Podcasts about animal charity evaluators

Cross-posted from Good Structures. For impact-minded donors, it's natural to focus on doing the most cost-effective thing. Suppose you're genuinely neutral on what you do, as long as it maximizes the good. If you're donating money, you want to look for the most cost-effective opportunity (on the margin) and donate to it. But many organizations and individuals who care about cost-effectiveness try to influence the giving of others. This includes: Research organizations that try to influence the allocation or use of charitable funds. Donor advisors who work with donors to find promising opportunities. People arguing to community members on venues like the EA Forum. Charity recommenders like GiveWell and Animal Charity Evaluators. These are endeavors where you're specifically trying to influence the giving of others. And when you influence the giving of others, you don't get full credit for their decisions! You should only get credit for how much better the thing you convinced them to do is compared to what they would otherwise do. This is something that many people in EA and related communities take for granted and find obvious in the abstract. But I think the implications of this aren't always fully digested by the [...] ---Outline:(03:34) Impact is largely a function of what the donor would have done otherwise.(04:36) Is improving the use of effective or ineffective charitable dollars easier?(06:14) How do people respond to these lower impact interventions?(08:14) What are the implications of paying a lot more attention to funding counterfactuals?(10:21) Objections to this argument. --- First published: November 12th, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/YrMFHJm7mbswJd7Me/the-overall-cost-effectiveness-of-an-intervention-often --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

16 minute read We update our list of Recommended Charities annually. This year, we announced recommendations on November 4. Each year, hundreds of billions of animals are trapped in the food industry and killed for food —that is more than all the humans who have ever walked on the face of the Earth.1 When faced with such a magnitude of suffering, it can feel overwhelming and hard to know how to help. One of the most impactful things you can do to help animals is to donate to effective animal charities—even a small donation can have a big impact. Our goal is to help you do the most good for animals by providing you with effective giving opportunities that greatly reduce their suffering. Following our comprehensive charity evaluations, we are pleased to announce our Recommended Charities!Charities awarded the status in 2025Charities retaining the status from 2024Animal Welfare ObservatoryAquatic Life InstituteShrimp Welfare ProjectÇiftlik Hayvanlarını Koruma DerneğiSociedade Vegetariana BrasileiraDansk Vegetarisk ForeningThe Humane LeagueGood Food FundWild Animal InitiativeSinergia Animal The Humane League (working globally), Shrimp Welfare Project (in Central and South America, Southeast Asia, and India), and Wild Animal Initiative (global) have continued to work on the most important issues for animals [...] ---Outline:(03:54) Charities Recommended in 2025(03:59) Animal Welfare Observatory(05:44) Shrimp Welfare Project(07:38) Sociedade Vegetariana Brasileira(09:41) The Humane League(11:22) Wild Animal Initiative(13:15) Charities Recommended in 2024(13:20) Aquatic Life Institute(15:25) Çiftlik Hayvanlarını Koruma Derneği(17:34) Dansk Vegetarisk Forening(19:18) The Good Food Fund(21:19) Sinergia Animal(23:20) Support our Recommended Charities The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: November 4th, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/waL3iwczrjNt8PreZ/announcing-ace-s-2025-charity-recommendations --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Killing two people is worse than killing one. What about 440 billion crustaceans? Adapted from Dylan Matthews's essay on Vox.com. This story is part of a series supported by Animal Charity Evaluators, which received a grant from EarthShare. For show transcripts, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/unxtranscripts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ For more, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/unexplainable⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ And please email us! ⁠⁠⁠⁠unexplainable@vox.com⁠⁠⁠⁠ We read every email. Support Unexplainable (and get ad-free episodes) by becoming a Vox Member today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/members⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Thank you! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today we're talking about a topic that's really important to me personally: donating and effective giving. Specifically, why donating 10% of your income to the most effective animal charities might be one of the most important things you can do to improve the world.To dive deep into this topic, I'm so excited to have Sjir Hoeijmakers on the show today. Sjir is the CEO of Giving What We Can (GWWC), the global organisation promoting effective giving and the 10% pledge. Even more impressive than this, he donates around 50% of his income to effective charities, so he really puts his money where his mouth is! In our conversation, we talk about the impact your donation can have, why it also makes sense for people who work full-time in the movement and why the act of pledging really matters. We also talk about another important part of Giving What We Can's work: Their evaluation of regrantors and evaluators, including the Effective Altruism Animal Welfare Fund and Animal Charity Evaluators. If anything we talk about today sparks your interest, I really encourage you to consider taking the trial pledge, where you can pledge to give just 1% of your income to effective charities. It's a great way to test it out and see if it works for you. Personally, taking the pledge is one of the things I'm proudest of. Because of this, I'll be donating £50 to Giving What We Can's effective animal advocacy fund for each person who takes the trial pledge or full 10% pledge, up to a total of £1000. So, if you sign up via the links below, there is a special tracker that will let me know how many people take it, and I'll donate accordingly. Take the

Stel, je hebt elke maand een paar euro in de over. Of je hebt net je startup naar de beurs gebracht en je hebt opeens miljoenen tot je beschikking. En stel, je denkt, ik ga er iets goeds mee doen. Dan vraag je je misschien af: waar kan ik mijn geld nou het beste aan doneren?  De goede doelen vechten om je aandacht. Van vrede op aarde tot hongerlijdende kinderen, van het kattenasiel tot campagnes voor plantaardig eten. Waar komt je euro nou het beste terecht? Daarover ga ik in gesprek met Bram Schaper van Stichting Doneer Effectief en Stien van der Ploeg van Animal Charity Evaluators._____________________________________________________Samen maken we meer mogelijk, steun onzepodcast en help ons groeien met jouw donatie:studioplantaardig.nl/donatie_____________________________________________________Doneer Effectief:https://doneereffectief.nl/Animal Charity Evaluators:https://animalcharityevaluators.org/De top 11 aanbevolen dierenorganisaties:https://animalcharityevaluators.org/recommended-charities/Het onderzoek naar de welzijnservaring van verschillende dieren:https://rethinkpriorities.org/research-area/welfare-range-estimates/Credits:Interview en montage: Esther MolenwijkAudio mixage: Marlon van der Pas, Nothing BlankHelp ons het plantaardige nieuws te verspreiden: deel deze podcast.Ga naar studioplantaardig.nl en volg ons via BlueSky, Mastodon, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok & #StudioPlantaardigGeef onze podcast ook een rating en schrijf een mooie recensie. Alvast enorm bedankt!

In this episode of Keep it Humane: The Podcast, we're exploring how smart, evidence-based giving can bridge the gap between farmed animals and the animals we see every day in our shelters. We sit down with the team from Farmkind.Giving, an organization that uses rigorous research to recommend top animal charities—ensuring that every donation goes to the most effective organizations.We'll learn how Farmkind.Giving's meticulous approach to charity evaluation mirrors the life-saving work animal shelters do every day—stretching limited resources, saving lives, and making every dollar count. From using Animal Charity Evaluators' in-depth research to collaborating with expert grantmakers, Farmkind.Giving helps donors maximize their impact, just like shelters aim to do for every animal in their care.Plus, we'll discuss their innovative Compassion Calculator—a unique tool that empowers anyone to “offset” the harm caused by factory farming, no diet change required. Just like animal shelters provide resources and support for our communities, Farmkind.Giving's approach to giving helps farmed animals and creates a kinder world for all.Tune in to discover how these lessons in smart giving can inspire animal shelter professionals, volunteers, and advocates to rethink how we can all do more good—together.

Read the full transcript here. Why do nonprofits often ignore the simplest, most obvious solutions for helping the world? Why do some problems get a lot of attention while others — often of equal or greater importance — go completely unaddressed? Why is behavior change so hard? When should or shouldn't NGOs collaborate with governments? Why are deworming effects not as immediately noticeable as might be expected? What sorts of incentive structures surround charities? How can NGOs and nonprofits gain the financial flexibility necessary to make better strategic bets and more principled decisions? What's more important for drawing in donors: stories or statistics? How do (or should) nonprofits measure the long-term economic effects on individuals of their interventions? How can you support the organizations and interventions mentioned in this episode?Kanika Bahl is CEO and President of Evidence Action where she has been on the Board since 2015. She is also a Trustee of Anthropic's Long-Term Benefit Trust. Previously she served as Managing Director at Results for Development (R4D), where she established and led the Market Dynamics practice. The practice has increased access to products such as childhood pneumonia treatments and malaria bed nets for millions of individuals in Africa and Asia. Prior to R4D, Kanika served as an Executive Vice President at the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) where she established greenfield operations in 17 African countries. She launched and led a $400M, 33-country public-private facility focused on driving access to new HIV/AIDS drugs and diagnostics. She received her MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and her BA in Mathematical Economics from Rice University. Find out more about the work of Evidence Action at evidenceaction.org, email them at info@evidenceaction.org, or connect with them on social media at @evidenceaction.Further readingDeworm the World Sponsor ✨This episode is sponsored by Animal Charity Evaluators.StaffSpencer Greenberg — Host / DirectorJosh Castle — ProducerRyan Kessler — Audio EngineerUri Bram — FactotumWeAmplify — TranscriptionistsIgor Scaldini — Marketing ConsultantMusicBroke for FreeJosh WoodwardLee RosevereQuiet Music for Tiny Robotswowamusiczapsplat.comAffiliatesClearer ThinkingGuidedTrackMind EasePositlyUpLift[Read more]

Read the full transcript here. How bad are things in US education? Why does it seem that educational progress has stagnated? What parts of the US education system should be reformed? Is it better to group students by skill level or by age? How useful are standardized tests? Why is there so commonly a disconnect between what cognitive science tells us about how people learn and the practices that are actually implemented in classrooms? How much do we know about what it's like in schools today? What did the No Child Left Behind act get wrong? What should educational incentive structures look like? Is individual student progress constrained more by interest or intelligence? In the grand scheme of things, how big of a problem is classroom management? What happened in the FAA hiring scandal? Did it increase the risks associated with flying? How could the FAA have better achieved its own ends?Jack Despain Zhou, also known online as Tracing Woodgrains, is the cofounder of the Center for Educational Progress, a nonprofit focused on reorienting education around a culture of excellence. Elsewhere, he is known for his coverage of institutional crises and online history, particularly the FAA's hiring scandal and Wikipedia abuse, and for cultural and political commentary from an ex-Mormon centrist perspective. He previously helped produce Blocked and Reported, a podcast about internet nonsense. He can be found on Substack as Tracing Woodgrains or on Twitter as @tracewoodgrains.Further readingProject Follow Through Sponsor ✨This episode is sponsored by Animal Charity Evaluators.StaffSpencer Greenberg — Host / DirectorJosh Castle — ProducerRyan Kessler — Audio EngineerUri Bram — FactotumWeAmplify — TranscriptionistsMusicBroke for FreeJosh WoodwardLee RosevereQuiet Music for Tiny Robotswowamusiczapsplat.comAffiliatesClearer ThinkingGuidedTrackMind EasePositlyUpLift[Read more]

Summary In this article, I estimate the cost-effectiveness of five Anima International programs in Poland: improving cage-free and broiler welfare, blocking new factory farms, banning fur farming, and encouraging retailers to sell more plant-based protein. I estimate that together, these programs help roughly 136 animals—or 32 years of farmed animal life—per dollar spent. Animal years affected per dollar spent was within an order of magnitude for all five evaluated interventions. I also tried to estimate how much suffering each program alleviates. Using SADs (Suffering-Adjusted Days)—a metric developed by Ambitious Impact (AIM) that accounts for species differences and pain intensity—Anima's programs appear highly cost-effective, even compared to charities recommended by Animal Charity Evaluators. However, I also ran a small informal survey to understand how people intuitively weigh different categories of pain defined by the Welfare Footprint Institute. The results suggested that SADs may heavily underweight brief but intense suffering. Based [...] ---Outline:(02:16) Background(02:46) Results(05:57) Explanations of the programs(08:59) Why these estimates are very uncertain(13:48) Animal welfare metric(16:42) Comparison to SADs(19:42) Comparison to other charities(19:47) Comparisons of SADs estimates(20:54) Comparisons of cage-free estimates(24:26) For how many years do reforms have an impact?(25:21) Cage-free(29:45) Broilers(31:18) Stop the farms(32:57) Fur farmsThe original text contained 8 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: April 10th, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/sLYSa7MyuDKxreN5h/cost-effectiveness-of-anima-international-poland-1 --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Scientist Dr. Rachel Mason joins us to break down her groundbreaking research on dismantling industrial animal agriculture through systems thinking. From her work with Animal Charity Evaluators to her current research using AI to track factory farms globally, Dr. Mason reveals how different forms of activism can work together for maximum impact in challenging factory farming. This episode explores: How the…

Introduction The Giving What We Can research team is excited to share the results of our 2024 round of evaluations of charity evaluators and grantmakers! In this round, we completed three evaluations that will inform our donation recommendations for the 2024 giving season. As with our 2023 round, there are substantial limitations to these evaluations, but we nevertheless think that they are a significant improvement to a landscape in which there were no independent evaluations of evaluators' work. In this post, we share the key takeaways from each of our 2024 evaluations and link to the full reports. We also include an update explaining our decision to remove The Humane League from our list of recommended programs. Our website has now been updated to reflect the new fund and charity recommendations that came out of these evaluations. Please also see our website for more context on [...] ---Outline:(00:14) Introduction(01:16) Key takeaways from each of our 2024 evaluations(01:39) Global health and wellbeing(01:44) Founders Pledge Global Health and Development Fund (FP GHDF)(04:07) Animal welfare(04:11) Animal Charity Evaluators' Movement Grants (ACE MG)(06:08) Animal Charity Evaluators' Charity Evaluation Program(08:33) Additional recommendation updates(08:37) The Humane League's corporate campaigns program(11:26) ConclusionThe original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: November 27th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/NhpAHDQq6iWhk7SEs/gwwc-s-2024-evaluations-of-evaluators-1 --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Introduction The Giving What We Can research team is excited to share the results of our 2024 round of evaluations of charity evaluators and grantmakers! In this round, we completed three evaluations that will inform our donation recommendations for the 2024 giving season. As with our 2023 round, there are substantial limitations to these evaluations, but we nevertheless think that they are a significant improvement to a landscape in which there were no independent evaluations of evaluators' work. In this post, we share the key takeaways from each of our 2024 evaluations and link to the full reports. We also include an update explaining our decision to remove The Humane League from our list of recommended programs. Our website has now been updated to reflect the new fund and charity recommendations that came out of these evaluations. Please also see our website for more context on [...] ---Outline:(00:10) Introduction(01:13) Key takeaways from each of our 2024 evaluations(01:36) Global health and wellbeing(01:41) Founders Pledge Global Health and Development Fund (FP GHDF)(04:07) Animal welfare(04:10) Animal Charity Evaluators' Movement Grants (ACE MG)(06:08) Animal Charity Evaluators' Charity Evaluation Program(08:35) Additional recommendation updates(08:39) The Humane League's corporate campaigns program(11:29) ConclusionThe original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: November 27th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/NhpAHDQq6iWhk7SEs/gwwc-s-2024-evaluations-of-evaluators-1 --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: FarmKind (a new animal fundraising platform) is live - Please DON'T DONATE, published by Aidan Alexander on August 2, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum. TL;DR FarmKind is a new effective giving platform dedicated to tackling factory farming We've just launched - www.farmkind.giving There are many ways you can help us if you're interested - details below FarmKind's aim Factory farming is one of the most neglected cause areas relative to the amount of suffering it causes. Globally, Farmed Animal Funders estimates that just $200 million is channeled specifically to this issue,[1] while more than 10 billion land animals (excluding insects) are factory farmed annually in the US alone.[2] Even when it comes to effective altruism, factory farming is a minority within a minority. We estimate that less than 10% of the funds raised by effective giving organizations go to factory farming.[3] All this despite the fact that proven interventions in the lives of factory-farmed animals remain arguably some of the most cost-effective ways to prevent suffering that we have yet discovered. The lack of funding has several consequences: 1. Proven strategies for reducing suffering are being scaled more slowly. 2. Promising new interventions struggle to get off the ground. 3. The space is overly reliant on a few large funders, posing many structural risks. FarmKind's mission is to increase funding for farmed animal charities by bringing in new donors and donations. To do this, we've built a platform inspired by the innovative work of Prof. Joshua Greene and Dr. Lucius Caviola and their Giving Multiplier platform, tailored specifically to raise money for farmed animal charities. People donate because they feel compassion but also want their donations to be spent wisely and have an impact. FarmKind seeks to meet both these motivations so people can feel good while they do a huge amount of good too. We work with expert charity evaluators, including Animal Charity Evaluators, to find charities that are super-effective at making the lives of factory-farmed animals better. We help donors give to a curated set of these charities while, at the same time, splitting their donation with their favorite charities. Then FarmKind boosts both donations with a bonus. We hope that, by increasing funding to these higher-profile and more thoroughly evaluated organizations, we will be able to free up other funders to look at interventions that require more vetting than we currently have the capacity for. Our story so far FarmKind was incubated in the first Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program of 2024, in April this year. Since then, founders Aidan Alexander and Thom Norman have been working to launch our giving platform as soon as possible. We have now launched our platform and are receiving donations. You can find us here: www.farmkind.giving To get to this point so far would not have been possible without the amazing support of a lot of people who want to see a better world for animals. In particular, our platform would not have been possible without Hive's Douglas Browne, Violet Studios or Every.org. Many others have helped us get to launch, are too many people to list here, but please check out our acknowledgements on our site here. DON'T donate through us (please) If you're reading this post, our platform isn't aimed at you. We aim to convert new donors to supporting effective farmed animal welfare. If people who would have given to our recommended charities anyway donate through our platform it doesn't add any value, and what's more, by using up limiting matching funding, donating through our platform hurts our ability incentivise counterfactual donations. If, however, you're the type of person who gives to ACE recommended charities already, you may be interested in giving to them via our bonus...

An absolute treat of an episode this week as we were asked to interview long-time advocates Leah Garcés and Sharon Núñez, live from the Animal and Vegan advocacy summit in Washington DC in May earlier this year.From anger in Leah's 20's to some eye opening potential prison-time in the past for Sharon, our esteemed guests walk us through their experiences over the last 20 years of their tireless work for animals. A nostalgic and powerful look back and projection forward from these two powerhouse leaders. Leah Garcés is president of Mercy For Animals and author of Grilled: Turning Adversaries into Allies to Change the Chicken Industry. She has nearly 20 years of leadership experience in the animal protection movement and has partnered with some of the world's largest food companies on her mission to build a better food system.Sharon Núñez is the co-founder and president of Animal Equality, a leading international animal protection organization ranked as one of the most effective animal rights organizations in the world for three consecutive years by Animal Charity Evaluators.Show notes to follow..00:00:00:00 | Intro00:01:10:10 | How have things changed in the past 20 years?00:06:10:16 | What sparked a different approach for a long fight?00:14:42:16 | Key challenges over the past 20 years00:22:22:15 | Resources00:28:01:10 | Strategic lessons00:34:46:01 | Personal lessons00:41:35:05 | Can we be optimistic with the change of the last 20 years?00:45:47:14 | Should resources be going to new organizations or the largest ones?00:49:19:16 | How do you balance work in the Movement and your personal life?00:53:27:02 | What has to be done to fulfill all the corporate commitment in the next few yearsIf you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - we would really appreciate it! Likewise, feel free to share it with anyone who you think might enjoy it. You can send us feedback and guest recommendations via Twitter or email us at hello@howilearnedtoloveshrimp.com. Enjoy!

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Linkpost: A landscape analysis of wild animal welfare, published by William McAuliffe on June 12, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Executive Summary Introductions to wild animal welfare as a moral concern abound, but there is no centralized overview of efforts to help wild animals. Using interviews and publicly available material, we describe the theories of change of five organizations working on wild animal welfare: Wild Animal Initiative, Welfare Footprint, Animal Ethics, Animal Charity Evaluators, and New York University's (NYU) Wild Animal Welfare program. Our synthesis reveals several commonalities: Academic outreach is the main tactic. Organizations have a cautious attitude towards controversial efforts to ameliorate non-anthropogenic harms. Organizations have focused mostly on helping mammals and birds so far. All organizations have room for more funding. To contextualize these trends, we assume that there are three preconditions to improving the aggregate welfare of wild animals at scale: 1. Valid measurement: Knowledge of (a) how to measure the welfare of wild animals and (b) the causal relationships among the factors that influence it. 2. Technical Ability: Technology and skill to implement interventions to help wild animals at scale, while minimizing unintended negative consequences. 3. Stakeholder Buy-In: Consent from stakeholders with veto power, and collaboration from stakeholders who can implement scalable interventions. When comparing the needs of the movement with organizations' activities, we see the following gaps: Academic outreach efforts do not yet focus on the most abundant taxa, or make salient the outsized role they play in determining the aggregate welfare of an ecosystem. There is little targeted outreach to groups other than academics. There is little work advancing Technical Ability. There are few investments in implementing interventions in the near-term. Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: 170 to 700 billion fish raised and fed live to mandarin fish in China per year, published by MichaelStJules on June 8, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Summary 1. Around 1.2 to 1.9 trillion fish fry have been produced by artificial propagation (breeding) annually in China, and it seems those farmed for direct human consumption and pre-harvest mortality can only account for at most around 460 billion of them (more). 2. I estimate that 170 billion to 700 billion animals (my 80% credible interval) - probably almost all artificially propagated fish - are fed live to mandarin fish (or Chinese perch), Siniperca chuatsi, in China annually, with 9 to 55 billion of them (my 80% credible interval) alive at any time (more, Guesstimate model). 3. By contrast, the number of farmed fish produced globally for direct human consumption is around 111 billion per year, and 103 billion alive at a time, with another 35 to 150 billion raised and stocked per year (Šimčikas, 2020). 4. It's unclear how bad their deaths are as live feed to mandarin fish, but I'd guess they die by suffocation, digestion (stomach acid, enzymes), or mechanical injury, e.g. crushing, after being swallowed live, and probably a common way for aquatic animals to die by predation by fish in the wild (more). 5. It's unclear if there's much we can do to help these feed fish. There's been some progress in substituting artificial diets (including dead animal protein) for live feed for mandarin fish, but this has been a topic of research for over 20 years. Human diet interventions would need to be fairly targeted to be effective. I give a shallow overview of some possible interventions and encourage further investigation (more). Acknowledgements Thanks to Vasco Grilo, Saulius Šimčikas and Max Carpendale for feedback. All errors are my own. Fish fry production in China One of the early developmental stages of fish is the fry stage (Juvenile fish - Wikipedia). Šimčikas (2019, EA Forum), in his appendix section, raised the question of why hundreds of billions of fish fry were produced artificially (via artificial breeding, i.e. artificial propagation) in China in each of multiple years, yet only "28-92 billion" farmed fish were produced in China in 2015, "according to an estimate from Fishcount". He found that if the apparent discrepancy were due to pre-slaughter mortality, then this would indicate unusually low survival rates. He left open the reason for the apparent discrepancy and recommended further investigation. Before going into potential explanations for the discrepancy, I share some more recent numbers for the artificial propagation of fish: 1.9143 trillion fish fry in China in 2013 (Li & Xia, 2018) and 1.252 trillion freshwater fry and 167 million marine fish fry in China in 2019 (Hu et al., 2021). The 2019 numbers seem substantially lower than in 2013, so the trend may have reversed, one of these numbers is inaccurate, there's high variance across years or one of the years was unusual. Li and Xia (2018) also plot the trend over time up to 2013, along with total freshwater aquaculture: 28 to 92 billion farmed fish produced in China in 2015 (Fishcount) from 1 to 2 trillion artificially propagated fish fry, would suggest a pre-slaughter/pre-harvest survival rate of 1.4% to 9.2% (from the fry stage on). Survival rates are typically at least 20% for the most commonly farmed species, including carps and tilapias (Animal Charity Evaluators, 2020, table 4), for which China accounts for most production. And Šimčikas (2019, EA Forum) notes: Since hatchery-produced juveniles are already past the first stage of their lives in which pre-slaughter mortality is the highest, mortality during the grow-out period shouldn't be that high. Under fairly generous assumptions for an explanation based on pre-harvest mortality, using ...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: How good it is to donate and how hard it is to get a job, published by Elijah Persson-Gordon on April 17, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Summary In this post, I hope to inspire other Effective Altruists to focus more on donation and commiserate with those who have been disappointed in their ability to get an altruistic job. First, I argue that the impact of having a job that helps others is complicated. In this section, I discuss annual donation statistics of people in the Effective Altruism community donate, which I find quite low. In the rest of the post, I describe my recent job search, my experience substituting at public schools, and my expenses. Having a job that helps others might be overemphasized Doing a job that helps others seems like a good thing to do. Weirdly, it's not as simple as that. While some job vacancies last for years, other fields are very competitive and have many qualified applicants for most position listings. In the latter case, if you take the job offer, you may think you are doing good in the world. But if you hadn't taken the job, there could be someone in your position doing nearly as good as you (or better, depending on if you were overstating your qualifications.) In animal welfare in particular, jobs get many applicants. Lauren Mee, from Animal Advocacy Careers, on the podcast How I Learned to Love Shrimp: "...there's an interesting irony in the movement where there is actually a lot of people who are interested in working in the movement and not enough roles for all of those people." There is some social pressure within and outside of the Effective Altruism community to have a meaningful job where you help others. Although there is a lot of focus on impactful careers, Rethink Priorities' 2020 Effective Altruism survey found that around only 10% of non-student respondents worked at an Effective Altruism organization. Donations are an amazing opportunity, and I think they are underemphasized I was confused to find that most people I talked to in Effective Altruism settings did not seem to be frugal or donate very much. It seems that this is correct. In the 2020 Effective Altruism survey , among respondents who opted to share their donation amounts, donating $10,000 annually would place you within the top 10% of donors. The median for these respondents was close to $500 per year. (Mostly, they donate to global poverty.) A lot of people in rich countries have flexibility in where their money goes. This money could be put toward their best bets of doing good in the world. Which is more likely to do good: going out to eat, or helping to fund an effective charity? It seems to me that you would have to think that the most effective charities are not that effective or that your contributions would be too small to make an impact to choose the former. To understand more about the effectiveness of charities, I would highly recommend talking to someone from the charity and asking your specific doubts. As for small contributions, I am not exactly sure how to think about them, and hope to write about this topic in the future. However, it seems to me that many charities make purchases in the thousands of dollars, which could be an achievable amount to donate over a year. For instance, Fish Welfare Initiative's 2024 budget includes numbers in the thousands. I used to really want an animal welfare-related job. Then I wanted to donate more. Now I am a substitute at a public school I graduated in May of 2023 and have since been interested in an animal welfare job. I have applied to a handful of these positions, realizing over time that the applicant pools were larger than I thought; the researcher position at Animal Charity Evaluators had 375 applicants. After moving back to a more rural area to be around friends and family, I looked into busin...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: ACE's New Application Process for Our 2024 Charity Evaluations, published by Animal Charity Evaluators on April 3, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Note: To prevent this important update from being overlooked due to April Fools' posts, the Forum team, with the authors' agreement, has changed the publication date to April 3rd." We are excited to announce that we are launching an application for our Charity Evaluations program. The new application form will help us simplify our evaluation process and obtain valuable information about organizations and their work at an early stage. Every year, we invite approximately 15 promising charities to participate in our evaluation process. To select this group of charities, we consider organizations around the world and assess whether they seem likely to do exceptional, cost-effective work to assist animals and, thus, become one of our Recommended Charities. To increase the chances of selecting and inviting the most effective organizations to our evaluation process, we have decided to introduce an application. Benefits of the new application process We expect that receiving essential information about organizations through the application form will help us make more informed decisions. Gathering relevant data from all organizations can help reduce potential biases such as misclassification bias, observer bias, and recall bias that may arise due to the high variance in the quantity and quality of publicly available information across organizations during the charity selection process. Ultimately, we aim to increase the likelihood of finding and recommending the most effective charities. The application form is intended to ensure charities meet the basic eligibility criteria and are willing and able to be evaluated. This will help to minimize the number of charities that decline our evaluation invitation, which can cause delays at the beginning of the evaluation season. Finally, we expect that this step will increase the transparency of our charity selection process. While we will not share the exact responses to the application questions for confidentiality reasons, we will be able to share anonymized, aggregate results to help clarify our decision-making at this stage. Limitations and how we will address them Having an application form requires more capacity on both sides. Charities need the capacity to respond to the application form, and our team needs the capacity to review applications before inviting charities. We aim to be mindful of everyone's capacity by asking only the most decision-relevant questions. With this in mind, we designed the application form in two dependent phases so that applicants who do not meet basic eligibility criteria (Phase 1) avoid spending unnecessary time responding to more in-depth questions (Phase 2). Because this is a new step we are implementing this year, we ran a pilot survey with potentially impactful charities to test the clarity and relevance of the application questions and gather more general feedback. We are very grateful to the pilot participants. Thanks to them, we have made important improvements to the application form and likely reduced the chance of unforeseen issues. Application content The application form is divided into two phases. Phase 1 consists of questions about the organization's basic details and eligibility. To meet the eligibility requirements to participate in our 2024 charity evaluations, charities must: Primarily work to help farmed animals and/or wild animals Not be in an exploratory or testing phase where there is significant uncertainty about which of the charity's programs will be scaled up Have been an organization for at least three years Have at least three paid full-time equivalents (including full-time, part-time, and contractors) Have an annual exp...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Animal Charity Evaluators is doing a live AMA now!, published by Animal Charity Evaluators on March 7, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Starting now! Animal Charity Evaluators is holding an AMA on our Movement Grants! The AMA is your chance to ask our team about what projects we're likely to fund, the application process, how to make a good application, and anything else about the program. Applications close March 17, 11:59 PM PT. Our team members answering questions are: Eleanor McAree, Movement Grants Manager Elisabeth Ormandy, Programs Director Holly Baines, Communications Manager How to participate? Go to the FAST Forum (make sure you have an account) and ask a question. We look forward to hearing from you! Movement Grants is ACE's strategic grantmaking program dedicated to building and strengthening the animal advocacy movement. For a limited time, you can DOUBLE your donation to ACE's Movement Grants! By donating to this program, you are investing in the expansion of a broader advocacy movement and a brighter future for animal welfare. Thank you! Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Announcement: We're launching Effectief Geven, published by Bob Jacobs on March 5, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum. We are thrilled to announce the launch of EffectiefGeven.be, the Belgian chapter of the global movement towards more effective giving. After 5 months of diligent work, crafting our vision, strategy, and both short- and long-term plans, we are ready to introduce our platform to the world. What We're Bringing to the Table Website & Newsletter: Our newly launched website serves as a central hub for all things related to effective giving in Belgium, offering an initial summary of insights, with plans on expanding with more relevant information. Accompanying the website, our newsletter will provide regular updates on our progress, along with communication about events. Helpdesk & LinkedIn Presence: We understand the importance of accessible support and networking opportunities. Our helpdesk is here to provide guidance, answer any questions a donor might face. Additionally, our LinkedIn presence allows us to connect with a broader audience, facilitating professional networking and collaboration opportunities within the effective giving community. Curated Cause Areas: A list of charities has been selected based on the recommendations of GiveWell, Founders Pledge, and Animal Charity Evaluators. In the first version, this list is identical to Doneer Effectief in the Netherlands, as we will start off by using their donation platform. Short-term plans Public Lectures & Networking Events: We are planning a series of public lectures and networking events designed to engage, inform, inspire, and promote donating behavior. These events will bring together individuals passionate about making a difference. From seasoned philanthropists to those new to the concept of effective giving, our events aim to foster a vibrant community united by a common goal of maximizing impact. Tax Optimization: We understand that tax deductibility is important for many donors. The charities we offer on our website are not yet tax-deductible in Belgium. Belgium is a complex country, with an even more complex fiscal system… EA Belgium has undertaken quite some effort trying to solve this, but has, as of this moment, not been successful. There are currently some in-between solutions that we explain on our website (in Dutch). Our plan is to keep pushing this tax optimization forward, and to put some extra pressure on government departments by gathering public support for the idea of effective giving. The end goal is to make donations to Effectief Geven and its charities, tax-deductible. A hybrid donation platform: In collaboration with Doneer Effectief, the Dutch effective giving initiative, we will be creating a different theme on top of the preexisting platform of Effectief Geven. This means that we don't need to create our own platform in the first stages. We would also like to extend our gratitude to all the national Effective Giving organizations that we contacted to get us up to speed and who helped brainstorm with us (Brazil, Canada, Spain, Denmark, Germany, and Estonia). Special thanks to GWWC, the 10% club in the Netherlands, and especially Doneer Effectief in the Netherlands. Get Involved As we embark on this journey, we recognize the importance of community support and collaboration. Whether you're looking to contribute financially, partner with us, or participate in events, there are several ways you can get involved and make a real difference in the way we approach philanthropy in Belgium: Funding: Securing our first round of funding is critical to laying an initial, solid foundation for our operations and creating some decent runway. We are currently looking to raise our first funds to be able to rely on a full-time director, who can keep pushing us forward for the next year,...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Farmed animal funding towards Africa is growing but remains highly neglected, published by AnimalAdvocacyAfrica on February 21, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum. This post is a summary of our recent report "Mapping the Charitable Funding Landscape for Animal Welfare in Africa: Insights and Opportunities for Farmed Animal Advocacy". We only included the most relevant parts for EA Forum readers here and invite interested readers to consult the report for more details and insights. TL;DR Funding towards the farmed animal advocacy movement in Africa has grown significantly over the past years, especially from EA-aligned funders. Despite these increases, farmed animal advocacy remains underfunded. We hope that this report can help us and other stakeholders to more rapidly and effectively build the farmed animal advocacy movement in Africa. We aim to use and amplify the growing momentum identified in this report and call on any individual or organisations interested in contributing to this cause to contact us and/or increase their resources and focus dedicated towards farmed animal welfare in Africa. Motivation Industrial animal agriculture is expanding rapidly in Africa, with the continent projected to account for the largest absolute increase in farmed land animal numbers of any continent between 2012 and 2050 ( Kortschak, 2023). Despite its vast scale, the issue is highly neglected by charitable funding. Lewis Bollard ( 2019) estimated that farmed animal advocacy work in Africa received only USD 1 million in 2019, less than 1% of global funding for farmed animal advocacy. Farmed Animal Funders ( 2021) estimated funding to Africa at USD 2.5 million in 2021, a significantly higher but still very low amount. Accordingly, activists and organisations on the ground cite a lack of funding as the main bottleneck for their work ( Tan, 2021). Since 2021, Animal Advocacy Africa (AAA) has actively worked towards strengthening the farmed animal advocacy movement in Africa, with some focus on improving funding. With this report, we aim to understand the funding landscape for farmed animal advocacy in Africa in depth, identifying key actors, patterns, and trends. Notably, we focus on charitable grants and exclude any government funding that might be relevant as well. Our research aims to build transparency and enhance information on what is being done to help animals in Africa, which can help various stakeholders to make better decisions. While we focus on farmed animals, we also provide context on other animal groups. We hope that the findings from our analysis can contribute to funders shifting some of their resources from less neglected and potentially lower-impact projects to more neglected and potentially higher-impact ones. Data basis Based on the funding records of 131 funders that we suspected might have funded African animal causes in the past, we created a database of 2,136 records of grants towards animal projects in Africa. This grant data allowed us to base our analysis on real-world data, which provides an important improvement to previous research, which was typically based on self-reported surveys with funders and/or charities. Findings Overall funding levels We estimate at an 80% confidence level that the funders in scope for this analysis granted a total of USD 25 to 35 million to animal-related causes in Africa in 2020. These grants had substantially increased from 2018 to 2020. Funding for animal causes in Africa shows interesting patterns that contrast, to a certain extent, with trends observed in the animal advocacy movement globally ( Animal Charity Evaluators, 2024). Wild animal and conservation efforts receive the most funding. Notably, the projects in this category do not follow the wild animal suffering approach typically discussed in Effective Altruism ...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Call for Expressions of Interest: NYU Wild Animal Welfare Summit, published by Sofia Fogel on January 10, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Deadline: March 1, 2024 (followed by rolling submissions) Event: June 21-22, 2024 Location: New York University, New York, NY The NYU Wild Animal Welfare Program is hosting a two-day wild animal welfare summit on June 21-22, 2024. The aim of this event is to connect scholars with an interest in this topic, particularly scholars across a variety of fields and career stages. The first day of the summit will feature lightning talks and discussion sessions. The second day will feature breakout sessions for workshopping collaborative project ideas. Both days will also include vegan meals and plenty of networking opportunities. We welcome expressions of interest from scholars in all fields, particularly scholars who work in animal welfare or conservation science. Please note that funding for travel and hotel is available for early-career scholars, i.e., scholars within five years of their terminal degree. If you have interest in attending this summit, please send the below materials to Sofia Fogel at sofia.fogel@nyu.edu. We guarantee full consideration of all submissions received by March 1, 2024. We will also consider submissions received after that date on a rolling basis. Please include in your expression of interest: A CV or resume. A statement of interest with three elements: A short summary of your current research, your expected future research, and how your research relates to wild animal welfare. (500 words max.) (Optional) If you have ideas for collaborative research projects that you might like to discuss at this summit, please describe them. (250 words max.) (Optional) If you might like to give a lightning talk about your current or future research, please suggest a topic or set of topics. (250 words max.) Please note that if you answer questions (b) and (c), your answers can range from general (e.g., "Researching the effects of wildlife corridors on different kinds of species") to specific (e.g., "Measuring the effects of a new wildlife corridor in Yellowstone National Park on the movement of elk populations." Please also note that answering these questions does not commit you to discussing your ideas or presenting your work at the event. Topics that we see as within scope for this summit include, but are not limited to: How can we assess wild animal welfare at individual and population levels? How can we make welfare comparisons within and across species? What are the most common causes of morbidity and mortality for wild animals, and how do they vary within and across species? How does the project of improving wild animal welfare interact with the project of conserving species and ecosystems? What are the costs and benefits of different kinds of population control for different individuals, species, and ecosystems? How can we support individuals, species, and ecosystems in adapting to human-caused climate change and other such environmental changes? How can we support coordination and collaboration between scholars who work in animal welfare and environmental conservation, among other areas? How can we educate advocates, policymakers, and the general public about the relationship between human, animal, and environmental protection? If you are interested in these or related topics, we would love to hear from you! If you have any questions, feel free to contact Sofia Fogel at sofia.fogel@nyu.edu. Thank you to Animal Charity Evaluators and Open Philanthropy for your generous support of this program and event. Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: EA Wins 2023, published by Shakeel Hashim on December 31, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Crossposted from Twitter. As the year comes to an end, we want to highlight and celebrate some of the incredible achievements from in and around the effective altruism ecosystem this year. 1. A new malaria vaccine The World Health Organization recommended its second-ever malaria vaccine this year: R21/Matrix-M, designed to protect babies and young children from malaria. The drug's recently concluded Phase III trial, which was co-funded by Open Philanthropy, found that the vaccine was between 68-75% effective at targeting the disease, which kills around 600,000 people (mainly children) each year. The work didn't stop there, though. Following advocacy from many people - including Zacharia Kafuko of 1 Day Sooner - the WHO quickly prequalified the vaccine, laying the groundwork for an expedited deployment and potentially saving hundreds of thousands of children's lives. 1 Day Sooner is now working to raise money to expedite the deployment further. 2. The Supreme Court upholds an animal welfare law In 2018, Californians voted for Proposition 12 - a bill that banned intensive cage confinement and the sale of animal products from animals in intensive confinement. The meat industry challenged the law for being unconstitutional - but in May of this year, the US Supreme Court upheld Prop 12, a decision that will improve the lives of millions of animals who would otherwise be kept in cruel and inhumane conditions. Organizations such as The Humane League - one of Animal Charity Evaluators' top charities - are a major part of this victory; their tireless campaigning is part of what made Prop 12 happen. Watch a panel discussion featuring The Humane League at EAG London 2023 here. 3. AI safety goes mainstream 2023 was the year AI safety went mainstream. After years of work from people in and around effective altruism, this year saw hundreds of high-profile AI experts - including two Turing Award winners say that "mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority". That was followed by a flurry of activity from policymakers, including a US Executive Order, an international AI Safety Summit, the establishment of the UK Frontier AI Taskforce, and a deal on the EU AI Act - which, thanks to the efforts of campaigners, is now going to regulate foundation models that pose a systemic risk to society. Important progress was made in technical AI safety, too, including work on adversarial robustness, mechanistic interpretability, and lie detection. Watch a talk from EAG Boston 2023 on technical AI safety here. 4. Results from the world's largest UBI study Since 2018, GiveDirectly - an organization that distributes direct cash transfers to those in need - has been running the world's largest universal basic income experiment in rural Kenya. In September, researchers led by MIT economist Taveneet Suri and Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee, published their latest analysis of the data - finding that giving people money as a lump sum leads to better results than dispersing it via monthly payments. Long-term UBI was also found to be highly effective and didn't discourage work. The results could have significant implications for how governments disburse cash aid. Watch GiveDirectly's talk at EAGx Nordics 2023. 5. Cultivated meat approved for sale in US After years of work from organizations like the Good Food Institute, in June 2023 the USDA finally approved cultivated meat for sale in the US. The watershed moment made the US the second country (after Singapore) to legalize the product, which could have significant impacts on animal welfare by reducing the number of animals that need to be raised and killed for meat. Watch the Good Food Institute's Bruce Friedrich talk about alternative ...

Stien is the executive director of Animal Charity Evaluators, also known as ACE. Stien, wants to help people help animals and ACE tries to do that by finding and promoting the most effective ways to help animals.In this episode we speak with Stien Van Der Ploeg who is their fairly newly appointed executive director. We talk through the latest release of the recommendations for this year and go into some detail on why certain charities and their interventions were selected. We talk about why their work is so important, the difficulties in the recommendation process and their developing strategy for the upcoming year.Relevant links to things mentioned throughout the show:Recommended charity fund and matching offer (to Dec 6th)ACE 2023 recommendationsACE Team emails Menu of interventionsIntervention scores spreadsheetMenu of outcomesFaunalytics reviewLegal Impact for Chickens reviewGWWC evaluationACE Strategy DocOther organisations discussed in the episodeRethink PrioritiesScarlet SparkAnimal Legal Defense FundThe Mission Motor[Amy's organisation] User-Friendly: Messaging WorkshopLead Together, by Tania LunaPodcast: Knowing AnimalsKnowing Animals: Episode 210: Saving Animals (and Ourselves) with Jeff Sebo (libsyn.com)Knowing Animals: Episode 168: Speaking with animals with Eva Meijer (libsyn.com)If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - we would really appreciate it! Likewise, feel free to share it with anyone who you think might enjoy it. You can send us feedback and guest recommendations via Twitter or email us at hello@howilearnedtoloveshrimp.com. Enjoy!

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: #GivingTuesday: My Giving Story and Some of My Favorite Charities, published by Kyle J. Lucchese on November 29, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Happy Giving Tuesday! A friend inspired me to share my giving story and some of my favorite charities. I was raised to love all and to give generously with my time, money, and spirit, aspirations I strive to live up to. When I first read The Life You Can Save in 2009, I realized that I could and should be doing more to help others wherever they are. It wasn't until 2011 when I came across GiveWell and Giving What We Can that I really put these ideas into action. I pledged to donate at least 10% of my income to effective charities and was driven to study business in hopes that I could earn to give more (I still don't make "make much" but it is a lot from a global perspective). Though I believe significant systemic reforms are needed to create a more sustainable and equitable world, I continue to donate at least 10% of my income and use my career to support better todays and tomorrows for all beings. Between now and the end of the year, I will allocate my donations as follows: 20% - The Life You Can Save's Helping Women & Girls Fund: This fund is for donors who seek to address the disproportionate burden on women and girls among people living in extreme poverty. Donations to the fund are split evenly between Breakthrough Trust, CEDOVIP, Educate Girls, Fistula Foundation, and Population Services International. 20% - Animal Charity Evaluators' Recommended Charity Fund: This fund supports 11 of the most impactful charities working to reduce animal suffering around the globe. The organizations supported by the fund include: Çiftlik Hayvanlarını Koruma Derneği, Dansk Vegetarisk Forening, Faunalytics, Fish Welfare Initiative, The Good Food Institute, The Humane League, Legal Impact for Chickens, New Roots Institute, Shrimp Welfare Project, Sinergia Animal, and the Wild Animal Initiative. 20% - Spiro: a new charity focused on preventing childhood deaths from Tuberculosis, fundraising for their first year. Donation details on Spiro's website here. Donations are tax-deductible in the US, UK, and the Netherlands. 15% - Giving What We Can's Risks and Resilience Fund: This fund allocates donations to highly effective organizations working to reduce global catastrophic risks. Funds are allocated evenly between the Long-Term Future Fund and the Emerging Challenges Fund. 10% - Founders Pledge's Climate Change Fund: This fund supports highly impactful, evidence-based solutions to the "triple challenge" of carbon emissions, air pollution, and energy poverty. Recent past recipients of grants from the Climate Change Fund include: Carbon180, Clean Air Task Force, TerraPraxis, and UN High Level Climate Champions. 10% - GiveDirectly: GiveDirectly provides unconditional cash transfers using cell phone technology to some of the world's poorest people, as well as refugees, urban youth, and disaster victims. According to more than 300 independent reviews, cash is an effective way to help people living in poverty, yet people living in extreme poverty rarely get to decide how aid money intended to help them gets spent. 5% - Anima International: Anima aims to improve animal welfare standards via corporate outreach and policy change. They also engage in media outreach and institutional vegan outreach to decrease animal product consumption and increase the availability of plant-based options. Other organizations whose work I have supported throughout the year include: American Civil Liberties Union Foundation EA Funds' Animal Welfare Fund, Global Health and Development Fund, Infrastructure Fund, and Long-Term Future Fund FairVote GiveWell's Top Charities Fund, All Grants Fund, and Unrestricted Fund Project on Government Oversight The Life You Can Save...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: The Humane League - Room for More Funding & 2023 Impact, published by carolinemills on November 17, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. About The Humane League The Humane League (THL) exists to end the abuse of animals raised for food. THL is laser focused on the efforts that have the biggest impact for the greatest number of animals. We are distinguished from other animal welfare organizations by the effectiveness of our corporate campaigns, our unique role as the most aggressive campaigners, and our approach to multiplying our movement's impact globally through the Open Wing Alliance (OWA) and in the US through the Animal Policy Alliance (APA). Our scalable interventions have a proven track record of reducing farm animal suffering - according to a 2019 Rethink Priorities report, our corporate cage-free campaigns affect nine to 120 years of a hens life per dollar spent, and have a follow-through rate of 48%-84% (we've found up to 89% in recent years)[1]. We are proud to be recognized by Animal Charity Evaluators and Founders Pledge as one of the most effective animal protection charities in the world. "While we expect all of our evaluated charities to be excellent examples of effective advocacy, THL is exceptional even within that group. Giving to THL is an excellent opportunity to support initiatives that create the most positive change for animals." - Animal Charity Evaluators, 2023 THL evaluation report Our Strategy & 2023 Impact THL believes in focusing our collective energy where it will do the most good. Since chickens represent 90% of all land animals raised for food, any interventions we make for chickens have the greatest potential impact. And restrictive battery cages - small wire cages used to confine laying hens - are one of the worst sources of suffering for chickens. Ending the battery cage means ending the acute suffering of millions of birds. Holding companies accountable to their cage-free commitments. Thousands of companies around the world have pledged to transition to 100% cage-free, eliminating the practice of confining hens in tiny, barren battery cages. Now, THL is holding these companies accountable, ensuring they keep their promises. Globally, 89% of companies followed through on their 2022 cage-free pledge. And in the US and globally, THL pushed the companies falling behind on their commitments to follow through on their promise. In 2023, THL held 36 companies with global cage-free commitments accountable to reporting progress on their pledges. Companies like Kellogg's, PepsiCo, and Yum! Brands - the world's largest service restaurant company and the parent company of KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell - began publicly reporting on their cage-free commitments. All of this is translating to real change on the ground, with 39.4% of the US egg-laying flock free from cages (over ~120 million hens), up from ~5% when THL began this work in 2014.[3] (Global data is currently unavailable) Progressing the cage-free movement globally. In addition to holding companies accountable for their existing commitments, THL is working to secure new cage-free commitments in key strategic areas around the world. Through the OWA, our coalition of nearly 100 member groups in 67 countries, THL is developing a global movement of effective animal advocates that conduct coordinated international and regional campaigns for layer hen and/or broiler chicken welfare. This year, the OWA pushed 103 global companies to pledge to rid their supply chains of cruel battery cages, including first cage-free commitments from corporations headquartered in Japan, the Middle East, Greece, Ukraine, Peru, Ecuador, South Africa, Argentina, South Korea, and Taiwan. Jollibee Foods Corporation, the largest and fastest-growing restaurant group in Asia, pledged to reform its global supply chain,...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Here's where CEA staff are donating in 2023, published by Oscar Howie on November 10, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Catherine Low I took the Giving What We Can pledge in 2015. Between 2015-2022, I've donated 10-15% of my income. This year is the first year where I'm not planning to donate my usual pledge amount; instead I've chosen to donate extra next year to make up for this. 2015-2022 Initially I focussed on Animal Charity Evaluators top charities (and to whatever charity won the Giving Game I was running). Then I started thinking more like a meta micro-funder - donating to projects/people I could donate to more easily (because of my knowledge or lack of constraints) than institutional donors could Helping get ideas to the "applying for funding" stage Helping through financially tricky situations - e.g. tiding them over between jobs or grants 2023 I began conserving my donations for potentially vulnerable initiatives I'm familiar with and really like, which might need support as a result of the drop in EA meta funding. While none of these have required funding thus far (thanks wonderful institutional donors!) I think I might see opportunities like this in 2024, and I have a couple of projects in mind that I'm ready to leap in and support. Aside: Separately to my pledge I also "offset" my carbon emissions. I currently donate this to Founders Pledge Climate Change Fund. I feel pretty mixed about this. I'm more worried about other risks and other current issues, so it's not a particularly " EA thing to do". My motivations are "try not to be part of the problem" guilt reduction reasons plus social reasons (many of my friends and family are "flightless kiwis" and enthusiastic climate advocates, so I feel better about flying when I can say "I offset! Here's how!"). Shakeel Hashim I took the Giving What We Can pledge at the end of last year, so this was my first "proper" year of donating 10% (though I ended up donating about 10% last year too). After taking the pledge, I made a template for deciding how to allocate my donations to cause areas. The idea was that I want to take a portfolio approach (giving some to global health, some to existential security, and some to animal welfare), and also want to consider the overall resources I "donate", which includes my time. This led me to realise that because most of my work time recently has been spent on existential security stuff, and because I think my work time is much more valuable than the amount of money I donate, my donations should all go to global health stuff. I'm also a big fan of encouraging new global health projects to appear, as I expect we might be able to find better projects than the current top-rated charities. That said, it's difficult to target donations to such projects. In practice, I donate 95% to the GiveWell All Charities Fund, and 5% to the Charity Entrepreneurship Incubated Charities Fund. Angelina Li I took the Giving What We Can pledge in 2016, when I was in college. In terms of how much I donate: From ~2018-2021, I was earning to give at a consulting firm, and gave somewhere between 20-40% of my income every year, mostly to effective animal advocacy charities. Last year, I joined CEA, and it looks like I barely made my 10% threshold last year (mostly based on one large donation to the animal welfare EA Fund in January). At the time, I think decreasing my donations was a reaction to a more cash-flush funding landscape, thinking my labour was now more valuable than my money, and wanting to save more after heading into a less lucrative career path. I regret this somewhat, looking back: I think I let my expenses ramp up too quickly and wish I had saved more to donate later. A smarter me would also have considered the benefits of preserving diverse funding options on a rainy day. Plus selfish...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Announcing Our 2023 Charity Recommendations, published by Animal Charity Evaluators on November 9, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Every year, Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) spends several months evaluating animal advocacy organizations to identify those that work effectively and are able to do the most good with additional donations. Our goal is to help people help animals by providing donors with impactful giving opportunities that can reduce animal suffering to the greatest extent possible. We are excited to announce that this year, we have selected six recommended charities. In previous years, we have categorized our recommended charities into two separate tiers: Top and Standout. This year, we have decided to move to only one tier: Recommended Charities. Having just one tier more fairly represents charities and better supports a pluralistic, resilient, and impactful animal advocacy movement. We expect it will also increase our ability to raise funds for the most important work being done to reduce animal suffering. Additionally, this shift will allow us to make better-informed grants to each charity and reduce time spent on administrative tasks. In 2023, we conducted comprehensive evaluations of 14 animal advocacy organizations that are doing promising work. We are grateful to all the charities that participated in this year's charity evaluations. While we can only recommend a handful of charities each year, we believe that all the charities we evaluate are among the most effective in the animal advocacy movement. However, per our evaluation criteria, we estimate that additional funds would have marginally more impact going to our Recommended Charities, making them exceptional giving opportunities. Faunalytics, The Humane League, and Wild Animal Initiative have all retained their status as Recommended Charities after being re-evaluated this year. Newly evaluated charities that join their ranks are Legal Impact for Chickens, New Roots Institute, and Shrimp Welfare Project. The Good Food Institute, Fish Welfare Initiative, Dansk Vegetarisk Forening, Çiftlik Hayvanlarını Koruma Derneği and Sinergia Animal have all retained their recommended charity status from 2022. Below, you will find a brief overview of each of ACE's Recommended Charities. For more details, please check out our comprehensive charity reviews. Recommended in 2023 Faunalytics is a U.S.-based organization that connects animal advocates with information relevant to advocacy. Their work mainly involves conducting and publishing independent research, working directly with partner organizations on various research projects, and promoting existing research and data for animal advocates through their website's content library. Faunalytics has been a Recommended Charity since December 2015. To learn more, read our 2023 comprehensive review of Faunalytics. Legal Impact for Chickens (LIC) works to make factory-farm cruelty a liability in the United States. LIC files strategic lawsuits for chickens and other farmed animals, develops and refines creative methods to civilly enforce existing cruelty laws in factory farms, and sues companies that break animal welfare commitments. LIC's first lawsuit, the shareholder derivative case against Costco's executives for chicken neglect, was featured on TikTok and in multiple media outlets, including CNN Business, Fox Business, The Washington Post, and Meatingplace (an industry magazine for meat and poultry producers). This is the first year that Legal Impact for Chickens has become a Recommended Charity. To learn more, read our 2023 comprehensive review of Legal Impact for Chickens. New Roots Institute (formerly known as Factory Farming Awareness Coalition, or FFAC) is a U.S.-based organization that works to empower the next generation to end factory farming. The...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Price-, Taste-, and Convenience-Competitive Plant-Based Meat Would Not Currently Replace Meat, published by Jacob Peacock on August 15, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Also available on the Rethink Priorities website. Executive summary Plant-based meats, like the Beyond Sausage or Impossible Burger, and cultivated meats have become a source of optimism for reducing animal-based meat usage. Public health, environmental, and animal welfare advocates aim to mitigate the myriad harms of meat usage. The price, taste, and convenience (PTC) hypothesis posits that if plant-based meat is competitive with animal-based meat on these three criteria, the large majority of current consumers would replace animal-based meat with plant-based meat. The PTC hypothesis rests on the premise that PTC primarily drive food choice. The PTC hypothesis and premise are both likely false. A majority of current consumers would continue eating primarily animal-based meat even if plant-based meats were PTC-competitive. PTC do not mainly determine food choices of current consumers; social and psychological factors also play important roles. Although not examined here, there may exist other viable approaches to drive the replacement of animal-based meats with plant-based meats. There is insufficient empirical evidence to more precisely estimate or optimize the current (or future) impacts of plant-based meat. To rectify this, consider funding: Research measuring the effects of plant-based meat sales on displacement of animal-based meat. Research comparing the effects of plant-based meats with other interventions to reduce animal-based meat usage. Informed (non-blinded) taste tests to benchmark current plant-based meats and enable measurements of taste improvement over time. Introduction Plant-based meats, like the Beyond Sausage or Impossible Burger, and cultivated meats[1] have been identified as important means of reducing the public health, environmental, and animal welfare harms associated with animal-based meat production (Rubio et al., 2020). By providing competitive alternatives, these products might displace the consumption of animal-based meats. Since cultivated meats are not currently widely available on the public market, this paper will focus on plant-based meats, although many of the arguments might also apply to cultivated meats. Animal welfare, environmental, and public health advocates believe plant-based meats present a valuable opportunity to mitigate significant negative externalities of industrial animal agriculture, like animal suffering, greenhouse gas emissions, and antimicrobial resistance. For example, Animal Charity Evaluators lists "[cultivated] and plant-based food tech" as a priority cause area (Animal Charity Evaluators, 2022b), and a 2018 survey of 30 animal advocacy leaders and researchers ranked creating plant-based (and cultivated) meats third (after only research and corporate outreach) in their top priorities (Savoie, 2018). Non-profits working to research and support plant-based and cultivated meat production have received millions of dollars in funding (Animal Charity Evaluators, 2022a; New Harvest, 2021). Hu et al. (2019) describes plant-based meats as a potentially "vital" means to reduce the risks of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and some cancers. Others have focused on reducing the climate impact of food production and "the need to de-risk global food systems" (Zane Swanson et al., 2023). The private and public sectors have taken note as well; in 2022, the "plant-based meat, seafood, eggs, and dairy companies" foods industry attracted at least $1.2 billion in private investment activity and at least $874 million in public funding (The Good Food Institute, 2022, pp. 55, 85-88). This enthusiasm has been propelled in some significant part by the informa...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: EA Survey 2022: What Helps People Have an Impact and Connect with Other EAs, published by WillemSleegers on August 3, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Summary Personal contact with EAs was the most commonly selected influence on EAs' ability to have a positive impact (40.9%), followed by 80,000 Hours (31.4%) and local EA groups (19.8%). Compared to 2020, EA Global, the EA Forum, EAGx, and 80,000 Hours one-on-one career discussion showed a small increase in being reported as important sources for greater impact. Relatively more sources decreased, some quite significantly, in being reported as important (e.g., GiveWell, 80,000 Hours website and podcast). Local EA groups were the most commonly cited source for making a new connection (35.5%), followed by a personal connection (34.1%), EA Global (26.2%), and EAGx (24.0%). Compared to 2020, relatively more respondents indicate having made an interesting and valuable new personal connection via EA Global and EAGx, and fewer via most other sources. Introduction In this post, we report on what factors EAs say helped them have a positive impact or create new connections. Note that we significantly shortened the EA Survey this year, meaning there are fewer community-related questions than in the previous EA Survey. Positive Influences We asked about which factors, within the last 12 months, had the largest influence on your personal ability to have a positive impact, allowing respondents to select up to three options. On average, respondents selected 2.36 options (median 3). Personal contact with EAs stood out as the most common factor selected by respondents (40.9%), followed by 80,000 Hours (combined, 31.4%), and local EA groups (19.8%). Personal contact, 80,000 Hours, and EA groups were also the top three factors that respondents reported as being important for getting them involved in EA. 2020 vs. 2022 We asked the same question in 2020, although we changed some of the response categories. This year we included 80,000 Hours (job board), the online EA community (other than EA Forum), and Virtual programs, but dropped Animal Charity Evaluators, The Life You Can Save, and Animal Advocacy Careers. These categories were dropped due to low endorsement rates in previous years. Compared to 2020, we see an increase in EA Global, the EA Forum, EAGx, and 80,000 Hours one-on-one career discussion as important sources for greater impact. These increases were quite small in most cases, with the biggest change observed for EAGx (from 6% to 13%). We saw multiple decreases, some quite sizable, in local EA groups, 80,000 Hours (both the website and podcast), Books, GiveWell, Articles/blogs, Giving What We Can, LessWrong, Slate Star Codex/Astral Codex Ten, podcasts, and Facebook groups. A portion of the decrease of the website of 80,000 Hours can be attributed to the addition of the 80,000 Hours job board category in this year's survey. Last year, respondents may have included this category in the website category of 80,000 Hours, while this year it was its own category. Including the job board category with the website category leads to a smaller decrease between 2022 and 2020, although it does not fully account for it. It's important to recall that these questions asked about which factors had had the largest influence within the last 12 months. Thus, the percentages of respondents who have been influenced by these factors at some point are likely larger than those reporting having been influenced in the last 12 months within this survey. Responses to this question might also be expected to change more, across years, than our questions which are not limited to the last 12 months. Gender Respondents who indicated identifying as a man were more likely to select the EA Forum, GiveWell, the 80,000 Hours podcast and one-on-one career discu...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Why isn't there a charity evaluator for longtermist projects?, published by BrownHairedEevee on July 29, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. i.e., Why isn't there an org analogous to GiveWell and Animal Charity Evaluators that evaluates and recommends charities according to how much impact they can have on the long-term future, e.g. by reducing existential risk? As opposed to only making grants directly and saying "just trust us" like the EA Funds. Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org

Carolina is the ​​founder and Executive Director of Sinergia Animal, an Animal Charity Evaluators' StandOut charity working in nine countries of The Global South.Carolina has twenty years of experience in advocacy, fundraising, strategic planning, management, and campaigning. Before founding Sinergia, she worked in more than thirty countries as an investigative journalist for various animal welfare, environmental and social justice organisations.In this episode Carolina talks us through the growth of Sinergia, their current programmes and the importance of diversifying tactics across the movement. Relevant links to things mentioned throughout the show:Sinergia Animal's WebsiteFinancial Institutions CampaignMeat Reduction CampaignJob BoardDonate to Sinergia AnimalBrazil Bans Live Cattle Exports articleManaging to change the world - Alison Green, Jerry HauserSelf Compassion - Dr Kristen NeffIf you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - we would really appreciate it! Likewise, feel free to share it with anyone who you think might enjoy it. You can send us feedback and guest recommendations via Twitter or email us at hello@howilearnedtoloveshrimp.com. Enjoy!

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Announcing the Animal Welfare Library

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Prioritising animal welfare over global health and development?, published by Vasco Grilo on May 13, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Summary Corporate campaigns for chicken welfare increase wellbeing way more cost-effectively than the best global health and development (GHD) interventions. In addition, the effects on farmed animals of such interventions can influence which countries they should target, and those on wild animals might determine whether they are beneficial or harmful. I encourage Charity Entrepreneurship (CE), Founders Pledge (FP), GiveWell (GW), Open Philanthropy (OP) and Rethink Priorities (RP) to: Increase their support of animal welfare interventions relative to those of GHD (at the margin). Account for effects on animals in the cost-effectiveness analyses of GHD interventions. Corporate campaigns for chicken welfare increase nearterm wellbeing way more cost-effectively than GiveWell's top charities Corporate campaigns for chicken welfare are considered one of the most effective animal welfare interventions. A key supporter of these is The Humane League (THL), which is one of the 3 top charities of Animal Charity Evaluators. I calculated the cost-effectiveness of corporate campaigns for broiler welfare in human-years per dollar from the product between: Chicken-years affected per dollar, which I set to 15 as estimated here by Saulius Simcikas. Improvement in welfare as a fraction of that of median welfare range when broilers go from a conventional to a reformed scenario, assuming: The time broilers experience each level of pain defined here (search for “definitions”) in a conventional and reformed scenario is given by these data (search for “pain-tracks”) from the Welfare Footprint Project (WFP). The welfare range is symmetric around the neutral point, and excruciating pain corresponds to the worst possible experience. Excruciating pain is 1 k times as bad as disabling pain. Disabling pain is 100 times as bad as hurtful pain. Hurtful pain is 10 times as bad as annoying pain. The lifespan of broilers is 42 days, in agreement with section “Conventional and Reformed Scenarios” of Chapter 1 of Quantifying pain in broiler chickens by Cynthia Schuck-Paim and Wladimir Alonso. Broilers sleep 8 h each day, and have a neutral experience during that time. Broilers being awake is as good as hurtful pain is bad. This means being awake with hurtful pain is neutral, thus accounting for positive experiences. Median welfare range of chickens, which I set to RP's median estimate of 0.332. Reciprocal of the intensity of the mean human experience, which I obtained supposing humans: Sleep 8 h each day, and have a neutral experience during that time. Being awake is as good as hurtful pain is bad. This means being awake with hurtful pain is neutral, thus accounting for positive experiences. I computed the cost-effectiveness in the same metric for the lowest cost to save a life among GW's top charities from the ratio between: Life expectancy at birth in Africa in 2021, which was 61.7 years according to these data from OWID. Lowest cost to save a life of 3.5 k$ (from Helen Keller International), as stated by GW here. The results are in the tables below. The data and calculations are here (see tab “Cost-effectiveness”). Intensity of the mean experience as a fraction of the median welfare range Broiler in a conventional scenario Broiler in a reformed scenario Human 5.7710^-6 2.5910^-5 3.3310^-6 Broiler in a conventional scenario relative to a human Broiler in a reformed scenario relative to a human Broiler in a conventional scenario relative to a reformed scenario 7.77 1.73 4.49 Improvement in chicken welfare when broilers go from a conventional to a reformed scenario as a fraction of... The median welfare range of chickens The intensity of the mean human experience 2....

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: How much funging is there with donations to different EA animal charities?, published by Brian Tomasik on May 11, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. My main question The EA Funds Animal Welfare Fund makes grants to many different animal charities. Suppose I want to support one particular charity that they grant to because I think it's better, relative to my values, than most of the other ones. For example, maybe I want to specifically give to Legal Impact for Chickens (LIC), so I donate $1000 to them. Because this donation reduces LIC's room for more funding, it may decrease the amount that the Animal Welfare Fund itself (or Open Philanthropy, Animal Charity Evaluators, or individual EA donors) will give to LIC in the future. How large should I expect this effect to be in general? Will my $1000 donation tend to "funge" against these other EA donors almost fully, so that LIC can be expected to get about $1000 less from them? Is the funging amount more like $500? Is it roughly $0 of funging? Or maybe donating to LIC helps them grow faster, so that they can hire more people and do more things, thereby increasing their room for funding and how much other EA donors give to them? The answer to this question probably varies substantially from one case to the next, and maybe the best way to figure it out would be to learn a lot about the funding situation for a particular charity and the funding inclinations of big EA donors toward that charity. But that takes a lot of work, so I wonder if EA funders have some intuition for what tends to happen on average in situations like this, to inform small donors who aren't going to get that far into the weeds with a particular charity. Does the funging amount tend to be closer to 0% or closer to 100% of what an individual donor gives? I notice that the Animal Welfare Fund sometimes funds ~10% to ~50% of an organization's operating budget, which I imagine may be partly intentional to avoid crowding out small donors. (It may also be motivated by wanting charities to diversify their funding sources and due to limited funds to disburse.) Is it true in general that the Animal Welfare Fund doesn't fully fill room for funding, or are there charities for which the Fund does top up the charity completely? (Note that it would actually be better impact-wise to ensure that the very best charities are roughly fully funded, so I'm not encouraging a strategy of deliberately underfunding them.) In the rest of this post, I'll give more details on why I'm asking about this topic, but this further elaboration is optional reading and is more specific to my situation. My donation preferences I think a lot of EA donations to animal charities are really exciting. About 1/3 of the grants in the Animal Welfare Fund's Grants Database seem to me roughly as cost-effective as possible for reducing near-term animal suffering. However, for some other grants, I'm pretty ambivalent about the sign of the net impact (whether it's net good or bad). This is mainly for two reasons: I'm unsure if meat reduction, on the whole, reduces animal suffering, mainly because certain kinds of animal farming, especially cattle grazing on non-irrigated pasture, may reduce an enormous amount of wild-animal suffering (though there are huge error bars on this analysis). I'm unsure if antispeciesism in general reduces net suffering. In the short run, I worry that it may encourage more habitat preservation, thereby increasing wild-animal suffering. In the long run, moral-circle expansion could encourage people to create lots of additional small-brained sentience, and in (hopefully unlikely) scenarios where human values become inverted, antispeciesist values could multiply total suffering manyfold. If I could press a button to reduce overall meat consumption or to increase concern for an...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Animal Charity Evaluators Is Seeking Intervention Effectiveness Research and Cost-Effectiveness Estimates, published by Animal Charity Evaluators on April 21, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Hello EA Forum, As Animal Charity Evaluators prepares for our 2023 charity evaluation cycle, we are gathering relevant research on the effectiveness of different animal advocacy interventions to update our beliefs and guide our assessments and recommendation decisions. To this end, we have compiled a list of references, including literature reviews, books, peer-reviewed articles, reports, and other non-academic content that might offer relevant insights into the outcomes of interventions. You can view the list here. We are especially interested in research into the effectiveness of corporate litigation work, providing or influencing funding, making podcasts, offering recruitment services, and running vegan or vegetarian events. If you know of any publications on these or other relevant topics, please let us know in the comments. Additionally, we are compiling a list of existing cost-effectiveness estimates. This includes, but is not limited to, interventions aimed at reducing farmed animal suffering, institutional and individual vegan outreach, advocating for better animal welfare policies, or supporting research into alternatives to animal products. We have started a list from a literature search and a scan of the EA Forum, which you can view in this spreadsheet. If you are aware of any additional estimates or are currently working on one, we would appreciate you letting us know. We will review responses every three business days until Friday, May 5, 2023. Thank you in advance for your help. Best regards, Alina Salmen Researcher Animal Charity Evaluators Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org.

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Introducing Focus Philanthropy, published by Focus Philanthropy on March 27, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. We're excited to announce the launch of Focus Philanthropy, a new organization that connects philanthropists with outstanding giving opportunities to reduce the harms of factory farming. Focus Philanthropy aims to fill a gap in the effective animal advocacy space. The factory farming cause area is both fast-changing and complex in its variety of approaches and we aim to reduce barriers for new funders interested in entering the space. We offer thoughtful, tailored funding advice and engage with donors to increase their commitment and inspire them to support impactful giving opportunities within the cause area over the long term. Our core principles Impact: We help philanthropists maximize the impact of their donations, ensuring their funds go where they can do the most good. Evidence: Our recommendations are based on research, the current state of scientific evidence, and expert judgment. Independence: Our advice is always free of charge, allowing us to provide unbiased and impartial giving recommendations. The team Focus Philanthropy was founded by Leah Edgerton and Manja Gärtner. Leah has extensive experience in effective animal advocacy ranging from volunteering and direct work to having acted as a leader, mentor, and advisor. She previously worked as a philanthropic advisor, at Animal Charity Evaluators, and at ProVeg International. Manja has several years of experience as a researcher, grantmaker, and advisor in effective animal advocacy. She previously worked as a philanthropic advisor and at Animal Charity Evaluators. She holds a Ph.D. in economics. Please approach us directly with any feedback or questions. Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org.

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: After launch. How are CE charities progressing?, published by Ula Zarosa on March 6, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. TL;DR: Charity Entrepreneurship have helped to kick-start 23 impact-focused nonprofits in four years. We believe that starting more effective charities is the most impactful thing we can do. Our charities have surpassed expectations, and in this post we provide an update on their progress and achievements to date. About CE At Charity Entrepreneurship (CE) we launch high-impact nonprofits by connecting entrepreneurs with the effective ideas, training and funding needed to launch and succeed. We provide: Seed grants (ranging from $50,000 to $200,000 per project) In-depth research reports with promising charity ideas Two months of intensive training Co-founder matching (this is particularly important) Stipends Co-working space in London Ongoing connection to the CE Community (~100 founders, funders and mentors) (Applications are now open to our 2023/2024 programs, apply by March 12, 2023).We estimate that on average: 40% of our charities reach or exceed the cost-effectiveness of the strongest charities in their fields (e.g., GiveWell/ACE recommended). 40% are in a steady state. This means they are having impact, but not at the GiveWell-recommendation level yet, or their cost-effectiveness is currently less clear-cut (all new charities start in this category for their first year). 20% have already shut down or might in the future. General update To date, our CE Seed Network has provided our charities with $1.88 million in launch grants. Based on the updates provided by our charities in Jan 2023, we estimate that: 1. They have meaningfully reached over 15 million people, and have the potential to soon reach up to 2.5 billion animals annually with their programs. For example: Suvita: Reached 600,000 families with vaccination reminders, 50,000 families reached by immunization ambassadors, and 95,000 women with pregnancy care reminders 14,000 additional children vaccinated Fish Welfare Initiative: 1.14 million fish potentially helped through welfare improvements 1.4 million shrimp potentially helped Family Empowerment Media: 15 million listeners reached in Nigeria In the period overlapping with the campaign in Kano state (5.6 million people reached) the contraceptive uptake in the region increased by 75%, which corresponds to 250,000 new contraceptive users and an estimated 200 fewer maternal deaths related to unwanted pregnancies Lead Exposure Elimination Project: Policy changes implemented in Malawi alone are expected to reach 215,000 children. LEEP has launched 9 further paint programs, which they estimate will have a similar impact on average Shrimp Welfare Project: The program with MER Seafood (now in progress) can reach up to 125 million shrimp/year. Additional collaborations could reach >2.5 billion shrimp per annum 2. They have fundraised over $22.5 million USD from grantmakers like GiveWell, Open Philanthropy, Mulago, Schmidt Futures, Animal Charity Evaluators, Grand Challenges Canada, and EA Animal Welfare Fund, amongst others. 3. If implemented at scale, they can reach impressive cost-effectiveness. For example: Family Empowerment Media: the intervention can potentially be 22x more effective than cash transfers from GiveDirectly (estimated by the team, 26x estimated by Founders Pledge) Fish Welfare Initiative: 1.3 fish or 2 shrimp potentially helped per $1 (estimated by the team, ACE assessed FWI cost-effectiveness as high to very high) Shrimp Welfare Project: approximately 625 shrimp potentially helped per $1 (estimated by the team) Suvita: when delivered at scale, effectiveness is at a similar range to GiveWell's top charities (estimated by external organizations, e.g. Founders Pledge, data on this will be available later this year) Giving G...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: The case for transparent spending, published by Jeroen W on December 15, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Context Recently, the purchase of Wytham Abbey came in the spotlight: The purchase by Effective Ventures of a (15 million pound?) manor house. On Twitter and on the forum, people have held extensive discussions on whether the expense was justified. I personally was very surprised, which is why I made a forum post requesting an explanation. (Currently, I'm still slightly sceptical but I'm happy I now understand the reasoning behind it a lot better.) Because of the purchase, the idea that Effective Ventures/CEA should be more transparent about large expenses has been brought up more often. I agree with that idea, and try to defend it here. I added footnotes/links when I have a source for the (counter) argument. They may have been made regarding a different formulation of my proposal or a slightly different proposal, but are nonetheless worth mentioning. I sometimes rewrote arguments and may have misunderstood their original meaning, so don't interpret my rewritings as the original authors' intentions. I just want to credit where I got the ideas from. I have no experience at all with funding projects, so there might be practical things I've overlooked. My proposal All spending above a certain threshold by EA organisations should be publicly explained The threshold should be high enough so it doesn't take away too much time from grantmakers/employees (ex. $500k, 1 million pounds) The more concerned people might be about the expense, or the more influential the expense is, the more time and effort should be put into the explanation The public explanation should be some kind of cost-benefit analysis and clearly state the reasons for the purchase including positives, potential negatives and counterfactuals in layman's terms. Precise numbers are admirable but not always necessary. “Worst case” and “best case” scenarios with some kind of probability distribution might be helpful. The explanations should be published within a reasonable timeframe (ex. within a month after the purchase/grant is made, every quarter,...). This timeframe should be made clear so that people can expect when to get an explanation of something. The sooner after the purchase, the better. The EA organisations could be: Effective Ventures and the organisations that fall under it (CEA, 80,000 Hours, Forethought Foundation, EA Funds, Giving What We Can, The Centre for the Governance of AI, Longview Philanthropy, asterisk, non-trivial, BlueDot Impact), Open Philanthropy, GiveWell, Animal Charity Evaluators,... I think the case is the strongest for Effective Ventures and CEA since they represent the EA movement, so they should be held to the highest standards. I haven't reviewed every organisation. Some might already do a great job. For example, I get the impression that GiveWell and Open Philanthropy do a better job at explaining grants than EA Funds does (except for EAIF they often only use one sentence, even with million dollar grants). I'm highly confident some variation of my proposal should be done if the grant is made using individual/small donations, I think it's reasonable to claim you owe explanations to your donors. The case is less strong when the donor of the grant is just one or two people (like with Wytham Abbey/Open Philanthropy), but I'm still quite confident it's important in those cases too. You may not owe an explanation to individual/small donors, but rather to the EA community as a whole. Should this be some kind of official rule every EA organisation must follow? No, but I'd be happy to see some organisations (especially Effective Ventures/CEA) try it out. Different organisations can try different thresholds and use different rules for their public explanations. Similar propos...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: EA Landscape in the UK, published by DavidNash on December 13, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Summary In this post I'm attempting to give an overview of what EA looks like in the UK, including communities and organisations with a range of affiliation with EA. EA Hubs in the UK Most of the people working at EA related organisations are in London, Oxford or Cambridge (sometimes known as Loxbridge), with some remote workers around the UK. It's quite easy to get from London to Oxford or Cambridge, being about an hour by train, and people regularly travel between them. London London probably has the largest number of people interested in EA. There are roughly 150-250 people working at EA related organisations although the majority of people interested in EA are working in the private sector, government, academia or (non EA) nonprofits. There are also four EA university groups in London at Imperial College London, King's College London, University College London and London School of Economics. There isn't one main EA community in London, there are quite a few subgroups based around different causes, workplaces and interests. There are also people who have an interest but attend an event or get involved with a relevant opportunity once every few years. Subcommunities Workplace/Cause Communities Charity Entrepreneurship are near Queens Park and with each new cohort there are more organisations set up that work from the CE office, mainly on global health & development, health security or animal welfare The Centre on Long-Term Risk are near Primrose Hill and there is a community there for people working on suffering risks Conjecture are close to London Bridge and support the SERI-MATS fellowship nearby, both focusing on AI Safety Profession communities The civil service has people interested in EA working there and they have regular meetups EA Finance has quite a few members in London and they have meetups every few months EA Tech have meetups every month or two There is also a group for people who are interested in politics and EA There are usually 1 or 2 meetups a year for entrepreneurs and consultants University groups There are 4 quite active groups, roughly 20 volunteer organisers as well as the London EA Hub (LEAH) supporting students interested in EA ICL KCL UCL LSE Interest communities EA for Christians have had meetups in London every few months There are also meetups for people to play football, dance, go to gigs, stitch and climb There are now quite a few EA related organisations in London, in 2015 there was just Founders Pledge and some Givewell recommended charities. EA Meta Charity Entrepreneurship 80,000 Hours Founders Pledge Impactful Government Careers Let's Fund SoGive Non-trivial EA UK LEAH - supporting EA groups in London. They are also running a co-working space for students and professionals working on EA projects Effective Giving Rethink Priorities ~18 people based in UK Better Matters Social Change Lab Global Development Against Malaria Foundation Schistosomiasis Control Initiative Malaria Consortium GiveDirectly - London Office Suvita Canopie Lead Exposure Elimination Project Animal Welfare - Most of these are the UK based teams for international orgs The Humane League Animal Equality Open Cages The Good Food Institute Europe Animal Advocacy Careers Animal Ask Fish Welfare Initiative Cellular Agriculture UK AI Alignment Conjecture The Cooperative AI Foundation Deepmind Safety team Safe AI London Long Term Future/Existential Risks Longview Philanthropy London Existential Risk Initiative (aimed at students) All-Party Parliamentary Group For Future Generations The Centre for Long-Term Resilience 1Day Sooner Center on Long-Term Risk There are some remote staff in London for various EA related organisations, such as Animal Charity Evaluators, Centre ...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: "Evaluating the evaluators": GWWC's research direction, published by SjirH on November 24, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. This post is about GWWC's research plans for next year; for our giving recommendations this giving season please see this post and for our other activities see this post. The public effective giving ecosystem now consists of over 40 organisations and projects. These are initiatives that either try to identify publicly accessible philanthropic funding opportunities using an effective-altruism-inspired methodology (evaluators), or to fundraise for the funding opportunities that have already been identified (fundraisers), or both. Over 25 of these organisations and projects are purely fundraisers and do not have any research capacity of their own: they have to rely on evaluators for their giving recommendations, and in practice currently mainly rely on three of those: GiveWell, Animal Charity Evaluators and Founders Pledge. At the moment, fundraisers and individual donors have very little to go on to select which evaluators they rely on and how to curate the exact recommendations and donations they make. These decisions seem to be made based on public reputation of evaluators, personal impressions and trust, and perhaps in some cases a lack of information about existing alternatives or simple legacy/historical artefact. Furthermore, many fundraisers currently maintain separate relationships with the evaluators they use recommendations from and with the charities they end up recommending, causing extra overhead for all involved parties. Considering this situation and from checking with a subset of fundraising organisations, it seems there is a pressing need for (1) a quality check on new and existing evaluators (“evaluating the evaluators”) and (2) an accessible overview of all recommendations made by evaluators whose methodology meets a certain quality standard. This need is becoming more pressing with the ecosystem growing both on the supply (evaluator) and demand (fundraiser) side. The new GWWC research team is looking to start filling this gap: to help connect evaluators and donors/fundraisers in the effective giving ecosystem in a more effective (higher-quality recommendations) and efficient (lower transaction costs) way. Starting in 2023, the GWWC research team plan to evaluate funding opportunity evaluators on their methodology, to share our findings with other effective giving organisations and projects, and to promote the recommendations of those evaluators that we find meet a certain quality standard. In all of this, we aim to take an inclusive approach in terms of worldviews and values: we are open to evaluating all evaluators that could be seen to maximise positive impact according to some reasonably common worldview or value system, even though we appreciate the challenge here and admit we can never be perfectly “neutral”. We also appreciate this is an ambitious project for a small team (currently only 2!) to take on, and expect it to take us time to build our capacity to evaluate all suitable evaluators at the quality level at which we'd like to evaluate them. Especially in this first year, we may be limited in the number of evaluators we can evaluate and in the time we can spend on evaluating each, and we may not yet be able to provide the full "quality check" we aim to ultimately provide. We'll try to prioritise our time to address the most pressing needs first, and aim to communicate transparently about the confidence of our conclusions, the limitations of our processes, and the mistakes we are inevitably going to make. We very much welcome any questions or feedback on our plans, and look forward to working with others on further improving the state of the effective giving ecosystem, getting more money to where it is needed mos...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Announcing GWWC's new giving recommendations, published by SjirH on November 24, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. We are delighted to announce that Giving What We Can have updated our giving recommendations page and donation platform (previously EA Funds), reflecting the latest recommendations of our five trusted evaluators this giving season (GiveWell, Animal Charity Evaluators, Founders Pledge, EA Funds and Longview Philanthropy) and applying our new inclusion criteria for funds and charities. We are currently recommending 12 top-rated funds and 14 top-rated charities spread across the "cause areas" of improving human wellbeing, improving animal welfare, and creating a better future. We have also recently added content on why we recommend donors to use funds over donating directly to charities, and have added a transparency page for Giving What We Can. Read more about GWWC's broader activities around giving season here, and about our research plans for next year here. We plan to add up to 10 more top-rated funds and charities over the coming few weeks, conditional on them completing due diligence and onboarding. Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org.

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Announcing our 2022 charity recommendations, published by Animal Charity Evaluators on November 22, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Every year, Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) spends several months evaluating animal advocacy organizations to identify those that work effectively and are able to do the most good with additional donations. Our goal is to help people help animals by providing donors with impactful giving opportunities that reduce suffering to the greatest extent possible. This year, we are excited to announce that we have selected one Top Charity and four Standout Charities. In 2022, we conducted comprehensive evaluations of 12 animal advocacy organizations that are doing promising work. Per our evaluation criteria, the five charities we recommended this year have the most impactful programs, are highly cost-effective, and have the most room for additional funding, making them exceptional choices for end-of-year giving. Because we changed the re-evaluation frequency of Top Charities from one to two years, The Humane League, Wild Animal Initiative, and Faunalytics have all retained their Top Charity status from 2021. The Good Food Institute now joins their ranks! We are also pleased to recommend Fish Welfare Initiative, Dansk Vegetarisk Forening, and Çiftlik Hayvanlarını Koruma Derneği as new Standout Charities. Additionally, Sinergia Animal retained their status as a Standout Charity after being re-evaluated this year. These charities join the seven other Standout Charities that retain their status from last year: Compassion USA, Dharma Voices for Animals, Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organisations, Material Innovation Initiative, Mercy For Animals, New Harvest, and xiaobuVEGAN. Below, you will find a brief overview of each of our Top and Standout charities. For more details, please check out our comprehensive charity reviews. Top Charities Evaluated in 2022 The Good Food Institute (GFI) currently operates in the U.S., Brazil, India, Asia-Pacific, Europe, and Israel, where they work to increase the availability of animal-free products through supporting the development and marketing of plant-based and cell-cultured alternatives to animal products. They achieve this through corporate engagement, institutional outreach, and policy work. They also work to strengthen the capacity of the animal advocacy movement through supporting research and start-ups focused on alternative proteins. GFI was one of our Top Charities from November 2016 to November 2021. To learn more, read our 2022 comprehensive review of the Good Food Institute. Evaluated in 2021 Faunalytics is a U.S.-based organization working to connect animal advocates with information relevant to advocacy. This mostly involves cоnducting and publishing independent research, working directly with partner organizations on various research projects, and promoting existing research and data for individual advocates through their website's content library. Faunalytics was one of our Standout Charities from December 2015 to November 2021. To learn more, read our 2021 comprehensive review of Faunalytics. The Humane League (THL) operates in the U.S., Mexico, the U.K., and Japan, where they work to improve animal welfare standards through grassroots campaigns, movement building, vegan advocacy, research, and advocacy training, as well as through corporate, media, and community outreach. They work to build the animal advocacy movement internationally through the Open Wing Alliance (OWA), a coalition founded by THL whose mission is to end the use of battery cages globally. THL has been one of ACE's Top Charities since August 2012, when we used a different evaluation process and did not publish reviews. In 2014, THL was awarded Top Charity status in our first official round of ACE charity evaluation...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Introducing new leadership in Animal Charity Evaluators' Research team, published by Animal Charity Evaluators on November 17, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Introduction Hello EA Forum! As some of you may already be aware, Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) has recently expanded our team, most notably in Research. As such, we'd like to introduce ourselves as ACE's new Director of Research and Evaluations Program Manager and share how we intend to engage the EA community via this forum moving forward. We both joined ACE this summer, right as the annual charity evaluation season kicked off. Since we were hired, two new researchers, Alina Salmen, Ph.D. and Max Taylor, have joined, as well as our new Executive Director, Stien van der Ploeg. Our Backgrounds Elisabeth Ormandy - Director of Research I have an academic background in Neuroscience (B.Sc.), Applied Animal Behaviour and Welfare (M.Sc.), and Animal Welfare and Ethics (Ph.D.). I completed a research fellowship in animal policy development for the Canadian Council on Animal Care and held a post-doctoral fellowship position at the University of British Columbia (UBC). I also taught various undergraduate courses at UBC including: Animals and Society, Animals and Global Issues, Scholarly Writing and Argumentation, and Animals, Politics and Ethics. In 2015, I opted to leave academia to co-found the Canadian Society for Humane Science—I served as their Executive Director until I joined ACE. In that role, I gained experience in nonprofit management, impact assessment, and strategic planning, and learned the importance of strengthening the animal advocacy movement. Alongside my paid work in animal advocacy, I currently serve in a number of volunteer roles, most notably as a Board member for the Association for the Protection of Fur-Bearing Animals. Vince Mak - Evaluations Program Manager I have a generalist background—I graduated from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and spent the beginning of my career in financial services. I discovered effective altruism in 2019, developed an interest in animal advocacy after reading Animal Liberation in 2020, and began doing EA-style charity evaluations across cause areas as a volunteer with SoGive in 2021. Outside of my job at ACE, I currently assist in various capacities with EA research, grantmaking, and movement building. ACE's Next Steps on the EA Forum Our intentions In the past few years, ACE's activity on the EA Forum has been to provide updates on our work and share our thinking. As an EA organization dedicated to transparency and intellectual rigor, we would like to take it a step further and interact more closely with the community that shares these values. As we tinker with our evaluation methodology in the months and years ahead, we plan to invite your feedback during the intermediate stages; we do not want to just inform you, we want to be informed by you. In addition to opportunities to critique our thinking, you can also expect from ACE transparency about our processes, responsiveness to fair and genuine criticism, and a commitment to evolve our thinking in response to new evidence. Adjustments to our evaluations process so far This year, our research team altered the way we approach our evaluations, partially thanks to input from people on this forum in the past. For instance, we have now implemented quantitative scoring frameworks for our Programs and Cost Effectiveness evaluation criteria—a marked departure from how we assessed these criteria last year. We appreciate the EA community's willingness to provide constructive criticism so that we can continually refine our methods. More recently, some of you have already volunteered your time and expertise by sharing proposals for how ACE can improve. In particular, we thank Nuno Sempere for a th...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Winners of the EA Criticism and Red Teaming Contest, published by Lizka on October 1, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. We're excited to announce the winners of the EA Criticism and Red Teaming Contest. We had 341 submissions and are awarding $120,000 in prizes to our top 31 entries. We set out with the primary goals of identifying errors in existing work in effective altruism, stress-testing important ideas, raising the average quality of criticism (in part to create examples for future work), and supporting a culture of openness and critical thinking. We're pleased about the progress submissions to this contest made, though there's certainly still lots of work to be done. We think the winners of the contest are both valuable in their own right as criticisms, and as helpful examples of different types of critique. We had a large judging panel. Not all panelists read every piece (even among the winners), and some pieces have won prizes despite being read by relatively few people or having some controversy over their value. Particularly when looking at challenges to the basic frameworks of effective altruism, there can be cases where there is significant uncertainty about whether a contribution is ultimately helpful. But if it is, it's often very important, so we didn't want to exclude cases like this from winning prizes when they had some strong advocates. You can read about our process and overall thoughts on the contest at the end of this post. Prize distribution logistics are also discussed at the end of this post. An overview of the winners Top prizes [see more] A critical review of GiveWell's 2022 cost-effectiveness model and Methods for improving uncertainty analysis in EA cost-effectiveness models by Alex Bates (Froolow) ($25,000 total) Biological Anchors external review by Jennifer Lin ($20,000) Population Ethics without Axiology: A Framework by Lukas Gloor ($20,000) Second prizes (runners up) — $5,000 each [see more] Are you really in a race? The Cautionary Tales of Szilárd and Ellsberg by Haydn Belfield Against Anthropic Shadow by Toby Crisford An Evaluation of Animal Charity Evaluators by eaanonymous1234 Red Teaming CEA's Community Building Work by AnonymousEAForumAccount A Critical Review of Open Philanthropy's Bet On Criminal Justice Reform by Nuño Sempere Effective altruism in the garden of ends by Tyler Alterman Notes on effective altruism by Michael Nielsen Honorable mentions — $1,000 for each of the 20 in this category [see more] Top prizes A critical review of GiveWell's 2022 cost-effectiveness model and Methods for improving uncertainty analysis in EA cost-effectiveness models by Alex Bates (Froolow) ($25,000 prize in total) We're awarding a total of $25,000 for these two submissions by the same author covering similar ground. A critical review of GiveWell's 2022 cost-effectiveness model is a deep dive into the strengths and weaknesses of GiveWell's analysis, and how it might be improved. Methods for improving uncertainty analysis in EA cost-effectiveness models extracts some more generalizable lessons. Summary of A critical review of GiveWell's 2022 cost-effectiveness model: The submission replicates GiveWell's cost-effectiveness models, critiques their design and structure, notes some minor errors, and suggests some broader takeaways for GiveWell and effective altruism. The author emphasizes GiveWell's lack of uncertainty analysis as a weakness, notes issues with the models' architectures (external data sources appear as inputs on many different levels of the model, elements from a given level in the model “grab” from others on that level, etc.), and discusses ways in which communication of the models is confusing. Overall, though, the author seems impressed with GiveWell's work. You can also see the author's own picture-based summary of thei...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: An Evaluation of Animal Charity Evaluators, published by eaanonymous1234 on September 2, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Introduction Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) is an effective altruism aligned organization which aims to provide information and recommendation to donors and advocates about the effectiveness of various interventions and charities. As one can expect, ACE reviews animal charities based on the effectiveness of their programs and recommends a small number of charities as “top” and “stand-out” charities. ACE also has a Movement Grants program, which provides small grants to various organizations. According to ACE, it has a budget over one million US dollars, and granted and influenced over ten million US dollars worth donations to its recommended charities and promising projects in 2021. This amount (10 million US dollars) is larger than the total amount of Effective Altruism Animal Welfare Fund grants in 2021. One can say that ACE is positioned to take the role of GiveWell in the Effective Altruism animal welfare cause area. It functions as an expert authority which evaluates different interventions and comes to conclusions about which ones are the most effective and which charities carry them out in the most effective way. One can also say that ACE's role is even more significant than GiveWell, since it is not just donors who may follow its advice, it is also the animal advocates who may benefit from this expert authority by following its advice on which interventions are the most effective to help animals. In this essay I will put forward three points of criticism, which I believe can uncover certain defects that ACE has, and can help ACE to overcome them: 1) ACE's current style of reasoning is somewhat opaque and therefore may mislead ordinary donors and advocates. 2) ACE is omitting from making substantial claims about the most effective ways to help animals, and thus failing in its primary role of evaluating the effectiveness of different interventions and charities. 3) ACE is currently underrating the effectiveness of programs which aim for animal welfare reforms relative to the effectiveness of other interventions. In the first criticism, I will argue that while ACE makes cost-effectiveness comparisons between charities which carry out similar programs (for example two charities which both engage in animal welfare campaigns), it does not comment how it is comparing charities which carry out different programs (for example, one charity which engage in animal welfare campaigns and another charity which has a vegan pledge program). I will claim that some of the terms that ACE is using such as “relative to other charities” or “highly cost-effective” is likely to be understood by ordinary donors and advocates differently than ACE's understanding, and ACE is not providing clear context when making these statements. In the second criticism, I will show that in its current form, ACE seems to accept that almost all programs in farmed animal advocacy may be effective and does not seem to answer fundamental questions which an evaluation organization has to answer, like “which program(s) help animals the most?” or “which programs should an animal charity or an advocate prioritize?” or “which charities should a donor prioritize?”. I will argue that starting from its foundation and in its current form, ACE functions more like a hits based giving “fund”, rather than an evaluation organization, and these multiple roles make it difficult for Animal Charity Evaluators to achieve its primary role: evaluation. I will suggest that ACE should not be timid to put forward its views on the effectiveness of different programs, whatever those views are or will be. I will also have some proposals such as applying stricter and clear cut evaluation criteria, focusing ...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: [Cause Exploration Prizes] The importance of Intercausal Impacts, published by Sebastian Joy on August 24, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. This essay was submitted to Open Philanthropy's Cause Exploration Prizes contest. If you're seeing this in summer 2022, we'll be posting many submissions in a short period. If you want to stop seeing them so often, apply a filter for the appropriate tag! Defining key cause areas - such as global poverty, animal suffering, and existential risks - is an important element of effective altruism, in part because it has helped effective altruists to identify the most effective organizations and interventions in each area. However, addressing one cause area at a time without considering the ways in which its interventions affect other cause areas - for better or worse - can have a negative impact on the overall effectiveness of EA, a consequence that is often not considered. Invoking an Intercausal Impacts analysis, this article makes a case for establishing food systems transformation/meat reduction as a cause area in its own right. Effective Altruism's ‘divide-and-improve' approach Effective Altruism aims to improve the world as effectively and efficiently as possible. To achieve this goal, global problems are usually split up into different cause areas. Each cause area is analysed on the criteria triad of importance, tractability, and neglectedness. Such an analysis is what led to causes such as ‘global poverty' (improving the economic or health situation of the least affluent), ‘animal suffering' (reducing non-human suffering) and ‘existential risks' (increasing the chances of survival for future generations) becoming prominent focus areas of EA. And the list of cause areas is growing. This ‘divide-and-conquer' or rather ‘divide-and-improve' approach has proven very useful so far in EA thinking and theorising, and has led to the establishment of several meta-charities for each of the three cause areas highlighted above. The goal of these meta-charities is to research, analyse and promote those organisations and interventions that are best suited to solve the specific problems within their cause area. While the meta-charity ‘GiveWell' looks into the most effective interventions to help the global poor, ‘Animal Charity Evaluators' tries to identify the most useful interventions to reduce animal suffering, and the ‘Centre for the Study of Existential Risk' aims at reducing the risk of humanity becoming extinct. Here is a simple overview of this process in three steps: Drawbacks of the divide-and-improve approach While this approach has many benefits and has helped improve the state of the world tremendously, it comes with crucial and so far often overlooked drawbacks. There are two ways this approach might actually work against EA's overall goal of creating the most good in the world - both of which involve what I call ‘Intercausal Impacts', i.e. the overall impact of a given organisation or intervention not only on its respective primary cause area but on all cause areas aggregated. Overrating: Interventions (and organisations) that are regarded as very efficient in one cause area might have negative spill-over effects and actually do damage in other cause areas. Thus, their overall impact might be significantly less positive (and in some cases even net negative) than is immediately apparent. Ignoring negative spill-over effects on other cause areas implies an overrating of the intervention or organisation in question. Underrating: Interventions (and organisations) that have a positive impact on various causes but are not amongst the most effective in any particular cause area will receive little or no attention and support although their overall cost-effectiveness across cause areas might be superior. Ignoring positive spill-ov...

What are some of the tensions between short-term and long-term thinking about how best to reduce animal suffering? Why spend time and energy working on animal welfare when human welfare hasn't even been secured? Why do so many animal rights activists and organizations have such negative reputations and elicit such strongly negative emotional reactions from the population at large when they're just trying to reduce suffering? How does animal rights activism from an effective altruism perspective intersect with the more traditional forms of animal rights activism and social justice activism? Humans tend to be more capable of empathizing (for example) with a cow than with a fish, and more with a dog than with a cow; so how can animal rights activists motivate people in a way that works with or around human cognitive and emotional biases? What are some tools for dealing with chronic pain?Leah has been involved in the effective altruism community for a decade and in animal advocacy her whole life. She has 7 years of professional experience in farmed animal advocacy, primarily focused on movement growth and interfacing with funders. Most recently, she worked at Animal Charity Evaluators on the Communications team and then as Executive Director. Her previous work experience includes performing in the Zurich Opera, managing a small business, and founding and leading ProVeg International's China Program. She currently works as a freelance philanthropic advisor to high-net-worth individuals entering the farmed animal space. You can email Leah at leah.edgerton@gmail.com or find out more about her on her LinkedIn profile.Further reading:A tool to help you figure out what animal products are most harmful (as well as some caveats about the methods of the tool)[Read more]

What are some of the tensions between short-term and long-term thinking about how best to reduce animal suffering? Why spend time and energy working on animal welfare when human welfare hasn't even been secured? Why do so many animal rights activists and organizations have such negative reputations and elicit such strongly negative emotional reactions from the population at large when they're just trying to reduce suffering? How does animal rights activism from an effective altruism perspective intersect with the more traditional forms of animal rights activism and social justice activism? Humans tend to be more capable of empathizing (for example) with a cow than with a fish, and more with a dog than with a cow; so how can animal rights activists motivate people in a way that works with or around human cognitive and emotional biases? What are some tools for dealing with chronic pain?Leah has been involved in the effective altruism community for a decade and in animal advocacy her whole life. She has 7 years of professional experience in farmed animal advocacy, primarily focused on movement growth and interfacing with funders. Most recently, she worked at Animal Charity Evaluators on the Communications team and then as Executive Director. Her previous work experience includes performing in the Zurich Opera, managing a small business, and founding and leading ProVeg International's China Program. She currently works as a freelance philanthropic advisor to high-net-worth individuals entering the farmed animal space. You can email Leah at leah.edgerton@gmail.com or find out more about her on her LinkedIn profile.Further reading:A tool to help you figure out what animal products are most harmful (as well as some caveats about the methods of the tool)

What are some of the tensions between short-term and long-term thinking about how best to reduce animal suffering? Why spend time and energy working on animal welfare when human welfare hasn't even been secured? Why do so many animal rights activists and organizations have such negative reputations and elicit such strongly negative emotional reactions from the population at large when they're just trying to reduce suffering? How does animal rights activism from an effective altruism perspective intersect with the more traditional forms of animal rights activism and social justice activism? Humans tend to be more capable of empathizing (for example) with a cow than with a fish, and more with a dog than with a cow; so how can animal rights activists motivate people in a way that works with or around human cognitive and emotional biases? What are some tools for dealing with chronic pain?Leah has been involved in the effective altruism community for a decade and in animal advocacy her whole life. She has 7 years of professional experience in farmed animal advocacy, primarily focused on movement growth and interfacing with funders. Most recently, she worked at Animal Charity Evaluators on the Communications team and then as Executive Director. Her previous work experience includes performing in the Zurich Opera, managing a small business, and founding and leading ProVeg International's China Program. She currently works as a freelance philanthropic advisor to high-net-worth individuals entering the farmed animal space. You can email Leah at leah.edgerton@gmail.com or find out more about her on her LinkedIn profile.