Quick takes

For American EAs who are LGBT/queer: I think we should begin having discussions about how the Trump administration will affect us (non-queer people would also be allowed to participate), and whether we want to leave or stay, as well as where we want to go to. I think there are factors to take into account (like impact, community, and career potential) that would be better for an EA-focused group to look at. It would also be nice to have a group that is shielded from the fearmongering of the general public. I might make a larger post or start a Groupchat for this, so if you are or know anyone who would be interested, you can comment or message me about it and we can get in touch. Personally, I will not yet be leaving the United States, but I want to be ready to leave if things get dangerous enough. I wouldn't normally post something this politically divisive, but the possible urgency and threat posed to people needs to be assessed seriously.

GWWC Anniversary Week Update: We're in the middle of celebrating Giving What We Can and the 10% Pledge's 15th anniversary! Thanks to everyone who has posted their thoughts, pledge stories, or hopes for the future on social so far and/or contributed to our EA Forum thread. We've also been posting pledge-focused content on our blog all week (and a bit before) and wanted to highlight a couple great posts to check out: -The "Progressive Pledge" by Phillip Popien and Alana HF (a unique way to gradually increase your pledge percentage that takes into account decreasing marginal utility of money) -The Virtues of Virtue Signaling by Martin Jacobson (an in-depth look at public giving — why it's sometimes difficult or discouraged, and why maybe it shouldn't be) Our Effective Giving Global Coordinator and Incubator Luke Moore also posted a great piece on how Peter Singer's ideas transformed his life! Of course, don't let these more in-depth examples dissuade you from posting your quick thoughts on what the Pledge has meant to you — even just a few sentences is great! :) Can't wait to share the compilation of anniversary week posts and thoughts at the end of the week!

I think that EA outreach can be net positive in a lot of circumstances, but there is one version of it that always makes me cringe. That version is the targeting of really young people (for this quicktake, I will say anyone under 20). This would basically include any high school targeting and most early-stage college targeting. I think I do not like it for two reasons: 1) it feels a bit like targeting the young/naive in a way I wish we would not have to do, given the quality of our ideas, and 2) these folks are typically far from making a real impact, and there is lots of time for them to lose interest or get lost along the way. Interestingly, this stands in contrast to my personal experience—I found EA when I was in my early 20s and would have benefited significantly from hearing about it in my teenage years.

I'm the co-founder and one of the main organizers of EA Purdue. Last fall, we got four signups for our intro seminar; this fall, we got around fifty. Here's what's changed over the last year: * We got officially registered with our university. Last year, we were an unregistered student organization, and as a result lacked access to opportunities like the club fair and were not listed on the official Purdue extracurriculars website. After going through the registration process, we were able to take advantage of these opportunities. * We tabled at club fairs. Last year, we did not attend club fairs, since we weren't yet eligible for them. This year, we were eligible and attended, and we added around 100 people to our mailing list and GroupMe. This is probably the most directly impactful change we made. * We had a seminar sign-up QR code at the club fairs. This item actually changed between the club fairs, since we were a bit slow to get the seminar sign-up form created. A majority of our sign-ups came from the one club fair where we had the QR code, despite the other club fair being ~10-50x larger. * We held our callout meeting earlier. Last year, I delayed the first intro talk meeting until the middle of the third week of school, long after most clubs finished their callouts. This led to around 10 people showing up, which was still more than I expected, but not as much as I had hoped. This year, we held the callout early the second week of school, and ended up getting around 30-35 attendees. We also gave those attendees time to fill out the seminar sign-up form at the callout, and this accounted for most of the rest of our sign-ups. * We brought food to the callout. People are more likely to attend meetings at universities if there is food, especially if they're busy and can skip a long dining court line by listening to your intro talk. I highly recommend bringing food to your regular meetings too - attendance at our general meetings doubled last year after I s

Is there a maximum effective membership size for EA? @Joey 🔸 spoke at EAGx last night and one of my biggest take-aways was the (controversial maybe) take that more projects should decline money.  This resonates with my experience; constraint is a powerful driver of creativity and with less constraint you do not necessarily create more creativity (or positive output).  Does the EA movement in terms of number of people have a similar dynamic within society? What growth rate is optimal for a group of members to expand, before it becomes sub-optimal? Zillions of factors to consider of course but... something maybe fun to ponder. 

I think Leif Wenar's "Open Letter to Young EAs" has significant flaws, but also has a lot going for it, and I would seriously recommend people who want to think about the ideal shape of EA should read it. I went through the letter making annotations about the bits I thought were good or bad. If you want to see my annotated version, you can do that here. If you want to be able to comment, let me know and I'll quite likely be happy to grant you permission (but didn't want to set it to "anyone with the link can comment" for fear of it getting overwhelmed).

I've heard from women I know in this community that they are often shunted into low-level or community-building roles rather than object-level leadership roles. Does anyone else have knowledge about and/or experience with this?

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 (