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 11
Comments357
Topic contributions1
I should probably emphasize more that the ideal outcome here is of course first that we don't pursue dangerous mirror bio research. And if that happens, that the "next-in-line" ideal outcome would be for gov'ts to create such shelters and distribute them more like Nordic countries have distributed nuclear shelters - not just for "the elites".
This is super helpful, I have tried to reflect this better in an updated title. The shelters I am fairly certain can but built for this material cost (not including labor as in a pinch I think these could be made by a wide range of people, perhaps even by the inhabitants themselves). But it is right that cost effectiveness is much harder than simply summing up material costs - one would have to cost the total solution and also have some grasp of the reduction in x-risk, which is far beyond the scope of what I have done. I simply found a physical structure that seems quite robust.
Highly agree with this! In fact, I hope that if a significant number of shelters is produced, that the primary effect would be to help make the case for stopping development of dangerous mirror bio research. It just happens to be that my expertise and experience lends itself more naturally to this rather grim work. I would be very happy to work on something more uplifting next - I am very open to suggestions for the next problem I can help tackle (having been a small part of bringing down the cost of wind energy dramatically).