I think it's helpful to think about a few things you're grateful for in the community
Your forum contributions in recent months and this thread in particular πππ
As someone who's run dozens of EA events and several retreats (though not fellowships) just noting that this all strikes me as good advice.
I particularly want to highlight paying attention to getting enough people to achieve the vibe you want (which may well be >30 for fellowships) and sharing visit dates (huge deal but often overlooked).
I also really like the tone and structure of the post.
Thanks for sharing :-)
Beautiful π
EA-Aligned Political Activity in a US Congressional Primary: Concerns and Proposed Changes by Carolina_EA (78 karma)
Why it's good: I am so, so appreciative when people share detailed, good-faith takes on parts of EA from perspectives that we rarely get such insight into. (Similar posts with at least the same karma, covering disagreement, agreement, praise, indifference, justification, advice: Podcast: The Left and Effective Altruism with Habiba Islam, A subjective account of what it's like to join an EA-aligned org without previous EA knowledge, Notes From a Pledger, Some unfun lessons I learned as a junior grantmaker, Some observations from an EA-adjacent (?) charitable effort.)
Some Carl Sagan quotations by finm (77 karma)
Why it's good: I really appreciate inspiring posts. (Higher-karma posts on this topic that I really appreciated: Open call for EA stories, π¨ Altruist Dreams - a collaborative art piece from EAG SF, Good things that happened in EA this year, The Spanish-Speaking Effective Altruism community is awesome.)
Consequentialism and Cluelessness by Richard Y Chappell (27 karma)
Why it's good: Raises and defends an important point that I think would release a lot of people from cluelessness-induced paralysis if more widely shared, namely that Option A can still have higher expected value than Option B despite us having no clue what many of the consequences will be, because these invisible consequences speak neither for or against either option. (Another important point that I wish was better known is that Person-affecting intuitions can often be money pumped, although this post was essentially a repeat of a post from 2020.)
Space governance - problem profile by finm, 80000_Hours (65 karma)
Why it's good: A new entry to 80,000 Hours' most pressing world problems that is huge in scale, severely neglected from a longtermist perspective, although admittedly not especially tractable (which is why I'd love to see more posts like Influencing United Nations Space Governance).
Paper summary: The Epistemic Challenge to Longtermism (Christian Tarsney) by Global Priorities Institute, EJT (37 karma)
Why it's good: An attempt to put numbers on the much-disputed tractability of longtermism (I also really appreciate summaries).
Pre-mortem i.e. "Imagine I make this decision and end up regretting it. What went wrong?"