By Jamie Harris.

The EA Infrastructure Fund isn’t currently funding-constrained. Hooray! This means that if you submit a strong application that fits within our “principles-first” effective altruism scope soon, we’d be excited to fund it, and won’t be constrained by a lack of money. We’re open to considering a range of grant sizes, including grants over $500,000 and below $10,000.^([1])

In part, we’re writing this post because we spoke to a few people with projects we’d be interested in funding who didn’t know that they could apply to EAIF. If you’re unsure, feel free to ask me questions or just apply!

The rest of this post gives you some tips and ideas for how you could apply, including ideas we’re excited to receive applications for. I (Jamie) wrote this post relatively quickly; EAIF staff might make more such posts if people find them helpful.

🔍 What’s in scope?

• Research that aids prioritisation across different cause areas.
• Projects that build communities focused on impartial, scope-sensitive and ambitious altruism.
• Infrastructure, especially epistemic infrastructure, to support these aims.
• (More on this post and our website, though the site needs a bit of a revamp. And please err on the side of applying. You don’t need to be fully ‘principles first’; that’s our strategy.)

💪 What makes an application strong?

• A great idea — promising theory of change and expected cost-effectiveness.^([2])
• Evidence suggesting you are likely to execute well on the idea.
• (I’m simplifying a bit of course. See also Michael Aird’s tips here.)

The second part is straightforward enough; if your project has been ongoing for a while, we’d like to understand the results you’ve achieved so far. If it’s brand new, or you’re pivoting a lot, we’re interested in evidence about your broader achievements and skills that would set you up well to do a good job.

You might already have a great idea. If so, nice one! Please ignore the rest of this post and crack on with an application. If not, I’ll now highlight a few specific topics that we’re especially interested in receiving applications for at the moment.^([3])

💡 Consider applying for projects in these areas

Epistemics and integrity

What’s the problem?

• EA is vulnerable to groupthink, echo chambers, and excessive deference to authority.
• A bunch of big EA mistakes and failures were perhaps (partly) due to these things.
• A lot of external criticism of EA stems back to this.

What could be done?

• Training programmes and fellowships that help individual participants develop good epistemic habits or integrity directly (e.g. Scout Mindset, Fermi estimates, developing virtues), indirectly (e.g. helping them form their own views on cause prioritisation), or as part of a broader package.
• Training, tools, or platforms for forecasting and prediction markets.
• Researching and creating tools that aid structured and informed decision-making.
• Developing filtering and vetting mechanisms to weed out applicants with low integrity or poor epistemics.
• New structures or incentives at the community level: integrating external feedback, incentivising red-teaming, or creating better discussion platforms.

What have we funded recently?

• Elizabeth Van Nostrand and Timothy Telleen Lawton recorded a discussion about why Elizabeth left EA and why Timothy is seeking a ‘renaissance’ of EA instead. They’re turning this into a broader podcast.
• EA Netherlands is working with Shoshannah Tekofsky to develop 5-10 unique rationality workshops to be presented to 100-240 Dutch EAs over a 12-month period, aiming to improve their epistemic skills and decision-making processes.
• André Ferretti launched the “Retrocaster” tool on Clearer Thinking, to enhance users’  forecasting skills. By obscuring data from sources like Our World in Data, Retrocaster invites users to forecast hidden trends.

Harri Besceli, another EAIF Fund Manager, wrote more thoughts on EA epistemics projects here. This is beyond EAIF’s scope but if you have a for-profit idea here, feel free to contact me.^([4])

EA brand and reputation

What’s the problem?

• Since FTX, the public perception of EA has become significantly worse.
• This makes it harder to grow and do community outreach.
• Organisations and individuals are less willing to associate with EA; this reduces the benefits it provides and further worsens its reputation.

What could be done?

• Good PR. There’s a whole massive industry out there focused on exactly this, and presumably a bunch of it works. Not all PR work is dishonest.
• Empirical testing of different messages and frames to see what resonates best with different target audiences.
• More/better comms and marketing generally for promising organisations.
• Inwards-focusing interventions that help create a healthier self-identity, culture, and vision, or that systematically boost morale (beyond one-off celebratory posts).
• Support for high-quality journalism on relevant topics.

What have we funded recently?

• Yi-Yang Chua is exploring eight community health projects. Some relate to navigating EA identity; others might have knock-on effects for EA’s reputation by mitigating harms and avoiding scandals.
• Honestly not much. Please send us requests!

I’ve focused on addressing challenges of poor brand and reputation, but of course the ideal would be to actually fix any underlying issues that have bad consequences and in turn cause poor reputation. Proposals relating to those are of course welcome (e.g. on epistemics & integrity).

Funding diversification

What’s the problem?

• Many promising projects are bottlenecked by funding, from AI safety to animal welfare.
• Projects are often dependent on funding from Open Philanthropy, which makes their situation unstable and incentivises deference to OP’s views.
• There’s less funding in EA than there used to be (especially due to the FTX crash) or could be (especially given historical reliance on OP and FTX).

What could be done?

• Projects focused on broadly raising funding from outside the EA community.
• More targeted fundraising, like projects focusing specifically on high-net-worth donors, local donors in priority areas (e.g. India), or specific professions and interest groups (e.g. software engineers, alt protein startup founders, AI lab staff).
• Regranting projects.
• Projects focused on democratising decision making within the EA community.
• Philanthropic advising, grantmaking, or talent pipelines to help address bottlenecks here.

What have we funded recently?

• Giv Effektivt hired its first FTE staff member to reach high-net-worth individuals and improve operations, media outreach, and SEO.
• EA Poland grew and promoted a platform for cost-effective donations to address global poverty, factory farming, and climate change.
• But we’ve mostly only received applications for broad, national effective giving initiatives; and there are so many more opportunities in this space!

Areas deprioritised by Good Ventures

Good Ventures announced that it would stop supporting certain sub-causes via Open Philanthropy. We expect that programmes focused on rationality or supporting under 18s (aka ‘high school outreach’) are the most obviously in-scope-for-EAIF affected areas; you can check this post for other possibilities.

We expect that Good Ventures’ withdrawal here leaves at least some promising projects underfunded, and we’d be excited to help fill (some of) the gap.

✨ This is by no means an exhaustive list!

There are lots of problems in effective altruism, and lots of bottlenecks faced by projects making use of EA principles; if you have noticed an issue, let us know about how you can help fix it by submitting an application.

For instance, if you’ve been kicking around for a few years — you’ve built up some solid career capital in top orgs, and have a rich understanding of the EA community, warts and all — then there’s a good chance we’d be excited to fund you to make progress on tackling an issue you’ve identified.^([5])

And of course, other people have already done some thinking and suggested some ideas. Here are a few longlists of potential projects, if you want to scour for options^([6]):

• Here’s a quick list we made earlier with different tabs from different EAIF staff (2024)
• Rethink Priorities’ General Longtermism Team’s longlist (2023)
• Finn Moorhouse’s list of “EA Projects I'd Like to See” (2022)
• FTX Future Fund’s list (2022) and crowdsourced suggestions (731 comments!)
• Charity Entrepreneurship’s “survey of 40 EAs” on the most promising areas to start new EA meta charities (2020)
• Probably a bunch of other posts in the EA Forum tags for “Opportunities to take action”, “Research agendas, questions, and project lists”, or “Community projects”

❓ Ask me almost anything

I’m happy to do an informal ‘ask me anything’ here — I encourage you to ask away in the comments section if there’s anything you’re unsure about or that is holding you back, and I expect to be able to respond to most/all of them. You can also email me (jamie@effectivealtruismfunds.org) or use my anonymous advice form, but posting your comment here is a public good if you’re up for it, since others might have the same question.

But if you already know everything you need to know…

🚀 Apply

See also: “Don’t think, just apply! (usually)”. By the way, EAIF’s turnaround times are much better than they used to be; typically 6 weeks or less.

The application form is here. Thanks!

Hey Johnny, man have you seen his lawn mower or have you gone mnemonic? I saw a report about a minority on the net with a group of hackers but Johnny I find it ironic that they all disappeared and now after all these years were still faced with the same interface.

And the world wide Web just a book. Let's face it Johnny even the bird flew away and x marks the same old interface. Gone in a flash all the promises web 2 up with we grew replaced by a shell with no ghost leaving us in our browser to be the host while servers serve up the most insecure codes.

And our devices start to slow instead of cruising it high speed we just wait for things to load and what servers are made for sit at 10% at most.

Johnny, Dear Johnny we're clicking away, it's logged it's collected analyzed and sold but we get no portion of sales - Johnny we’re slaves. This isn't socializing it's not the internet it's a data Rush gold mine at our expense. There's no neo in this matrix to come to our defense.

Only a trail of cookies and more autonomous agents. Johnny where did we lose sight of the user experience? Where's the great design immersive environment? all I'm seeing is ads and text. And intelligence growing greater than our own the biggest thing that's next. That can't see beauty in line or in context. That were typing to giving away all our artistic skill sets no longer learning art as students.

Johnny I'm sick of waiting please become mnemonic!

Show us an interactive website something immersive as content. I want a glove I want a lawnmower man. I want to be Stallone and Sandra Bullock — in the net. My point is Johnny I take Taco Bell as the only food option to see the internet again. If not for every click every word every action I deserve a percent. For every bit of data they sell and collect.

So we can start building what was supposed to be the world wide Web. An actual community built on trust and respect and experiences we enter upon giving consent. Not a bunch of divisive limited liability licenses where it's the companies they aim to protect. Not cookies not libraries not scripts that re direct all the page load and cumbersome over engineered code going to the client. I want my hackers to be anonymous not wearing a hat while they forego innovation to focus on work around and invisible errors they struggle to correct.

I want front end designers back in the category of Dev for they got buried and stuff overflowing from the back end. Come on Johnny it's time to go back. To a future with open source hoverboards and cars moving on tracks. With zero emissions so we can have our climate back. Come on Johnny are we too stupid for that? Or maybe say screw it there's an AI for that maybe just keep providing data to the sky goes black and upload our brains and souls to algorithms and math to computer way our existence until the Earth's crust begins to crack and we can't find what's human no pattern to match.

Come on Johnny say f*** that! Sandra Sylvester Wesley!

Let's put shells to our backs tell those developers to start some trends and get the f*** off of data to

Innovate again.

give us web for take us out of the book or give us money for all the data they took Give us an internet so beautifully immersive and interactive that we can stop and simply take a look. So we can all start feeling connected like it was like we should. Sincerely, End User.

Politics engenders a unique degree of hatred and vitriol. Each half of the country concludes the other half is entirely filled with ignorant morons, too stupid to recognize the obvious truth that their candidate is better. When one side wins, hundreds of millions of people on the other side fear that the U.S. will descend into totalitarian dictatorship. People become gloomy about the state of their country and spiteful towards the other side.

I think this is pretty unjustified. While I’ve talked at length about my view that Harris is better, many non-crazy people disagree with me about that. I have an absurdly smart friend who is supporting Trump who I could never in a million years win an argument with on the subject.

Our political views are shaped by a multitude of interlocking bits of information that we gathered over the course of our lives—blog articles, TV episodes, books, studies, and so on. No person can digest anything more than the smallest slice of the total information out there.

Additionally, politics is complicated. On every particular political issue—even ones that seem like slam-dunks, like opposition to tariffs—there are smart, informed people on every side of the issue. The presidential candidates are hugely consequential on a multitude of issues—immigration, abortion, PEPFAR, the economy, and a hundred others. It’s genuinely difficult to figure out which candidate is better on average across so many different issues of such immense complexity. Figuring out which candidate better is a highly complicated optimization problem across dozens of different issues of unfathomable complexity.

Given this, though I support Harris, I can see why a reasonable person could disagree, and I know many reasonable people that do. If you’re pro-life, for example, while I still think you should vote for Harris, I can see why you might disagree. In fact, I find it much easier to get into the head of a Trump supporter than, say, someone who rejects SIA—I find politics much trickier to figure out than most philosophical topics. Similarly, if you have very different views about foreign policy, regarding the Ukraine war as an existential threat so long as we keep arming them, while again I disagree, I don’t think you’re crazy.

Lots of people seem to think that disagreeing with them about politics is indicative of corrupt character. I’ve heard many Harris supporters saying that those who vote for Trump don’t respect women because they’re opposed to abortion. This is a staggering failure of cognitive empathy. In the minds of those who oppose abortion, abortion is murder. The reason they oppose abortion isn’t that they support restricting what women can do with their bodies, but that they want to prevent innocent babies from being murdered and women from becoming murderers. You can disagree with this position all you want, but such a position isn’t motivated by malevolence or sexism—it’s a serious and debatable philosophical position.

It’s true, of course, that most people don’t form their political positions in a particularly rational way. Most people are in echochambers, primarily listening to information from their own side, ignorant of basic facts, wholly unable to explain why their opponents believe what they do. But this applies to those who are on your side too!

Forming political views without thinking too hard might be a bit bad, but it’s not bad enough to hate someone over. Most people come to many decisions in a wildly irrational way—having ill-thought out views doesn’t make someone a bad person. If someone forms their political views in an irrational way, you shouldn’t write them off as a bad person, unless you’re prepared to write-off almost everyone on your own side.

People also feel gloomy about the state of the world based on politics. When their side loses, they think the world is going to shit. But they shouldn’t feel that way—we’re at by far the best time in human history, and the world is only getting better. We have so much less to fear and worry about than almost everyone who has ever lived.

Given how complicated politics is, with administrations being hugely consequential on huge numbers of hugely complicated issues, we shouldn’t look down on others based on it, even if they come to disagree. It sounds naive, but politics should be an area where we can disagree without hatred, without thinking the person who disagrees with us is stupid or evil. If you’re the kind of person who gets very mad at your relatives over Thanksgiving dinner because of their political views, or feels visceral rage towards your political opponents, I would encourage you to regard this as a vice and work to minimize it.

By Bentham's Bulldog

I often wonder about the indirect “ripple” effects of certain decisions in the nonprofit world. Of course it’s much easier to measure the direct, intentional efforts, (for example, how many dollar spent will lead to how many mosquito nets will lead to how many lives deaths prevented) but that doesn’t mean the harder to understand issues deserve to be overlooked.

I like the fact that 80000 hours advocates for organizations that want to address problems that are difficult to measure and quantify like AI risk and nuclear war threat. I would argue that the visibility and publicity of EA should be an important issue, because if $100,000 is spent on advertising the EA movement that brings in $1,000,000 of funds to highly effective organizations, that advertising was highly effective even if no mosquito nets were directly paid for.

With that in mind, I wonder and want opinions about the indirect positive consequences of encouraging people to give to less effective organizations. For example, many people in the United States are upset about the costs of the healthcare system because of recent events. Would encouraging them to donate to organizations focused on policy research and improvement potentially have unexpected benefits?

My thinking is this: yes, investing is healthcare policy improvement is a low impact per dollar spent issue. However, if that is the first time someone is emotionally motivated to begin giving in the benefit of society, perhaps the experience will allow them to be more open minded to donating again in the future. Also, perhaps improving the healthcare system will allow the people who are already donating effectively to give more instead of wasting it on high health costs. (For example, if I get cancer, I will be limited with how much money I’ll be able to donate because of how expensive the treatment is.) Finally, another question: is a dollar given to a less effective organization better than a dollar spent on just day to day living and consumption?

In conclusion, I’m very interested to discuss the harder to measure complexities of giving in a world where people make emotional decisions about money. Are there important causes that are being overlooked simply because their impact is difficult to quantify??

One man’s death has resulted in collective scrutiny of the inherent issues within the American healthcare system, and this event has catalyzed a large support base for passing reforms that could more effectively utilize healthcare spending to reduce domestic suffering. Does anyone have more nuanced thoughts or rebuttals?

https://preview.redd.it/fijgrzy4d36e1.png?width=729&format=png&auto=webp&s=549b0271af3e5ae0d9256782a6b4649615ede8a7

Is there any organization in EA capable of workshopping whether or not this is an unexploited philanthropic avenue? (image text: link)

Cost-effectiveness:

-The prison itself could be net profitable
-If it's not possible to do, the research isn't wasted because it'd still give you a good model of the obstacles, which other activists could valuably take up?
-An organization piloting a single example of the model can aid copycats, so cost doesn't have to scale up with impact
-Cause that isn't global health or animal welfare can appeal to other funders and not cannibalize existing EA funding (given some initial momentum, at least)

Thoughts? Pointers?

https://preview.redd.it/bh3vyquia36e1.png?width=2400&format=png&auto=webp&s=406bb8b86d97066b144f3aab7ce3b5fa210046ee

Human Rights feel very establishment and not neglected at the organisational level, but the theme of human rights seems to be receding in popular interest and usage in media over the past couple if decades -- displaced by less savoury discourses, which I will not mention.

10 December is human rights day. I suggest that anyone who cares about human rights would be doing something tractable and neglected to find some way to amplify the message in your organisations and social groups. 10 December can make a good decisive point at which to act and make it possible to advocate without sounding too much like you're bizarrely fixated on civics/PSHE for 12 year olds.

This could be high impact if it improves the culture of your groups, promoting a freer, kinder, less ableist/scapegoating, less petty and vindictive, less tyrannical, higher vibe, more cooperative culture. I feel other discourses seem to be displacing human rights in corporate, public and civil society culture. Let's keep them alive and not just some musty old forgotten thing left in 1945.

By the way, Russia and America torture people.

https://publicintegrity.org/inside-publici/newsletters/watchdog-newsletter/when-a-school-turns-to-shock-therapy/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_torture_chambers_in_Ukraine

https://www.ohchr.org/en/stories/2024/11/human-rights-day-2024-our-rights-our-future-right-now

Hi there,

I've been looking into how best to donate to help prevent even further catastrophic climate change from impacting the planet. With a climate denying monster about to be in power in the US, this seems even more urgent.

Looking into the EA Climate Change Fund, it seems that most of their funds go to promoting nuclear power or coal to small nuclear reactor (SMR) projects.

However, analysis of this strategy has shown it to be incredibly cost and time inefficient compared to established renewables like wind and solar.

Small reactors don’t add up as a viable energy source

https://cosmosmagazine.com/science/engineering/small-reactors-dont-add-up/

According to the 2023 GenCost report from the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and the Australian Energy Market Operator, the estimated cost of generating each megawatt-hour of electricity from an SMR is around AUD$400 to AUD$600.

In comparison, the cost of each megawatt-hour of electricity from wind and solar photovoltaic plants is around AUD$100, even after accounting for the cost involved in balancing the variability of output from solar and wind plants.

These reactor projects, and the Hinkley Point C project under construction in the United Kingdom, also confirm another historical pattern: costs of nuclear power plants go up with time, not down. This is unlike other energy technologies, such as solar and wind energy, where costs have declined rapidly with experience.

In the Australian context, a report was done which corroborated the above.

The question of nuclear in Australia’s energy sector In Australia's transition to net zero emissions, the electricity sector has a major role to play. But does nuclear power have a place in our future grid?

https://www.csiro.au/en/news/all/articles/2023/december/nuclear-explainer

Nuclear power does not currently provide the most competitive solution for low emission electricity in Australia.

The costs for small modular reactors (SMRs) are currently high but could improve over time. Large-scale nuclear is more competitive but exceeds the cost of wind and solar photovoltaics (PV). Long development times mean nuclear won’t be able to make a significant contribution to achieving net zero emissions by 2050.

The Carbon Free Power Project was a nuclear SMR project in the United States established in 2015 and planned for full operation by 2030. It was the first and only project to receive design certification from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, an essential step before construction can commence. In November 2023, the project was cancelled following a 56 per cent increase in reported costs.

So my question is, why is so much money being wasted on a strategy that will be far costlier and time consuming than going all in on renewables?

Hi everyone,

I would like you opinion on monitoring burning of e-wast in "Agbogbloshie, the roughly 20-acre scrap yard in the heart of Accra, Ghana". My proposal is to start with better monitoring though tracking of plastic burning by sattelite images. However, where to start?

Sofar I've found the following sources on monitoring of burning landfills: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.estlett.3c00225 using 3m/pixel data from premium source nextgenplanetscope and based on windspeed and smoke detectors https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2772508122000205. In addition, I've checked the Nasa database but didnt find a proper source to replicate it, except for FIRM with a too low degree.

"One of the biggest public health and environmental concerns at Agbogbloshie is the large amount of air pollution produced by the regular practice of burning the plastic insulation from metal wires (Fig. 6)." 

From <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2452292922000418#s0021>