TL;DR:

• EAGs from 2022–2023 each cost around $2M–$3.6M USD at around $1.5k–2.5k per person per event.
  • These events typically cost a lot because the fixed costs of running professional events in the US and UK are surprisingly high.
• We’re aiming to get these event costs down to ≤$2M each moving forwards.
  • We’ve already started to cut back on spending and will continue to do so, whilst also raising default ticket prices to recoup more of our costs.

Throughout this post, for legibility I discuss the direct costs behind running our events and don’t include other indirect costs like staff salaries, software, and our office space (which would increase the costs below by ~25%).

Introduction

This year (2023), EAG Bay Area cost $2M and EAG London cost £2M (including travel grant costs).[1] Our most expensive event ever was EAG SF 2022, which cost $3.6M. This gives us a range of about $1.5–2.5k per person per event.[2]

In-person EAGx [...]

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Outline:

(03:07) Venue and catering

(06:07) Other costs

(07:08) What are we doing to save money?

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Nuclear winter is a topic that many have heard about, but where significant confusion can occur. I certainly knew little about the topic beyond the superficial prior to working on nuclear issues, and getting up to speed with the recent research is not trivial. Even then there are very large uncertainties around the topic, and different teams have come to different conclusions, which are unlikely to be resolved soon.

However, this does not mean that we cannot draw some conclusions on nuclear winter. I worry that the fact there are still uncertainties has been taken to the extreme that nuclear winters are impossible, which I do not believe can be supported. Instead, I would suggest the balance of evidence suggests there is a very serious risk a large nuclear exchange could lead to catastrophic climate impacts. Given that the potential mortality of these winters could exceed the direct deaths, the [...]

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Outline:

(01:11) Headline results, for those short on time

(10:29) The case for concern: Firestorms, plumes and soot

(17:05) Complexities and disagreements

(21:23) Point one – How many detonations can we expect?

(29:08) Point two – How do detonations translate into stratospheric soot?

(33:22) The anatomy of the disagreements

(38:51) Synthesis

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∼250,000 new contraceptive users, ∼20 million new listeners and up to ∼60x cost effectiveness

TL;DR: 

In 2021, FEM launched our pilot: a 3-month family planning radio campaign, educating listeners about maternal health and effective contraception. Our ads and shows played up to 860 times in Kano state in northern Nigeria, reaching ~5.6 million. An independent survey showed that in 11 months, contraceptive use increased by ~75% among all women in the state. Since then, we launched a 9-month campaign, aired proofs of concept in three new locations and re-aired in 8 more states, reaching an estimated 20 million new listeners. We were recommended by Giving What We Can and Founders Pledge, who assess our campaigns as ~22 times as effective as cash transfers. We developed new technologies that will allow us to customise health advice to listeners and run a randomised controlled trial. We continue to build organisational capacity to scale across [...]

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Outline:

(00:14) TL;DR:

(01:21) Promising results from our pilot (Oct - Dec 2021)

(03:58) New technology to evaluate our impact (Jan -Dec 2022)

(05:40) Launching our first 9 month campaign (May 2022 - Feb 2023)

(06:49) Scaling our work: three new proofs of concept (Oct - Dec 2022)

(08:13) Cost-effectiveness estimates

(09:47) Meet the FEM team

(12:57) Key learnings

(14:47) Our biggest mistakes

(16:00) Our biggest successes

(16:55) What we’re doing now

(18:17) Our plan for the years ahead

(20:30) Support our work

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Summary

• Impact obsession is a potentially unhelpful way of relating to doing good which we’ve observed among effective altruists, including ourselves. (More)
• What do we mean by impact obsession?
  • One can distinguish unhealthy and healthy forms of impact obsession. (More)
  • Common characteristics include an overwhelming desire for doing the most good one can do, basing one’s self-worth on one’s own impact, judging it by increasingly demanding standards (“impact treadmill”), overexerting oneself, neglecting or subjugating non-altruistic interests, and anxiety about having no or negative impact. (More)
• Is impact obsession good or bad?
  • Many aspects of impact obsession are reasonable and even desirable. (More)
  • Others can have detrimental consequences like depression, anxiety, guilt, exhaustion, burnout, and disillusionment. (More)
• What to do about (unhealthy) impact obsession?
  • Besides useful standard (mental) health advice, potentially helpful strategies involve, for example: reflecting on our relationship with and motives for having impact, integrating conflicting desires, shifting from avoidance to approach motivation, cultivating additional sources of meaning and self-worth, reducing resistance [...]

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Outline:

(05:31) Why we wrote this post

(06:21) What do we mean by impact obsession?

(06:25) Healthy vs. unhealthy impact obsession

(08:25) Common characteristics

(08:56) Overwhelming desire for maximizing positive impact

(09:41) Self-worth and identity are linked to impact

(10:09) Personally demanding (or unreasonable) standards

(10:39) Excessive comparisons and the impact treadmill

(11:50) Pushing oneself too hard and neglecting non-altruistic interests

(12:34) Black-and-white thinking

(13:07) Frequent worries about (prioritization) mistakes

(13:40) Obsessive thoughts about impact

(14:11) Impact obsession, clinical perfectionism, and scrupulosity

(15:57) Benefits and costs

(16:00) Isn’t impact obsession reasonable?

(17:43) Benefits

(18:54) Potential negative consequences of unhealthy impact obsession

(19:11) Depression, feeling worthless or unable to contribute

(21:05) Anxiety and guilt

(22:47) Burnout and (chronic) fatigue

(25:09) Reduced curiosity, excitement, and interests

(27:02) Less likely to enter flow states and reduced creativity

(27:58) Competitive comparisons, shame, and isolation

(29:13) Other risks

(29:51) What might help

(31:11) Reflect on your relationship with having impact and your conflicting motivations

(32:49) Strengthen additional sources of meaning and self-worth

(35:48) What about value drift?

(37:25) Approach motivation vs. avoidance motivation

(38:51) Obligation vs. exciting opportunity

(39:20) Focusing on the positive

(41:09) Focus less on yourself, compare yourself less

(42:11) You want to be the least impactful person in the world

(43:57) Leaning into absurdity

(45:22) Accepting what we cannot change

(46:31) Beware self-improvement perfectionism

(46:57) Welcoming and exploring negative emotions with acceptance and curiosity

(50:48) Fear and coming to terms with the possibility of having no impact

(53:48) Sadness, despair, and guilt

(55:22) Feeling like a failure or inadequate

(58:30) Replacing self-criticism with self-compassion

(01:00:32) Fully commit to rest

(01:00:51) Keeping yourself busy with semi-useful tasks

(01:02:08) Not committing to rest

(01:03:56) It’s fine if you need more rest than others

(01:04:25) Other related relevant resources

(01:04:58) Acknowledgements

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Sometimes, there is a reason other grantmakers aren't funding a fairly well-known EA (-adjacent) project.

This post is written in a professional capacity, as a volunteer/sometimes contractor for EA Funds’ Long-Term Future Fund (LTFF), which is a fiscally sponsored project of Effective Ventures Foundation (UK) and Effective Ventures Foundation USA Inc. I am not and have never been an employee at either Effective Ventures entity. Opinions are my own and do not necessarily represent that of any of my employers or of either Effective Ventures entity. I originally wanted to make this post a personal shortform, but Caleb Parikh encouraged me to make it a top-level post instead.

There is an increasing number of new grantmakers popping up, and also some fairly rich donors in longtermist EA that are thinking of playing a more active role in their own giving (instead of deferring). I am broadly excited about the diversification of [...]

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Outline:

(02:13) Reasons against broadly sharing reasons for rejection

(03:16) Select examples

(06:52) Some tradeoffs and other considerations

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These are my own views, and not those of my employer, EVOps, or of CEA who I have contracted for in the past and am currently contracting for now. This was meant to be a strategy fortnight contribution, but it's now a super delayed/unofficial, and underwritten strategy fortnight contribution. [1]

Before you read this: 

This is pretty emotionally raw, so please 1) don’t update too much on it if you think I’m just being dramatic 2) I might come back and endorse or delete this at some point. I’ve put off writing this for a long time, because I know that some of the conclusions or implications might be hurtful or cause me to become even more unpopular than I already feel I am - as a result, I’ve left it really brief, but I’m willing to make it more through if I get the sense that people think it’d be [...]

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Outline:

(00:21) Before you read this:

(01:20) Summary:

(01:40) Introduction

(02:07) Global EA

(03:19) Narrow EA

(04:58) Reasons I think this is important and should be addressed:

(07:14) Reasons not to address this:

(07:48) Reasons I might be wrong:

(08:16) Other notes:

(09:08) About me:

(09:36) Thanks:

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Imagine this:

Oliver: … Thus we see that donating to the opera is the best way of promoting the arts.

Eleanor: Okay, but I’m principally interested in improving human welfare.

Oliver: Oh! Well I think it is also the case that donating to the opera is best for improving human welfare too.

Generally, what is best for one thing is usually not the best for something else, and thus Oliver's claim that donations to opera are best for the arts and human welfare is surprising. We may suspect bias: that Oliver's claim that the Opera is best for the human welfare is primarily motivated by his enthusiasm for opera and desire to find reasons in favour, rather than a cooler, more objective search for what is really best for human welfare.

The rest of this essay tries to better establish what is going on [...]

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Outline:

(01:31) Varieties of convergence

(07:00) Proxy measures and prediction

(08:20) Pragmatic defeat and Poor Propagation

(13:23) EA examples

(18:18) Conclusion

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Plant-based meats, like the Beyond Sausage or Impossible Burger, and cultivated meats have become a source of optimism for reducing animal-based meat usage.

- Public health, environmental, and animal welfare advocates aim to mitigate the myriad harms of meat usage.

- The price, taste, and convenience (PTC) hypothesis posits that if plant-based meat is competitive with animal-based meat on these three criteria, the large majority of current consumers would replace animal-based meat with plant-based meat.

- The PTC hypothesis rests on the premise that PTC primarily drive food choice.

The PTC hypothesis and premise are both likely false.

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