EA Newsletter: March 03, 2016
Hello you,
It’s a big edition this time, so let’s get to it!
Ciao, The Team
Articles and Community Posts
“Can Effective Altruism Change the World? It already has.” Scott Weathers responds to Lisa Herzog on Open Democracy. He refutes common misrepresentations about EA, such as the focus on donations and individual action.
Ben Todd published a strategic post on the value of coordination in the EA movement.
EA Forum user Anj has written a cautiously optimistic review of the possibility to sustainably eradicating mosquito-borne diseases with gene drives.
Claire Zabel urges us to post our reasoning before we make a donation (e.g. on the EA Forum or the Facebook group), ask for feedback and tell people when you’ve changed your mind.
Jon Danaher discusses some justice-related philosophical objections to EA on the blog of the Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technologies.
Updates from EA Organizations
80,000 Hours
80,000 Hours has been rewriting their career guide. They’ve also published a lot of new posts on their blog, including a review of the question whether you should seek or avoid stress in your career decisions.
Animal Charity Evaluators
ACE announced their hire of Greg Boese, a PhD student in social psychology, as Advocacy Research Program Officer. Boese will spearhead a $1,000,000 program to create high-quality empirical research in the animal advocacy field. ACE also published an intervention report of undercover investigations and a blog post detailing their room for more funding.
ACE has also been interviewed by Sören Mindermann about opportunities to work, get involved and more background info.
Charity Entrepreneurship
The Charity Entrepreneurship team has finished shallow reviews on approximately 30 intervention areas and are now beginning the second stage of their research where they will dig deeper nto a number of specific charity ideas. A very broad outline of their research timeline is available here.
Charity Science
Charity Science published a detailed review of their first 2.5 years.
Centre for Effective Altruism
CEA is holding a competition for a short EA introduction essay which will be on the landing page of effectivealtruism.org. The winning contribution gets $250 to spend on their favorite charity. The deadline is 10 March.
Giving What We Can
Giving What We Can is collaborating with the Founders Pledge who encourage entrepreneurs to commit at least 2% of their proceeds to charity when they sell their businesses. Giving What We Can is providing research expertise to encourage these pledges to go to the most effective charities. You can see the latest research reports on theirwebsite.
Sören Mindermann has published an interview with Michelle Hutchinson about working at GWWC.
Global Priorities Project
The Global Priorities Project ran a workshop in Oxford connecting top x-risk policy-makers and researchers. They visited the Cabinet Office to deliver a presentation on effective altruism.
Open Philanthropy Project
The Open Philanthropy Project described its approach to grantmaking so far and announced one of its first large grant recommendations within the focus area of criminal justice reform: funding to launch the Alliance for Safety and Justice, a multi-state policy reform organization. They also awarded a $1,000,000 grant to The Humane League for their corporate cage-free campaigns.
Raising for Effective Giving
REG now has officially raised $1M for effective charities since its launch in mid-2014. They’re expanding into finance and probably other industries in 2016.
Sentience Politics
Sentience Politics will host a conference on effective strategies to reduce animal suffering in Berlin on May 21st and 22nd. Speakers include Nick Cooney, Jon Bockman and Sebastian Joy. Registration is now open.
The Life You Can Save
The Life You Can Save’s 2015 Year in Review report is out, reflecting that for every $1 they spent last year, they moved $5.5 to their recommended effective charities; their conservative total estimate is $1.55 million moved – about double the 2014 impact.
Job Postings
.impact is seeking a full-time or part-time employee in Vancouver, focusing on the local effective altruism network. They are also now looking for interns on a rolling basis. For more details and to apply, see here.
80,000 Hours is looking to hire a freelance web engineer at 3 days per week, starting immediately.
Animal Charity Evaluators is hiring a Research Associate to help find and promote the most effective ways to help animals. They hope to fill the position by the end of March.
The Foundational Research Institute is looking to hire full-time, part-time, or intern researchers to explore how to reduce wild-animal suffering, with a focus on environmental choices and policy. Work can be done remotely with no set working hours.
GiveDirectly is hiring for multiple positions, including interns, in New York, Rwanda and Uganda.
Applications for Giving What We Can’s summer internship are open! Read Thomas Sittler’s experience from last year here.
Raising for Effective Giving is still looking for a Director of Growth to help run its activities in poker and expand into finance/trading. They’re looking for EA-minded people with an interest in communications and fundraising.
Other Announcements
Will MacAskill and Jeff Johnson will edit an issue of the journal “Essays in Philosophy” on EA. Submissions are open.
Are you interested in starting a local EA group? If so, then say so! Or if you start one, register it on the map of groups.
Do a quick review of your career for the start of 2016. Check out 80,000 Hours’ five question checklist.
Peter Hurford is seeking someone to carry out a study on how much the EA movement is growing and through what means.
The Global Innovation Fund invested in Segovia, a new tech company aiming to make (highly effective) cash transfers cheaper, easier and more reliable. Segovia was started by three members of GiveDirectly's board.
Mercy for Animals, in collaboration with .impact, released a study of online ads that are used to inspire people to reduce their consumption of animal products. Effective altruists Kieran Greig and Jeff Kaufman provided their own analyses of the data, and ACE called it “the highest quality randomized controlled trial so far of an animal advocacy intervention.”
Timeless Classics
Ben Todd’s TEDx talk “To find work you love, don't follow your passion” is the second most-viewed EA video of all time.
Go forth and do the most good!
Let us know how you liked this edition and how we can improve further.
See you on April 7!
Georgie, Michał, Pascal and Sören – The Effective Altruism Newsletter Team
The Effective Altruism Newsletter is a joint project between the Centre for Effective Altruism, the Effective Altruism Hub and .impact.
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This is an archived version of the EA newsletter sent to 7,336 subscribers on March 03, 2016. To see the full archives, click here.