Open Thread: June — September 2022

Could we have a higher karma discount for community posts? Almost every post on the frontpage for the past few weeks has been a community post, and I think karma inflation has outpaced the effect of the current discount. It would be nice for the EA forum frontpage to not be an endless pit of meta...

Hey Y'all, I'm Mar! I'm an undergraduate student studying Arts and Humanities with a focus in community engagement and a minor in Sustainable Natural Resource Recreation Management.

Learning about EA was entirely a coincidence. I started seeing more and more recommended tweets that interested and/or inspired me. I like the emphasis on reason and rationality, the acceptance of people of diverse world views, and that everyone seems genuinely kind. I followed more accounts, and saw "EA" in many of the bios. I had literally no idea what that meant, and didn't think much about it until I noticed the majority of people I followed were identifying as Effective Altruists. I started to read more about it, and I like many of the ideas and values. 

I feel lucky to have found EA. I've been frustrated with my college and degree path. I'm in a small liberal arts program that produces and encourages unrealistic, unproductive, echo-chamber ideas and culture. Some examples are: a non-acceptance of political or economic ideas other than communism or socialism, valuing identity politics over factual information, none of my community engagement classes involving doing community engagement,  and hypocritical ideas on the value of human lives. I initially loved this program and believed much of that myself, until living in a kinda-anarchist housing cooperative caused me challenge and re-evaluate a lot of the social and economic beliefs I held. EA addresses a lot of the concerns I have about the world, and does so in a way that feels a lot less harsh and judgemental than my my college community. 

I'm drawn to EA because of the positive critical thinking, the acceptance of diverse beliefs, the kindness, and the action. I want to learn more about global sustainability, philosophy, and AI and how it can be beneficial in community engagement.

Some Concerns I Have: There seems to be a really strong emphasis on EA's being smart and good at science things. I'm a liberal arts girl, and I'm worried that there isn't much value in that here. Also, I could totally be wrong, but it seems to be a more male dominated community. Which isn't necessarily bad, just confusing to me. 

Random Fun Facts About Me: As if this intro isn't long enough, here's more. 

• I have a cat! Her name is French Toast (I will gladly provide unlimited cat pics)
• I'm a vegetarian! And I have a pretty bad dairy allergy so my diet is like 99% vegan
• Some things I like to talk about: Decriminalizing drugs, gender and feminism in country music, consent/sexual violence/and sex work, making art

Hi all! I'm a 40 year old mom who just (re)discovered 80,000 Hours, and through it this forum. I am look at a career change (though I don't know if I really have had a "career" up to this point), and I have the luxury of taking some time to figure out where I could be most useful and enjoy what I'm working on.

I really like the concept of using my time/skills/money to do the most good, though I find that (I think like many people), I place slightly different value on some parts of EA vs. some of the introductory posts I have read. So far, I am interested in social justice issues, promoting/preserving democracy, what future government might look like, and the general preservation of human life through access to preventative medicine and stable food and water supply.

I have background/some skills in many areas, including electronics repair and manufacturing, inventory management, web design, copy writing, video editing, photography and photo editing, box office/front-of-house, retail customer service, shipping coordination, planning and facilitating children's programming. I don't really see how this might get me a job at a very EA-centric company, but who knows.

For now my goal is to learn and connect, so if you have any recommendations for things I should read or just want to say hi, please send me a message.

Hi, Folks! I'm Wahhab Baldwin, a 78-year-old retired software developer and manager and minister. I have donated at least 10% of my income for decades, strongly favoring effectiveness. I ran into EA through the Podcast interview with William MacAskill on "People I (Mostly) Admire." 

I strongly affirm much of EA, but I disagree with certain elements, and hope I am able to have some enlightening conversations here. I hope tomorrow to write a post on longtermism. As a preview, I will argue that we must discount a future good compared to a present good. It is better to save a life this year than to save a life next year. If we discount at the conservative rate of 2% per year, then a life 1000 years from now should be valued at 1/600,000,000 of a life today, meaning (imo) that we should really focus only on the next century. But before you argue, read my more detailed post! I look forward to our conversation. (Now at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xvsmRLS998PpHffHE/concerns-with-longtermism).

Here’s me just jumping in to break the ice and lower the bar to entry for other folks thinking about maybe posting something in this thread!

I'm Rob, new around here. 

I read Doing Good Better a few years ago, got interested in EA and started channeling >50% of my charity donations through EA. But wasn't very active in the EA community. This year I decided to take the EA online intro course. And with the course - plus all the reading and podcasts around it - I've been gravitationally sucked into the EA universe (in a good way).

My specific intention right now is to work on Improving Institutional Decision-Making as that is pretty close to what I do for living at the moment.

My background is in psychology (undergrad) & then marketing (17 years professional career) & now coaching leadership teams (inc. around their strategy and key decisions).

If anyone is based in Australia and especially Sydney, let me know - I have checked out EA Sydney on facebook and meetup and haven't seen many upcoming events.

Hi! My name is Liza Munk, and I found out about EA through an ad on the podcast, Dear Hank and John. I'm working on making a career pivot away from academia but not yet had luck finding a new job, so I found it really refreshing to stumble upon a more optimistic message about my ability to find a high impact career. My MA and PhD are in ethnomusicology, the cultural anthropology of music, and I did my research as a Fulbright Fellow in Amman Jordan. It was never boring! But I grew increasingly frustrated with academia and am so looking forward to finding work that is collaborative at its core, respectful of work-life boundaries, economically secure, and remote (if not local) so that I can stay close to my family. I have a lot more reading, thinking, and brainstorming to do before I can narrow down which high impact area(s) exactly I'm most passionate about, but I can tell you how nice it was to hear a reference to cultural anthro on the podcast - having a high impact on the Ebola epidemic. I would love to connect and talk more! You'll find my contact info on my profile. 

I/Leo have now incorporated the new elements from Big List of Cause Candidates: January 2021–March 2022 update into  Big List of Cause Candidates.

Is there a way to search for sequences in this forum? There are some sequences that seem really good, like “Winners of the First Decade Review”, but I’m struggling to find sequences other than happening to find a post that’s part of a sequence, and then clicking on the sequence banner at the top. Any help would be great! :)

(Perhaps this has been talked about before, and I’d be grateful for being pointed in the right direction if so - though when I quickly searched just now, I wasn’t able to find an answer.)

Hi. I'm based in the UK, and run a sizeable reuse/regifting movement called Freegle (www.ilovefreegle.org).

After reading too much Peter Singer, I donated a kidney and am involved in the Give A Kidney charity, which promotes non-directed (aka "altruistic") kidney donation.

None of this is effective as cataract operations, of course.

Hello everyone,

My name is Bary, I'm currently recovering from a 2-year-long anxiety and depression episode, which I partly attribute to me joining EA around that time. I am really thankful for this community, and for the amazing people here that helped me recover.

I'm writing a piece for the red teaming contest about community mental health. If since joining or learning about EA, you suffered from a mental health problem, even a minor one, or felt less satisfied with your job or life, I would like to have a 1:1 with you. Feel free to ping me here, on [email protected], or on Discord Bary#6478

Of course, if you feel like talking about your experience can cause you distress, please pass this opportunity. I am not a mental health professional and I will not be able to help.

Hello!  

-

Fwiw, looks like reciprocity.io (a Rationalist and EA dating site) has recently been upgraded. Thank you Buck for your work on this

Hello everyone, I am a new forum member. 

I am 29, live in Geelong, Australia and discovered the EA community through reading LessWrong a few years ago. I have paid attention to it since then, as well as read some of the canonical books and set up a regular automated donation. With this considered, I have since realised I should be more proactive in reaching out and connecting with people. Especially as I am currently going through a transitional phase in my career.

Originally I completed a bachelor's and master's in exercise science and worked within the strength and conditioning industry from the age of about 21-27. After that, I worked in the mental health industry for 12 months and now work in government. This transition came about during COVID-19  after I took the plunge of learning to code. I loved the challenge and after gaining some basic skills, I decided to re-enrol at university for an undergraduate in artificial intelligence. 

From about 24 onwards I had fantasised about changing careers and working in a space that was more pressing and impactful -- particularly AI alignment -- but felt I had already chosen my path and had to stick with it. (How naive of me!) Learning to code made me feel that maybe I hadn't missed my chance and the sooner I started making moves, the better. Although I still have a long way to go in getting my technical knowledge up to par, I am just taking it one small step at a time. Please let me know if you have any advice for someone at this stage of development who can start to get involved, contribute, and build skills that will have a scalable impact.

I also keep a blog where I try to arrange and distil my thoughts about topics that interest me, such as self-development, rationality, and productivity. If you're interested, you can find it at ThereforeThink.blog.

Nice to meet you all!

Hello!

I'm Arjun Khemani, a student in high school. I have a blog and podcast that revolves around science, philosophy and the human condition.

Signing up for the Forum had long since been an overdue after hearing all its incredible comments! But I'm glad to be here now.

Problems of interest to me include changing the way education is done and making humanity a multi-planetary species. 

Looking forward to having interesting discussions on doing the best we can.

You can DM me on Twitter. (I love meeting new people!)

New member here. I teach American government and learned about effective altruism through The Scout Mindset and Julia Galef's podcast.

Hi all!  My name's Tom. I'm an A level student in the UK, currently studying Politics, Philosophy and Environmental Science. My main forays into the world of altruism include volunteering at Oxfam for a period and donating to the odd charity here or there. Admittedly though, Oxfam isn't a very effectively targeted organisation, and the charities I have previously donated to have been more based on superficial measures such as my respect for people who endorse them or have been motivated by disaster responses.

The issue I'm most concerned about is Climate Change, which I notice doesn't seem to be as big an issue for many members of the EA community. My subject A level choices were largely influenced by my aspirations to help tackle Climate Change, and ideally I'd like to move into an effective career in this area ASAP. However, some of the stuff I've read in the EA community, particularly some of the advice of 80000hours.org has made me contemplate this plan, but I think it is something I'll have to contemplate further.

I seem to remember that I initially found Effective Altruism through the reddit page after I google search on some adjacent topic that I can no longer remember. I initially thought it seemed like a good idea which reflected lots of questions and ideas I'd had myself, but haven't been able to productively apply thus far. However, it wasn't until a video I watched recently by YouTuber Ali Abdaal where he discusses taking the Just Giving Pledge, that I started to dig deeper and read more about the community. Upon discovering EA I realised that I'd been on the cusp of discovering it several times, such as when I first heard about GiveWell (which I found out about through a sponsored Simon Clark as I recall) and another time when I read the synopsis of, and almost bought the book Moral Uncertainty by William MacAskill, Krister Bykvist and Toby Ord.

More recently I've started a Sustainability group at my college to try and educate students on climate change and reduce the College's emissions, however as mentioned above, I am beginning to question the effectiveness of climate interventions such as these.

I have many questions ideas I'd like to discuss relating to EA. The following is a list of a few things things I'm thinking about right now, but might write more detailed posts on:

• Does 80000hours.org work with careers advisers in educational institutions?
• In Doing Good Better, William MacAskill sets out the view that carbon offsets are more efficient than reducing ones on footprint, however what is the limit to this, and would are its drawbacks? If there are few, surely more people and governments would take this carbon sequestration approach.
• If we should donate to the best causes, surely it doesn't make sense to donate to more than one cause? However, isn't there something to be said for supporting less effective causes so that would-be beneficiaries don't feel neglected?

If anyone knows of any information/resources on these topics than please send them my way!

Hi everyone! First time writing on the forum. I'm a 2021 college graduate living in St. Paul/Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. I learned about EA through an introductory ethics course I took while completing my philosophy degree. 

I'm still figuring out some early career strategies that can help me identify what would be a good fit for me while also adapting to a post-grad life. I've taken the GWWC Pledge and volunteer for farmed animals, I'm interested in reducing suffering of all animals (human and non-human) and I'm also learning more about existential risk and longtermism. 

A topic I'm going to be writing about/working on is bodily autonomy. I've realized many of the issues that I care about connect back to bodily autonomy in some way or another and I want to explore the connections more through writing and research. I'm excited to continue learning, working, writing, and connecting with the larger EA community! 

Hi everyone! I'm new to this forum. I'm a professor at ASU who studies cooperation. I'm also an author, a podcaster and I produce educational video content. I am excited to explore the connections between my research and EA. This morning I made a post about need-based transfers, one of the topics that I work on, and how those might fit within EA frameworks.  I'm looking forward to interacting with you all and learning from the community.

"Hello World!" 
My name's Fazle. 
I'm an 11th grader(2nd grade senior high) student in Indonesia.

I first came across EA from the book 'Impact' by Christen Brandt and Tammy Tibbetts.
I bought this book alongside 2 other books, 'Immune' & 'Kingdom of Speech'
Forgot the specific reason why I choose Impact & Kingdom of Speech out of all available books I could choose, but one thing for sure is 'to broaden my horizons.'
Immune coz its Kurzgesagt's.
At the time, when 'Impact' mentioned Effective Altruism, I have no idea what is it. 
Is this some sort of system? A method to do things? etc. I didn't get it at all.

That's when, around 2 days later, Kurzgesagt uploaded their most recent video in which at the end of the video, they mentioned that EA is a global movement. Then I looked up EA. Knowing that I could be a part of this change-making community,  here I am!

I'm interested in reshaping the education system. This outdated system... If only this system were as updated as our technological advancement... Won't it make it easier to have a better world?

Oh well. I might be inexperienced and can't help much. But my long ahead is still pretty long... damn I can still barely see my starting point. 

I'm happy that I could be a part of this community, and I wish to learn more through all you guys! 

:)


 

Hello!
I posted this in a short form, but I guess it's also good to post it here.

I am a startup founder. My company is starting to work well by itself - I have about one full free day per week. My skills are team building, start-up building, remote team building, and software development.

How can I help? Is there a list of open projects that one could take on?  🤔

And for a bit of background, I came upon EA a couple of months ago and found it very meaningful. I attended my first meetup last week and also start the Giving What We Can pledge in September.

Nice to meet you all!

[FOUNDING ENGINEER JOB OPPORTUNITY]

Dear all,

My name is Drew Schneider and I am the co-founder and CPO at Chariot. Chariot is a payment network for the $420B+ in charitable donations. We build the financial infrastructure that connects nonprofits to complex charitable assets. Chariot is a mission-driven organization aiming to get more dollars into the hands of nonprofits around the world.

We are currently backed by Y Combinator (backed Airbnb, Stripe, Instacart, Coinbase), Spark Capital (backed Twitter, Snapchat, Plaid, Slack, Oculus), SV Angel (backed Google, Facebook, Stripe, Square, Dropbox), and top tier angel investors like Mike Massaro, Ofek Lavian, and Angela Duckworth.

We are currently hiring a founding engineer to join our team. If you or anyone you know is interested please check out our job description here.

Every line of code you push will lead to millions of more dollars going to nonprofits :)

Best,

Drew Schneider

P.S. If you have any questions feel free to email me at [email protected]

Hi 👋 my name is Sarah, I’m 42 and I live in Calgary Canada.

I first heard about ‘doing good better’ from Sam Bankman-Fried, it was a very new and interesting topic to me and finally got me into EA.

Since I was 22 I’ve started donating a small portion of my income through sponsorship, the first family I sponsored was a mom with two very young kids who lost their dad in an accident. Today I have 4 families which introduced to me through a trustable friend and all are living in a middle eastern country. I believe in the world as a whole and I know a few dollars really can make a difference in someone else’s life.

My goal is to help as many people as I can either through sponsorship or a one time donation, specially to the families who are dealing with illness. I would like to also volunteer but haven’t figured out where yet!

I’m not donating because it feels good, I believe I am given to give, and through donation I’m doing what I’m supposed to do.

Im excited to be here, to learn from others and to see the opportunities that I might be able to help, and if there is an EA community in Calgary I would love to meet them.

Hey everybody!

One of my friends is interested in learning more about EA and I am trying to find good resources to recommend to her. The thing is, her English is only so-so; her preferred language is Spanish. I found a couple websites that give brief overviews of some EA ideas, but I am having a hard time finding comprehensive EA texts in Spanish.

Does anyone know of any EA resources in Spanish that could be helpful?

Thanks!

Hello All, 

I have been giving through Givewell to a charity for years (on and off) since hearing William MacKaskill on Sam Harris's podcast in 2016. 

I would absolutely love to get any feedback from the EA community on a movement / platform, called Value Life, that I would like to conceptualise. Or even where I could or should potentially post?  

A high-level overview is provided in my first Substack newsletter here (which contains a short (<4min) video about what the Value Life community and platform is, or is striving to be). 

https://valuelife.substack.com/p/value-life-newsletter-25-aug-2022?utm_source=email

A direct link to YouTube is as follows:

The Value Life presentation was actually complete a few months before Mr MacKaskill made his first appearance on Sam's podcast (in 2016) and at the time I did not put two and two together and join this community, but now I am fully motivated with content to share and promote. 

I am actively looking for a job in the EA movement if possible too, but ideally, I would like any feedback to see if the idea for the Value Life platform has any legs (I know the movement with respect to the mentioned "Deep Trust" should - which is the primary purpose of the YouTube mini-series (a few more episodes are in the pipeline to wrap-up in the coming weeks)). 

If you want more information about me:

My mission statement in a nutshell, is as follows:

“To be actively involved with an ethical and moral organization and community, championing the causes to further humanity and make the world a safer, cleaner and happier place for children forevermore.”

I am a Civil Engineer by training and having passed my Professional Engineering (PEng) designation in Vancouver, BC, Canada, (have my black belt in Taekwondo) and I mention this because I am honour bound (having sworn oaths) to serve society and believe this is a strong foundation to further humanity. 

I am also a certified Professional Project Manager (PMP). I have worked on multi-billion dollar projects and managed multi-million dollar civil infrastructure and big tech projects simultaneously.  

I invite you to review my work experience and recommendations on my Linkedin profile from previous clients, employers and colleagues. 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ross-mcmath-b-eng-hons-p-eng-pmp/

I would welcome any request to connect. 

I realise that is a lot for a short introduction, but any response, advice or direction would be very much appreciated - I would love to know what you think!

Thank you very much in advance for your time. 

I Value Life - Do you? ;-) 

Ross McMath

Dear all,

My name is Arturo Macias. I am a 45 years old economist working at Banco de España, the Spanish Central Bank. I have recently finished my Ph.D (see my ORCID account for my published papers: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1623-0957) and consequently I have recovered a substantial amount of free time. 

While I have a great deal of simpathy to the whole Effective Altruism movement my main interest is related to intitutional desing and economic estabilization.  In my view among the main existential risk bottlenecks for this Dangerous Century, a critical one is institutional stagnation. E.O Wilson famously said: "The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology". Regarding the Paleolithic emotions, I can not advance any solution (this is for geneticists), and regarding the godlike tecnologhy, after Aug 6th 1945 nobody can. 

Regarding the medieval institutions I think I can make some modest contributions  and thats is why I am here.

Kind Regards,

Arturo

Hey everyone! My name is Stew, and I'm a 22 year old recent college graduate. I first heard of effective altruism through the media I consume (podcasts, written media, etc.) and became further interested in the topic after taking a philosophy class at my university. I've lurked on this forum before and browsed sites such as 80,000 hours, but the recent momentum EA has gained in the mainstream has prompted me to create an account. Looking forward to interacting with all of y'all! Cheers. 

Hey, I'm Jeffrey Arana. Raised and reside in Hudson County, NJ. I live right across Manhattan so you might have seen me in EA NYC events.

I first heard about EA through the Peter Singer TED Talk and then went down that rabbit hole. I kind of fell off and would donate 10% of my paychecks here and there until Sam Harris interviewed Toby Ord a year ago and got me thinking about having a career in EA.

Some personal non-EA things about me: I love to play and watch football (I'm sorry, soccer),  penny board around NYC and my neighborhood, try cooking some new vegan dishes, and read books. 

I'm an undergraduate in economics at Rutgers University-Newark but will be transferring to the New Brunswick campus in Spring 2023 and hopefully help restart the EA chapter there.

Some of the career options I'm mostly interested in are research into global priorities, global health, and poverty.  Policy and governance domestically and internationally are also intriguing to me too. Earning to give would be something interesting to try while an undergraduate.

Although I don't see myself dedicating my career to AI or factory farming I consider them both top priorities as well (I'm vegan) and looking forward to learning about AI safety!

Hi everyone!

About me

I'm a new PhD student in Computer Science (specifically Cloud-Edge computing). Interested in most CS technology and have a decent understanding of related subjects like AI, HPC, and math. Hobby interest in philosophy and psychology. I live in a small city in northern Sweden called Umeå.

Experience with EA

I'm completely new to the community. I have Will MacASkill's and his book "What We Owe the Future" to thank for finding this community Long time ago I read Yuval Noah Harari's books, specifically the "21 questions for the 21st century". Since then I have, somewhat lazily, been searching for a realistic and hopeful philosophy to adopt. Thus far EA seems promising, the environment seem very welcoming and the ideals are great.

Question to the community

My PhD is funded by the university and I can do almost anything I want (within the constraint of Cloud-Edge). Swedish universities have great employment standards for PhD students. So, as I have barely started, do you have any ideas for subjects to look at that are aligned with EA? As an example I have been proposed: Green Energy Aware Scheduling for the Cloud-Edge Continuum.

Hi everyone.
I'm Riccardo working on a mobile game with a group of activists.

I decided to look into the EA forums again after listening to an interview with Will MacAskill on Ali Abdaal's YouTube channel, if you haven't seen it, it's one of the best interviews I have seen with Will.

I checked out the forums years ago, so I thought I'd give it another try and look a bit through the most popular posts and see what people here are up to.

Looking forward to see how things have developed since the last time

Hello all! I'm Lauren. I'm a startup founder working on an app to make it easy to measure impact. We ultimately want everyone who is putting effort into creating good to be able to measure it, prove it,  improve it, share it, and scale it... We want to make Measurement/Evaluation (M/E) woes a thing of the past so that we can collectively put an end to ineffective and harmful effort. #shouldbeeasyright

Would love to connect with anyone here who also works in M/E or needs help with your impact practice/ data collection/ measurement/ reporting. Very excited to have come across this community!

-Lauren Schwaar and the Fathom Performance team

Are any of the more philosophically incline EA's into the pragmatic school? There's obviously a (very!) strong consequentialist strain here though I could see engaging with pragmatists like Dewey, Rorty and others to be super helpful to this movement. 

Hello everyone.

I have been following the 80000hours podcast and Peter Singers work for years. So naturally I had considered creating an account here as well, but what ultimately pushed me over the edge was that I wanted to point out a typo xD

My philosophy can mostly be described as utilitarian to the extent that this doesn't interfere with truthfulness, which fits well with EA to a point (I also value certain virtues and principles, but that shouldn't be too relevant). The main reason why I decided against joining this forum for the longest time is its policy regarding information hazards.

The EA cause I care most about is animal rights.

I am not sure how active I'll be here if at all. But just in case I wanted to introduce myself anyways. Nice to meet you all.

Hi everyone, 

In this recent critique of EA, Erik Hoel claims that EA is sympathetic towards letting AGI develop because of the potential for billions of happy AIs (~35 mins) . He claims that this influences EA funding to go more towards alignment rather than trying to prevent/delay AGI (such as through regulation). 

Is this true, or is it a misrepresentation of why EA funding goes towards alignment? For example, perhaps it is because EAs think AGI is inevitable or it is too difficult to delay/prevent? 

Thanks very much! 

Lucas 

Hi everyone!

I am a budding product designer for blockchain/web 3.0 projects who just recently discovered the Effective Altruism community.

Having done some work with Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), it has become clear to me that they could become a vital part of EA of the future because they can enhance transparency and governance of effective altruism communities and projects.

They can also help to scale projects and fundraising campaigns.

As a member here I hope to contribute content which aims to educate community members who are new to cryptocurrency and blockchain and also expand upon my thoughts on how blockchain technology can make EA even more effective and why we must pay attention to DAOs and Web3.

I'm seeing that two posts are now starred. If I recall correctly, LW mods used to leave a comment explaining why when they did that, which I thought was a neat thing to do. I'd also appreciate a way to turn it off.

Hello, I'm a french citizen living in Bourges, France. I own a bachelor in wildlife conservation. I learned about EA through my personal curiosity about artificial intelligence and I also was wondering how to help biodiversity on the long term. I don't  work because of health problems but that won't stop me from doing my part as a volunteer.

Hi all,

I am new to the forum, but not new to the ideas behind EA. I read Will's book back in 2015 when I met him in the US, and have been inspired to do the most good with my career. I have lurked on the forum for a while, but would like to meet more in the community so finally introducing myself. :)

I currently work on digital at the UNDP,  but also potentially open to new opportunities. 

I am curious to learn more about organisations working on longtermism policy research and advisory,  if there are any? 

I would love to connect with others working in the space especially if you have ideas you would like to bounce around. Here's my Linkedin! https://www.linkedin.com/in/greenjcb/

Cheers

Jamie

 

Hi folks,

newcomer here.

I am looking for advice on what to do when i have -finally, at long last- finished my masters degree in bioprocess engineering at a major university in southern germany (KIT, Karlsruhe).

There is a lot of cool research going on here and staying at my cozy environment, working on a doctorate degree seems tempting. But staying in academia until i am fourty (which isn't too long anymore) could hamper my ability to find a job later.

I could most likely find a well-paying job in a major Pharma company, but working as a small gear in a big company without a real bigger-picture-cause could stifle my motivation.

There sure is a lot of cool stuff to do in biotech, but is there a company/institution (preferrably in the Karlsruhe/Heidelberg/Stuttgart - Area) that somewhat aligns with EA principles?

Also i'd love if you shared your favorite biotech-articles that don't revolve around cultivated meat.

Hi all. Vastav here. I live in India, and am pursuing my undergraduate studies in Economics and Computer Science. I am primarily interested in issues around urban economics, judicial functioning , and quality of higher education in developing countries.

I found EA while looking for interesting topics for my undergraduate dissertation. The ITN framework really clicked for me, and helped me find a suitable passion and research agenda for myself. 

For now, I hope to pursue a PhD in economics, contributing to research and solutions in areas that pique my interest. At the same time, I am creating a research-to-action pipeline by conducting small-scale pilots and case studies to refine my toolkit of solutions. I look forward to interacting with the community on the ways to create and sustain such institutions, and engage with policymakers and decision makers in developing countries.

Is it possible to subscribe to a sequence?

If not, I'm suggesting this feature :)

Hello! I'm Kyle, based in Pittsburgh, U.S.A. I am an interdisciplinary researcher and communications professional, also with significant experience in United States and United Nations policy. I am only a few months old to the EA community. However, I have been working for most of my career so far in EA-adjacent efforts in climate change. I currently work for myself in that field. But, in conjunction with career counseling with 80,000 Hours and others, I am job hunting for an explicitly EA position, ideally in AI safety/alignment. I would love to connect with more people in this community! You can find my LinkedIn, professional website, and other contact info in my profile.

Hi everyone, there are animal rights groups working to introduce new ballot measures in the US in California and Oregon that could help animals in a significant way. In California, we are working to introduce a ballot initiative that will probably be a ban on new animal factory farms in all of California. We are having several possibilities tested by Faunalytics. We are also preparing to first pass a more radical measure banning animal factory farms in a semi-rural California county. This is a beta test for the California state ballot initiative. In Oregon, a group is already collecting signatures to introduce a ballot measure that would ban killing farmed animals in all of Oregon. We need more help with making sure we collect enough signatures from voters in a limited amount of time to get these initiatives on ballots so voters can vote on them later. If you’d like to help get these ballot initiatives introduced, please text me to +1 (650) 863-1550 or message me on WhatsApp or Signal. Thank you! -Rasa Petrauskaite

As Ukrainian woman who was forced to leave the country with two kids, I wonder how I can help Ukrainians to donate more efficiently. Ukrainians become more and more conscious and altruistic nation, but I am sure that most volunteers and donors are not efficient enough. I appreciate any information links on this cause. Thank you.

Anyone interested in an EA unconference on gather dot town during EA global? Seems like an easy way to open up the event to those who weren't selected by the annointed and/or can't make it logistically. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/dsCTSCbfHWxmAr2ZT/open-ea-global 

Has EA engaged with the geopolitical risks of AI / AGI? For example regardless if AGI is developed, there are different risks if advanced AI is led and controlled by the CCP verus Open AI.

Hi everyone! I'm trying to learn more about Land Use Reform (YIMBY) Advocacy as a cause area. Are there any cost-effectiveness estimates of the work on this?

Hi: I'm Sharmake Farah that has been in the forum since February.

I got to EA by getting a free book called The Precipice, which introduced genuinely novel concepts to me like existential risks, longtermism and our potentially very long future ahead. While I got used to the scales, it's still large enough to matter.

I made my first post today, focusing on AI ethics and alignment fields fighting, and why that's bad. Here it is: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/AARnvz99hiEytnA9k/there-are-two-factions-working-to-prevent-ai-dangers-here-s

My biggest impact so far is in reframing what matters the most in a healthy way. I got much less worried about politics and got to see a broader perspective than my own country's near term politics.

Have any prominent EA philosophers engaged with critiques of consequentialism? Are there canoncial examples of those that people might point to? I don't really have a desire to write a several thousand word essay though would be curious what more philosophically inclined EA's think of works like "Beyond Consequentialism" by my old prof Paul Hurley. ( https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Consequentialism-Paul-Hurley/dp/0199698430 ) 

Hey all! 😊

My intuition leads me to think that focusing on improving life quality and eradicating poverty in all forms (not just extreme) would be highly impactful. This is because lifting more people out of poverty means that they have more free time to pursue self actualization, and therefore more likely to pursue EA and an impactful career. It's essentially the idea behind egoistic altruism (cute video below).

Essentially, I feel that egoistic altruism would be a highly effective purpose to orient my career around. However, my search results haven't turned up a lot of existing research into whether poverty alleviation (as a means to leveraging the number of humans working on important problems) is /actually/ an effective cause to pursue.

If you have any thoughts, articles or even just intuitions about this yourself, I'd love to hear them. Bonus points if you have insights on whether technology is an effective means to reduce poverty. Please feel free to interrogate any presumptions I'm making.

Thanks! 💜
Jack

Hi everyone!

I'm director of learning for a French ed tech startup focused on evidence-based learning.

I believe I found out about effective altruism proper from Vox around 2015. Had also gone down the existential risk rabbit hole around 2013-2014 while a student but did not make the connection between those issues at the time.

I recall EA arguments influencing  my career decision in 2016 as I had just left my previous company and was considering many opinions - to this day, I am thankful for being introduced to a framework that helped me reason through my choice at the right time.

I had never engaged with the intellectual community up until now. What ultimately brought me back to EA was my news and social media consumption. The zeitgeist of the past five or so years appears to have been largely driven by negative passions - anger, terror and despair - passions I myself have indulged in far too often. Rather than rein in or redirect those energies towards the common good, many of the most influential (often highly educated) people in our societies  ended up amplifying them. 

With every fleeting sentiment turned into a wild conceptual exaggeration, I started wondering - is there anything better on the menu? Reading articles, listening to podcasts such as 80K Hours, I have realized the EA community can help turn the tide.

As much as I agree with the basic principles of EA, I have found the most hope in its general disposition  - purposeful, constructive, and prosocial ; based in reality, curious, and open to new evidence. To strive to be of use;  to engage with the world as it is to that end; whatever the affliction, this must be what the cure looks like.

General areas of interest include:

• Scaling effective instruction - My main area of professional training. While there is much warranted skepticism within the EA community when it comes to spending resources on education, there is also growing evidence that some ways of teaching are more effective than others, and that scaling them works. The potential societal returns of such an approach (especially in lower-income countries) may therefore be underestimated. One often neglected aspect of this debate I have observed in my work is that the space not taken up by effective instruction tends to create a vacuum for methods that are both inherently appealing to funders and counterproductive (anything from a focus on learning styles to pure constructivism, where infants are being expected to "create" knowledge when it would be much faster to just share it with them).
   
• Improving decision making - With a particular focus on key decision makers. I see much promise in improving elite education (turning credentialism into a quest for usefulness), optimizing democratic incentives , and stage directing "the room where it happens" (from EU summits to White Hour "war rooms", it is striking how many influential decisions are made in bad meetings, with poor structure / access to relevant data).
   
• Cause exploration - Not only on which areas to pursue but also on how to pursue them. For instance, we are far from being able to tell whether a given course of action is likely to increase or decrease the chance of great power conflict.

Hope I can help in some way!

As a brand new newcomer to EA, only a day or two, my fairly ignorant first impression is to wonder whether EA culture is too intellectual.  

It could be argued that the most successful effective altruism effort in the history of Western civilization has been Christianity.  (FYI, I'm not Christian)  As example, in the United States Catholic Charities is the second leading provider of services to the needy, topped only by the federal government.   And that's not counting the very many Protestant charity projects.

Certainly there is an intellectual component to Christianity, but it's hard to imagine that Christianity would have come to dominate the Western world if there wasn't a much more accessible way to access Christianity as well.

Honestly, my fairly ignorant first impression, subject to revision at any time, is that EA will have appeal for well intended university based intellectuals, and is likely to be mostly ignored by the wider public.   Is this a problem?  I don't know.   But what the example of Catholic Charities might teach us is that it's simple messages which most engage the broad public, and it's the broad public which has most of the money, and thus most of the power to do good.

Ideally EA will, like Christianity, be presented in a great variety of forms so as to connect with a great variety of well intended people.    Just as with Christianity, there can be EA scholars, and simpler EA folk who just want to be nice as well.

People with Twitter accounts might want to vote on my poll asking whether my EA forum comments should be more or less critical.