Mo Putera
Bio
Participation4
I currently work with CE/AIM-incubated charity ARMoR on research distillation, quantitative modelling and general org-boosting to support policy advocacy for market-shaping tools to incentivise innovation and ensure access to antibiotics to help combat AMR.
I previously did AIM's Research Training Program, was supported by a FTX Future Fund regrant and later Open Philanthropy's affected grantees program, and before that I spent 6 years doing data analytics, business intelligence and knowledge + project management in various industries (airlines, e-commerce) and departments (commercial, marketing), after majoring in physics at UCLA and changing my mind about becoming a physicist. I've also initiated some local priorities research efforts, e.g. a charity evaluation initiative with the moonshot aim of reorienting my home country Malaysia's giving landscape towards effectiveness, albeit with mixed results.
I first learned about effective altruism circa 2014 via A Modest Proposal, Scott Alexander's polemic on using dead children as units of currency to force readers to grapple with the opportunity costs of subpar resource allocation under triage. I have never stopped thinking about it since, although my relationship to it has changed quite a bit; I related to Tyler's personal story (which unsurprisingly also references A Modest Proposal as a life-changing polemic):
I thought my own story might be more relatable for friends with a history of devotion – unusual people who’ve found themselves dedicating their lives to a particular moral vision, whether it was (or is) Buddhism, Christianity, social justice, or climate activism. When these visions gobble up all other meaning in the life of their devotees, well, that sucks. I go through my own history of devotion to effective altruism. It’s the story of [wanting to help] turning into [needing to help] turning into [living to help] turning into [wanting to die] turning into [wanting to help again, because helping is part of a rich life].
How others can help me
I'm looking for "decision guidance"-type roles e.g. applied prioritization research.
How I can help others
Do reach out if you think any of the above piques your interest :)
Posts 4
Comments165
Topic contributions3
There's this chart from the What trends do we see in GWWC Pledgers’ giving? subsection of GWWC's 2020-22 cost-eff self-evaluation:
Joel's comment on this is worth reading too.
Agree with the lower bound on fungal burden. For the post you linked I'd signal-boost J Bostock's 7 criticisms too.
I think you're right re: cheap distribution. My guess is it would be hard for a new charity to beat VisionSpring, who have been executing on this strategy for a while and have the resources (~300 staff, $15M grant from MacKenzie Scott, etc), the results to show for it (e.g. 1.9 million eyeglasses distributed last year with 535 partners, etc), and "expansion plans" secured (e.g. their new $70M flagship project to screen 8M workers over the next 5-7 years based on the PROSPER RCT). Their 2022 financial summary (page 17) claims to have distributed 1.52 million eyeglasses for $11.9M in total expenses i.e. ~$7.80 per eyeglasses, nearly half opex (mgmt ops, fundraising, program & sales ops) and ~2/3rds of the remainder program delivery costs, although the expenses were inflated by the delivery of ~1.3 mil "covid safety materials" (PPEs etc) so I'd guess the true figure is closer to $5-6 per eyeglasses all-inclusive.
That's fair, no need to take it.
The criticism, if there is one, would be that Scott's concept doesn't add anything to the work done by academics
Stuart Armstrong (author of the OP in the link above) seems to think it was academically inspiring, cf. the passage starting with
Academic Moloch
Ok, now to the point. The "Moloch" idea is very interesting, and, at the FHI, we may try to do some research in this area (naming it something more respectable/boring, of course, something like "how to avoid stable value-losing civilization attractors").
The project hasn't started yet, but a few caveats to the Moloch idea have already occurred to me. ...
Not sure if that counts for you.
(I'm not socially tied to Luke in any way. I had the same misconception as you a long time ago, remember reading that comment as clarifying, and thought you would appreciate the share.)
No? cf. this dialogue between Jason Crawford and Clara Collier, Max Daniel's post (and this thread with Jason), Jason's attempt to find the crux between PS and x-risk communities, etc
Makes sense. Their analysis treats large donors differently, although they don't mention anything about retention differences vs other pledgers. Given that GWWC say they "often already have individual relationships with them", my guess is it's probably slightly higher.