AI Use Note: Main body text entirely human written. Claude (Opus 4.8) helped develop models of animal life histories in the appendix.
Cross-posted from Good Structures.
Executive Summary
* Animal advocates sometimes make claims like “there are X of this animal...
“How long have you been v*g*n?”
This is one of the most common icebreakers at animal protection events. It’s a baseline assumption, and it mostly holds true: if you’re out advocating for animals not to be tortured or abused, realistically these days you are v**n, or close. And it makes for good conversation. It seems fairly safe to assume when you meet strangers.
But this assumption is hurting the movement in a way which we don’t always notice: someone new comes into the sp...
Summary
Back in November 2023 I posted here to launch Spiro and raise our first $198k. Two and a half years later this is an update and a fundraiser for the next step.
The short version: we've now reached over-5,900 people with TB preventive medicine, including over 3,000 children under five years old. Our early results have held up well an...
As an experiment, would it be worth sharing this in Meetup?
FYI, this meetup will be announced at ACX, so we can expect more people than usual.
Regarding sharing the event in more public platforms.
My (never explicit) goal with the Lisbon group has been to connect people who are into EA/Rationality. This doesn't require too much time/energy from me, and I'm ok with doing it, even if not perfectly.
Sharing the events in Meetup/Facebook would bring in people who don't know anything about EA/Rationality (and, from I heard from other people, that are not even interested in knowing about it), and so it would make more sense if the goal was to increase the Lisbon community and letting more people know about it. The above would require more time/energy than I'm willing to spend.
TBH, I'm only filling the group organizer role because no one else was doing it. :) Happy to pass the torch to someone more component and with more ambitious goals!
I think this depends on how many people who are not into EA/Rationality would come. If lots of people came, then it would probably be wise to organise specific activities. However, I do not think this will be the case, so I guess it is fine to introduce EA informally in the meetup.
I would be happy to post something on Meetup/Eventbrite.
Agree with Luis's sentiment. Unless we put in more thought about how to indoctrinate the uninitiated, posting it on meetup/eventbrite presents the risk of devolving this into just another social gathering. However, maybe it's worth it to run the risk and potentially evangelize at least one person 😁
So, I think we should post it up there, but make it explicit that if you join, it's because you're curious about this. We can just post some links to intros and explanations about EA/ACX.
I agree with this approach. If we expect more people who are into ACX for the next meetup, there is also less risk of the meetup going badly, because the fraction of people not interested in EA/Rationality will tend to be lower.