Effective Altruists do so much great work, but much of it occurs in private. Yet if we publicize our good deeds, we can gain many benefits, for ourselves and for the world.
1) Support each other doing good deeds through providing warm fuzzies/emotional support/encouragement;
2) See if we can help each other out;
3) Inspire others with the opportunity to emulate some aspects of those good deeds for ourselves;
4) Provide an opportunity to amplify the signal about things you want others to know about.
As such, based on discussions on .impact, we decided to experiment with an “Accomplishments” thread on the EA Forum. This experiment may seem weird at first, but as Effective Altruists, we know the benefit of trying out unorthodox approaches for good reasons. We believe this experiment may be quite valuable as an EA capacity-building activity. If it works out, we will make it monthly, similar to the current Open thread.
This thread is meant for all of you as a completely safe space, with no social norms of "don't be a braggart" applying - just share and be safe in your sharing. So please share recent EA-themed accomplishments! Share as many or as few good deeds as you wish.
Please both share about your own good deeds and respond to what other people share with your authentic responses, ranging from upvoting to comments :-) Doing so will help this experiment succeed and motivate each other to greater accomplishments going forward.
You can also share on Facebook in the main EA group at this link if you prefer.
P.S. This is an experiment, and is very open to optimization - besides sharing about your good deeds, please suggest ways to improve any aspects of it. Please take a look at the .impact discussion prior to doing so in case some points were raised and addressed there already :-)
EDIT: Edited based on feedback from Kathy Forth and Linchuan Zhang
Suggestion: Let people talk about any accomplishments, without special emphasis on the month level, or the name of the month.
Some of the moments when people most need to brag is when they need to recover a sense of identity with a self that is more than a month old, that did awesome stuff.
Example: Once upon a time 12 years ago I thought the most good I could do was fixing aging, so I found Aubrey, worked for them for a bit, and won a prize!
A thing I'm proud off is that a few days ago I gave an impromptu speech at Sproul Hall (where free speech started) at Berkeley, about technological improvement and EA, and several people came after to thank me for it.
Meta - Nice suggestion, makes sense. Thanks!
Cool, great to hear about the speech!