All of emily.fan's Comments + Replies

The discord link no longer seems to work.

I have mixed feelings about this because I don't know enough about the situation.

Conflicts:

1. There are things that people are naturally better at and worse at, and the law of comparative advantage does make sense vs. There are things that people could get good at but don't because they don't believe in themselves and don't try aka imposters syndrome. (I think this may result in some lack of diversity in tech, STEM, EA, etc.)

I think the EA community might lean more towards trying really hard to match people with what they are good at / not bad at. I think... (read more)

EA Mental Health and nEArodivergent discord server: https://discord.gg/e6Nxy4N5xu Not super active at the moment, but it does exist.

EA Mental Health and nEArodivergent discord server: https://discord.gg/e6Nxy4N5xu Not super active at the moment, but it does exist.

This isn't exactly related to the post, but I am a little bit wary about the connotation of more students should have internships / work experience at EA Orgs rather than corporate roles.

I talked to some EAs that say that it's good for EA uni students to get a job outside of EA first. This makes me think that the issue of EA Orgs not having that many uni interns aren't actually a big problem.

Why it may be good to pursue a corporate role:

• Mistakes made earlier in my career will be much more low stakes
• Experiencing the world outside the EA bubble
• Skills suc

My knee jerk reaction was also that 30-40% was an unreasonably high number, however, I kind of disagree with "Unreasonably large estimates shouldn't be allowed to frame the discussion just because we can't reject them with model evidence yet" since it's hard to know what numbers are reasonable in the first place. It also provides a good starting point to the discussion and to challenge my assumptions on why I automatically want to reject the 30-40%.

I feel like certain populations (particularly women) tend to underestimate their abilities, so I find this comment pretty discouraging. My current take is that a lot of people think they aren't good enough for XYZ, but if they take a good stab at XYZ in an environment that is encouraging they may realize that they might be able to do XYZ after all.

I think that a lot of people naturally think that they are "not math people" when they could actually be much better at math.

And I don't think that you don't have to be the best at math or XYZ to contribute. I th... (read more)

++ having a sociology background is great Not sure, but I think Vaidehi may have also studied Sociology at a non-Ivy+ school as well, and she seems to have done some cool stuff in the EA community too.

Not sure how relevant this comment is, but as someone who studies more technical stuff, I am honestly impressed with people who study things like sociology. The sheer number of papers and essays you guys pump out and how you have to think about large social systems honestly scares me! English / history classes were some of the hardest for me in high school!

I ... (read more)

I very much like that this post encourages inclusion of how much people are able (or willing to) contribute to EA.

It was very easy for me to talk to people telling me how important it was to have balance in my life and do some fun non-EA things, but then I would see examples of EAs who work long hours and love their work and feel like I'm not making as much of an impact as the people who make EA their life.

I think this post clarifies part of the confusion because it makes it explicit that it is healthy for the EA community to have both, and just because I ... (read more)

Articles like this are hard to write because the cause of stress and the solution for stress varies for different individuals, and you did seem to try to put the "taking stress personally" as a section which is good, but perhaps I think there could be more. Or perhaps I felt like this article didn't seem to speak to me personally as much. However, it is evidence that you put in a lot of work to write up this article.

Thoughts on why this article didn't really speak to me as much.

I do think that underlying causes matter a lot, and would appreciate if there ... (read more)

This comment is late, but anyway...

Though I think there is value to having a more comprehensive survey like the one you have, I do want to pitch having a shorter survey for general comments with maybe 1 textbox.

The survey could be useful to collect new ideas, or just quick thoughts people wanted to share to Effective Self-Help. That way whenever someone has a new idea, they don't have to click through a bunch of buttons on whether or not they've read the Effective Self-Help articles. I know that there is an option to email, but I find myself much more aver... (read more)

You can share screen on gathertown (I think I managed to do it before.) However, it seems like in the current gathertown setup (the way the desks are arranged and where videos can be streamed), I haven't really found a way to see other people's videos while working in the desk working area, though you can work in other areas and maybe see nearby people's videos.

I do have a shameless plug to the EA coworking discord server though: https://discord.gg/5FGY4PyEcT where you can share screen! :)

There is also an EA coworking discord server: https://discord.gg/5FGY4PyEcT

You can share screen + there are pomodoro bots that people can sync up working/taking breaks together if they want to.

One great thing about the EA coworking discord is that you can get to know people can connect with them because you have their discord handle :)

I run the EA coworking discord server and was curious if you would be open to collaboration opportunities. At the moment, there seems to be at least one person on the coworking server every other day if not every day. Here's the link to the EA coworking server: https://discord.gg/5FGY4PyEcT

Possibilities:

• having regular coworking sessions on the EA coworking server
• matching people on the EA coworking server to be accountability buddies
• having daily check-ins on the server
• hosting events about executive dysfunction / productivity

Let me know what you think!

@Chris Lakin?

I'm surprised that this is the case because from what I've seen at EA meetups in both the Bay Area and Boston is that the majority of people seem to be software engineers. Is it because the software engineers who go to the Bay Area / Boston meetups may not have as much ML background? Is it because the software engineers in EA meetups don't realize that this is a problem?

Same here. I feel like I don't have the executive function to do so since I tend to be interested in a bunch of things at once and generally have generalist tendencies. I'd also be curious to hear more about the niche of being a generalist in the EA community, since they do provide value in our society.

Agree that the quality of magnesium matters!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfeiBd8h6Xw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTiXVGwZLO4

Just wanted to +1 blue blocking glasses.

Just to clarify, we RSVP on Facebook? Thanks! :)

I didn't realize that this existed until now, is there a way for this to be more visible? For instance, incorporated in the notifications settings (where I spent way too much time trying to find this a couple of months ago)? Is there a way to auto-add people who join the EA forum to this mailing list and unsubscribe as necessary?

Thank you so much for the insights! We've tried longer applications to ensure that the fellows are more engaged due to bad experiences of fellows dropping out / derailing the conversation in the past. However, the point about counterfactual impact has nudged me to shorten our application!

Thank you so much for the insights! We've tried longer applications to ensure that the fellows are more engaged due to bad experiences of fellows dropping out / derailing the conversation in the past. However, the point about high-potential people being busy has convinced me to shorten our application!

What are the community's thoughts on making the application super long so that only the most interested people apply (and basically accept everyone who applies)? Would this be considered selective in the same way as rejecting people?

Agree with alexrjl

A possible counter-argument to this strategy is that neoliberalism appeals to people with power (businesses with $$ that don't want to get regulated). Very interesting read though!