Quick takes

In light of recent discourse on EA adjacency, this seems like a good time to publicly note that I still identify as an effective altruist, not EA adjacent. I am extremely against embezzling people out of billions of dollars of money, and FTX was a good reminder of the importance of "don't do evil things for galaxy brained altruistic reasons". But this has nothing to do with whether or not I endorse the philosophy that "it is correct to try to think about the most effective and leveraged ways to do good and then actually act on them". And there are many people in or influenced by the EA community who I respect and think do good and important work.

Austin Chen (co founder of Manifold) shared some thoughts on the EA community during a recent interview with a former-EA [see transcript here] I think it is good to deter unscrupulous ultra high-net-worth individuals from engaging with EA. I think it was good that various 'EA thought leaders' came out as they did and said something along the lines of "we do not endorse this. Don't commit fraud."  I'm not entirely sure what Chen thinks the alternative could/should have been. Defend SBF's motives? Say nothing? Either of those approaches seem like the kind of optics-maxing he critiques as being a 'huge error' (only instead of aiming to 'broadly protect reputation' it's 'protect reputation in eyes of billionaires'). It's worth pointing out that Chen has a slightly more sympathetic view of Sam than I do:

One of the benefits of the EA community is as a social technology where altruistic actions are high status: earning-to-give, pledging and not eating animals are all venerated to varying degrees among the community.  Pledgers have coordinated to add the orange square emoji to their EA forum profile names (and sometimes in their twitter bio). I like this, as it both helps create an environment where one is might sometimes be forced to think "wow, lots of pledgers here, should I be doing that too?" as well as singling out those deserving of our respect.  Part of me wonders if 'we' should go further in leveraging this; bestow small status markers on those who make a particularly altruistic sacrifice.  Unfortunately, there is no kidney emoji, so perhaps those who donate their kidney will need to settle for the kidney bean emoji (🫘). This might seem ridiculous (I am half joking with the kidney beans), but creating neat little ways for those who behave altruistically to reap the status reward might ever so slightly encourage others to collect on the bounty (i.e donate their kidney or save a drowning child) as well as rewarding those who have done the good thing. 

I would like to publicly set a goal not to comment other people's posts with a criticism of some minor side point that doesn't matter. I have a habit of doing that, but I think it's usually more annoying than it is helpful so I would like to stop. If you see me doing it, feel free to call me out (I reserve the right to make substantive criticisms of a post's central arguments)

I’ve been working a few hours per week at the Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund as a Fund Manager since Summer this year. EA’s reputation is at a bit of a low point. I’ve even heard EA described as the ‘boogeyman’ in certain well-meaning circles. So why do I feel inclined to double down on effective altruism rather than move onto other endeavours? Some shower thoughts: * I generally endorse aiming directly for the thing you actually care about. It seems higher integrity, and usually more efficient. I want to do the most good possible, and this goal already has a name and community attached to it; EA. * I find the core, underlying principles very compelling. The Centre for Effective Altruism highlights scope sensitivity, impartiality, recognition of tradeoffs, and the Scout Mindset. I endorse all of these! * Seems to me that EA has a good track record of important insights on otherwise neglected topics. Existential risk, risks of astronomical suffering, AI safety, wild animal suffering; I attribute a lot of success in these nascent fields to the insights of people with a shared commitment to EA principles and goals. * Of course, there’s been a lot of progress on slightly less neglected cause areas too. The mind boggles at the sheer number of human lives saved and the vast amount of animal suffering reduced by organisations funded by Open Philanthropy, for example. * I have personally benefited massively in achieving my own goals. Beyond some of the above insights, I attribute many improvements in my productivity and epistemics to discussions and recommendations that arose out of the pursuit of EA. * In other roles or projects I’m considering, when I think of questions like “who will actually realistically consider acting on this idea I think is great? Giving up their time or money to make this happen?” the most obvious and easiest answer often looks like some subset of the EA community. Obviously there are some echo chamber-y and bias-related reasons tha

I'm going to be leaving 80,000 Hours and joining Charity Entrepreneurship's incubator programme this summer! The summer 2023 incubator round is focused on biosecurity and scalable global health charities and I'm really excited to see what's the best fit for me and hopefully launch a new charity. The ideas that the research team have written up look really exciting and I'm trepidatious about the challenge of being a founder but psyched for getting started. Watch this space! <3 I've been at 80,000 Hours for the last 3 years. I'm very proud of the 800+ advising calls I did and feel very privileged I got to talk to so many people and try and help them along their careers! I've learned so much during my time at 80k. And the team at 80k has been wonderful to work with - so thoughtful, committed to working out what is the right thing to do, kind, and fun - I'll for sure be sad to leave them. There are a few main reasons why I'm leaving now: 1. New career challenge - I want to try out something that stretches my skills beyond what I've done before. I think I could be a good fit for being a founder and running something big and complicated and valuable that wouldn't exist without me - I'd like to give it a try sooner rather than later. 2. Post-EA crises stepping away from EA community building a bit - Events over the last few months in EA made me re-evaluate how valuable I think the EA community and EA community building are as well as re-evaluate my personal relationship with EA. I haven't gone to the last few EAGs and switched my work away from doing advising calls for the last few months, while processing all this. I have been somewhat sad that there hasn't been more discussion and changes by now though I have been glad to see more EA leaders share things more recently (e.g. this from Ben Todd). I do still believe there are some really important ideas that EA prioritises but I'm more circumspect about some of the things I think we're not doing as well as we could (

Learnings from a day of walking conversations  Yesterday, I did 7 one-hour walks with Munich EA community members. Here's what I learned and why I would recommend it to similarly extroverted community members: Format * Created an info document and 7 one-hour Calendly slots and promoted them via our WhatsApp group * One hour worked well as a default timeframe - 2 conversations could have been shorter while others could have gone longer * Scheduling more than an hour with someone unfamiliar can feel intimidating, so I'll keep the 1-hour format * Walked approximately 35km throughout the day and painfully learned that street shoes aren't suitable - got blisters that could have been prevented with proper hiking boots Participants * Directly invited two women to ensure diversity, resulting in 3/7 non-male participants * Noticed that people from timeslots 1 and 3 spontaneously met for their own 1-1 while I was busy with timeslot 2 * Will actively encourage more member-initiated connections next time to create a network effect Conversations * My prepared document helped skip introductions and jump straight into meaningful discussion * Tried balancing listening vs. talking, succeeding in some conversations while others turned into them asking me more questions * Expanded beyond my usual focus on career advice, offering a broader menu of discussion topics * This approach reached people who initially weren't interested in career discussions * One participant was genuinely surprised their background might be impactful in ways they hadn't considered * Another wasn't initially interested in careers but ended up engaging with the topic after natural conversation flow * 2 of 7 people shared personal issues where I focused on empathetic listening and sharing relevant parts of my own experience * The remaining 5 discussions centered primarily on EA concepts and career-related topics Results * Received positive feedback suggesting participants gained eithe

EA Awards 1. I feel worried that the ratio of the amount of criticism that one gets for doing EA stuff to the amount of positive feedback one gets is too high 2. Awards are a standard way to counteract this 3. I would like to explore having some sort of awards thingy 4. I currently feel most excited about something like: a small group of people solicit nominations and then choose a short list of people to be voted on by Forum members, and then the winners are presented at a session at EAG BA 5. I would appreciate feedback on: 1. whether people think this is a good idea 2. How to frame this - I want to avoid being seen as speaking on behalf of all EAs 6. Also if anyone wants to volunteer to co-organize with me I would appreciate hearing that