JH

James Herbert

Co-director @ Effective Altruism Netherlands
868 karmaJoined Mar 2022Working (6-15 years)Amsterdam, Netherlands

Bio

I'm currently a co-director at EA Netherlands (with Marieke de Visscher). We're working to build and strengthen the EA community here.

Before this, I worked as a consultant on urban socioeconomic development projects and programmes funded by the EU. Before that, I studied liberal arts (in the UK) and then philosophy (in the Netherlands).

Hit me up if you wanna find out about the Dutch EA community! :)

Comments
135

That's nice to read! But please don't feel guilty, I found it to be a very useful prompt to write up my thoughts on the matter. 

Thanks for sharing your thoughts! 

It's a pity you don't feel comfortable inviting people to the conference - that's the last thing we want to hear! 

So far our visual style for EAGxUtrecht hasn't been austere[1] so we'll think more about this. Normally, to avoid looking too fancy, I ask myself: would this be something the NHS would spend money on?

But I'm not sure how to balance the appearance of prudence with making things look attractive. Things that make me lean towards making things look attractive include:

  • This essay on the value of aesthetics to movements 
  • This SSC review, specifically the third reason Pease mentions for the Fabians' success
  • The early success of SMA and their choice to spend a lot on marketing and design
  • Things I've heard from friends who could really help EA, saying things like, "ugh, all this EA stuff looks the same/like it was made by a bunch of guys"

For what it's worth, the total budget this year is about half of what was spent in 2022, and we have the capacity for almost the same number of attendees (700 instead of 750). 

In case it's useful, here are some links that show the benefits of EAGx events. I admit they don't provide a slam-dunk case for cost-effectiveness, but they might be useful when talking to people about why we organise them: 

  • EAGx events seem to be a particularly cost-effective way of building the EA community, and we think the EA community has enormous potential to help build a better world. 
  • Open Philanthropy’s 2020 survey of people involved in longtermist priority work (a significant fraction of work in the EA community) found that about half of the impact that CEA had on respondents was via EAG and EAGx conferences.
  • Anecdotally, we regularly encounter community members who cite EAGx events as playing a key part in their EA journey. You can read some examples from CEA’s analysis

Thanks again for sharing your thoughts! I hope your pseudonymous account is helping you use the forum, although I definitely don't think you need to worry about looking dumb :)

  1. ^

    We're going for pink and fun instead. We're only going to spend a few hundred euros on graphic design. 

There is a lot in this article that I disagree with. However, I think the following quote is very true[1] and we should take the issue seriously, particularly professional community builders like myself. 

At their best, EAs are well-meaning people who aspire to rigorous analysis. But EA doesn’t always bring out their best. 

  1. ^

    Although I think it's probably true of just about every movement. The real question is whether EA is relatively bad at bringing out the best in well-meaning people. I don't think this is the case currently, but we shouldn't rest on our laurels. 

Very interesting! We have made exactly the same observation so we’ve started investing in it more, but we’re still learning how best to go about this.

Aha yes I saw that you'd linked to those two older ones! Given that you had, I was surprised you'd missed this one :)

Oh nice! Congrats with that. Do you know if it was a good use of resources?

Yeah I see what you’re saying but I guess if you know the answer to the Q ‘is it EA?’ then you have a data point that informs the probability you give to a bunch of other things, e.g., do they prioritise impartiality, prioritisation, open truth seeking, etc., to an unusual degree? So it’s a heuristic. And given they’re a new org it’s much easier to answer the Q ‘is it EA’ than it is ‘is it valuable’.

But I agree, knowing whether it’s actually useful is always far more valuable. Apart from anything else, just because the founders prioritise things EAs often prioritise, it doesn’t mean they’re actually doing anything of value.

I think 80k have the best article on this subject and I don’t think you referred to it in the above? If I’ve interpreted your post and their article correctly, I think they’re more restrictive than you are here.

Said 80k article: https://80000hours.org/articles/harmful-career/

Interesting! I think figure 2.1 here provides a partial answer. According to the FAQ: 

"the sub-bars show the estimated extent to which each of the six factors (levels of GDP, life expectancy, generosity, social support, freedom, and corruption) is estimated to contribute to making life evaluations higher in each country than in Dystopia. Dystopia is a hypothetical country with values equal to the world’s lowest national averages for each of the six factors (see FAQs: What is Dystopia?). The sub-bars have no impact on the total score reported for each country but are just a way of explaining the implications of the model estimated in Table 2.1. People often ask why some countries rank higher than others—the sub-bars (including the residuals, which show what is not explained) attempt to answer that question."

India seems to score very low on social support, compared to similarly ranked countries.

I did some googling and found this, which shows the sub-factors over time for India. Looks like social support declined a lot, but is now increasing again. 

I haven't checked whether it declined more than in other countries and, if it has, I'm not sure why it has.  

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