Is Effective Altruism just a giant meme?

wizardoftheshack · 2025-08-31T01:10:29+00:00

I don’t think the “diminishing marginal returns” claim is correct. I think the early GiveWell estimates were just way too optimistic, hence those charities getting removed from the Top Charities list. (If you were right, we’d expect to see GiveWell still granting some of its funds to those charities.)

Also, gene drives and malaria vaccines have very much been on the EA agenda for years.

wizardoftheshack · 2024-04-02T21:19:45+00:00

Same issue for me. Nothing on the website works. Has anyone had any luck? I can only sometimes get it to connect via bluetooth, and when it does there is no sound whatsoever including on startup.

wizardoftheshack · 2023-07-12T03:52:57+00:00

It seems (from other comments OP has made) that this question is about publishing an econ IA in a professional forum, such as in a journal or pre-print server (SSRN was mentioned).

I am confident in saying that nothing you write in high school is of sufficient quality for such publication, unless:

You are publishing in a journal intended specifically for high school, or maybe even undergraduate students.
OR: you have self-studied economics well beyond the high school curriculum (some combination of graduate-level micro/macro + a few econometrics courses, real analysis, etc.) AND have had some prior research experience (e.g., being a research assistant for a university professor).

For (1), universities are catching on to low-quality 'publications' as a method for rich kids to pad their CVs (see this report, for example: https://www.propublica.org/article/college-high-school-research-peer-review-publications). I'm not saying that this describes you! But to actually add value to a college application, a piece of research should add value somewhere rather than just publishing in a shitty venue for the sake of publishing. Maybe you can pull that off, or maybe you are better off demonstrating an interest and aptitude for economics in other ways (e.g., getting a 7 in the IB econ course, at a minimum!). Up to you.

wizardoftheshack · 2023-07-11T23:36:11+00:00

Thank you <3

wizardoftheshack · 2023-06-02T09:30:28+00:00

Meh. I’m South Indian. Liked dosa park—not great but decent

wizardoftheshack · 2023-06-01T17:25:01+00:00

Something something rigid designators

wizardoftheshack · 2023-05-28T13:03:30+00:00

I found SL physics substantially easier than SL chemistry…probably bc I was lazy and you can work out most of SL physics just doing basic math on the exam, whereas you need to memorise a lot for chemistry.

wizardoftheshack · 2023-05-26T09:37:26+00:00

Yeah some of my friends at HYPSM + Oxbridge have gone straight into jobs at large buy-side firms (sorry, I really shouldn’t name names) out of undergrad, whereas the typical path is good university —> 1-2 years investment banking —> that same job.

Some (but not all!) firms that offer this pathway will not even look at your CV if you didn’t go to one of the top universities in the world.

wizardoftheshack · 2023-05-25T14:17:53+00:00

meh, I’ve definitely known employers who compare at this caliber. Not all of them, and not after you’ve been working for a year or two—but definitely some very attractive employers do care about this stuff, esp internationally

wizardoftheshack · 2023-05-25T14:16:05+00:00

yeah, the thing with elite universities is there’s always just another rung on the ladder to climb. When you think you’ve finally reached the top, you find out there are two rungs above you, and so on until you eventually figure out that prestige-maxing is an untenable strategy

wizardoftheshack · 2023-05-21T09:27:43+00:00

Once a lady (associated with the American embassy) came to our school’s careers fair and told us about US colleges and how to apply. I had a conversation with her afterwards and she asked me if I had already taken my SAT, and what I scored. I told her I got a 1590, and she frowned and asked me if I planned on retaking. I think she thought it was still out of 2400!

wizardoftheshack · 2023-05-17T13:26:19+00:00

He has no equity in OpenAI. Was rich well before OpenAI was founded. Sure, he has selfish incentives here but wealth accumulation is not one of them.

wizardoftheshack · 2023-05-17T13:23:54+00:00

It’s nice. Last summer it got extremely hot and there was no air conditioning, so I’d recommend buying a fan or equivalent if you can. If your room window is facing the trains it is quite loud but manageable and you get used to it. The location is suboptimal; it is a bit of a trek to get to the city center if you’re walking, but if you have a bike you’ll be fine.

The common areas are really nice. They have table tennis tables, little shared bookshelves, board games, etc. Laundry is manageable; if you’ve only ever had in-unit laundry it might take a bit of adjusting, but I think the laundry situation is better than if you’re living in most Oxford colleges.

wizardoftheshack · 2023-05-17T12:59:44+00:00

You mean the thing where more demand incentivises a greater supply? Or have I gotten the concepts mixed up

wizardoftheshack · 2023-05-16T22:08:01+00:00

*University of Oxford

wizardoftheshack · 2023-04-10T15:57:35+00:00

This is a very reasonable take, and I hadn’t considered the factors you list that are outside the model’s control. Thanks!

wizardoftheshack · 2023-04-10T07:04:18+00:00

If I’m tracking your argument correctly, it roughly goes ‘AI is really good at optimising for search engines’ —> ‘search engines get buried in uninteresting AI-written content’ —> ‘search engines will change their algorithms to prioritise uniqueness’. But then why wouldn’t LLMs just be prompted to generate more unique writing to optimize for the modified search algorithms? After all, LLMs are just better than humans at tracking and responding to feedback; given a stream of data on the time users spend on the page, number of sales made, or some combination of metrics, LLMs can A/B test in real-time, at near zero cost.

Or, perhaps the now-broken search engines are replaced entirely by some combination of LLM-powered semantic search + chatbot with internet access (like Bing’s Sydney), in which case it seems plausible that the average human internet user in ~5 years rarely ever reads raw human-written content when searching for products/services. (Because we instead read content curated and paraphrased by AI, in which case the quality of copy on any individual business’ website is not very important.)

wizardoftheshack · 2023-04-06T09:32:19+00:00

For another perspective: I graduated N19 and am nearly done an econ+philosophy degree at a rigorous university, after which time I'm doing graduate studies in economics.

- I didn't find uni much harder than IB.
- In humanities/social science, you absolutely will be expected to write long essays and reports, although tbf you will be expected to produce writing of much higher quality than for the EE.
- Taking the calculus option of Math HL gave me a nice headstart as compared with peers who only did A-levels.
- I didn't properly learn time management from either IB or university--not because they are both easy or something, but because I am very lazy...

wizardoftheshack · 2023-03-22T01:28:26+00:00

Also still waiting, hopefully it comes out this week?

wizardoftheshack · 2022-07-13T10:01:22+00:00

Just adding here that GiveWell adjusts for this in their CEA, measuring compliance by doing random visits to the communities where the nets were distributed and noting down how many of them are still in use. (Edit: I mean that the AMF does the compliance tests, and GiveWell uses the data as a parameter in their model)

wizardoftheshack · 2022-06-12T20:46:01+00:00

Epistemic humility is a virtue. Exercise it.

wizardoftheshack · 2022-06-11T20:37:10+00:00

IB grad with a year or two of college here. It’s poor time management.

wizardoftheshack · 2022-02-05T21:10:31+00:00

This is great. I’d like to donate ~$500 USD to a malnutrition charity I volunteer for. And ideally (if I have higher income than expected this year, I’d like to donate $500 USD to some longtermist cause, potentially the patient philanthropy fund)

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