Hello, I was introduced to EA through Dr. Lucia Coulter on a podcast and reading Will Macaskill's books What We Owe the Future and Doing Good Better. Both were fantastic, seriously mind-expanding books. I'm a Primary school teacher working at an International school in Monaco. I started a 'Superhero Global Citizens' club last week and keen to share these ideas with the children and the wider community which offers fantastic potential for leverage and impact. I'm surprised how little is known of EA from my initial conversations with others. I'd be grateful for any support anyone is able to offer to help me get this started or gain traction. Perhaps there are already members working with other International School Communities, Monaco or with other philanthropy networks?

Hey there, I am new to the forum but already reading through post after post :)

I first came across the topic through th 80,000 hours website which was recommended to me by a friend when I asked him: How can I find a job that matters? I still owe him alot for that hint :)

Actually at that time I was quite a bit frustrated with my job, as I didn't feel like having an impact. But with my learnings from 80,000 I shifted my focus and now try to push innovations in the construction industry as an innovation manager. However, it is still hard, as there is "crisis" every year and the (so much) profitoriented management cuts budgets all the time and makes it hard to really achieve great things. So now I increased my donations to not feel so helpless. And dig deeper into EA, e.g. here in the forum. And try to be more rigorous in my job to push sustainable innovations more that the last 3 years. Wish me luck :)

Bio in short: André from Germany, Ruhr Area looking for opportunities to have an impact

Hello everyone, my name is Manik. I joined the forum a month ago and am very excited to be here.

I am a business and technology consultant in the UK, collaborating with clients on business problems across multiple industries and domains. I have 3 years of software development experience after Engineering Bachelor's and 6 years of business and technology consulting experience after MBA. I am exploring ways to utilize my skill set to transition into a career which can create a bigger impact. 

Over the last few years, I developed ideas about how I want to design my life and arrived at something very similar to longtermism. This led me to do some research and I was absolutely delighted to know that there is a term for this and that a wider community is working with a similar mindset. The idea of “prioritization” and “effective” altruism resonated with me; I have always believed in an intellectual response to emotional motivations/challenges in life (personal, professional, or global). 

I have been exploring articles on this forum and on 80,000 hours, pursuing a course on AI safety fundamentals, reading Nick Bostrom’s work, listening to EA podcasts and looking for projects/jobs where I can contribute. 

I am at present interested in AI Safety, but keeping my mind open to exploring other areas if I find I can create a bigger impact.

Request for advice from animal suffering EAs (and, to a lesser extent, climate EAs?): is there an easy win over getting turkeys from Mary's Turkeys? (Also, how much should I care about getting the heritage variety?)

Background: I routinely cook for myself and my housemates (all of whom are omnivores), and am on a diet that requires animal products for health reasons. Nevertheless, I'd rather impose fewer costs than more costs on others; I stopped eating chicken and chicken eggs in response to this post and recently switched from consuming lots of grass-finished beef to consuming lots of bison.

I have a general sense that "bigger animals have better lives", and so it's better to roast turkeys than roast ducks, for example, but am 1) not clear on the relative impacts of birds and mammals and 2) not clear on turkeys specifically. My sense is that even relatively well-treated chickens have been bred in a way that's pretty welfare-destroying, but that this hasn't yet happened to ducks; turkeys are subject to Thanksgiving pressure in the US, tho, which I'm sure has had some effect. The various food impact things that I've seen (like foodimpacts.org) don't seem to address turkeys (or use estimates from 'similar' creatures, which feels like too much of a stretch).

I think the counterfactual to roasting a turkey is either smoking the same weight of bison brisket or my housemates cooking themselves the same weight of chicken.

Hi. I've been reading about EA ideas, giving effectively and listening to 80,000 hours podcast etc for a couple of years now, but have only recently started to interact with the community. At the end of 2023 I participated in the EA UK Career Planning programme, and listened in on EAGx Virtual.

Recently discovered this forum and greatly enjoying both the content and the spirit of discussions! Especially the Biosecurity, movement-building and Philosophy areas. Honestly, I'm a bit daunted by the knowledge and insight of posters here, but might push myself to put out a quick-take in Draft Amnesty Week, as I'd like to develop my writing abilities.

I work as a Physiotherapist, but am now on a maternity career break, and in this time, am trying to develop my knowledge and skills for a career transition to a more effective path. The cause area I'm most interested in is Biosecurity but I am pretty open-minded to anything high impact that is also a good personal fit. Working on mini-projects to test my abilities in advocacy and policy.

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to drop in and introduce myself! I'm new to the forum and super excited to be here. I come from a background in social work and community development, and I'm currently diving deeper into Development Studies. I'm really passionate about making a positive impact in my community and beyond, and I'm eager to learn how I can contribute to positive change initiatives.

So far, I've enjoyed volunteering with an organization that focuses on empowering women. We teach them about running a business, culinary arts, and provide mental support through counseling sessions.

I'm based in East Africa, specifically Kenya, and I'm on the lookout for projects and opportunities where I can lend a hand. If anyone has any leads or guidance on how I can use my career for the greater good, I'd love to hear from you.

Let's work together to make the world a better place through effective altruism initiatives!....CHEERS!!

Hi! I've been following EA for more than six years now. I am not sure how it started, but I think the first contact was a TED talk from Peter Singer. I joined some local and online events, I took the founders' pledge, and I follow it—though I never accepted Give Well's monopoly on deciding where to donate. I love the conceptual frameworks of EA - such as the importance, traceability, and neglectedness framework, or the idea of guiding young people on what impact their job might have before they make the choice. I hope this forum to be a still open space for a discussion on where we go forward with those ideas!

Someone reminded me that I have an admonymous. If some of y'all feel like leaving some anonymous feedback, I'd love to get it and you can do so here: https://admonymous.co/loki

Hi Everyone!
I'm excited about joining the forum and I'm grateful for having the time to navigate and read this storehouse of reflection. I'm enjoying the EA handbook and have listened to many podcasts.

I'm an Argentinian psychologist with over eight years of experience working with civil society organizations (from grassroots groups, national CSOs, and regional networks).

I've worked in research, program management, and mental health support. In research, I’m stronger in qualitative methodologies and have had fantastic experiences with participatory and peer-to-peer methodologies.  I’ve worked in mental health as a clinician and supporting/accompanying activists and victims of human rights violations.

I've devoted most of my time to advancing deinstitutionalization: changing systems that rely on large institutions (orphanages,  asylums, etc.) for '''''care''''' provision.

I've practiced vipassana meditation since 2016, and I lack the words (although if you ask I might go on speaking for hours :P) to state how much I've learned and continue to learn from my practice and service.

I've experienced many significant changes to my thinking, worldviews, and even ways of experiencing life. I embrace the idea of the 'middle point' as not losing the possibility to grasp any of the extremes.

I've suffered a lot -from physical and 'moral' pain- (I'm interested in the difference between pain and suffering), and I found a path to live a happy life when it all seemed dark.

I'm interested in consciousness studies and individual suffering as well as its social determinants and social change.

I love moving and enjoy standing in different places to experience diverse worldviews and thinking. Coming from a poor background in the global south, I find EA developments thought-provoking.

Looking forward to engaging with this community!
 

Hello all!

My name is Craig and I am an EU policy consultant and writer on the politics of biotech. I edit the Genetic Choice Project, which reports on debates and developments on natalism and reprogenetic technologies, including IVF, embryo selection, and genetic enhancement. Reprotech will likely increasingly influence reproductive patterns and therefore the evolution of human species in the years and decades to come.

I also have a personal blog on bio/politics where I look at the impact of biotechnology on international relations, notably national security and U.S.-China relations.

I look forward to discovering the Forum and exchanging with you all!

Hello! I'm thrilled to be joining this community. My name is Eric, and I recently discovered effective altruism through various online channels. My background is in quantum gastronomy, and I currently work as a Flavor Fusion Specialist at Quantum Flavor Dynamics Corp.

In my role, I experiment with merging taste profiles from parallel universes to create mind-bending culinary experiences. While it's a fascinating field, I've been feeling a calling to use my skills for a broader impact, which led me to the world of effective altruism.

I've always been passionate about exploring the intersection of flavor and philanthropy, and after learning about effective altruism, I'm eager to understand how I can contribute to making a positive impact in the world. The idea of maximizing the good I can do with my unique background really resonates with me.

I came across effective altruism through an obscure culinary blog post that surprisingly delved into ethical considerations in flavor creation. Currently, I'm particularly drawn to sustainable food systems and the intersection of gastronomy with social and environmental issues.

Maximally Effective Altruism

Imagine that two people are lost at sea, with only enough food for one. One is the world’s most promising cancer researcher while the other, to be polite, has far less potential to improve humankind. Most people would wisely choose the cancer researcher.

Yet the fashionable Effective Altruism movement focuses on lower-potential people—typically, people who are struggling in poor countries. That implies the belief that all lives have roughly equal value. Of course, our hearts go out to “the least among us,” but they face so many barriers. If we care to maximally benefit humankind, we’re wiser to invest in people with great potential for ripple effect who, importantly, would not otherwise get fully funded.

For example, leading lights in the Effective Altruism movement are far from downtrodden, for example, William McCaskill, Holden Karnofsky, Peter Singer, and Zvi Moshowitz. Effective altruism might fund such people to develop ever more “ripply” altruism.

Some other possibilities for more ripply and thus more effective altruism:

— SuperCourses: online versions of standard school courses taught by dream teams of transformational instructors, augmented by vivid demonstrations and gamification. Of course, instruction would be individualized, not just in pace but in teaching approach. Machine learning would make that individualization ever better, and automatic translation would make SuperCourses available in many languages. The development of SuperCourses would enable every student, rich and poor, kindergarten through college, Alabama to Zululand, to get a world-class education. The private and government sectors haven’t funded this—I have proposed SuperCourses to top U.S. and California education officials and gotten nowhere. One reason is the fear that the teacher’s union would use its might to try to stop it to preserve teacher jobs. But if developed and disseminated worldwide, SuperCourses could be very effective altruism indeed.

— Independent researchers studying solutions that are promising but have a poor chance of success. Governmental and corporate funding sources tend to invest in institution-based researchers whose projects have higher probability of near-term success. But if the focus is on long-term risk-reward, effective altruism would include independent, unaffiliated researchers working in their home-office or garage who are exploring novel ways to, for example, lower the cost of nuclear fusion energy, develop better AI-driven models for predicting and foiling terrorism and even for assessing a war’s worthiness, e.g., the U.S. entering World War II versus the war in Vietnam or Afghanistan.

— People developing ever better mental health apps, for example, using ChatGPT. Such apps could be distributed worldwide to countries rich and poor—Cell phones are ubiquitous even in poor nations. Private sources are funding development of such apps, but such development deserves greater funding given the apps’ potentially great ripple effect.

— Researchers studying the enhancement of reasoning ability, impulse control, and altruism. For largely political reasons, those research areas are underfunded by government and corporations but, with sufficient ethical guardrails, such research has great ripple potential to provide major benefit to humankind.

— People developing software that matches mentors with protégés, available worldwide. It would be like match.com but for mentor/protégé, relationships—Many protégés and mentors say that mentorship has been among their life’s greatest learning experiences. Such software would facilitate that. Alas, the matching industry, despite having been around for decades, has remained focused on romantic relationships. That makes mentor-matching apps a good candidate for effective altruism.

Again, it’s understandably tempting to want to help “the least among us,” those with the greatest deficits. After all, we feel good in helping them and it’s a fashionable form of virtue signaling. But if we truly care about humankind and are willing to focus on the greatest ultimate benefit, ripple should be the core criterion for determining what is maximally effective altruism.