Incredible big brain thinking from the Effective Altruists, who are
definitely showing no bias. If you ctrl-f for “Mikhail Yagudin” on that
page, you can read about the super rational proposed grant to spend
nearly 30K on printing and giving out copies of the fanfiction, Harry
Potter and the Methods of Rationality, to winners of International Math
Olympiad and European Girls’ Mathematical Olympiad (roughly 650
copies).
So, I’m not physically or emotionally capable of listing all
the problems with this idea, so I will leave the majority of that to
you, the gentlereader. There’s a delightful grant rationale a little
ways down the page. Please bear in mind, this is coming from an
organization dedicated to finding the most effective way to support
charity.
Two bits I found particularly incredible are:
“[HPMOR] is the most reviewed Harry Potter fan fiction on
fanfiction.net, which is a remarkable state of affairs.”
for part of their justification why this particular work would be the
most effective way to conduct charity, and when they justify the team
for this project, they begin with
Is the team competent enough to execute on their
plan?
I don’t have a lot of information on the team, don’t know Mikhail,
and have not received any major strong endorsement for him and his team,
which makes this the weakest link in the argument.
Truly, this is the type of solid research and confidence I expect
when giving tens of thousands of dollars away in the most effective
manner. I can’t think of a single level on which this idea makes any
sense. It’s honestly surreal. Incredible work, EA, simply superb.
>giving out copies of the fanfiction, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, to winners of International Math Olympiad and European Girls’ Mathematical Olympiad
yikes I thought people were supposed to be rewarded for winning, not punished.
>rewarded for winning
Word. Anyone who wins a math olympiad already understands math better than Yud, so HPMOR as a “prize” comes off as laughably condescending.
> Is the team competent enough to execute on their plan?
>
> I don’t have a lot of information on the team, don’t know Mikhail, and have not received any major strong endorsement for him and his team, which makes this the weakest link in the argument.
I'm dying. The "weakest link in the argument" is one of the very first questions you should answer when undertaking a project like this. This is just incredible.
>"\[HPMOR\] is the most reviewed Harry Potter fan fiction on fanfiction.net, which is a remarkable state of affairs."
Note that this untrue. The fanfic [Rebuilding](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11439594/1/Rebuilding) has 37308 reviews, as compared to HPMOR's 34692. Making claims that can be easily disproven within five seconds by anyone with an internet connection sure smells like data-driven charity to me.
My jaw dropped multiple times when reading this list. That’s nearly a
million dollars they’ve essentially spent on masturbation that could go
to actually effective EA causes, like deworming/antimalarial
programs.
Note that there are multiple [Effective Altruism Funds](https://www.effectivealtruism.org/effective-altruism-funds-options/), including for causes like treating neglected tropical diseases (that would be 'global health & development'). So there are other options for donors, and the donors to the fund that allocated this money were donors who specifically wanted their money to go to these causes instead. So it's not like this money came from individual donors who were duped into thinking their own money was going to a different cause. In that case, then, that could be an indictment of the decision to donate to this cause *instead* of something like global poverty alleviation while still calling oneself 'effective,' or the donors themselves, as much as it is the grantmakers who made these choices, or the individuals running these projects.
I think it just makes sense to be clear about who is included in 'they' whenever someone is talking about a "them."
The most powerful tools that humanity has discovered so far are
methods for thinking quantitatively and scientifically about how our
universe works, and using this understanding to manipulate the universe.
HPMOR attempts to teach the fundamental skills behind this thinking
It really, really fucking doesn’t. One of the most dissapointing
things about HPMOR is that there is basically no scientific method at
all within it. There is like one or two chapters containing actual
experiments, the rest is masturbation about being smarter than everyone
else.
Big Yud doesn't believe in the scientific method, so this is 100% in line with what they consider the "fundamental skills behind thinking", i.e. give money to MIRI (Yud).
> Now, I should hasten to say that I don’t really have a dog in this fight. To me both interpretations seem somewhat unsatisfactory, largely because they are interpretations. Call me old school, but I don’t like it when scientific theories need to be interpreted (it reminds me too much of different “interpretations” of the Bible). I’m not alone in this, as several physicists subscribe to what is informally known as the “shut up and calculate” school of quantum mechanics: the theory works in the sense that it predicts the results of experiments to a high degree of precision, no interpretation required.
lmfao this guy is dumb tho
Granted, it's money that won't go towards even more stupid endeavors like, IDK, pharmaceutical startups or paying MIRI to write more Harry Potter fanfiction.
Hot take: it's actually unethical _not_ to steal EA money when you consider that.
Apparently the fanfic clocks in at around 2K pages. 28,000 USD comes out to having about 43 USD per copy. I have no clue what the printing price would be for that much paper, but $43 dollars is a lot. Most normal retail books retail for, what, $10-$20? So the printing cost for those books has got to be a fraction of the retail cost.
So, I have no clue how the numbers actually play out for printing HPMOR, but I do kinda want someone else to run the numbers for me and see if it checks out.
But, can you imagine how many of those copies would be immediately thrown away? "Hey, congrats on winning this contest, here is the encyclopedia Britannica for you to lug home now. Except, actually, instead of something marginally useful, it's Harry Potter fanfiction that's already freely available online."
There's a surprising amount of Russian rationalists.
Really, if I wanted completely unnecessary dead-tree versions of a fic, I'd rather buy the Fallout Equestria pleather-bound hardback incl. chapter 20.5 (which is about what you think it is) than this, and that's _really_ saying a lot.
The comments indicate it's actually for 650 books (there are several hundred "medalists" in the IMO, I think).
Not that this is any more "effective" than your version (2x0=650x0 after all).
> Nikhil Kunapul (30k) - "independent deconfusion research" aint exactly confidence inspiring but to be fair that could just be the kind of awful description LW-folk are prone to. But shouldn't this guy just be, like, hired part time by MIRI if they like his stuff? Why is he getting an EA grant?
Best careful with that one. Taken too earnestly, deconfusion may spoil some of the rationalists' favorite counter-intuitive nuggets of nonsense.
MIRI also got 0,000 with no spending restrictions.
Remember those next time some rationalist tells you something like “You’re a girl, right? Have you tried camming?”
Incredible big brain thinking from the Effective Altruists, who are definitely showing no bias. If you ctrl-f for “Mikhail Yagudin” on that page, you can read about the super rational proposed grant to spend nearly 30K on printing and giving out copies of the fanfiction, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, to winners of International Math Olympiad and European Girls’ Mathematical Olympiad (roughly 650 copies).
So, I’m not physically or emotionally capable of listing all the problems with this idea, so I will leave the majority of that to you, the gentlereader. There’s a delightful grant rationale a little ways down the page. Please bear in mind, this is coming from an organization dedicated to finding the most effective way to support charity.
Two bits I found particularly incredible are:
for part of their justification why this particular work would be the most effective way to conduct charity, and when they justify the team for this project, they begin with
Truly, this is the type of solid research and confidence I expect when giving tens of thousands of dollars away in the most effective manner. I can’t think of a single level on which this idea makes any sense. It’s honestly surreal. Incredible work, EA, simply superb.
Give me 0,000 and I will edit HPMOR to be actually readable and rational
My jaw dropped multiple times when reading this list. That’s nearly a million dollars they’ve essentially spent on masturbation that could go to actually effective EA causes, like deworming/antimalarial programs.
It really, really fucking doesn’t. One of the most dissapointing things about HPMOR is that there is basically no scientific method at all within it. There is like one or two chapters containing actual experiments, the rest is masturbation about being smarter than everyone else.
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Wait, it’s not 30,000 dollars to publish that sum worth of copies of MOR but just to produce TWO to hand out as a reward?
What the fuck?
[deleted]
Kim, there’s people that are dying