Kevin_S

This isn't really fair I think. Academic money is actually not fungible - it can't be used to fund athletics, and vice versa. Just because both pots are relatively large doesn't mean that the money itself is fungible.

As an academic researcher, it's most frustrating in that it feels like IRB scrutiny doesn't seem to align with risk.

I do accounting research. My human-subjects research involves surveying practitioners about their jobs, interviewing them about their experiences, and conducting very simple experiments online that ask them to make decisions. There is virtually 0 real risk to any participants of my studies. IRB does always give my studies "exempt" status, but it still has to be reviewed. And they will pester me about different things like where will store our data (Onedrive is fine, but dropbox is not for some reason). This process will typically take a couple weeks of back and forth.

Yet I have a friend who participated in a Kinesiology dissertation study where they were asked to do extremely strenuous physical activity. He fainted(!) at one point from the activity. And it seemed to them that there were relatively few safeguards from that happening. Now, I'm sure that study did have IRB approval, but it really got me thinking... are we really scrutinizing studies optimally?

I disagree with this - traditional philanthropy does ignore systematic/societal problems, for many reasons it is simply unable to.

EA tries to look at the bigger picture of effectiveness, and many within EA do believe that political solutions are a good use of resources. For example, many of the new charities created by Charity Entrepreneurship spend their time lobbying governments. Relative to traditional philanthropy, I think EA has a real shot at the systemic changes necessary to make real change.

This article makes a fundamental mistake that many who have written about EA make - by treating the philosophical and real-world application of EA as the same thing. EA is such a new philosophy and movement that the philosophy and application of EA are not sufficiently divorced from one another, and the people at the core of "philosophy EA" are also involved in "application EA". So this is an easy mistake to make.

There are people in rooms discussing whether "the ends justify the means" (though I don't think anyone is seriously arguing in favor of SBF-type means). BUT THESE ARE PHILOSOPHICAL DISCUSSIONS.

If you asked 1,000 effective altruists if they think what SBF did was acceptable (or gave a hypothetical ends justify the means at 10% of the severity of SBF), I would wager that 0 would say it was acceptable. SBF used EA as a shield to hide his fraudulent behavior, and EA (both the philosophy and application sides) have taken a hard look at what EA argues for, and to think that EA (even philosophy EA) would approve of SBF's behavior do not understand EA at all.

---

I study EA and so I am loosely connected to the movement, but I don't consider myself an effective altruist.

OK but you also have to measure the services the university provides to students through the increase in administration. Things listed already in this thread articulate that students desire these services.

I think if you seriously looked at the difference in the level/sophistication of services over those 20 years, it explains the vast majority of the bloat.

Students are getting what they pay for, and ultimately they demand greater services.

But removing tenure will only increase the incentives of chasing those things.

And I don't understand how others in this thread are saying academic freedom isn't necessary anymore/doesn't matter. The entire purpose of the republican party attacking tenure is so they can explicitly attack academic freedom.

You've hit on a few reasons. Basically: taxes, no more need for money, desire to give back, desire to have a lasting legacy, societal pressure...

And no, there really is very little work done evaluating private foundations. They operate with very few guardrails and oversight is extremely minimal. It is difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of charities, so how do you evaluate foundations that give grants to charities?

I am an academic that studies foundations and would be happy to talk more about it if you have other questions.

Really interesting.

My wife and I are about to go from ~70k yearly income to ~250k yearly income.

I have done a ton of planning for how our lifestyle will change and new expenses (buying a house, having kids). 250k is an insane amount to me, but as I am doing the math for our monthly income and expenses, it does go quickly if you are not careful.

Wish there were more resources on navigating this kind of income jump. Anyone know any?

I know biology and many other STEM stipends are very low.

As someone in a business field with a very high stipend (32k), I am also feeling the pinch. My wife and I keep a relatively strict budget and I track with YNAB, and gas alone is pretty damaging to our spare income. And I am lucky to be at an institution in a college town with a relatively low cost of living. I don't know how my peers in cities like Boston do it.

You usually do pay for a dog you adopt from a shelter. It's cheaper ofc. I paid 200, which covered his shots and vet bills that the shelter initially paid.

Surely not. If you don't raise another round, YC may just write off this as a cost of doing business (similar to failed startups they've invested).

It may be written into the terms some other backup for this situation.

RS was the perfect game for me and dramatically changed my life. Started when I was 12, played for YEARS slowly getting better.

Discovered staking and scamming at the duel arena. Invented a new scam and made bils. Made a sizeable chunk over a couple years (enough to pay all my bills in college and a LOT of beer money). Got into botting with some friends, made a little money doing that too.

My experience with RS led me to an interest in economics, and I'm now an accounting PhD student about to graduate. My bro got into coding bots, and is now an SWE doing high level work.

I love the game to pieces, and it isn't because I made money playing.

Don't disrespect my boi Runescape like that.

It's pretty insane to read "both sides" at this point.

The idea that democrats and republicans are equal in this way is absurd.

I read Bhagavad Gita for a philosophy course. It made me very interested in religion and philosophy. Highly recommend it for anyone, it's a relatively chill read as well.

Outside of a few select people (mostly my parents and grandparents), if someone calls me I assume it is an emergency or something very important.

I actually get a surge of anxiety because of this lol.

So I scammed at the duel arena for a few years. Made quite a lot of gp, then RWT it all.

I know what we did constituted a violation of terms of service, and we were subject to bans at any time. However, I was reasonably confident there was little Jagex could do to pursue legal action against us. Generally, we were relatively small fish compared to things like the Mod Jed scandal.

I am not sure the courts would find this to be in any way illegal. But I find it very interesting.

I find that ownership of one's work is a gigantic motivator for me, though not necessarily for others. I moved from a consulting job to academic research and am significantly more fulfilled doing research projects rather than being a small piece of a greater machine at a corporation.

There is nothing I love more than finding the seed of an idea and spending a whole day getting it started.

Sorry this is off topic, but you seriously don't respect a single charity?

There are a ton of amazing charities doing incredibly underfunded work. Even small amounts of money can make a big difference.

I'm an academic researcher that studies nonprofits. I could recommend a few if you like?

Sorry late reply, but I am in accounting.

Just to extend your point, some of my stats:

3.0 high school GPA 3.0 undergraduate GPA

Now in year 3 of a PhD program. I wasn't even considered academically gifted in undergrad! Yet I think I am a pretty good researcher.

You should examine the nonprofit's Form 990 if you have concerns or look at their page on Guidestar.

Hi Elon,

I study nonprofits and the effective altruism community. I'm not super familiar with your philanthropic efforts, but now that you are the richest person in the world, what is your plan for the money?

The Gates Foundation could use your resources and do a huge amount of good. Alternatively, Open Philanthropy would have a lot of insight into ways to do a lot of good with your resources.

I hope you are thinking carefully about the impact you want to have.

Do you live in/near a rural area? Schools around me (Alabama) are hurting badly for equipment to facilitate remote learning.

I'll be on the academic market next year. In my field (business), the market has been better than expected, but we are quite priviliged.

I'm hoping next year will be closer to normal, but I do have concerns about the long term future of the career I've chosen.

Givewell.org is another great resource for identifying extremely impactful organizations.

There's a few black mirror episodes on this theme, search for the "cookies"episodes

V A P E R W A V E A E S T H E T I C S

I recently decided to purchase either this or an ipad, and ended up going with the ipad.

My primary use is reading academic articles, and I use Endnote to organize my pdfs and citations. I ended up going with the ipad because it has an endnote app and automatically syncs with my desktop, so I just always have all of my papers handy. If I had to manually sync papers to the remarkable it would be very annoying.

So I ended up going with the ipad despite wanting the experience of the remarkable. Though the ipad was cheaper and has other uses (entertainment).

They are not only protesting the killing of unarmed black people, but all aspects of the structural bias of American police and the justice system against blacks. These biases affect much more than the extreme cases of the killing of unarmed black people.