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.

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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.