All of Erin Braid's Comments + Replies

I just got my physical copy of the inaugural issue and I'm very happy with it! I love the cool-yet-professional design, color schemes, and infographics. I've ordered a copy for my parents and a copy for my parents-in-law, with offers to get them subscriptions if they like the first issue, and I'm feeling enthusiastic about this as a way to introduce people to EA-adjacent ideas and worldviews. I personally was nerdsniped into EA, drawn in by the fascinating problems and the efforts to think deeply and clearly about them. That's the experience I've wanted fo... (read more)

Something I personally would like to see from this contest is rigorous and thoughtful versions of leftist critiques of EA, ideally translated as much as possible into EA-speak. For example, I find "bednets are colonialism" infuriating and hard to engage with, but things like "the reference class for rich people in western countries trying to help poor people in Africa is quite bad, so we should start with a skeptical prior here" or "isolationism may not be the good-maximizing approach, but it could be the harm-minimizing approach that we should retreat to ... (read more)

I for one would listen to a podcast about shelters and their precedents! That's not to say you should definitely make it, since I'm not sure an audience of mes would be super impactful (I don't see myself personally working on shelters), but if you're just trying to judge audience enthusiasm, count me in!

Podcasts I've enjoyed on this topic (though much less impact-focused and more highly produced than I imagine you'd aim for): "The Habitat" from Gimlet Media; the Biosphere 2 episode of "Nice Try!"

Interesting. Thanks for sharing your findings and experiences!

I see [EA] as a key question of "how can we do the most good with any given unit of resource we devote to doing good" and then taking action upon what we find when we ask that.

I also consider this question to be the core of EA, and I have said things like the above to defend EA against the criticism that it's too demanding. However, I have since come to think that this characterization is importantly incomplete, for at least two reasons:

1. It's probably inevitable, and certainly seems to be the case in practice, that people who are serious about answering thi

I understand that this is no longer relevant to your plans, but I'm curious about this:

Unfortunately, the result of the vooroverleg was that the charity as described above cannot be registered in the Netherlands. The main reason for this is that those who would directly benefit directly from the charity (the donors) are relatively well-off.

I'm used to the US landscape, where lots of organizations serving the well-off, from private schools to symphony orchestras, are nonprofits that take tax-deductible donations and have tax-exempt status. Is that not the case in the Netherlands?

Love this question! I too would identify as a hopelessly pure mathematician (I'm currently working on a master's thesis in category theory), and I too spent some time trying to relate my academic interests to AI safety. I didn't have much success; in particular, nothing ML-related ever appealed. I hope it works out better for you!

Thanks for this post Julia! I really related to some parts of it, while other parts were very different from my experience. I'll take this opportunity to share a draft I wrote sometime last year, since I think it's in a similar spirit:

I used to be pretty uncomfortable with, and even mad about, the prominence of AI safety in EA. I always saw the logic – upon reading the sequences circa 2012, I quickly agreed that creating superintelligent entities not perfectly aligned with human values could go really, really badly, so of course AI safety was important in

To support people in following this post's advice, employers (including Open Phil?) need to make it even quicker for applicants to submit the initial application materials

From my perspective as an applicant, fwiw, I would urge employers to reduce the scope of questions in the initial application materials, more so than the time commitment. EA orgs have a tendency to ask insanely big questions of their early-stage job applicants, like "How would you reason about the moral value of humans vs. animals?" or "What are the three most important ways our research ... (read more)

Maybe the process of choosing a community service project could be a good exercise in EA principles (as long as you don't spend too long on it)? 

I like this idea and would even go further -- spend as much time on it as people are interested in spending, the decision-making process might prove educational!

I can't honestly say I'm excited about the idea of EA groups worldwide marching out to pick up litter. But it seems like a worthwhile experiment for some groups, to get buy-in on the idea of volunteering together, brainstorm volunteering possibilities, decide between them based on impact, and actually go and do it. 

The subquestion of high salaries at EA orgs is interesting to me. I think it pushes on an existing tension between  a conception of the EA community as a support network for people who feel the weight of the world's problems and are trying to solve them, vs. a conception of the EA community as the increasingly professional project of recruiting the rest of the world to work on those problems too. 

If you're thinking of the first thing, offering high salaries to people "in the network" seems weird and counterproductive. After all, the truly committ... (read more)

Why I Apply to EA Orgs

There's been a lot of handwringing about people's obsession with getting the relatively few jobs at the relatively few explicitly EA-branded organizations. The discussions have been interesting, but they tend to miss the essential reason for this phenomenon in my experience: when you're an EA applicant, EA orgs may like you more than non-EA orgs do. A lot more.

Personally, I never felt much pressure, or even necessarily desire, to work only at explicitly EA organizations. I want to work as an analyst or researcher in an EA or EA-adjace... (read more)

Cash by Default       

Once upon a time, I found myself with a bunch of unconditional $25 charity gift cards from an every.org promotion. This seemed like a great opportunity to encourage the people in my life to pick charities to donate to, without the awkwardness of talking directly about how they should spend their own money. So I sent four gift card links and an explanation to a group chat with my four closest friends from college.

The first thing that happened was that one friend expressed enthusiasm, claimed a gift card, and donated... (read more)

I really appreciate this post Rose! My partner and I have noticed some of the same cross-pressures, though they stack up a little differently in our case. I'll say a bit more about my experience, in case anyone's interested, but mostly I wanted to say that I appreciated reading about yours. 

My partner and I are still young and only just starting our careers, so there's a lot of uncertainty, but we basically expect that my partner will have a lucrative and stable career in big tech, while I will have an erratic but potentially impactful career in EA. C... (read more)

I'd be happy to contribute by reading aloud! However, I don't have any specialty recording equipment, so you might not want to include me if you're going for high sound quality.