“Six Mistakes You've Probably Been Making About Effective Altruism (The Last One Will Shock You)” is one of the comments below this summary article on mistakes in the EA community. Happy clicking!
Did you know that there are 300+ EA Facebook groups around the world? This list lists them all.
“Cellular agriculture – the production of animal products in cell cultures – has the potential to massively reduce suffering by replacing systems of animal exploitation.” This article outlines some scenarios for cellular agriculture.
AI safety research is getting traction: “Concrete Problems in AI Safety”, a collaboration among scientists from Google, Stanford and Berkeley, was co-authored by EAs Dario Amodei and Paul Christiano.
The EAGx organizers in Boston wrote up this comprehensive post on their experience, covering everything from start to finish. A great read for anyone organizing an event like that.
Updates from EA Organizations
80,000 Hours
80,000 Hours launched their significantly updated career guide, receiving over 100,000 views and 5,000 newsletter sign-ups in one week. They also made two great new hires.
GPP submitted a joint recommendation to the House of Commons for an AI transparency research fund and AI safety horizon scanning team, drawing together input from FHI, CSER, FLI and others in the broader community.
Sentience Politics launched a ballot initiative for fundamental rights for primates in Basel, Switzerland. Their policy paper (available in English) calls for fundamental rights to life and physical and mental integrity for non-human primates. Achieving basic rights for the first non-human species could serve as a stepping stone towards extending rights to other species and ending factory farming. Switzerland's leading newspaper reported favorably (German only) on the initiative.
New meta-charity Students for High-Impact Charity (SHIC) has launched an Indiegogo campaign to get the funding they need to continue. SHIC is looking to establish 50+ secondary schools and university clubs worldwide at the start of the next semester and collect detailed information on the effectiveness of the program.
The Life You Can Save
Ethics Philosopher Peter Singer, founder of The Life You Can Save, turns 70 this month. If his work in philosophical ethics, notably effective altruism and animal rights, has touched you, consider a message and/or donation in his honor at special landing pages created for this occasion.
Other Announcements
Only 4 weeks to go until EA Global 2016 – the largest gathering of effective altruists in history with 1,000+ attendees and 50+ speakers, including the co-founder of Skype, advisors in the White House and the Director of J-Pal. It looks set to sell out far in advance, so apply today to reserve a spot.
While we’re at it, there’s also going to be an EA Global research meeting for postgraduate students and early-stage academics. The call for abstracts closes on July 10.
In short though: EA is a growing social movement founded on the desire to make the world as good a place as it can be, the use of evidence and reason to find out how to do so, and the audacity to actually try.
Let us know how you liked this edition and how we can improve further. Thanks a lot to everyone who has submitted feedback so far – it's been really useful!
See you again on August 4!
Georgie, Michał, Pascal and Sören – The Effective Altruism Newsletter Team
A community project of the Centre for Effective Altruism, a registered charity in England and Wales, Registered Charity Number 1149828 Centre for Effective Altruism, Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, Littlegate House, St Ebbes Street, Oxford OX1 1PT, UK
