Announcing grant from the Open Philanthropy Project to the Centre for Effective Altruism
CEA update, August 2017
Changes to the EA Forum
Over the last several years, the EA Forum has been run on a volunteer-led basis. Given how much the EA community has grown, the volunteers who have been running the Forum have decided to transition primary responsibility for the EA Forum to the Centre for Effective Altruism. In practice, this should mean that things run much as they have done, but means that volunteers no longer have to be responsible for coordinating the technical maintenance of the Forum.
Considering considerateness: Why communities of do-gooders should be exceptionally considerate
Summary:[1] When interacting with others you can be considerate of their preferences, for instance by being friendly or reliable. This normally has small positive direct effects. But, by improving your reputation or strengthening aspects of culture that make a community more cooperative, the positive indirect effects can be large.
Selecting the appropriate model for diminishing returns
In a previous post, Max suggested two key ways of thinking about diminishing returns: funding gaps and returns functions. He also set out two classes of considerations that are generally desirable in models: closeness of fit and clarity.
Defining returns functions and funding gaps
As organisations receive more funding, the value of extra funding changes. This is relevant for donation decisions. People have used various concepts to discuss this feature:
What CEA is currently focusing on and why
The fidelity model of spreading ideas
The value of money going to different groups
It is well known that an extra dollar is worth less when you have more money. This paper describes the way economists typically model that effect, using that to compare the effectiveness of different interventions. It takes remittances as a particular case study.