this week in effective altruism

another scandal, new charities, and cute ukulele improv

top story: Owen Cotton-Barratt (the guy who convinced Open Philanthropy and Effective Ventures to buy a castle) has resigned all his EA-related positions because of sexual misconduct. A lot of people are upset not just because of the misconduct but because Owen was a trusted figure in the EA community (personally, I met him at a dinner where friends were chatting about recent scandals in EA - I did not think he would be the topic of the next one!).

Owen was a trustee of the UK branch of Effective Ventures, the umbrella charity for several EA organisations including the Centre for Effective Altruism and 80,000 Hours; his resignation leaves them in a tough spot. Will MacAskill and Nick Beckstead are currently recusing themselves from all discussion of FTX, due to their close links (frankly I’m surprised they haven’t been suspended completely until any inquiries have been completed), so that leaves two scandal-less board members, Tasha McCauley and Claire Zabel. I’m holding my breath that those two stay out of trouble at least until Effective Venture can appoint a couple more trustees!

also this week:

• rethink priorities launched the insect institute

• charity entrepreneurship published a list of biosecurity and health charities they’re hoping to incubate this year, including kangaroo care for premature babies

• Hamish Doodles posted some cute improvised ukulele songs, including this one inspired by Habiba’s poem to love is to help and this one based on the Twitter back-and-forth between Eliezer Yudkowksy and Julian Hazell

If you’d like to read a round-up of the important news in EA (rather than just the juiciest gossip), I’d recommend David Nash’s monthly newsletter Monthly Overload of Effective Altruism that covers recent research, job postings and grants awarded as well as Zoe Williams’ weekly summary of top posts on the EA Forum and LessWrong.

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This is the last post in my experiment in trying out an EA Lifestyles substack, and I’m keen for your feedback. Are there any posts you particularly liked (feel free to vote below)? Are there any topics from this list that you’d particularly like to see covered? Comment or send me a message with any thoughts - I’m Kirsten on the EA Forum and @kirsten3531 or @eaheadlines on Twitter.

Thank you all for reading and making this experiment so interesting!

-Kirsten