Advice to my EA newcomer self

In 2017, I learned about EA from a friend of a friend in Scotland. He gave me a copy of Doing Good Better to read on the flight home, and I was sold by the time I’d finished it. Over the next five years, I was interested in EA but low on context - occasionally lurking on the Forum and talking about the ideas with friends and family. This post is a smorgasbord of thoughts I wish I could tell my past self.  

Diligence or caveat claims before repeating them as code

I knew that the commercials set to Sarah McLachlan music claiming you can help a dog find a foster home for 60 cents were probably inaccurate. However for some reason, I would repeat EA-related claims out of context in ways that the author would probably dislike. I’ve seen public-facing threads along the lines of the following:

Author:

• “If forced, I’d guess that the annual global disutility of nightmares is 500,000 utiles. This is made up, entirely vibesy, my 50% confidence interval spans five orders of magnitude, I put zero thought into this, please form your own view, I hate that I even have to put a number on this”.

Comment thread:

• “+1,
• +2,
• Omg new cause area,
• Drop everything, we’re all in on nightmares babyyy”

This is to say, I think there can be echochamber effects where ideas are communicated with increasingly less nuance and more confidence. To give a slightly less facetious example:

“14 BEES! DID YOU HEAR? 1 4 B E E S = 1 H U M A N.”^[1]

Most people don’t have the time to dive deep on everything they hear, so the other quick way to share information you don’t have much context on is through caveats. E.g., after listening to Bob Fischer’s interview about Rethink Priority’s Welfare Ranges project, I might endorse telling a friend something like:

I heard this interesting interview that changed my view on animals’ subjective experiences. I haven’t looked into this myself, but a talented researcher shared a few findings that suggest that many species of animals, even insects, experience pain and happiness more similarly to humans than I expected. Here’s the link if you want to check it out for yourself.

Much is made of “epistemic humility” in EA circles - I think for good reason! I wish I would have been more explicit about what I was confident in, what I was not, and what I was relaying through the grapevine. It’s not a great look for any philosophical/social/academic movement to have a bunch of 20 year olds like me telling their development economics professors “UM AkTuAlLy…”

Being funny is a virtue. Being edgy is not

I recently had a call with the three EA student group organizers. It was evident why they were able to get 80 GWWC pledges at a small school in their first year: they are the types of people that their peers want to be around.

They exuded fun-loving, high-integrity, and creative energy - e.g., they sent me an email that began with the sentence: “We’ve now entered the phase of EA where we open one Holden Karnofsky podcast and wake up on the floor next to an 18-tab Chrome window and an unopened banana.”

I’ve also spent time around people who communicate insensitively for shock and awe. I have definitely been guilty of this in the past. I think I had underestimated the potential to do harm by saying something distasteful. I might have thought “it’s only a joke, I’m doing good with my actions, isn’t that what counts?”

I now think that some very caring people who want to make the world a better place might bounce off EA when they hear things like “it doesn’t matter that the lions in the San Diego zoo are held in captivity, do you even KNOW how many chickens are on factory farms right now?”

Online communication in particular can be a minefield of misunderstanding. I would recommend being especially cautious before posting something that could be seen as offensive online; Rob Long is someone who I think does a great job of posting funny, EA-related content on Twitter in a good-spirited way.

Jargon is rarely necessary

I heard someone (unironically) say the following at a bay area social event: “We must take seriously the plausibility of steelmanning Molochian instrumental convergence”. I thought "this guy is talking in hieroglyphics".

I used to feel like using jargon helped me be more of a part of the in-group. Now I feel like jargon is a crutch, and the people I really look up to in EA rarely use it. Here is a list of podcasts where I think the guest does an excellent job of discussing EA topics in both a detailed and understandable way:

• Buddy Shah on data-backed public health policy
• Emily Oehlsen on Open Philanthropy's process for global health and development cause selection
• Elie Hassenfeld on two big-picture critiques of GiveWell’s approach, and six lessons from their recent work
• Holden Karnofsky on how AIs might take over even if they’re no smarter than humans, and his 4-part playbook for AI risk
• Lewis Bollard on the 7 most promising ways to end factory farming, and whether AI is going to be good or bad for animals
• Peter Singer on Utilitarianism, Influence, and Controversial Ideas

This being said, please do not feel intimidated by the level of polish that posts on the EA forum and speakers on the 80,000 Hours podcast have. There is a ton of behind-the-scenes tweaking that makes this content artificially sharp (e.g., a member of Open Philanthropy’s media team reviewed and improved this post).

Embrace entrepreneurship but not risky schemes

I am a schemer at heart. I love coming up with zany ways to make the world a better place. However, if an idea carries risk of breaking the law or damaging the reputation of an organization you care about, it’s not worth it.

For example, at one point I thought: “What if we could connect donors in lower tax brackets with donors in higher tax brackets? Then the low-tax-bracket donors could transfer their money to high-tax-bracket donors to give. This would generate a higher tax break, which could be donated as well. We could call the project something like ‘TakeDirectly’ or ‘Evasive Ventures’!” 

I ran this by a lawyer, who very compassionately said “Dawg. Do you really think that’s a good idea?” Upon reflection, I did not.

The potential for impact over your working lifetime can be extraordinary; there is no reason to jeopardize your future or the movement you love for a clever-seeming side hustle.

Be cognizant of professional dynamics and personal boundaries

Though I didn’t live in areas with an in-person EA scene when I was early in learning about EA, some people do. The social world, and particularly the dating world, can be delicate and complex. I would highly recommend reading Julia Wise’s Power dynamics between people in EA.

There’s an old Mitch Hedberg one-liner that goes something like:

I’m a heroine addict; I’m obsessed with women who have saved lives. 

It’s natural to be drawn to people who share your values! But I would encourage everyone, especially straight men, to be extremely careful before making advances. Here are a couple potentially unintuitive pieces of information:

• Overall in EA there are about twice as many men as women. The imbalance is stronger in some cause areas and cities. I’ve been surprised to hear how many interactions between EA women and men end with the man asking the woman out. Even if each man only asks once, it’s easy for this to be a major factor in a woman’s experience.
• EA Global conferences and EAGxs are intended to be strictly professional spaces.

It’s great to ask for help

I was on the periphery of EA for five years because I assumed I wasn’t the right person to work directly on the causes I cared about. I didn’t think to ask for help, which was decidedly a mistake. I could have:

• Reached out to career advising orgs like Probably Good or 80k.
• Asked the team at Effective Thesis for impactful ways I could use my time in school.
• Signed up for EA virtual programs sooner.
• Volunteered at EA conferences.

• Asked to volunteer for EA-related areas of interest/experience (in my case, Raising for Effective Giving), and explained how I could add value with little managerial oversight in my outreach.^[2]

Asking for help also looks like letting others in to enable you to get more done. One of the most special parts of the EA community is that we’re all on the same team, and there are people out there itching to contribute to our shared goals. Letting others in can take the form of trying out an executive assistant, opening up to a therapist or professional coach who works with EAs, or asking friends to co-work (even virtually).

What the people are really like

I think part of the reason I didn’t get involved in EA sooner was because I didn’t know what the people would be like. It was a little intimidating to picture these faceless AI whizkids and PhD development economists who write essays arguing with each other online.

After moving to SF and spending three years around EAs, I think the community is extraordinary. EAs are caring, driven, curious people who live by their values and help their friends grow. Some EAs aren’t naturally charismatic, but almost all of them mean well and try their best to make the world a better place. I wish I had gotten involved sooner; working directly on high-impact causes alongside world-class colleagues has been the most meaningful chapter of my life. I never intend to leave this work.

1. ^{^}

    Another claim I had overconfidently miscommunicated is that “GiveWell recommends charities that save lives most cost-effectively per dollar donated”. There are a number of philosophical judgment calls baked into GiveWell’s grantmaking decisions that randomized trials don’t answer. E.g., (how) should one apply different moral weights for saving the life of a one-day-old vs a five-year-old vs a 40-year-old? My understanding is that of these three groups, all else equal, GiveWell prioritizes saving the life of a five-year-old because it has more connection to the world than a one-day-old and more remaining years of life than a 40-year-old. If a donor held different views, they might consider giving to RICE’s Neonatal Kangaroo Mother Care program to prioritize one-day-olds or the Center for Pesticide Suicide prevention to prioritize 40-year-olds. With low confidence, I believe both likely save more lives per dollar on the margin than GiveWell’s four top recommended charities.

2. ^{^}

    Here is a post with advice on interacting with busy people.