tog

• tog 23 Oct 2014 9:35 UTC

  52 points

  on: 2014 Less Wrong Cen­sus/​Survey

  I’ll be interested to compare the results to the 2014 Effective Altruists Survey from earlier this year. Peter Hurford will be presenting its results soon, and I believe he’s cross-tabulating them with those on the 2013 LW Census (including figures like the gender ratio and how much people donate).

Slate Star Codex: al­ter­na­tive com­ment threads on LessWrong?

2014 Sur­vey of Effec­tive Altruists

In­tro­duc­ing Effec­tive Altru­ist Profiles

The new GiveWell recom­men­da­tions are out: here’s a sum­mary of the charities

Jobs and in­tern­ships available at the Cen­tre for Effec­tive Altruism

• tog 2 Nov 2014 8:01 UTC

  23 points

  on: Novem­ber 2014 Monthly Brag­ging Thread

  This month I officially launched the EA Donation Registry, which you may have seen featured in MIRI’s latest newsletter, or across the Animal Charity Evaluators website. Related, we also officially launched Effective Altruist Profiles (here’s the LessWrong post) - we’d soft-launched both projects a while ago, soon after starting the 2014 EA Survey.

  I also created a step-by-step guide to writing a will and the ‘Shop for Charity’ scheme, through which you can earn 5% cost-free commission for GiveWell-recommended charities while doing your shopping on Amazon. And I’ve been doing other Charity Science work too—people may be interested in our recent review of our first year of operations.

• tog 23 Oct 2014 9:47 UTC

  20 points

  in reply to: tog’s comment on: 2014 Less Wrong Cen­sus/​Survey

  Also: I’ve now taken the survey. There were some interesting questions there.

Shop for Char­ity: how to earn proven char­i­ties 5% of your Ama­zon spend­ing in commission

In­tro­duc­ing an EA Dona­tion Registry, cov­er­ing ex­is­ten­tial risk donors

What top­ics are ap­pro­pri­ate for LessWrong?

SSC dis­cus­sion: “bi­cam­eral rea­son­ing”, episte­mol­ogy, and scope insensitivity

• tog 30 Nov 2015 8:50 UTC

  10 points

  on: Open thread, Nov. 30 - Dec. 06, 2015

  Here’s drawing your attention to this year’s Effective Altruism Survey, which was recently released and which Peter Hurford linked to in LessWrong Main. As he says there:

  This is a survey of all EAs to learn about the movement and how it can improve. The data collected in the survey is used to help EA groups improve and grow EA. Data is also used to populate the map of EAs, create new EA meetup groups, and create EA Profiles and the EA Donation Registry.

  If you are an EA or otherwise familiar with the community, we hope you will take it using this link. All results will be anonymised and made publicly available to members of the EA community. As an added bonus, one random survey taker will be selected to win a $250 donation to their favorite charity.

  Take the EA Survey

• tog 15 Nov 2014 14:30 UTC

  10 points

  in reply to: juliawise’s comment on: The Athe­ist’s Tithe

  Have you guys ever been tempted to make it 50.1% so you can say it’s a majority? ;) Or do you think it’s better not to seem too extreme?

• tog 3 May 2014 18:55 UTC

  10 points

  in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: 2014 Sur­vey of Effec­tive Altruists

  I can assure you I didn’t think that—it was rather that I didn’t think of any right-wing (or additional non left-wing) movements that significant numbers might plausibly belong to. But I definitely made a mistake in not trying to think of them more. If you can suggest some, I’ll add them.

  My predictions (linked in this comment ) did have few conservatives or libertarians. The set of EAs whose views I know contains a few libertarians and no conservatives. However that set contains disproportionately many elite university students, an unrepresentatively lefty group.

  I was surprised that there weren’t a few more libertarians and conservatives in the LessWrong census.

Join a ma­jor effec­tive al­tru­ist fundraiser: get spon­sored to eat for un­der $2.50 a day

SSC dis­cus­sion: growth mindset

• tog 1 Dec 2014 21:56 UTC

  9 points

  in reply to: Metus’s comment on: Open thread, Dec. 1 - Dec. 7, 2014

  Even more easily, you can visit this interactive tool I made and it’ll tell you which charities are tax-deductible or tax-efficient in your country, and give you the best links to them. It also has a dropdown covering 18 countries, including some in which tax-efficient routes are far from obvious.

• tog 9 Oct 2014 19:21 UTC

  9 points

  in reply to: dthunt’s comment on: On Caring

  Reminds me of the time the Texas state legislature forgot that ‘similar to’ and ‘identical to’ are reflexive.

  In case anyone else was curious about this, here’s a quote:

  Barbara Ann Radnofsky, a Houston lawyer and Democratic candidate for attorney general, says that a 22-word clause in a 2005 constitutional amendment designed to ban gay marriages erroneously endangers the legal status of all marriages in the state.

  The amendment, approved by the Legislature and overwhelmingly ratified by voters, declares that “marriage in this state shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman.” But the troublemaking phrase, as Radnofsky sees it, is Subsection B, which declares:

  “This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage.”

  Oops.

SSC Dis­cus­sion: No Time Like The Pre­sent For AI Safety Work