All of Eric_Bruylant's Comments + Replies

I like this! Especially if combined with a Schelling day for doing the thinking (possibly one winter and one summer?).

Why I'm hesitant to take the current pledge, and what I want to commit to instead.

I feel that added separation between people improving the world in ways other than donation from the ones focusing on donating is fairly bad, from the point of view of information exchange and movement dynamics (though I think GWWC is likely net-positive, despite this).

I'd love a version of GWWC which allowed people to customize a pledge (or pick from a selection, or switch between them, or something which lets people who want to do good and have reason to think that working ... (read more)

I have one in mind, though it's far from finished. I asked about how the GWWC pledge interacted with my current plans, and was told (by PM) by someone from GWWC that it was within the spirit of the pledge. But, I'd rather pledge something I can follow the letter of, so have been thinking about what I actually want to commit to.

I'd like to give myself a north star of something close to: Put all available resources (both time and money), other than those required to maintain myself and those close to me as healthy, productive, and stable, humans, towards thi... (read more)

I'd imagine there would be effects of this kind, but I expect the local impact to be much smaller than the impact flowing through enabling people trying to improve the world to be more effective and live on a tighter budget, so I'd not want to prioritize optimizing this class of effect over picking a place that works best for EAs. Still, if there are two otherwise similar locations, one of which would likely lead to notably larger effects of this kind, it could be a tiebreaker.

Yes, this class of self-improvement seems like one of the larger potential wins, especially if there's a supportive community in place to help.

nods, a hub in a low-cost part of a developed country is also worth considering, but I think it'd still be significantly higher cost than a low cost country (food, assistance, and building), and has the disadvantage of being significantly less visa friendly (the US in particular puts major hurdles in the way of non-US citizens). The really low cost locations in the US are also likely to be less attractive locations, in terms of access to major cities and environment.

I also think that being in a developed country may be less of an advantage than some people... (read more)

hm, depending on how many locations are explored in the next few months we may or may not be confident we're in one of the top few locations (imagine a world where, three or four places are looked at, one of them stands out but based on other research we suspect that there are other countries which would be significantly better to establish a hub for administrative reasons. In that case I'd be in favor of trying to visit the other countries before moving to stage 2.), but in general that plan makes sense. I like the idea of collecting info on the ground if... (read more)

nods, makes sense. My current guess is that at least initially most people would spend 3 months to a year visiting while working on something specific rather than moving as permanent residents.

I'd be aiming less for an activist community in the country, more a tech/startup/research hub for people with an interest in fixing global problems. I don't foresee a focus on influencing the host country. Good point that perceptions around that are important though. I'm very open to advise and assistance from people with PR skills on how to present this.

Have added links to this to the relevant column in the spreadsheet. Thanks for the leads!

Yes, this is definitely something we'd want to do. I've added a question to the survey about how large a community people would be happy to move into, and will either work out how to usefully include precommitment in the survey at this stage or do that as a separate commitment once we have contact details for everyone interested and know more about where and how we'd do this.

This is very similar to my model of the highly active EA places are expensive problem.

I suspect that creating the culture from the ground up would not be extremely hard, though it would impose a fixed cost/require some dedicated people to push it forward. Primarily because we could bring people in who are already familiar with relevant mindsets/ideas rather than having to spread them to locals where we arrive. I would expect a group on the order of ~15-30 awesome people (+low-cost, +high quality of life) to start to be attractive to many from around the wo... (read more)

I think the approach you're talking about here is sensible and would be a good way to start things if you're wanting to move relatively soon.

The reasons I'm mostly thinking about this approach instead is partly that I don't expect to be in a position to move in the near future (minimum six months, probably somewhat more), meaning planning does not delay my direct involvement, partly because I suspect it's more likely to hit critical mass and start attracting more people rather than staying small/dissipating if an initial group go over together to set thing... (read more)

It's not sufficient reason to think that low-cost hubs are higher value than additional high-cost hubs, but it is (I think) sufficient reason to think that whether or not EAs are working towards more hubs in higher cost countries, it would still be good to also be moving towards having at least one low-cost hub.

I have greater personal interest in low cost hubs, and I suspect that getting the first low-cost hub will be unusually high value (for reasons in some of the discussions on facebook/in person which I will write up properly at some point), so that's ... (read more)

Primarily much lower property and living costs, meaning people can live there for less (= more donations, longer runways for startups, lower expenses for researchers, etc) while still retaining high quality of living and being around interesting people. Hubs in higher cost countries would likely be valuable as well, but they cater to a different group of people, would require higher initial investment for a comparable property, and generally have stricter visa requirements.

Sorry for the delay, most of the content creation was being done on the old wikia site (where registrations were open), and now the new wiki is open to registration with your google account http://wiki.effectivealtruismhub.com/

Yup, and they also hold regular workathons and hangout meetings if you feel like joining in with those.

.impact is a volunteer taskforce, and to request an invite to our slack (kind of IRC for the modern web, very handy for communicating and organizing projects) put your email here.

Preferably CSS as well, but having mockups may be useful to whoever writes it up.

Testing pluggins for MediaWiki and drupal, likely updating them to be compatible with the latest versions, possibly adjusting a few parameters so they pass each other the right info.

Additionaly, if anyone is interested in helping with web design for the main page or pre-launch content, let me know and I'll make you an account (signups are disabled to keep out the spambots which plague unprotected wikis).

Hi! I'm working on the new EA Wiki (http://wiki.effectivealtruismhub.com/w/index.php?title=Effective_Altruism_Wiki https://impact.hackpad.com/EA-Wiki-y8z6wp5yCxD). I've been distracted by preparing for the MIRI/CFAR summer fellows thing for the past month and a bit, but have been encouraged to try and get it public before EA Global. I should be able to get the bits I'd like ready in time, except for Single Sign On (which is important because wikis have massive spam problems otherwise, and it would allow people to contribute without making a new account low... (read more)

As someone who's spent a significant amount of time thinking about possible rearrangements of civilization, reading On Saving The World was both tantalizing and frustrating (as well as cementing your position as one of the most impressive people I am aware of). I understand building up from the ground, covering all the pre-requisites and inferential distance, would be a huge effort and currently not worth your time, but I feel like even a terse summary without any detailed justifications for suggestions based on of all those years of thought would be highl... (read more)