Effective Altruism Forum
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by RyanCarey
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Hello everyone,

It's been a big launch month for the Effective Altruism Forum. To the roughly 100 existing posts on the Effective Altruism Blog, we've added 43 new posts.

Congrats Jess, Kaj, Peter, Katja and Topher for writing the five most popular posts! Thanks everyone for your comments, without which the forum would not be such a fun place to hang out!

Now is the time to throw the forum open to lots more new contributions. To facilitate this, we've decreased the karma requirement for writing a new article. You can now post as soon as you get ten karma (posting used to require 30). As usual, you can upvote, downvote, comment, write in the Open Thread and post meetups right away. I'll continue to supplement your articles with some classic introductory essays.

In terms of updates in the last week, we've installed the ability to moderate user's contributions. Note that contributors on this site have so far been sufficiently well-behaved so far that I haven't had to delete a single comment, which is a credit to effective altruists, and may this continue far into the future! We have also updated the Recent on EA Blogs section to include just the rationality-related posts, rather than all posts from Slate Star Codex, which means that our sidebar will be less densely filled with Scott's articulate and provocative commentaries but will hopefully give people a more representative impression of effective altruism. (Including this subset of Scott's posts was always our original intent anyway.)

If you haven't already introduced yourself, then now is a great time to do so. Use the comment thread below to tell others something that others might find interesting about you!

Enjoy!

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Ales_Flidr11
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Sorry for the double-post, figured it would be better to sign up with my real name

Hi, I'm Ales, a second-year student at Harvard College and a prospective economics major interested in too many things.

I'm currently one of the co-presidents of Harvard College Effective Altruism [1], in which position I succeeded Ben Kuhn. We are currently working on making HCEA an established organization and it seems like we're getting near the critical mass of dedicated people to work on some really great projects. We're also helping to found a group at MIT and Tufts, and our organizers volunteer for the Future of Life Institute.

[1] http://harvardea.org/

[2] http://thefutureoflife.org/

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Ben_West🔸11
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I'm Ben – I've been earning to give as a software developer for the past few years, and recently started a company so I can hopefully donate even more!

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Larks4
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Hey Ben, welcome to the forum! What's your company do?

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Ben_West🔸4
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Thanks Larks!

We create software which calculates the quality of care that physicians provide, so that physicians who provide better care get paid more. More technically, we make it simple for physicians to participate in programs like PQRS. This is our website.

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DanielFilan9
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I'm Daniel, a university student from Canberra studying artificial intelligence. I'm interested in going into FAI-related research.

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pappubahry9
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I didn't make an introduction comment in the last post, so I suppose I should do one here. I'm David Barry -- one of the migrated posts from the old blog is authored by the user David_Barry, but I signed up my usual Internet handle before thinking about the account that had already been made for me. I live in Perth, where I moved for work earlier this year, having previously lived in Brisbane.

I always used to think I'd become a physicist one day, but what was supposed to be a PhD went badly for too long and I escaped with a Master's. I've now been working in mining geostatistics for almost six years, and donating a chunk of my salary to GiveWell-recommended charities for five years.

I don't do much actively in EA apart from the donations I send out roughly once a month. Occasionally I'll knuckle down and work through cost-effectiveness calcu-guestimates, but mostly I just like skimming the EA Facebook group and this forum, occasionally chipping in.

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ruthie8
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I'm Ruthie. I'm a software engineer. I'm a GWWC member, most interested in global poverty alleviation. I keep a blog, mostly not related to EA at ruthiebyers.com. I also do a lot of social dancing and I play fiddle.

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John_Salvatier8
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I'm John, and I help organize the Seattle EA meetup group! I also think Bayesian statistics is the bees knees. I find it pretty fun to help EAs improve their fashion skills. Also, I love to dance to electronic dance music.

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RyanCarey0
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Hey John, yes I agree that Bayesian statistics is great, especially philosophically. Good luck developing your Seattle group, and growing a band of EAs to run it!

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Tom_Ash0
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Hi John! Any EDM recommendations? I sometimes find these mixes energising to listen to while working - they help me blitz through spreadsheets (and Science suggests they don't hurt for this sort of task).

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Gina_Stuessy🔸8
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I'm Gina, a software & applications engineer in Madison, WI. I'm also on the board of directors for a local animal rights & environmental protection group, Alliance for Animals and the Environment. Random fact: I used to do synchronized swimming in high school!

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Tom_Ash8
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My name is Tom and I dislike piña coladas and getting caught in the rain.

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HaydnBelfield7
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Hi everyone, I'm Haydn. I used to work at the Centre for Effective Altruism, now I work for a Member of the UK Parliament. Message me if you're interested in politics and EA.

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Gregory Lewis🔸3
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I'm Gregory. I work as a junior doctor. I have done some work for GWWC and 80k, and I try to give a significant fraction of my income to charity. I'm reluctant to call myself an 'Effective Altruist', as I'm broadly ineffective and selfish. Enjoy life!

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Peter Wildeford3
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The name of this forum should be "Emma".

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yboris2
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Hello, Boris Yakubchik here. 29 year old, residing in New Jersey

Finished Rutgers University (New Jersey, USA) with a BA in Mathematics, MA in Education. Started a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology. Joined Giving What We Can a few months after it started. Quit my Ph.D. program 2 years aiming to devote more time to EA stuff (I wrote about it here). Worked as a math teacher in high school, first year giving 50%. Subsequent years worked only part-time so went back to giving at least 10%. Currently a full-time math tutor, still aiming to follow the Earning to Give (E2G) strategy.

I helped run the Rutgers chapter of GWWC; few days ago we celebrated our 4th anniversary. I made a 5-minute video about members of GWWC. I gave a TEDxRutgers talk last year. I was interviewed by Peter Hurford, read here. I've read extensively and would love to give my recommendations.

Feel free to contact me, I'd love to help out a good project if I have the skills and can find the time :)

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Phil_Thomas2
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Hi everyone, I'm Phil. I have a background in engineering and biology, and am currently considering career paths. I started out working on infrastructure projects in the developing world as an undergrad, and then began to learn about development economics more broadly. This led me to read about J-PAL, IPA and then eventually to GiveWell, GWWC and 80,000 hours. My background makes me most interested in global health and development, but I also find arguments for existential risk mitigation and effective animal altruism pretty convincing. In general, I find it hard to find a group of people thinking along the same lines as effective altruists, so I'm glad to find this forum!

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Escherbach1
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Hi, I'm Ales, a second-year student at Harvard College and a prospective economics major interested in too many things.

I'm currently one of the co-presidents of Harvard College Effective Altruism [1], in which position I succeeded Ben Kuhn. We are currently working on making HCEA an established organization and it seems like we're getting near the critical mass of dedicated people to work on some really great projects. We're also helping to found a group at MIT and Tufts, and our organizers volunteer for the Future of Life Institute.

[1] http://harvardea.org/

[2] http://thefutureoflife.org/

[This comment is no longer endorsed by its author]Reply
RyanCarey0
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Welcome, Ales. You had a pretty hot speaker list in recent times. Shulman, Ord, Critch, Bostrom, Kremer, Vivalt, Greene, Tegmark, Hassenfeld, !!!

Good to have you around the forum.

What's news in FLI?

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Ales_Flidr2
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Thanks! We've been quite successful/lucky getting speakers. We're going to have another talk by Elie tonight. Later in the semester, we'll have George Church and Steven Pinker.

As for FLI, the main thing now is x-risk publicity (ie articles, editing wikipedia to replace sci-fi with science, etc.), project prioritization, conferences and panel discussions for academics and people working in AI. All of those are going really well, much faster than expected.

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[anonymous]1
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Should we use this comment thread, or this one (http://effective-altruism.com/ea/7r/introduce_yourself/) ?

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RyanCarey2
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I don't think it matters but I clarified the post so that it suggests that people use this comment thread :)

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[comment deleted]7
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Deleted by GMcGowan,
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