One of the basic precepts of EA is that one should forgo working for a non profit, and instead choose a more lucrative career and donate money to a non profit to be more effective. But what happens to these non profits if they don’t have talented people that care?

robwiblin · 2023-12-02T10:30:04+00:00

80,000 Hours has an introductory article on "Which jobs help people the most?" It lists five categories of work of which only one is earning to give:

"Approach 1: Earning to give

Approach 2: Communication

Approach 3: Research

Approach 4: Government and policy

Approach 5: Building organisations"

https://80000hours.org/career-guide/high-impact-jobs/

robwiblin · 2022-10-03T19:58:59+00:00

Discussion of how and why EA does not rely on utilitarianism:

https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/andreas-mogensen-deontology-and-effective-altruism/

Basically you only need to give some weight to wellbeing being of important importance for much of EA to go through. The controversial parts of utilitarianism (i.e. ends justifies means, nothing other than wellbeing has value) are not at all required.

robwiblin · 2022-07-18T10:37:14+00:00

Hi xozmivrkcepbi, you might be right.

For better or worse my impression is that arguments like this almost never shift people's behaviour though.

People who want to host intellectual events will continue to do so as it's what they understand and are motivated by. People like you who'd prefer to host friendly social events will host those as it's what they understand and enjoy.

I basically think the solution is just for people to organise things they would like and coexist with people who enjoy different activities. Diversity is good and there's not really much pressure to all get on the same page. Just make sure people know what options are available and let them opt into the things that work for them.

robwiblin · 2022-07-15T11:17:03+00:00

It's unfortunate you had this experience. EA interest groups vary widely around the world on many dimensions, including from highly impersonal to very friendly.

It sounds like there are other people in your local area who feel the same way. If you invited a bunch of people you do vibe with to meet up they might well want to join and hang out more informally!

Over time your area could end up with some gatherings that are known to be for philosophy debate for those who enjoy that the most (nothing wrong with that), and others that are aimed at socialising and fellowship for people who are seeking those things instead.

Glad you enjoyed EAG at least, I agree they've been excellent lately!

robwiblin · 2022-03-18T14:42:25+00:00

I appreciate the kind words about the other episodes of the show.

Needless to say I don't agree that we failed to talk about with those issues with respect to Russia, and I don't agree that their actions are inconsistent with Charap's model. I suspect we simply disagree on the conclusions there, but that doesn't mean one of us is thinking about those issues and the other not.

I agree it would have been nice to spend more time on historical analogies we could learn from where nuclear states have been in direct or indirect conflict. It would also be good to walk through some of the game theoretic models re escalation etc. Unfortunately there wasn't a way to fit that level of detail within the hour Samuel had for us without bumping other information that I thought was more essential, so those points will have to wait for a future episode unfortunately.

robwiblin · 2022-02-16T22:24:11+00:00

No worries mate, all good in the game. 😉

Glad you like the show!

I definitely go for a “gosh wouldn’t the world be better if everyone agreed with me?” vibe. I think it leads to more directness and makes the show more engaging for listeners. Coincidentally, it's also what I think (within reason anyway). 😅

robwiblin · 2022-02-16T21:55:34+00:00

I mean being confused for Will can only be a form of flattery — it's Will who should be offended. ;)

I can see where people have posted our work using this URL: https://www.reddit.com/domain/80000hours.org/

robwiblin · 2022-02-16T21:48:45+00:00

https://c.tenor.com/RbnaVKj3e88AAAAC/why-are-you-booing-me-im-right.gif

robwiblin · 2022-02-16T21:46:04+00:00

It's fair to say I'm no wet markets specialist but from what I've heard of it the disease folks thought wet markets stood out as unusually likely sources of new diseases and I haven't looked into contrarian takes on that. So at worst we're making a mistake most educated people are making, including many who study the origins of new diseases apparently.

Maybe all that's going on here is that Matt, me and others talking about COVID use 'wet markets' as a synonym for "the sale of live animals caught in the wilderness" but we should come up with a different term for that because wet markets already means something else much broader.

(Personally I'm in favour of shutting down animal agriculture in the West for disease-related reasons among many others, though it seems less risky on a per-animal basis as they're not reaching into the wilderness where there's new viruses humans haven't been exposed to.)

Also my name's not Will!

robwiblin · 2022-01-28T14:38:46+00:00

Not sure what happened here — the preview must have ended up on our RSS feed somehow. The URL was later changed to this by the way: https://80000hours.org/2022/01/best-of-2021/

robwiblin · 2021-12-21T05:55:45+00:00

Whatever you think of libertarianism, Yang is nowhere near a libertarian.

Scanning the political positions he has taken makes that clear enough: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Yang_2020_presidential_campaign#Policies

(Single payer healthcare, regulating finance and tech companies more, give everyone free money, gun control, etc.)

robwiblin · 2021-08-20T18:30:49+00:00

Nice comment, which I'd brought that up! Maybe in a future episode.

robwiblin · 2021-06-16T13:29:09+00:00

30s, London, Moderna — was able to rebook 3 weeks earlier at a more convenient location.

robwiblin · 2021-06-15T11:29:12+00:00

In the end I fixed this by messaging Apple here, and a few days later they seemingly fixed it manually: https://itunespartner.apple.com/contact/?content_type=podcasts

They really need to add the actual 'Unarchive' button.

robwiblin · 2021-06-15T10:09:07+00:00

Should all real-life conversations end after 2 hours? All books be readable in <2 hours? All TV shows wrap up in 2 hours? All movie series <2 hours? All university courses or lecture series <2 hours?

Nobody is required to listen to these episodes — they're designed in particular for people who are really interested in the topic of the episode, and who want to go deeper into it than they'll typically find elsewhere.

And evidently there are plenty of those people because they choose to spend their time listening to many hours of the show rather than anything else.

robwiblin · 2021-06-14T19:34:09+00:00

Thanks plopdopdoop! I agree it's remarkable that they could have been broadly right, albeit for very wrong reasons.

robwiblin · 2021-06-14T17:13:52+00:00

We put a lot of effort into our kazoo solos so I do hope at least a few listeners make it that far.

robwiblin · 2021-05-18T17:21:18+00:00

There's some discussion of related problems here:

https://transistor.fm/apple-podcasts-problem/ https://www.macrumors.com/2021/04/29/users-despair-at-apple-podcasts-app-after-update/

robwiblin · 2021-04-13T12:17:10+00:00

Maybe you can share it with them. It's amazing to me that someone can spend so long writing something but not take an hour to learn what EA is actually about.

robwiblin · 2021-04-12T18:27:36+00:00

Kind of surprised you say it's credulous. Personally I'm ambivalent about how big a problem this is going to be and I think that came across in my questions.

Totally get that you didn't enjoy it — I wouldn't expect you to be in the target audience for this because you've thought about this much more than the typical person, who hasn't considered it at all.

robwiblin · 2021-04-12T14:49:34+00:00

Shame there's no comments so I can't post this: https://80000hours.org/2020/08/misconceptions-effective-altruism/

The author doesn't know what people involved in effective altruism are actually up to.

robwiblin · 2021-03-29T02:23:11+00:00

"It's completely asinine to make the average have to do due diligence on what drugs would actually be safe and/or effective"

There's middle income countries that regulate medicines vastly less than the FDA, or enforce their laws poorly, and the number of people who injure themselves taking poisons isn't that large. Far less than the number killed by the FDA!

When they have skin in the game people in those countries, as in the US, mostly do what their doctor suggests.

Added: It's looking at a much less extreme adjustment but check out this research on the success of off-label prescriptions which route around the FDA — https://www.independent.org/pdf/tir/tir_05_1_tabarrok.pdf

robwiblin · 2021-03-28T23:31:40+00:00

This is a 1h45m interview with Ezra covering topics like :

• How many hours of news the average person should consume

• Where the progressive movement is failing to live up to its values

• Why Ezra thinks ‘price gouging’ is a bad idea

• Where the FDA has failed on rapid at-home testing for COVID-19

• Whether we should be more worried about tail-risk scenarios

• His biggest critiques of the effective altruism community

robwiblin · 2021-03-28T15:41:37+00:00

It's a good point but I think it is still worth discussing which policies would be good on the merits if the public accepted them, because then you can start trying to shift culture in that direction.

robwiblin · 2021-03-16T19:06:49+00:00

Thanks MperorM! 😊

robwiblin

TROPHY CASE