A place to explain your preferences, discuss them, and maybe change your mind.
Some comments on this thread are cross-posted from a text box which appears when you reach the end of the voting process, but everyone is welcome to post here whenever.
You can read about all the candidates here.
I voted for Wild Animal Initiative, followed by Shrimp Welfare Project and Arthropoda Foundation (I have COIs with WAI and Arthropoda).
I ranked the Shrimp Welfare Project 1st because I think their Humane Slaughter Initiative is the most cost-effective intervention around.
+1 for doing a Fermi estimate, I would like to see more of those.
Though I've made some comments that disagree with some of Vasco's specific numbers, I agree that SWP is extraordinarily effective and ranked them a close second after Arthropoda!
(Edited at 19:35 UTC-5 as I misunderstood how the voting system works)
My top 10 right now look something like:
1. The Midas Project
2. EA Animal Welfare Fund
3. Rethink Priorities
4. MATS Research
5. Shrimp Welfare Project
6. Apart Research
7. Legal Impact for Chickens
8. PauseAI
9. Wild Animal Initiative
10. High Impact Professionals
I ranked my organization, The Midas Project, first on my ballot. I don't think we have a stronger track record than many of the organizations in this election (and I expect the winners will be a few familiar top contenders like Rethink Priorities, who certainly deserve to be there), but I do think the election will undervalue our project due to general information asymmetries and most of our value being speculative/heavy-tailed. This seems in line with the tactical voting suggestion, but it does feel a bit icky/full of hubris.
Also, in making this list, I realized that I favored large orgs whose work I'm familiar with, and most skipped over small orgs who I know little about (including ones that made posts for marginal funding week that I just haven't read). This was a funny feeling because (as mentioned) I run a small org that I expect many people don't know about and will skip over.
One way people can counteract this would be, in making your selection, choose 1-2 orgs you've never heard of at random, do a deep dive on them, and place them somewhere in your rankings (even at the bottom if you aren't excited about them). With enough people doing this, there should be enough coverage of small orgs for the results of the election to be a bit more informative, at least in terms of how smaller orgs compare to each other.
One's second, third, etc. choices would only come into play when/if their first choice is eliminated by the IRV system. Although there could be some circumstances in which voting solely for one's #1 choice could be tactically wise, I believe they are rather narrow and would only be knowable in the last day or two.
Is there any scenario where only voting for your first choice would be wise? I don't think there is any downside to listing a second choice, assuming that you do actually prefer that second choice over any of the other options should your first choice be eliminated.
Ooh interesting. Thanks for pointing this out, I'm revising my ballot now.
I think animal welfare as a cause area is important and neglected within EA. Invertebrates have been especially neglected since Open Phil pulled out of the space, so my top choices are the Arthropoda Foundation and Shrimp Welfare Project (SWP).
With high uncertainty, I weakly prefer Arthropoda over SWP on the margin. Time is running short to influence the trajectory of insect farming in its early stages. The quotes for Arthropoda's project costs and overhead seem very reasonable. Also, while SWP's operational costs are covered through 2026, Arthropoda's projects may not happen at all without marginal funding, so donations to Arthropoda feel more urgent to me since they're more existential. But all of this is held loosely and I'm very open to counterarguments.
I also ranked Arthropoda first! I'm quite bullish on the value of information in the animal welfare space, and think that on the current margin they would do extremely valuable work.
The donation election post (meet the candidates) and the actual voting platform need to be cross-checked. I saw that Animetrics was included in the vote but not in the post, while Giving Green was included in the post and not in the vote. There may be other errors which I missed.
Thanks so much for flagging this, and really sorry for the mistakes. I've gone through and updated both, hopefully they are now both up-to-date. Please let me know if you see any other issues.
I'm voting for charities that have the biggest room for funding considering the impact the want to make. I am also prioritising meta charities, because they are less likely to receive votes due to most people supporting direct work, while meta charities are important for us to grow as a community.
Here's my longtermist, AI focused list. I really haven't done my research, e.g. I read zero marginal funding posts. This is mostly a vote for MATS.
I would have ranked The Midas Project around 5 but it wasn't an option.
Hey Zach- Midas Project should be visible to you now!
We've just resolved some launch issues with the voting portal. The portal was limited to 30 candidates, so a randomised group of organisations was missing for each voter.
If you've already voted, consider re-voting with a full list of candidates.
I voted for mainly animal welfare/rights charities first, particularly ones which focused on highly neglected, large-scale populations like insects, shrimps, and fishes. I also voted highly for PauseAI because I believe in creating greater public pressure to slow AI progress and shifting the Overton Window, even if I am agnostic about pausing AI progress itself. After these, I voted for some of the meta/mixed organizations which I thought were especially promising, including Rethink Priorities and the Unjournal. Then I voted for mental health/resilience interventions. Then I voted for GCR initiatives. I did not vote for any human welfare interventions which I expected to cause net harm to animals. I did not vote for any other AI organizations because I did not trust that they were sufficiently decelerationist.
Organizations like the Shrimp Welfare Project or the Fish Welfare Initiative have high utilitarian returns, but are difficult to sell to people outside of EA, so it makes sense for dollars coming directly from the core of the community to go to these niche but highly effective cause areas.
I think work on animals is comparatively neglected, due to the high numbers of individuals of bad conditions. More specifically, the smaller the animals, the more numerous and neglected they tend to be, which leads to underfunding.
I ranked the more neglected charities higher as they will benefit from funding more than others
Please consider using star (or approval) voting next year instead of RCV
I'm not an expert, but this may be a good idea. Apparently ranked-choice voting is always vulnerable to certain types of failures (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem), but these can be avoided with rated voting systems.
Like @Toby Tremlett🔹 I did a quick initial vote and will come back and edit my vote once I've read more marginal funding posts + see who's in the lead.
(Another plug here for the Spotify playlist we created with the marginal funding posts in case you (like me) prefer listening to posts)
I voted for The Humane League UK (meat/broiler chicken welfare), Fish Welfare Initiative, Shrimp Welfare Project and Arthropoda Foundation for cost-effective programs for animal welfare with low risk of backfire. I'm specifically concerned with backfire due to wild animal effects (also here), or increasing keel bone fractures for cage-free hens, so I avoid reducing animal product consumption/production and cage-free work.
It's still very unclear that the decrease in pain in cage-free system would not be significant enough to make the intervention not worth funding. What has convinced you specifically?
Rather than being convinced that cage-free is worse, I'm just not convinced it's better, so why support it?
I'm not convinced nest deprivation reaches the disabling intensity. It's definitely possible, and I not very unlikely, but it's hard to say either way based on the current evidence. And whether or not it does, maybe keel bone fracture inflammation pain could still just be at least few more times intense anyway.
What was your thinking on Humane League UK vs Humane League?
THL UK is focusing on meat/broiler chicken welfare, while I'd guess THL is doing a lot of cage-free egg work, which I want to avoid.
Write that's A but confusing for your average punter 😂.
I don't have a lot of confidence in this vote, and it's quite possible my ranking will change in important ways. Because only the top three organizations place in the money, we will all have the ability to narrow down which placements are likely to be outcome-relevant as the running counts start displaying. I'm quite sure I have not given all 36 organizations a fair shake in the 5-10 minutes I devoted to actually voted.
I noticed my view of these charities splits roughly into three categories: a) My knowledge of this charity makes me think it has a good chance (>30%) of being more effective than givedirectly, b) My knowledge of this charity makes me think it has a low chance of being more effective than givedirectly (<10%), and charities, and c) I wish I knew more about this charity.
I added those in category a) to the top of my list, in no particular order for now.
I'm kind of confused why I don't think anything is range 10-30%, but it seems I don't...
Animals are suffering and they deserve as much or more help than we give to other humans. They demonostrate no malice, hatred, jealousy, they only wish to survive. How we care for them reflects how we care for other humans.
I've put together a quick initial vote, but I'll vote again at least once before the deadline. I'll go more in depth and closely read the marginal funding posts of the top 5 or so candidates when there are clear front-runners.
Hey @Toby Tremlett🔹 , when people leave their rationales with their votes and they end up as comments here, they often don't say what they voted for, and it doesn't show in this thread. So, I don't know what orgs they're talking about. Is that intended?
In the field where you can leave a comment after voting it says the comment will be copied here but not who you voted for, probably some people just missed that info though.
My previous experience assessing the projects of the listed organizations (I did not vote for those I'm unfamiliar with), how neglected the work they're doing is, and the marginal impact I expect from funding them.
Like Toby, this is my initial vote, but I may revise it as more information becomes available over time.
I believe these are the most effective organisations and will use the money wisely
Which ones?
test vote, please ignore
I believe these are organisations most deserving of funding
(Your ranking isn't displayed on the comment thread, so if you were intending to communicate which organizations you were referring to with the readership you may want to edit your comment here)