AnonymousTurtle's Quick takes
By AnonymousTurtle @ 2024-04-02T02:37 (+5)
AnonymousTurtle @ 2024-04-21T10:41 (+27)
GiveWell and Open Philanthropy just made a $1.5M grant to Malengo!
Congratulations to @Johannes Haushofer and the whole team, this seems such a promising intervention from a wide variety of views
John Salter @ 2024-04-22T09:00 (+7)
Potentially self-funding organisations strike me as neglected within EA
BrownHairedEevee @ 2024-04-24T03:52 (+2)
Cool! For context, Malengo is helping students from Uganda attend university in Germany, and it also has a program to support students from French-speaking African countries [link in French]. I'm excited about this program not only for its economic benefits, but also for its potential to enable more people to live in liberal democratic countries, and in the long term, increase support for liberal democracy around the globe.
NickLaing @ 2024-04-24T06:27 (+5)
As a quick reply, I'm wondering what evidence you have that education in democratic liberal countries increases support for liberal democracy accross the globe? There's arguments for and against this thesis, but I don't think there's good evidence that it helps.
Many dictators in Africa for example were educated in top universities, which gave them better connections and influence which might have helped them oppress their people. Also during the 20ths centure a growing intelligent and motivated middle class seems correlated with higher chance of democracy. - its unclear whether highly skilled migration helps grow this middle class through increasing remittances and a growing economy, or removes the most capable people who could be starting businesses and making their home country a better place. Its worth noting that programs like this don't just take high school graduates, they usually take the cream of the crop who were likely to do very well in their home conutry as well.
I'm not saying you're wrong, just that its complicated and far from a slamdunk that this will increase support for liberal democracies.
AnonymousTurtle @ 2024-04-02T02:37 (+17)
https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/1brg5t3/the_deaths_of_effective_altruism/kx91f5k/ Scott Alexander response to the Leif Wenar article
titotal @ 2024-04-02T08:02 (+2)
In the comment, Scott claims that only 1% of nets are "misused". I wasn't able to find any sources backing this up in the linked articles, does anyone know where this figure comes from?
the articles state that somewhere from 65-90% of nets are being used, depending on the study, but doesn't state what happened to the unused nets.
AnonymousTurtle @ 2024-04-09T16:40 (+1)
r/philosophy response: https://old.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/1bw3ok2/the_deaths_of_effective_altruism_wired_march_2024/
to what extent was the ongoing death of effective altruism, as this article puts it, caused by the various problems it inherited from utilitarianism? The inability to effectively quantify human wellbeing, for instance, or the ways in which Singer's drowning child analogy (a foundation of EA) seems to discount the possibility that some people (say, children that we have brought into the world) might have special moral claims on us that other people do not.
Don't think it's really because of its philosophical consequences. EA as an organization was super corrupt and suspicious. That's why it's falling apart. Like it quickly went from "buy the best mosquito net" to "make sure AI doesn't wipe out humanity". Oh and also let's buy a castle as EA headquarters. Its motivations quickly shifted from charity work to prostelyzation.
Most of its issues seem to fundamentally lie in the fact that it's an organization run by wealthy, privileged people that use "rationality" to justify their actions.