EA Updates for September 2021

By DavidNash @ 2021-08-27T09:37 (+27)

Upcoming Events

• 3rd September - 'A new international agreement to spend 1% of GDP on global risk reduction', a virtual talk by Hauke Hillebrandt - Organised by the Legal Priorities Project
• 5th September - 'Understanding Cause Neutrality' virtual discussion - Organised by EA Anywhere
• 12th September - Giving What We Can Virtual Meetup
• 13th September - Jason Crawford on the roots of human progress virtual talk - Organised by EA Munich
• 29-31st October - EA Global: London 2021 - Applications will open on Wednesday, 1st September

Latest Research and Updates

Meta

• Open Philanthropy have a new program providing grants to support academics for the development of new university courses that are relevant to their grant making
• Benjamin Todd looking at how resources in EA are allocated across causes
• A post on the EA Forum suggesting that more people interested in EA should consider 'non-EA' jobs
• EA Survey 2020
  • Engagement
  • Community Information - what factors had a positive/negative influence on people's interest in EA
• A forum series with career advice on management consultancy
• 'The case for increasing EA policy efforts in smaller countries'
• EA Anywhere: A Year in Review
• A forum post arguing that 'Most research/advocacy charities are not scalable'
• Giving What We Can is seeking applications for members to participate in their 12-month Ambassador Program
• Benjamin Todd and Sanjay Joshi were on BBC Radio 4, discussing impactful careers
• Charity Entrepreneurship introducing their 2021 incubation program participants
• EA Cambridge have released their second magazine, highlighting what the group has been up to

Grants

• Open Phil have made 8 grants recently with a total value of $1,430,000
  • $850,000 - Farm Animal Welfare
  • $450,000 - Criminal Justice Reform
  • $130,000 - Geopolitical Forecasting
• The EA Animal Welfare Fund has made 30 grants with a total value of $1,920,000

Global Development

• John Halstead with a post arguing that economic policy in poor countries is neglected by effective altruism
• The Centre For Global Development with a podcast looking at Special Drawing Rights
• Saloni Dattani looking at the data behind our understanding of depression
• Lucia Coulter being interviewed by the Mayo Clinic, discussing the Lead Exposure Elimination Project

Animal Welfare

• A six month update from Animal Advocacy Africa
• A meta review of interventions that influence animal product consumption

Existential & Catastrophic Risks

• A new paper by Lara Mani, Asaf Tzachor and Paul Cole on global catastrophic risks from lower magnitude volcanic eruptions
• An article looking at the potential problems with a synthetic pandemic
• A post looking at the risks from the UK's planned increase in nuclear warheads
• A post introducing the Existential Risk Observatory, a new organisation in the Netherlands

Improving Institutions

• The UK government just launched a call for evidence on bureaucracy around research and development
• Research England is funding a new global platform aiming to disrupt the current scientific research culture
• A post describing a framework to work out which institutions are most important if you are interested in improving institutional decision making

Longtermism

• 80,000 Hours podcast with Holden Karnofsky on the most important century
• Open Philanthropy with the results of a survey that intended to get a better understanding of how people became interested in longtermism
• A post on the forum looking at foresight for governments, 'Singapore’s Long-termist Policy Tools & Lessons'
• New Global Priorities Institute working papers - and an updated version of "The case for strong longtermism"
• David Manheim with the post 'Towards a Weaker Longtermism'

Emerging Technology

• Podcast with Chris Olah on what is going on inside neural networks
• A series of articles looking at whether we are trending towards transformative AI

Other Links

• A post looking at how EA billionaires are using their money in U.S. politics
• The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk with a response to the IPCC report
• An Ask Me Anything with Jason Brennan, author of "Against Democracy" and creator of a Georgetown course on EA
• Ellen Quigley wrote an article for Aeon about responsible investment
• Natalie Jones appeared on the Gin and Topic podcast, discussing climate change and climate justice
• Rob Bensinger with an outline of Julia Galef's "Scout Mindset"