All of Amber Dawn's Comments + Replies

FWIW I'm happy this question was asked publicly: I had no idea about this ruling (which is just extremely cruel and unhelpful) and this is a serious inclusion issue. 

Yeah, this is a good point: you can go a long way with just commitment/agency/creativity/confidence/?

I mean, maybe people who are strong in those traits aren't really "mediocre", ?

But yeah, this is a good reminder that excellence isn't just one axis.

Thanks for writing this! I’ve long been suspicious of this idea but haven’t got round to investigating the claim itself, and my skepticism of it, fully, so I super appreciate you kicking off this discussion.

I also identify with ‘do I disagree with this empirically or am I just uneasy with the vibes/frame, how to tease those apart, ?'

For people who broadly agree with the idea that Sarah is critiquing: what do you think is the best defence of it, arguing from first principles and data as much as possible?

I have a couple of other queries/scepticisms about the... (read more)

I guess I weakly disagree: I think that motivation and already having roots in an issue really are a big part of personal fit - especially now that lots of "classic EA jobs" seem highly oversubscribed, even if the cause areas are more neglected than they should be. 

Like to make this more concrete, if your climate-change-motivated young EA was like 'well, now that I've learnt about AI risk, I guess I should pursue that career, ?', but they don't feel excited about it. Even if they have the innate ability to excel in AI safety, they will still have to o... (read more)

Thanks for writing this! As others have said, thank you for trying to do this valuable work even if it didn't work out. 

I haven't read everything so sorry if you mention this elsewhere but I'm confused about:

-'Of the three studies we found that measure the effects of facility-based postpartum family planning programming on pregnancy rates, two found no effect (Rohr et al. 2024; Coulibaly et al. 2021), and one found only a 0.7% decrease in short-spaced pregnancies (Guo et al. 2022).
This suggests that facility-based programs may have limi... (read more)

This is a cool idea!

FYI, if you're excited about one of these ideas but struggling to actually get it drafted and posted, I can help with that. I wrote more here:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/4towuFeBfbGn8hJGs/amber-dawn-s-shortform?commentId=C6Z7u57FHh6nYqo4N

Since the season of Draft Amnesty is upon us, a bit of mild self-promotion: you can hire me to help you turn your unwritten thoughts and messy drafts into posts. 

For example:

-if some sections of your post are in your head but not yet on the page, I can help you draft them
-if you feel self-conscious about your draft, I can quickly review it and fix or flag the biggest issues
-if you feel ugh-y or uncertain about posting or finishing your post, or if you have anxieties about posting more generally, I can talk you through that
-I agree with the Forum team ... (read more)

Thanks for the shout-out! I just want to add that I also offer writing coaching, for those who want to learn how to make their own writing clearer and more effective. 

I don't agree that EA requires current venal systems to exist. For example, in a state communist society, or an anarchist society, or a libertarian society, you can still imagine people trying to work out how to do the most good with their resources. Of course current EAs work within current systems, but that just seems necessary to get anything done. 

I think it's "poor intellectual etiquette" to require people to comment along with votes: if I posting, I'm interested in whether readers find it valuable or not, even if they understandably don't want to prioritize explaining why they think I'm right or wrong. 

The evidence collected here doesn’t convince me that Alice and Chloe were lying, or necessarily that Ben Pace did a bad job investigating this. I regret contributing another long and involved comment to this discourse, but I feel like “actually assessing the claims” has been underrepresented compared to people going to the meta level, people discussing the post’s rhetoric, and people simply asserting that this evidence is conclusive proof that Alice and Chloe lied.

My process of thinking through this has made me wish more receipts from Alice and Chloe were ... (read more)

There are also Facebook groups for people with specific marginalised identities, which might also have some of that sort of content: e.g. there is one for LGBTQ people, and one for women and non-binary people. There may also be groups related to other identities: there are a bunch of "EA+X" related groups on FB so I'd say search there

Not sure if you know, but GiveDirectly did have a zakat fund last year https://fundraisers.givedirectly.org/campaigns/yemenzakat

I think @Daniel_Wyrzykowski is working on something in this area

I think it's a minority opinion in EA but I also think it would be worth it for EAs to produce lists of the cost-effective charities/interventions within causes that EAs don't prioritize overall, recognizing that some people may care about effectiveness but will be emotionally attached to certain cause areas, or (as you say) will be motivated more by selfish reasons or by a narrower altruistic concern for their loved ones. This might be an especially good idea for people who have expertize in that area.

When I posted about this, people pointed out that SoGi... (read more)

Fund me to research interesting questions?
 

Here’s a list of questions/topics I’d be interested to research. If you’re also interested in one of these questions and would like to fund me to research it, get in touch: you can email at ambace@gmail.com, DM me on the Forum, or book a chat. It’s a bit of a long shot, but you don’t get what you don’t ask for XD

I’m also keen to hear about relevant work that already exists. I haven’t done much work yet on any of these questions, so it’s possible there’s already a lot of research on them that I’m not aware of.... (read more)

Thanks for the suggestions! 

Thank you so much for this! I may get in touch to chat more about your experiences if I look into this further. The three organizations you mention are probably not a good fit for me because of location (I'm based in the UK), but maybe there are similar ones nearer me. 

I'm curious about why you focussed on high-skilled immigration. 

I think you misunderstood me - I'm talking about my innate motivations, not what I would propose as a general norm.

I think part of the lack of motivation is that I in fact don't viscerally see (my) public outrage having much of an effect. Like, you're right that it plausibly does. But I'm strongly liberal/left and I've spent most of my life under right-wing governments, having my social circles being vocally outraged about all sorts of things, and having the governments basically seem to ignore this outrage. 

Some thoughts on why I personally have done minimal 'calling for a ceasefire' type actions (I think I've signed a few petitions). I'm not sure all of these are reasonable, but like, here are the emotional or practical blocks I face:

1. Effectiveness: I agree that not everything I do has to be maximally effective. However, if something isn't fun, I want it to be at least a bit effective, and I've never been sure how effective letters to MPs etc are. I'd guess the more detailed and personal, the more effective - but in my experience, writing a well-researched... (read more)

This is a complex of questions on the theme of 'did you actually enjoy your job, and is this important?'

When you were earning to give, did you enjoy your day-to-day work and find it motivating and meaningful, even if you expected your largest impact to be from your donations? If not, was that difficult, and how did you deal with it? Is your impression that other EtG-ers had/have a similar experience? In general, is it important for EtG-ers to feel positive about their work, or can one compensate for a less good working life by focusing on the positive impact of one's donations? 

'Use your connections, media, and social media to push your country's leaders to call for de-escalation and ceasefire. This costs you nothing but time' - what concretely do you suggest, for me and people like me? (I'm an ordinary person living in the UK). I think what usually stops me from taking particular action at times like this is a sense that nothing I can do will matter. I could post on social media that I want the conflict to stop, but I don't think anyone influential will notice or care.

I don't mean this as an excuse, I just get really frustrated ... (read more)

Yeah, I think you might be right -like, it would mostly be covered by Philosophy, right? 

This seems relevant to this question: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/a5JAiTdytou3Jg749/pascal-s-mugging-tiny-probabilities-of-vast-utilities. Disclaimer: I haven't read it.

I do think this is an interesting question: how to deal with tiny probabilities of great utilities?  

A couple of thoughts:
(1) On the object level: most religions are mutually exclusive. Also, I don't know that much about comparative religion, but I do know that Christianity has both a Hell, and doesn't allow you to worship other gods. So like, you probably have to pick one religion... (read more)

Yeah I don't have a strong opinion about whether they would accelerate it - I was just saying, even if some workers would support acceleration, other workers could work to slow it down.

One reason that developers might oppose slowing down AI is that it would put them out of work, wouldn't it? (Or threaten to). So if someone is not convinced that AI poses a big risk, or thinks that pausing isn't the best way to address the risk, then lobbying to slow down AI development would be a big cost for no obvious benefit. 

Thanks, I didn't have this on my radar! I'll try to get some iodised salt. 

Thanks for writing this; I've thought about this before, it seems like an under-explored (or under-exploited?) idea. 

Another point: even if ML engineers, software devs etc either could not be persuaded to unionize, or would accelerate AI development if they could, maybe other labour unions could still exert pressure. E.g., workers in the compute or hardware supply chain; HR, cleaners, ops, and other non-technical staff who work at AI companies? Perhaps strong labour unions in sectors that are NOT obviously related to AI could be powerful here, e.g. by... (read more)

Some thoughts on the general discussion:

(1) some people are vouching for Kat's character. This is useful information, but it's important to note that behaving badly is very compatible with having many strengths, treating one's friends well, etc. Many people who have done terrible things are extremely charismatic and charming, and even well-meaning or altruistic. It's hard to think bad things about one's friends, but unfortunately it's something we all need to be open to. (I've definitely in the past not taken negative allegations against someone as serious... (read more)

Massive thanks to Ben for writing this report and to Alice and Chloe for sharing their stories. Both took immense bravery.

There's a lot of discussion on the meta-level on this post. I want to say that I believe Alice and Chloe. I currently want to keep my distance from Nonlinear, Kat and Emerson, and would caution others against funding or working with them. I don't want to be part of a community that condones this sort of thing. 

I’m not and never have been super-involved in this affair, but I reached out to the former employees following the earlier ... (read more)

Thanks, this post is interesting. I've often experienced the frustration that EA seems to really emphasise the importance of cause prioritisation, but also that the resources for how to actually do it are pretty sparse. I've also fallen into the trap of 'apply for any EA job, it doesn't matter which', and have recently been thinking that this was a mistake and that I should invest more time in personal cause prioritization, including more strongly considering causes that EAs don't tend to prioritize, but that I think are important. 

I think the idea of... (read more)

This is a cool project! I've registered my interest.

This is such a genius idea, thank you!

Application forms for EA jobs often give an estimate for how long you should expect it to take; often these estimates are *wildly* too low ime. (And others I know have said this too). This is bad because it makes the estimates unhelpful for planning, and because it probably makes people feel bad about themselves, or worry that they're unusually slow, when they take longer than the estimate. 

Imo, if something involves any sort of writing from scratch, you should expect applicants to take at least an hour, and possibly more. (For context, I've seen appl... (read more)

Just echoing the others that I like job listings - I've often applied for things because I saw them advertized on the Forum (or sent them to others who were looking)

This is a generous offering that will hopefully help a lot of people, so I feel uncomfortable posting a critical comment, but:

I don't like how this is framed as 'boost your mental health to grow your impact', + the repeated references to productivity. I worry that this perpetuates a belief (or alief or attitude) that EAs' individual wellbeing only matters inasmuch as it contributes to their impact and productivity. I disagree with this: we have a right to be happy regardless of our impact.

On the one hand, it's true that EAs care a lot about impact. Some ca... (read more)

Thanks for this! This has occurred to me too - I've not heard labour power discussed as a lever in AI governance (though maybe I've just missed that discussion), and it seems like something people should at least consider, as strikes and labour organizing have effectively changed company norms/actions in the past. 

Thank you! 

(So my aim was less to propose a norm, more to challenge an implicit preconception I've heard of (elsewhere in EA too!) - that a person who highly values honesty will, necessarily, end up hurting others' feelings. I don't really agree with "proposing norms" as an activity - I'm just reacting a certain way to certain people, and they can react to my reaction my changing their behaviour, or not doing that.

You seem to be worried that advocating for a norm that's already strong  critiques tends to lead to unfair punishments for transgressors. I don't real... (read more)

Hmm, that's interesting. I guess I had seen both of those discourses as having similar messages - something like 'it doesn't matter how "effective" you are, common sense virtue is important!' or 'we are doing a bad job at protecting our community from bad actors in it, we should do better at this'. (Obv SBF's main bad impact wasn't on EA community members, but one of the early red flags was that a bunch of people left Alameda because he was bad to work with. And his actions and gendered harassment/abuse both harm the community through harming its reputatio... (read more)

You don't have to be an asshole just because you value honesty 

In Kirsten's recent EA Lifestyles advice column (NB, paywalled), an anonymous EA woman reported being bothered about men in the community whose "radical honesty" leads them to make inappropriate or hurtful comments:
 

For example: radical honesty/saying true things (great sometimes, not fun when men decide to be super honest about their sexual attraction or the exact amount they’re willing to account for women’s comfort until the costs just “aren’t justified.” This kind of openness is u

I would have died as a baby - I needed a complex heart operation.

I'm pretty sceptical that sexual liberalism is at fault, though maybe some aspects of sexually-liberal culture don't help. There's just as much sexual abuse and assault in sexually-conservative communities, now and in the past, and maybe more.