All of ColinBested's Comments + Replies

Title:
I'd like to draw attention to a new (very old) cause area. It is this:  Feeling our body more fully and working with it to improve every aspect of life and work

Context:
Buddhism and a host of other practices are what I've been engaging with over the last 8 months while living and training with others in a small community, a new Canadian Monastic Academy near Toronto called Willow. growingwillow.org
After working on EA community building for 3 years, I see the last 8 months as a very effective use of my resources for many reasons.

Premise:
Scale - ev... (read more)

Hi Eirin! I appreciate your comment.
Yes, I naturally spend quite a bit of time reading newsletter articles, EA forum posts, books, and other resources that I find interesting and that relate to EA community building (plus, one gets enough reading recommendations at one EA global or EA retreat to last a year, it seems).
If I had to give a better account of this relationship between my learning and EA Toronto's outcomes, I'd still be quite anchored to saying that somewhere between one third and half of new suggestions and action-updates that I have... (read more)

This review is wonderful. Thank you very much for making this.


What do you think are the 1-3 areas for further research that are most pressing/valuable?

For me, it looks like more work on the mechanisms and perhaps stories of behaviour change towards a given set of outcomes (careers, projects, donations) would be a good area. Another is about seeking a better understanding of how the engagement/sales funnel works (how individuals can move through it in a clearer way, step to step, perhaps with staggered events, in series, that aim for deeper engagement and m... (read more)

I find the term 'operations' to be chunky and plausibly misleading in a survey such as this where it might take on quite different meanings for different people and organizations depending on the specific needs it refers to, for example, in this article: https://80000hours.org/articles/operations-management/

Insofar as it is feasible, I would love to see it broken up into different parts, as it seems to me that it can refer to a lot:

-People in operations roles act as multipliers, aiming to enable those in the organisation to maximise their produ
... (read more)

Thanks for this Holly.

I plan to share your article and talk about in an upcoming workshop I am doing on Self Care for the Altruistic (which will mostly consist of using 80k's strategies in addition to taking suggestions from participants and others EA folks https://80000hours.org/career-guide/how-to-be-successful/#1-dont-forget-to-take-care-of-yourself).

I resonated with most of what you wrote about. You are definitely not alone in having those feelings. (I have also been thinking and writing about sustaining altruistic motivation, and I found your articl... (read more)

0[anonymous]6y
Just seen this! Cool idea with the workshop :-) I think Julia Wise is putting together a template Self Care event for EA group organisers, if there are any takeaways you'd like to share with her. I think I experience something similar to what you do with Representing EA. I have always hated doing anything that resembles a pitch, and unfortunately I think people usually can see my heart sink when they say, "So tell me more about effective altruism." Actually the last time I was asked to do something like this, my list of caveats, clarifications and nuances was getting so long that I consciously skipped one and when this later became apparent I got cut off with " - because you were trying to manipulate me?" In some ways, I think online is higher fidelity than offline. Conversation doesn't have footnotes ;-)

Thanks for the model! I found it useful for framing many community building plans. I am a community builder for EA Toronto, a local community group as opposed to a university/college group (though we will hopefully be collaborating with more schools and students soon).

For community group contexts, I think most of the elements in the model above fit in well, especially 1 on 1s. One element that I think might not cross-over so easily is the EA Seminar. People coming into an EA community of varying backgrounds, ages, and professional statuses might not get ex... (read more)

I just played with Parable of the Polygons recently http://ncase.me/polygons/ and I think it illustrates a simple general strategy for building more diversity which may underly many of the strategies in this article. The simple strategy is to have a preference against high levels of sameness (/homogeneity), given that one already has a preference for more diversity. I think it is important to not be okay with a demographically homogenous EA movement, manifested with more general strategies, e.g. 'I will try to notice, feel bad/ disapproving, and do s... (read more)

1
ateabug
6y
This will only work if you get the 80% to have a preference for more diversity first (as explained in the Parable of the Polygons), otherwise it will be ineffective even if you are pushing for more diversity from the top.