Re:Launch HN: Effective Altruism Funds (YC W17 Nonprofit)
by richardbatty on Thursday March 16, 2017 @08:57PM
(#13890487)
To add some numbers to this, according to http://www.climatefinancelandscape.org/ $392 billion was spent on various aspects of tackling climate change in 2014. In contrast, under $10 million per year is being spent on potential risks from AI (https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/artificial-intellige...).
That doesn't mean there's nothing neglected in climate change (e.g. negative emissions technology) and it would be good to see some more investigation into this.
Re:Launch HN: Effective Altruism Funds (YC W17 Nonprofit)
by rspeer on Friday March 17, 2017 @05:05AM
(#13892561)
> many EAs think that we should first focus on problems which receive less media attention but are plausibly just as serious.
How is that effective? How could you even measure the effectiveness of focusing on problems that don't currently exist but that you happen to consider "plausible"? (Global warming, in contrast, is quite measurable.)
I'm looking at the list of recipients of that fund and it looks like self-dealing: people on the futurist side of EA would like to encourage people to donate to people on the futurist side of EA.
Having said that, one of the reasons that EA has not focused as heavily on climate change historically is that climate change is not as neglected as potential risks from AI, or biotechnology. We are happy to see a lot of funding going into climate research and modelling, and a lot of grassroots activism. While climate change is far from solved, and remains one of the most important problems of our time, many EAs think that we should first focus on problems which receive less media attention but are plausibly just as serious.