Navigating these slides

Hosted HERE

Also see the ‘curated links’ HERE

• Press “O” To See All Slides/Slide Map!

• Columns denote ‘sections’; descend a column within each section

• You may have to shrink the screen to be able to see the whole slide

I intend to post a more readable ‘bookdown’ version of this and add a link here

Some key links and references

Reinstein CV

• Barriers to effective giving project

• Guide: Researching and writing for Economics students

• Alternateves to academic journals proposal

EA principles, some key hubs

• EA Forum

• CEA guiding principles

• [Curated List of EA Orgs](https://eaforum.issarice.com/posts/f6kg8T2Lp6rDqxWwG/list-of-ea-related-organisations"

• 80000hours.org

Grants, fellowships, jobs

• Future of Humanity Institute vacancies

• Rethink priorities is hiring

• GPI/Forethought fellowship, [pre-doctoral](https://globalprioritiesinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/GPI-Predoctoral-Research-Fellow-Economics.pdf

• EA Funds grants, e.g,, for “Promising research into animal advocacy or animal well-being”

• Action: Charity Entrepreneurship incubator

• Open Philanthropy advice for grant-seekers

• Open phil funding sheet

• Longview grantmaking

• 80k hours job board

Agendas and research questions

• GPI research agenda

• Open Philanthropy “Technical and Philosophical Questions That Might Affect Our Grantmaking”

• Happier lives institute research priorities

• Effective thesis project

• Rethink Priorities 2020 Impact and 2021 Strategy (includes broad agenda)

• 8000 Hours research questions by discipline

• Animal Charity Evaluators research

Message

The founders of Effective Altruism took ideas from Philosophy, Economics, and other parts of academia to build a rigorous approach to ‘doing the most good in the world’, and to exploring and measuring this.

Big opportunity for academic researchers to have impact, inspiration, funding

• Partnering within academia, EA research audience

• Grants

• Helping students

• Leave academia for greener (?) pastures at an EA-aligned org

Things I’m not going to cover:

What is EA?

Doing the ‘most good’ given limited resources (some relationship to utilitarianism)…

Question: What do EA’s prioritize most?

1. Global Poverty
2. Artificial Intelligence Risk
3. Climate Change
4. Cause prioritization
5. Animal welfare

Results of impromptu survey at LIS conference: What they think EA’s prioritize

.kable_styling <- hijack(kableExtra::kable_styling, full_width=FALSE)
.kable <- hijack(knitr::kable, format.args = list(big.mark = ",", scientific = FALSE))

lis_ea_priority_guess <- factor(c(
"Cause prioritization",
"Global Poverty",
"Cause prioritization",
"Climate Change",
"Global Poverty",
"Climate Change",
"Global Poverty",
"Global Poverty",
"Cause prioritization",
"Cause prioritization",
"Climate Change",
"Cause prioritization",
"Climate Change",
"Artificial Intelligence Risk",
"Climate Change",
"Global Poverty",
"Cause prioritization",
"Cause prioritization",
"Climate Change",
"Global Poverty",
"Cause prioritization",
"Cause prioritization",
"Cause prioritization",
"Global Poverty",
"Global Poverty",
"Global Poverty",
"Cause prioritization",
"Climate Change",
"Climate Change",
"Global Poverty",
"Global Poverty",
"Climate Change",
"Global Poverty",
"Global Poverty",
"Cause prioritization",
"Climate Change",
"Global Poverty",
"Global Poverty"
)
)




lis_ea_priority_guess <- tibble(
  lis_ea_priority_guess = lis_ea_priority_guess
)

lis_ea_priority_guess %>% tabg(lis_ea_priority_guess) %>%
  .kable(caption = "What LIS respondents *think* EAs prioritize most:" ) %>%
  .kable_styling()

2020 EA survey: all responses

(
priority_ordered_bar <- lik_priority_eas20 %>%
      as.data.frame() %>%
    select(-engagement_num) %>%
    likert() %>%
  plot(.,
     type="bar") +
  ggtitle(title)
)

… ‘Highly engaged’ (self-rated)

(
priority_ordered_bar_eng <- lik_priority_eas20 %>%
  filter(engagement_num==5) %>%
        select(-engagement_num) %>%
   as.data.frame() %>%
    likert() %>%
  plot(type="bar") +
  ggtitle(title)
)

How much? …

How much effective altruism/global priorities research funding is there?

Evidence

(
op_research_grants_tab <-
open_phil_grants %>%
  filter(possible_research==TRUE) %>%
  group_by(year) %>%
  dplyr::summarise(total =  format(sum(amount, na.rm = TRUE), big.mark=",", scientific=FALSE), grants = n()) %>%
  arrange(-year) %>%
    mutate(year=as.character(year)) %>%
    .kable(caption = "Open Phil (likely) research funding by year")  %>%
 .kable_styling()
)

By year and focus area:

(
  op_res_grants_tab_yr_area <-
open_phil_grants %>%
    filter(possible_research==TRUE) %>%
    dplyr::group_by(year, focus_area) %>% # drop_na(!!yvar, !!treatvar) %>%
    summarise(total = sum(amount_usd_k,  na.rm = TRUE)) %>%
    spread(year, total, fill=0) %>%
    arrange(-`2020`) %>%
    .kable(caption = "OpenPhil (likely research) grants by year and area, in $1000 USD") %>%
    .kable_styling()
)

## `summarise()` has grouped output by 'year'. You can override using the `.groups` argument.

(
  op_res_grants_line <-
open_phil_grants %>%
  group_by(year, focus_area) %>%
    mutate(total = sum(amount_usd_k, na.rm = TRUE)) %>%
    ggplot() +
    aes(x = year, y = amount_usd_k, colour = focus_area) +
    geom_jitter(width = 0.5, height = 0.2, size=0.8) +
  scale_colour_discrete(labels = function(x) str_wrap(x, width = 15)) +
    geom_line(aes(x=year, y=total)) +
  ylab("Grant amounts in $1k")
)

(
open_phil_grants %>%
  filter(possible_research==TRUE) %>%
  filter(year==2020) %>%
  group_by(Focus.Area) %>%
  summarise(total = format(sum(amount, na.rm = TRUE), big.mark=",", scientific=FALSE), grants = n()) %>%
  dplyr::arrange(-grants) %>%
  .kable(caption = "Open Phil (likely) research funding, 2020") %>%
  .kable_styling()
)

By organization

(
  op_res_grants_tab_orgs_area <-
open_phil_grants %>%
    filter(possible_research==TRUE) %>%
    dplyr::group_by(Organization.Name) %>% # drop_na(!!yvar, !!treatvar) %>%
  summarise(total = sum(amount_usd_k,  na.rm = TRUE), `number of grants` = n()) %>%
      arrange(-total) %>%
    filter(total>5000) %>%
    .kable(caption = "OpenPhil (likely research) grants by corganization  and area, in $1000 USD") %>%
  .kable_styling()
)

Other organizations funding or doing EA/GP research, or likely interested

knitr::include_url("https://www.longview.org/grantmaking",  height = "800px")

EA funding model

Maybe 500 million USD per year in EA/adjacent donations (+ about 250 million from OpenPhil)

• GiveWell moving ~$80M per year

• Founders Pledge

• Longview

• Effective Giving

• EA Funds

• “Gates Foundation seems to do ~$100M-500M/yr of grants in global economic development that seem to have cost-effectiveness on par with GiveWell work”

Other research orgs

knitr::include_url("https://eaforum.issarice.com/posts/f6kg8T2Lp6rDqxWwG/list-of-ea-related-organisations", height = "700px")

link

Research orgs (partial list):

• Future of Humanity Institute (about 70 including affiliates, fellows, affiliates)
• Global Priorities Institute (about 20 researchers/affiliates)
• Rethink Priorities (11 researchers, hiring more)
• GiveWell (about 10 researchers/advisors)
• Animal Charity Evaluators (5-ish)
• Machine Intelligence Research Institute (about 20)

How do most ‘effective altruists’ engage; what is most strongly advocated? (Quiz to audience)

1. Political action
2. Effective charitable donations/Earning to give
3. Pursuing a high-impact career
4. Avoiding environmental damage through personal actions

lis_engage_priority <- factor(c(
"Pursuing a high-impact career",
"Effective charitable donations/Earning to give",
"Effective charitable donations/Earning to give",
"Effective charitable donations/Earning to give",
"Effective charitable donations/Earning to give",
"Pursuing a high-impact career",
 "Pursuing a high-impact career",
 "Pursuing a high-impact career",
 "Pursuing a high-impact career",
"Pursuing a high-impact career",
"Pursuing a high-impact career",
"Pursuing a high-impact career",
"Effective charitable donations/Earning to give",
"Effective charitable donations/Earning to give",
 "Pursuing a high-impact career",
"Pursuing a high-impact career",
"Effective charitable donations/Earning to give",
"Pursuing a high-impact career",
 "Pursuing a high-impact career",
"Effective charitable donations/Earning to give",
"Pursuing a high-impact career",
"Pursuing a high-impact career",
"Pursuing a high-impact career"
),
levels = c("Pursuing a high-impact career", "Effective charitable donations/Earning to give", "Avoiding environmental damage through personal actions", "Political action")
)


lis_engage_priority <- tibble(
  lis_engage_priority = lis_engage_priority
)

lis_engage_priority %>% tabg(lis_engage_priority) %>%
  .kable(caption = "What LIS respondents *think* most 'effective altruists' engage... is most strongly advocated?:" ) %>%
  .kable_styling()

From EA Surveys, EA orgs

• EAs are moving towards pursuing impact through their careers.

• 80k hours statements

EA Careers (survey)

Source - EA survey 2020 forum post

CV

New ideas?

Berkeley:

• Proposing ‘new ideas’ like the Poor Card

Limited audience…

Proto-EA?

- ‘Does one donation come at the expense of another’?

• Should an ‘efficient altruist’ purchase ‘fair trade’ products, bundling consumer choices with additional revenue to poor farmers/workers?
  

• Considering ideas with a pre-EA policy audience.

‘Does one donation come at the expense of another’?

“Research agenda”, c 2012, University of Essex

Things I care about: but did they line up with concepts in the discipline?I really cared about ideas and impact.

Essex, UK:

• Experiments/trials and observational work on charitable and gift-giving: social influences, types of income/uncertainty

• Applied microeconomic theory

Moved to Exeter, UK to pursue ‘Impact’

• ‘Impact’ (ESRC grant, REF focus)

• Building teaching/research/outreach resources, such as

• innovationsinfundraising.org and ‘barriers to effective giving’

• “Researching and writing for Economics students”

innovationsinfundraising.org

Pros and cons of (Exeter) academia

Positives: A fairly supportive environment, research freedom, many great colleagues, moderate teaching, targets ‘deep and rigorous theoretical work’, some of the smartest people

Rethinking my priorities (eyeroll)

(Should you do it too? Back to this at the end)

What I’m doing now

0. Longview-funded: ‘Barriers to effective giving’

• Categorization and links to Economics and Psychology ‘theory’

• Meta-analysis and synthesis

• Field experiments and trials in large-scale contexts

1. EA Survey and ‘movement building’

• Survey methods: representativeness, survey design

• Identifying key questions for ‘tracking a movement and its impact’, e.g.,

  • “Which people are likely to contribute the most; ‘selecting’ where to promote’” (ML and inference)
  • “What will the impact of the EA community be in 10-20 years?” (APC modeling)
  • Do anticipated donations tend to exceed actual donations and when/why

• Analysis: Visualisation, descriptive, predictive, and

…

2. Outreach and message testing

• Receptiveness to parts of EA message

• Support for policies (e.g., animal welfare)

3. Future work: moral weights, measurement of satisfaction, ‘near-term’ (global health) evaluation, ‘shallow reviews’

4. Support and guidance to other RP projects (e.g., modeling the meat industry; designing behaioural trials)

5. Connection with academia; publishing, recruiting, advising students

What are the ‘important cause areas’?

Near term, Long-term future, Animal welfare, Prioritization research and ethics

Near-term

• Global health, environmental
• Extreme poverty
• Mental health
• Manmade/political suffering
• Global warming

Long-term

• Existential risk
• ‘S-risk’ (suffering)
• Population growth/expansion
• Global catastrophic risks: Artificial Intelligence ‘alignment’, Bio risks and epidemics, Nuclear/political

Animal welfare

• Factory farming and fishing
• Wild animal welfare

Land animals in factory farms, plot over time

E.g.,

• How to create better systems for creating and disseminating knowledge

• Whether and how to ‘discount’ future individuals (income or happiness)?

• How to make choices under moral uncertainty

• How to value ‘more happy people’ versus ‘happier people’ (population ethics)

Defining a moral framework, considering ‘what has value’, and ‘how to learn and choose’?

… how to value things and be consistent, how to use uncertainty and information in making altruistic choices

From GPI agenda:

Under what conditions would a social planner or philanthropist prioritise policies that primarily increase social welfare in the far future rather than in the near term? For instance, under what condition would such agents prioritise saving for future generations (Ramsey 1928) or reducing the risk of human extinction (Baranzini and Bourguignon 1995)?

Should one have the same levels of epistemic modesty about unusual moral views as one should about unusual empirical views?

Empirical measurement informs ‘production function for good’

• ‘What has value and moral worth?’ (e.g., sentience research)

• How to measure value? (e.g., pain/pleasure DALY)

• How to achieve value?

• Direct interventions and policies, direct/indirect, short and LT impacts

• Very long term impacts, inference with deep uncertainties

Empirical (behavioural) … How to get people and institutions to care about others (altruism) and about being effective in doing so?

• Barriers to considering effectiveness and acting effectively (my focus – open project HERE)

• Applied work : message testing, information and choice-architecture

Open Philanthropy

“Technical and Philosophical Questions That Might Affect Our Grantmaking”

Rethink Priorities, Happier Lives institute, Animal Charity Evaluators

Rethink Priorities 2020 Impact and 2021 Strategy (includes broad agenda)

• Happier lives institute research priorities

• Animal Charity Evaluators research

Academia vs EA (Rethink Priorities)

Academia:

• Publications, grants, citations, students placed in jobs, awards

• Need to be ‘first to publish’ on a new topic; supporting evidence less valued

Operationalizing: ‘Which research to prioritize’?

‘How to measure research impact?’

Explained:

Money-metric impact of a random-ish sample of projects:

Changing the game: Ideas for more productive system of peer feedback and credibility

The EA research landscape - a new ‘funder’ and consumer of research

‘Evaluated project repo’

\(\rightarrow\) ‘Evaluated project repo’ rather than frozen publications?

Can we help academia escape the journal publication collective-action problem?

FHI

Rethink Priorities

Rethink Priorities is hiring – “Staff Researcher (Global Health and Development)”

• several positions

• and very soon “a longtermist and a meta/movement building person”

GPI, Grants, Action

• GPI/Forethought fellowship, [pre-doctoral](https://globalprioritiesinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/GPI-Predoctoral-Research-Fellow-Economics.pdf

• EA Funds grants, e.g,, for “Promising research into animal advocacy or animal well-being”

• Action: Charity Entrepreneurship incubator

• Open Philanthropy grants

How can academics support and do EA/GP research within universities

• Contact EA organisations; present your work

• Help build open-content

Encourage your students

• to apply for GPI/FHI/RP fellowships and internships
• to engage with the Effective Thesis Project

Who should want to work at an EA org like RP? Why or why not?

YES if you (because you like)…

• Care about impact and social good; research outcomes, implications, applications

• Rigorous analytical framework (Philosophy, Economics, Statistics/data) anchored and connected to the practical

• “Interdisciplinary” in the right way

• Positive, supportive environment: people motivated by outcomes, zero competitiveness/politics AFAIK

• High-achieving, super-literate and ‘switched on’ colleagues

Note: RP and GPI and others differ dramatically in focus and approach; I’m mainly talking about RP.

NO if you want to…

• Focus on deeply theoretical ‘pure’ research without a direct connection to impact, a completely independent research agenda

• Earn a lot of money, have the long-term job security of ‘tenure’

Which fields?

Economics: Both theory and empirical/application, development economics, behavioral, preference and choice theory, macroeconomics, and more

Philosophy: The answers to ‘arcane’ philosophical questions are now driving very important decisions and uses of funds

Psychology and behavioral science, marketing: “How to get people to care”, “how to do messaging and how to measure the results”

Maths, statistics, computer science: AI-risk, data science, mathematics of uncertainty and forecasting, controlling technology, statistical experimental design…

Political science and international relations/area studies

Biology and neuroscience (RP just hired an entymologist): Wild animal welfare, animal sentience

Other sciences: Existential risks (natural and human)

Other humanities - some possibilities discussed here (considering ‘longtermism’)

• EA tries to be analytically rigorous and to make decisions based on empirical evidence

• There is a lot of money your research can move

• There is money to get the research done (e.g., FHI, Open Phil, CEA, Center for Long Term risk…)

• A diverse set of relevant research areas, …

  • ‘defining the neutral point of subjective well being’ of interes
  • Animal science
  • QALY and DALY definition and measurement
  • AI Safety
  • Giving and messaging
  • Much more.