resources.

Thanks, Michael...I hope you get a lot out of the resources! I welcome feedback to make the folder more useful and also to determine which of my client trainings to convert next.

Thank you, Charles! Do you mean, for example, in the Read Me file? I could write up a marketing-type description for each resource if that would help people determine which resources are most relevant for them.

Adding to that, Lucia Coulter of the Lead Exposure Elimination Project had high praise for Charity Entrepreneurship when I interviewed her:

Charity Entrepreneurship has [...] made a big difference – their support from the incubation program to now has helped with pretty much every aspect of our work. [...] Firstly they provided a two-month full-time incubation program, which I went through (remotely) in the summer 2020. This was where I decided to work on lead exposure (which was an idea researched and recommended by Charity Entrepreneurship), where I paired up with my co-founder Jack, and from where we received our initial seed grant. During the program we learnt a huge amount of extremely relevant and practical material – for example, how to make a cost-effectiveness analysis, how to make a six-month plan, how to develop a monitoring and evaluation strategy, how to hire, and a lot more. Since then Charity Entrepreneurship has provided LEEP with weekly mentoring and wider support through the community of staff, previous incubatees, and advisors. I highly recommend checking out the Charity Entrepreneurship incubation program if anyone is interested!

(emphasis mine; source)

In particular, do you see downside risks that I’ve overlooked, i.e. risks that are not merely like a failure of the project but create net harm?

Related to what you wrote under the "General Use" section, I think we should consider the risks from funding "very risky altruistic projects" that are actually net-negative, even though they have a chance of ending up being extremely beneficial. The root of the problem here is that certificate shares can never have a negative market price, even if the underlying charity/project/intervention ends up being extremely harmful. So from the perspective of a certificate trader, their financial risk from their purchase is limited to the amount they invest, while their upside is unlimited. In other words, the expected future price of a certificate share (and thus its price today) can be high even if everyone thinks that the underlying charity/project/intervention has a very negative expected value.

Is it possible to make it so that the estimation of the share value, from the perspective of certificate traders, will somehow account for the historical downside risks of the charity/project/intervention? (Even if by now the downside risks no longer exist and the charity/project/intervention ended up being extremely beneficial.)