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SneerClub @awful.systems

David Gerard @awful.systems

1y ago

We started a charity to alleviate wild fish suffering. We spent $30k trying to contact fish farmers via email. This didn't work, so we gave up. We consider the project a success.

forum.effectivealtruism.org How we started our own EA charity (and why we decided to wrap up) — EA Forum

A retrospective on six months of work focused on improving slaughter conditions in Mediterranean aquaculture.

How we started our own EA charity (and why we decided to wrap up) — EA Forum

31 comments

The comments are the best part.
And by best, I mean worst.
Thank you for trying!
We also made sure to enjoy our trip and tried some Turkish coffee and petted some of the stray cats." (Awwww),
Well, cats like fish too so this is relevant.
One thing I reflected on after learning about your experiences is the challenge of getting in touch with other, non-EA established organizations
Who knew that acting in a weird, insular manner would hinder the very thing that was attempting to be accomplished?
- The continuation of the stray cats thing:
  One of these cats gave me fleas so I will no longer engage in petting stray cats
  lol
  
  @swlabr @gerikson
  "I have learned a lesson as old as time itself. Bow before my greatness."
  
  Jordan Peterson is shaking his head in dismay.

@dgerard @sneerclub
i can’t believe I read this whole article. They somewhat buried the lede with the paragraphs about emailing farmers twice and that was it. Apparently shoe leather and knocking on doors was not an option. They did also go to a conference and have coffee and pet cats though!
- 5/10, failed to sexually harass their staff

How delightfully ineffective
(Seriously, what has Effective Altruism ever accomplished beyond buying castles?)
- The "malaria nets" side of it has done legitimate good, because they didn't try to reinvent the wheel from scratch, stuck to actual science and existing, well performing charitable organisations.
  global poverty still gets a good portion of the EA funding, but is slowly falling out of the movement because it's boring to discuss and you can't make any dubiously effective startups out of it.
- sexual harrassment
- money laundering and embezzlement

TL;DR:
Overall, despite the fact that the project "failed", we see the overall experience as a positive one. Most new charities fail - that is part of the game. The important thing is to figure out as quickly as possible whether your idea is a good one, and we believe that we succeeded in doing so.
- the whole thing reads like a nonspecific job application to the EA-industrial-complex, actual "charity" irrelevant here
  
  Honestly, if they had taken just one evening to chill and put themselves in the shoes of the tired, overly spammed, unmotivated farmers; they would have instantly recognised that sending them a non solicited email with a nondescript, probably overly verbose request, would be the absolute worst way to go about reaching them. Save maybe for carving their message on a brick and throwing it at their main window.
  It looks to me as a typical case of "not my money, so let's take things easy". I would gladly make a study on how many failed charities would have been successful, would the funding depend on some basic metric. I would even do that as a charity. For, say, 30k. 🙃
- "We had a bad idea bad spent only 30k on it."
  Great job kids, here's your "You Tried " ribbon.

Greece has no groups focused on improving fish welfare however, Charity Entrepreneurship is possibly starting a charity focused on advocating for fish welfare improvements Greece.
EAs advocating for fish welfare is about the only thing yet to be seen in this country, awesome.
If you want to influence Greece just use some of the fabled EA obsquatumatillions to buy out the left part of our two party system, they're currently in such shambles they'd barely notice, and it's not like they could do much worse with shrimp rights as a flagship issue.

Dang those donors overpaid. I'd happily run an unremarkable & ineffective email campaign for $20k

well I mean at least they spent a reasonable amount of money. It is very easy to see hundreds to millions of K sinked to projects with similar complexity and get not much in return.
- the reasonable amount of money on such a non-project is closer to $0
  
  @dgerard Exactly. Fish deserve whatever suffering comes their way.

I doubt that would even pass an Eagle Scout project proposal review.
- Only Eagle Scout I know of is Ross Ulbrich, was his "do crimes, don't get caught"?
  
  Lil' old me (with volunteer help, ofc) installed railroad tie steps on a trail at an ecological reserve.

31 comments