EA ABQ's "Community Action" series meets once a month with the goal of investigating important, neglected, and actionable problems and then taking direct action to tackle at least one such problem and drive positive change in our city and beyond.
What do you think is the most important thing we could be doing? In this meeting, we're opening the floor to you to propose ways problems we might work together to address, then discussing and evaluating them, and finally, voting on our favorites.
If you'd like to present (and you should!) we ask that you listen to this 8-minute podcast introducing the concept of Effective Altruism.
Then, research a problem and potential solution (which would involve the action we could collectively take as a group) and prepare a 5-10 minute presentation making the case for why this is the best of all possible ways to spend our time and energy.
Your presentation should:
Briefly introduce your problem and proposed solution.
Explain why this might be the most valuable thing to do using the tenants of Effective Altruism. Specifically, what makes this problem exceptionally:
Important: i.e. solving it will prevent a large amount of suffering or save many lives.
Tractable: i.e. making a large impact on the problem is within our power.
Neglected: i.e. are others unlikely to make the same impact that we would.
Consider longtermism: How might your project positively shape the long-term future? If not, that's totally ok, so long as you can make a case for exceptional positive impact in the near term!
Finally, explain you think is the strongest argument against your proposal.
Here's some examples of topics to consider:
Activism
e.g. YIMBY, voting reform, animal rights, nuclear safety, etc.
Could be joining a campaign or starting a new one.
Smaller or early-stage campaigns are more likely to be tractable and neglected.
Donations
Committing ourselves to donating more, e.g. by signing the giving pledge.
e.g. Encouraging our broader communities to donate more (and more effectively).
Community building
Expanding our meetup or the EA community
And/or building relationships outside of the EA community
Could target politicians, UNM students, etc.
Could be a side effect of other activities
Volunteering
Is there critical work bottlenecked by labor that we can do?
Volunteering could also help us build skills and relationships
Self improvement
Building our capacity to contribute, e.g. learning useful career skills, improving judgement and alignment
e.g. improving rationality meetups
After all presentations are delivered, the group will have time to ask follow-up questions from each presenter. Then, as a group, we will evaluate the ideas based on our EA values to determine which, or any are worth pursuing.
Join our Discord server for ideas and to coordinate topics!
Bonus resources:
Podcast series introducing Effective Altruism
"Big List of Cause Candidates" on the EA Forum
"Reasons for EA Meetups to Exist" on the EA Forum
