Erica_Edelman
Posts 1
Comments12
Take the opportunity! As a girl, it's not that I WANT to take the child, it's that other people rarely step forward, and I think the parents deserve some time to participate.
It's totally not weird for a guy to take the baby. Children are pretty hardy. You're unlikely to break one. Parents are usually pretty expert at calming their kids down, so if something DOES happen, you have a parent right there.
(Note: Currently I'm the nanny to the only child who ever comes to meetups, and I'm fine with being the person responsible for taking THAT SPECIFIC baby for a bit, because I know I'm going to have a much easier time with him than anyone else. My comments are in regards to other instances.)
I would like to see both the rationalist and the EA communities be more welcoming of families. However, at the same time I often dislike when children are present at meetups. (not that I ever express this, since I most emphatically do NOT want to discourage parents)
The biggest reason for this is the gender imbalance of these groups. As a female who is good with children, I know that when a child shows up that I will be the one (and probably the only one) who will be helping to take care of the child, and so missing out on the activity that I actually came there for. OTOH I'm perfectly happy to see children at SCA (medieval recreation) events, where the distribution of responsibility is much more widespread.
I was involved in the initial facebook thread on the topic. At the time, I made less than 30k, didn't ever expect to make much more than $30k (I'm a nanny), and was highly turned off by the conversation.
Two cross-country moves later, I have actually doubled my income, but I still am highly turned off by elitist EA conversations that assume that all the readers are high-potential-earners in their 20s with strong social safety nets.
It would have been much easier to convince me to donate 10% of a $30k income, than to upend my life in order to make some kind of career change.
Given it's history, I'm not surprised that the EA movement is currently primarily non-religious people. But I am surprised that no one has tried talking to/at churches, which could be very useful, if it worked. I would guess that some denominations would be more open to it than others.
The war on environmental degradation has a powerful new ally: Pope Francis. Prompted by a Joint Workshop of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences on sustainability that was convened in May 2014, the Vatican has articulated some of its strongest environmental statements to date, calling for all of us to take personal responsibility and redirect our relationship with nature to ensure the future habitability and sustainability of this planet. The problems that motivate the Vatican are no different from those that concern the scientific community: depletion of nonrenewable resources, loss of ecosystem services, and risks from changing climate. But what the Vatican contributes is the rationale for taking action: because it is our moral responsibility to bequeath a habitable planet to future generations.
And a summary of an article behind a paywall that
argues that engaging religious leaders, rather than relying on politicians, could hold the key to mobilising billions of people around the world to change aspects of their lifestyles to help prevent catastrophic climate change.
How can we submit a draft to be published? I don't see a way to send private messages to individuals, and I don't have your email (I had seen a facebook post where you said we could email you drafts). Here's the draft if it's visible to anyone with a link.
FYI: When I log in on my android phone (but not on my chromebook) it sends me to the google search bar page. Then if I navigate back to the forum (but not by hitting the back button) I am logged on.
I totally agree, Michael!
There are also decisions that are: hard, important, you don't have enough information, AND the cost of getting more information is too high. Especially if you did this thought experiment: If I tried to optimize every decisions of a similar level of importance as this one, how much would I actually accomplish?
Even for career decisions, once you've narrowed it down to a handful that meet your criteria, there needs to come a time when you just pick one and run with it. Especially considering that a lot of the information that is very important is also very hard to get (It's hard to know how good of a fit you can be for a job until you've actually done it for a while)
Hi, I'm Erica. I'm a New York nanny (so obviously not EtG :P), and I lean towards poverty reduction and animal activism. I got into EA through the LW/CFAR route, and am relatively active in those communities.
Other interests include: many various styles of dance, self-improvent, community organizing, board games, and trying new things. I recently joined the choir for the local Sunday Assembly, which is an organization that I highly recommend as a welcoming community of people who are into applying reasoning to things, AND doing good.
In case you were wondering why people find you elitist.