Benevolent_Rain
Bio
Participation4
I have received funding from the LTFF and the SFF and am also doing work for an EA-adjacent organization.
My EA journey started in 2007 as I considered switching from a Wall Street career to instead help tackle climate change by making wind energy cheaper – unfortunately, the University of Pennsylvania did not have an EA chapter back then! A few years later, I started having doubts whether helping to build one wind farm at a time was the best use of my time. After reading a few books on philosophy and psychology, I decided that moral circle expansion was neglected but important and donated a few thousand sterling pounds of my modest income to a somewhat evidence-based organisation. Serendipitously, my boss stumbled upon EA in a thread on Stack Exchange around 2014 and sent me a link. After reading up on EA, I then pursued E2G with my modest income, donating ~USD35k to AMF. I have done some limited volunteering for building the EA community here in Stockholm, Sweden. Additionally, I set up and was an admin of the ~1k member EA system change Facebook group (apologies for not having time to make more of it!). Lastly, (and I am leaving out a lot of smaller stuff like giving career guidance, etc.) I have coordinated with other people interested in doing EA community building in UWC high schools and have even run a couple of EA events at these schools.
How others can help me
Lately, and in consultation with 80k hours and some “EA veterans”, I have concluded that I should consider instead working directly on EA priority causes. Thus, I am determined to keep seeking opportunities for entrepreneurship within EA, especially considering if I could contribute to launching new projects. Therefore, if you have a project where you think I could contribute, please do not hesitate to reach out (even if I am engaged in a current project - my time might be better used getting another project up and running and handing over the reins of my current project to a successor)!
How I can help others
I can share my experience working at the intersection of people and technology in deploying infrastructure/a new technology/wind energy globally. I can also share my experience in coming from "industry" and doing EA entrepreneurship/direct work. Or anything else you think I can help with.
I am also concerned about the "Diversity and Inclusion" aspects of EA and would be keen to contribute to make EA a place where even more people from all walks of life feel safe and at home. Please DM me if you think there is any way I can help. Currently, I expect to have ~5 hrs/month to contribute to this (a number that will grow as my kids become older and more independent).
Posts 15
Comments420
Topic contributions1
This is genuinely incredibly impressive — a proof point that a small, dedicated team can create meaningful x-risk reduction impact through "policy" (e.g. if scientific consensus is a precursor to policy action). If so, subsequent progress here may also be relatively cost-effective: compared to stockpiles or hard infrastructure, the marginal public spend to adopt guidance and implement early measures could be low.
Also: I think this is extra impressive because my (anecdotal) experience is that many people in mainstream bio who hear “mirror bio” dismiss it as a non-issue — so shifting scientific consensus here seems like a significant achievement.
I’m pro-nuclear, but the commonly used EA framing of “nuclear is overregulated” seems net negative more often than not. Clearer Thinking’s new nuclear episode is one of the more epistemically rigorous discussions I’ve heard in EA-adjacent spaces (and Founders Pledge has also done nuanced work).
Nuclear is worth pursuing, but we should argue for it clear-eyed.
My read was that a major success was that they seem to have broad, initial agreement, even among previously bullish scientists, that we should be extremely cautious when developing the scaffolding of mirror bio, if at all. I think that is truly remarkable, borderline historic. This is agreement across national borders, scientific disciplines and the argument they put forward was not watertight - there was no definite proof that mirror bio would assuredly be catastrophic. So this consensus was built on plausible risk only. It was extremely well pulled off. It is what skeptics might easily and still do dismiss as "sci-fi".
I ran this very lightweight poll and super crudely (probably massive sampling bias) 4 out of 9 EAs residing in the US considered moving abroad.
Naïve question: Do you know if there is data on YouTube's potential to convert to highly engaged EAs that would not otherwise convert? I think YouTube is worth testing, but if there is little data already I would be interested to see anything on conversion or even proxies for it. I know 80k hrs is rigorous so they probably have some hypothesis it can work out, or maybe they have hard evidence.
I would really recommend to look into pre-schools in the Nordics. They have high sickness rates and importantly: The government pays parents to stay home with sick kids. Even a 5% reduction in absence is worth millions and the government explicitly asks for solutions to this.
But there is more, anyone can set up a nursery, and the authorities track absence rates across pre-schools (I know, because kids who are immunocompromised get preference in pre-schools with the lowest absence rates). Setting up one's own pre-school is paid for by the state - they are called cooperatives. So one can literally possibly set up a pre-school running far-UV at almost no cost.
There is a challenge in the ethics of this: Is it ethical to do this? I have not checked but would be happy to either myself, or find someone even better positioned to figure out if this is actually possible. I know from talking to many parents that parents are extremely motivated to have their kids be sick less often. Another thing about the Nordics: It is quite evidence based and the freedom of choice for individuals has weight in government decisions - if parents are fully informed and still opt in, it might not be a problem.
Good question — I think it’s mostly untrue as commonly used. It implies regulation is the main bottleneck, but as the podcast lays out, there are likely much better levers for driving down cost. So it’s both misleading and counterproductive as a talking point, even if you’re broadly pro-nuclear (which I and the podcast guest are).