Quick takes

A delightful thing happened a couple weeks ago, and it gives an example for why more people should comment on the forum.  My forum profile is pretty scarce, less than a dozen comments, most of them are along the lines of 'I appreciate the work done here!'. Nevertheless, because I have linked in some social media profiles and set my city in the directory, a student from a nearby university reached out to ask about career advice after finding me on the forum. I gave her a personalised briefing on the local policy space and explained the details of how to enter the UK civil service if she chose to do so.  Some internet activites are like little seeds that take no effort to plant but may lead to something nice, even months later. 

After hanging out with the local Moral Ambition group (sadly there's only one in Malmö), I've found a shorthand to exprss the difference in methodology compared to EA. Both movements aim to find people who aready have the "A," and cultivate the other component in them. Many effective altruism communities target people who already wish to help the world (Altruism), then guide and encourage them to reach further (be more Effective). Moral Ambition meanwhile targets high achieving professionals and Ivy Leaguers (Ambition), then remind them that the world is burning and they should help put out the fire (be more Moral).

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.

Hey y'all, My TikTok algorithm recently presented me with this video about effective altruism, with over 100k likes and (TikTok claims) almost 1 million views. This isn't a ridiculous amount, but it's a pretty broad audience to reach with one video, and it's not a particularly kind framing to EA. As far as criticisms go, it's not the worst, it starts with Peter Singer's thought experiment and it takes the moral imperative seriously as a concept, but it also frames several EA and EA-adjacent activities negatively, saying EA quote "has an enormously well funded branch ... that is spending millions on hosting AI safety conferences." I  think there's a lot to take from it. The first is in relation to @Bella's argument recently that EA should be doing more to actively define itself. This is what happens when it doesn't. Because EA is legitimately an interesting topic to learn about because it asks an interesting question. That's what I assume drew many of us here to begin with. It's interesting enough that when outsiders make videos like this, even when they're not the picture that'd we'd prefer,[1] they will capture the attention of many. This video is a significant impression, but it's not the end-all-be-all, and we should seek to define ourself lest we be defined by videos like it. The second is about zero-sum attitudes and leftism's relation to EA. In the comments, many views like this were presented: @LennoxJohnson really thoughtfully grappled with this a few months ago, when he talked about how his journey from a zero-sum form of leftism and the need for structural change towards becoming more sympathetic to the orthodox EA approach happened. But I don't think we can necessarily depend on similar reckonings happening to everyone, all at the same time. With this, I think there's a much less clear solution than the PR problem, as I think on the one hand that EA sometimes doesn't grapple enough with systemic change, but on the other hand that society would be

Applications for EA Global: San Francisco close February 1st. The event is February 13–15 at the Hilton Union Square. We're expecting over 1,000 attendees this year. For more information, visit our website or contact hello@eaglobal.org with any questions.

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 (

I am sure someone has mentioned this before, but… For the longest time, and to a certain extent still, I have found myself deeply blocked from publicly sharing anything that wasn’t significantly original. Whenever I have found an idea existing anywhere, even if it was a footnote on an underrated 5-karma-post, I would be hesitant to write about it, since I thought that I wouldn’t add value to the “marketplace of ideas.” In this abstract concept, the “idea is already out there” - so the job is done, the impact is set in place. I have talked to several people who feel similarly; people with brilliant thoughts and ideas, who proclaim to have “nothing original to write about” and therefore refrain from writing. I have come to realize that some of the most worldview-shaping and actionable content I have read and seen was not the presentation of a uniquely original idea, but often a better-presented, better-connected, or even just better-timed presentation of existing ideas. I now think of idea-sharing as a much more concrete, but messy contributor to impact, one that requires the right people to read the right content in the right way at the right time; maybe even often enough, sometimes even from the right person on the right platform, etc. All of that to say, the impact of your idea-sharing goes much beyond the originality of your idea. If you have talked to several cool people in your network about something and they found it interesting and valuable to hear, consider publishing it! Relatedly, there are many more reasons to write other than sharing original ideas and saving the world :)

I’ve seen a few people in the LessWrong community congratulate the community on predicting or preparing for covid-19 earlier than others, but I haven’t actually seen the evidence that the LessWrong community was particularly early on covid or gave particularly wise advice on what to do about it. I looked into this, and as far as I can tell, this self-congratulatory narrative is a complete myth. Many people were worried about and preparing for covid in early 2020 before everything finally snowballed in the second week of March 2020. I remember it personally. In January 2020, some stores sold out of face masks in several different cities in North America. (One example of many.) The oldest post on LessWrong tagged with "covid-19" is from well after this started happening. (I also searched the forum for posts containing "covid" or "coronavirus" and sorted by oldest. I couldn’t find an older post that was relevant.) The LessWrong post is written by a self-described "prepper" who strikes a cautious tone and, oddly, advises buying vitamins to boost the immune system. (This seems dubious, possibly pseudoscientific.) To me, that first post strikes a similarly ambivalent, cautious tone as many mainstream news articles published before that post. If you look at the covid-19 tag on LessWrong, the next post after that first one, the prepper one, is on February 5, 2020. The posts don't start to get really worried about covid until mid-to-late February. How is the rest of the world reacting at that time? Here's a New York Times article from February 2, 2020, entitled "Wuhan Coronavirus Looks Increasingly Like a Pandemic, Experts Say", well before any of the worried posts on LessWrong: The tone of the article is fairly alarmed, noting that in China the streets are deserted due to the outbreak, it compares the novel coronavirus to the 1918-1920 Spanish flu, and it gives expert quotes like this one: The worried posts on LessWrong don't start until weeks after this article was p