Top products from r/EffectiveAltruism

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Top comments that mention products on r/EffectiveAltruism:

u/lamson12 · 1 pointr/EffectiveAltruism

I should have mentioned that I was optimizing for environmental impact and health, not just money and time. Also, I thought I worded things with enough caveats to prevent point-by-point refutations, but since I seem to have failed, I will make some general comments about your reply.

When it comes to EA, there are two options: either work for/found an EA org, or donate money. I would consider volunteering for events to be a relatively minor activity. Most people won't have the skills to directly contribute yet, so while they're building up those skills with that "second job" I mentioned, they'll be working a normal job and donating money. In this case, it would make sense to pick the job with the highest earning potential. Assuming a suitable amount of grit, humanities majors can go to a boot-camp and go into web development and STEM majors can go through a few programming textbooks and work for a major tech company. The major bottleneck comes from being able to actually program versus being able to pass tests in a CS class. As Cal Newport says, taking the time to get good at a skill is the differentiating factor between having your pick of jobs and hoping you get a job at all. Luckily, according to the BLS, software developers and web developers will see greater than average job growth, so even if you aren't in the top 1% of your field, you will still be able to land a job. And yes, as I stated earlier, not everyone is going to become a programmer, but it's definitely worth a hard look.

I agree that getting a used car makes sense for some people, but given that most trips don't consist of a trunk full of groceries and filled passenger seats, I would seriously consider the alternative. Also, fast food and delivered food is vastly inferior to Soylent and other meal replacements, in terms of time-efficiency as well as health. Also, I'm slightly horrified that you mentioned the two options that run counter to the EA values of concern for the environment and concern for animals.

The video I linked to earlier talks about the tax benefits of real estate. Given that the real estate market is highly illiquid, this also means that it's not an efficient market at all. That's why you have house flippers and companies like Fundrise. The other main investment vehicle people think of besides real estate is stocks, but leveraged ETFs only allow you to leverage your money 2-3x , which is a far cry from the nearly 30x from real estate. Given that real estate appreciates in pace with inflation and the fact that you have greater leverage, this beats out the 7% average growth of stocks. I would argue that the reason why people choose other types of investments is a lack of knowledge. If you didn't know, for instance, that there is a process to landlording, you would deem the task of renting out and managing properties to be unfeasible. So, far from being tied down to one place, if another job opportunity comes up, you can just rent out your current residence and get a mortgage for a house in that new location. Now, I would not consider real estate to be a "hugely leveraged bet." You are buying and holding an asset that pays for itself in 30 years. That's it. Seems straightforward to me. If you're worried about illiquidity, HELOCs completely mitigate that concern. Of course, this whole real estate thing seems risky if you're bad at managing your money, but if you can do that, then the numbers check out.

Now, even though donating now has long run effects, the compounding returns of real estate dictate that it would be prudent that allocate a nonzero amount of disposable income towards real estate. Fermi estimate. How big that amount is will depend on how confident you are in the potential for future EA opportunities that have a greater impact than the options available today. Given that we have just started founding high-impact charities within the past few years, I would argue that the number of higher-impact-than-AMF charities will only grow.

u/PBandEmbalmingFluid · 1 pointr/EffectiveAltruism

Sorry for sort of grave-digging this thread, but does this mean that African population growth should be a concern for EA's? Do we have any good reasons to believe that donating money to charities that work in Africa might contribute to an increase in the population to unsustainable levels, which might cause famine and mass migration, especially combined with the effects of climate change?

Bill Gates seems to be worried about the possibility of the trend of reducing global poverty being reversed, which may lead to instability, and urges investment in the human capital (education and health) of young Africans. But, will education really be enough? I'm a bit skeptical of the human capital story after reading The Case Against Education.

So far the only discussion I've seen in the EA community is here, but that didn't really convince me either way.

Right now, I think that whatever good work is being done in Africa now, like Against Malaria, is well worth it, even considering the chance of a future famine, for a few reasons:

  1. It seems doubtful to me that actions taken by EA's, like donating to Against Malaria, would actually form a tipping point that would push Africa into famine that wouldn't have occurred otherwise.

  2. We can only guess at what will happen in the future. The changes are gradual, so improvements in technology or distribution may prevent things from becoming catastrophic. Also, certain EA-backed efforts are likely helping to improve economic growth, which could help improve agricultural efficiency.

  3. The chance of a catastrophic famine leading to mass instability and migration would have to be weighed against all the lives that are being saved now. It is possible that more lives will be saved or improved than will be negatively effected by a large famine.

    That being said, these are just some intuitions. I haven't thought deeply about the topic. /u/UmamiTofu, do you know if this sort of thing has been looked at before by people in the EA community?
u/shark_to_water · 1 pointr/EffectiveAltruism

I hear you. I think your concern is well motivated, and it's worth asking the question.

But would you reject a well researched book like this https://www.amazon.com/Ethics-What-We-Eat-Choices/dp/1594866872 just because Peter Singer is a well-known advocate for animal welfare? I mean, isn't there a reason why an eminent and serious philosopher like Singer was convinced to take up the cause in the first place? Does he seem like the type who shoehorns conclusions to fit his biases?

u/honeypuppy · 5 pointsr/EffectiveAltruism

Bryan Caplan would probably say so.
(He's also written a book called Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, which (predictably) focuses on the selfish reasons as well.)

>Because much government spending is non-rival, estimates of the fiscal externality of a new baby are positive and large. The highest-quality study is probably Wolf et al (forthcoming).[22] For the United States, it calculates a positive externality of $217,000 $83,000 [figured modified by me to show correction] in 2009 dollars—roughly five times per-capita GDP.[23]

However, you might reasonably consider yourself likely to have above-average children, in which case the fiscal externalities would likely be larger. There are many other possible positive externalities too - your child may not become an effective altruist, but they might nonetheless still have a good chance of having a positive impact. There are negative externalities (such as an increased carbon footprint) too, but it's important to not give these considerations undue weight (as some people seem to).

u/Allan53 · 2 pointsr/EffectiveAltruism

Further to /u/UmamiSalami 's suggestion, you may want to think about reading What Color Is Your Parachute. It does a good job of giving you a guide to how to apply for jobs, even at big firms (although they do recommend going for smaller ones).

On that note: how big is the wage difference at, say, Google/Facebook vs a smaller company, in the same role? A quick Google (heh) said that a software engineer makes ~$100,000 a year there, which is more or less on par for the average? Plus, long-term, even if you start out on say $70 - 80,000 a year, that's still a lot, and it's likely to go up as you gain experience and skills. So within five years, you could easily be pulling down $100,000 if you work hard, even if not at Google.

I wouldn't get too hung up on the big firms, just do as well as you can in your current situation and aim for the job you want, taking 80,000 Hours suggestions as a suggestion.

u/Qgqqqqq · 3 pointsr/EffectiveAltruism

Ooh, this is a sub, good to know.

I wasn't wanting to influence those doing the reading, but here's my initial pitch for The Bottom Billion:

> I'd humbly suggest The Bottom Billion as the first submission. I chose it because it was touted as the balanced perspective on development economics by the /r/economics sidebar, and I think it represents this subs focus.

> The premise is that, since the 1960s, where 1/6th of the world was rich and the rest poor, real strides have been made worldwide, with some 4/6ths of the world being lifted out of poverty to middle income. At the turn of the millenia, this gives us 1 billion rich, 4 billion middle income and 1 billion that has been left behind, with incomes stagnant or falling in this period. Collier than examines why this is, and offers solutions.

> I think this is a title worthy of the audience of /r/globalistshills because a) it is heavily evidence-based, but more importantly b) it represents the twin premise of this sub, that the (((neoliberal))) consensus has worked for the betterment of billions of people, but there are still problems in the world, and we need evidence-based policy to solve them.

> Obviously we can use another text if of the powers that be prefer, but I think this would be an excellent start.

> Caveat that I've not actually got very far in it yet, but I want to discuss it with people when I'm done.

I've read the book now, so I'm happy to answer any questions about its content and recommendations. I'm not an expert in the field, though, with this being the first work I've read directly dealing with this topic.

u/[deleted] · 4 pointsr/EffectiveAltruism

Yes, that makes sense in context. I added "Doing Good Better" to my reading list. Thanks!

u/nootherhell · 2 pointsr/EffectiveAltruism
  • Effective Altruism: How Can We Best Help Others? by Magnus Vinding (available for free and on Amazon)
  • Effective Altruism online course with Peter Singer
  • [More advanced] Resources at EA Hub
u/decreasingworldsuck · 1 pointr/EffectiveAltruism

Yep, makes sense. (Although if JS Mill isn't your kind of thing, I know Animal Liberation has compelled a lot of people on the animals front, and borrows a lot of ethical framing from social movements generally as opposed to just utilitarianism stuff)

In that case, as someone else has mentioned, I would go with SCI - its the highest ranked deworming org that GiveWell has, and after AMF will likely have the biggest funding gaps after expected contributions from other big donors.

u/UmamiTofu · 2 pointsr/EffectiveAltruism

I notice he didn't say anything about importance! I was hoping for a nod to Caplan.

u/industrialprogress · 7 pointsr/EffectiveAltruism

There's a great book entitled The Health Hazards of Not Going Nuclear, which makes the affirmative argument.

u/adamaero · 1 pointr/EffectiveAltruism

Start learning a programming language to eventually do some contract work from UpWork or something:
Python Crash Course: A Hands-On, Project-Based Introduction.

u/fqrh · 7 pointsr/EffectiveAltruism

Amazon link The full title is "Inadequate Equilibria: Where and How Civilizations Get Stuck", and it is by Eliezer Yudkowsky. Here is a review, which seems long enough to be another book itself.