I am a bit wary of telling EAs what I think they Should do. It seems to me that as a movement, EAs are awfully tangled up about Shoulds, especially when it comes to the thoughts of other EAs.

Still, it seems awfully important to me that EAs put fuel into their gas tanks (or electricity into their batteries, if you prefer), rather than dumping that fuel onto the pavement where fictional cars sit in their imaginations.

And not just a little bit of fuel! Not just when you’re too exhausted to go on without a little hit. I think that no matter what you hope to accomplish, it is wise to act from your true values ALL of the time—to recognize instrumental principles as instrumental, and to coordinate with allies without allowing them to overwrite your self concept.

This really spoke to me. Thanks for (re)posting this!

Thank you so much Judith, this helps a lot!

I wasn't saying that it's correct to do so. My point is precisely that the public tends to not distinguish, and I think it's perfectly legitimate to be bothered by this and feel especially frustrated because your views are being invalidated by the wider public due to an incorrect assumption.

Hi Karolina, thanks so much for summarizing this, it's great to see the changes at a glance and exciting to see how the program is evolving. Two questions regarding the process:

1. When you say you're able to process early applications sooner, does this mean that early applicants will get earlier responses? If so, do you have a time frame from submitting the application to receiving the response?

2. Since you were recruiting for this year's summer cohort last fall already, would you be able to say how many spots you are still looking to fill?

Thanks in advance!

I don't have a specific comment, but I still want to say THANK YOU for covering this topic and describing your personal perspective while also giving more general recommendations. I just listened to your episode on the 80k podcast from a while back when you were about to become a parent and was wondering how it all turned out. Thanks for adding to this underdiscussed topic!

What a refreshing read, easy to digest but with deep thoughts! Thank you for this. I find the "faith vs church" argument quite compelling and I've used it in the past to explain similar conundrums (although I am not a religious person myself).

I think the argument here is that these two cannot be / are not distinguished, which bothers her. When a community is so strongly interlinked to its values that they are one and the same to the "general public" (i.e. outsiders), criticism of individuals of that community tends to be directed toward the community as a whole as well as the underlying values. I can relate to this being frustrating.

Thanks for writing this post. I recently saw Simone Giertz introducing 80k in one of her videos and liked the result very much. I think one needs to distinguish the different kinds of content to mitigate the risks you described, and I don't think the goal here has ever been to explain everything EA on TikTok - that is indeed quite unrealistic and dangerous. When it comes to pointing to resources that are freely available and have already been written for a broad audience, though, such as the 80k career guide, using influencers seems like an obvious way to reach more people with negligible downsides. It seems like directing more people toward 1. working on one of the well-researched career paths and/or 2. donating to effective charities has quite some unused potential. Not all of them will (want to) understand the more complex concepts, but that is arguably also not necessary.