EA Newsletter: April 07, 2016

EA Newsletter header Hello hello,

What do Easter eggs, cheesy jokes and EA job posts have in common? Nothing. But you can find two of these things in this newsletter.

Enjoy! Le team

Articles and Community Posts

Here’s a great post with four ideas that you probably already agree with. “Individually, they each might seem a bit trite or self-evident. But taken together, they have significant implications for how we think about doing good in the world.” If you also think that this makes for a great introductory article to EA, share it with a friend or two!

Ever tried to change some of your habits? Did you find it difficult? Have a look at this post from Charlie Bresler, Executive Director of The Life You Can Save. If this kind of thinking appeals to you, consider taking part in a CFAR workshop (we're big fans of them!).

80,000 Hours did a beast of a review of the research on income and happiness (“full reading time: 15 minutes”). Are you happy now?

If you’re interested in what Bill Gates thinks about artificial intelligence and whether he would pick up $40,000 he found on the sidewalk, check out this recent Reddit AMA.

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Updates from EA Organizations

80,000 Hours

There’s a bunch of new 80k articles on cause areas you might have missed! Dive straight into these: global health problems, biosecurity, factory farming, and prioritisation research. Thanks to them, you can also learn which skills make you most employable (then combine this knowledge with the job postings below please!).

Animal Charity Evaluators

ACE published several blog posts in March, including one on the impact of social media and another on comparing advocacy in different countries. They also announced a call for abstracts for the 2016 Symposium on Multidisciplinary Research in Effective Animal Advocacy in November at Princeton.

Charity Entrepreneurship

The Charity Entrepreneurship team continues to do large amounts of research work to find the best charities to found. You can see the first round of published intervention reports here and their other updates here.

GiveWell

Read all about the documented progress GiveWell made throughout 2015. Well, there’s actually no undocumented progress GiveWell makes. That’s because they’re transparent. See how great that is? GiveWell also described why offering donors calls is likely to be an important part of their outreach in the future. Individuals can sign up for a conversation with GiveWell staff here.

Giving What We Can

Giving What We Can recently produced research reports on areas such as cancer, climate change, refugees and the best ways to improve education. The latter two were requested for a meeting with former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Giving What We Can now has 1700+ members pledging 10% of their income to effective charities.

Local Effective Altruism Network

LEAN have seeded over 50 new EA groups recently – see if there’s a new group near you.

Machine Intelligence Research Institute

MIRI is accepting applicants for its new Colloquium Series on Robust and Beneficial AI. This program, running the first three weeks of June, will feature hands-on workshops and presentations by Stuart Russell, Tom Dietterich, Bart Selman, and other leading AI researchers. In other news, MIRI has a new COO and new technical results on self-referential reasoning in bounded agents.

Open Philanthropy Project

The Open Philanthropy Project published a blog post discussing “hits-based giving”, i.e. its openness to supporting philanthropic work that may fail to accomplish its goals, so long as the overall expected value is high enough.

Sentience Politics

Sentience Politics has launched a $2,000 essay prize for the best strategies to reduce the suffering of all sentient beings. They are hosting a conference on cutting-edge, innovative strategies to reduce animal suffering on May 21-22 in Berlin. The registration closes on April 17 – reserve a spot now.

The Global Priorities Project

GPP continued its policy engagement in their focus areas of global catastrophic risk, research impact, and cause prioritisation. They presented their white paper on biotechnology risk management for a National Academies of the Sciences symposium. And they continued to advise on using research budgets as official development assistance and responded to the UK’s Stern consultation on research impact.

The Life You Can Save

The Life You Can Save is looking for people to build on early success running Giving Games in secular/humanist communities. Find a United Coalition of Reason or Secular Student Alliance group near you that you can reach out to about running a Giving Game – both organizations have endorsed the activity for their members! Send questions to givinggames@thelifeyoucansave.org.

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Job Postings

Dreams do come true. You can now review career paths for 80k (as a freelancer (yeah!)).

Do you know what “type theory” and “machine self-reference” is or know people who know such things? If so, you should definitely spread the news that MIRI is seeking to hire research fellows in these areas.

MIRI has also just announced the details of this year’s Summer Fellows program. The sooner you apply, the better.

GiveWell is advertising for a number of positions, for instance in operations, outreach and research.

Apply to work at Evidence Action in Washington as a Cost-Benefit Modeller (cool!).

GiveDirectly is recruiting for both a VP Partnerships and a VP Marketing, among other positions.

If you’re a scientist, you probably don’t want to miss out on this offer by CSER – they are looking for a Postdoctoral Research Associate.

.impact is seeking a full-time or part-time employee in Vancouver, focusing on the local effective altruism network. For internships, apply by April 13th, and for full-time positions, apply by April 20th. For more details, see here.

They have also created an analytics fellowship program for volunteer projects – apply here.

The Effective Altruism Foundation is looking for a operations manager in Berlin.

Raising for Effective Giving (REG) is currently seeking a Director of Growth.

Sentience Politics is hiring! They are looking for an Outreach Coordinator, a Political Campaign Manager and a Director of Content to join them full-time or part-time at their office in Berlin.

And do check out other offers through this community-nurtured site, and join this job postings Facebook group.

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Other Announcements

The Future of Humanity Institute is hosting an essay competition on food system shock with a £2000 prize. The subject matter of the essay should address the question, “How could we feed everyone in the event that we experience a global crises in which there is a sudden reduction in agriculture?” The closing date for applications is April 15. Details are here.

LEAN is running a global fundraiser for Deworm the World. “Living on Less” challenges participants to get sponsored to live on $2.50 a day for 3 days (though participants can adjust the number of days and the amount). To register your interest in participating, sign up here or email livingonless@eahub.org.

Timeless Classics

It’s time for everyone to finally Get Along With People Who Are Totally Wrong, using these six actions

Go forth and do the most good!

Let us know how you liked this edition and how we can improve further.

See you on May 5!

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.