All of John_Salvatier's Comments + Replies

Good framing! This problem extends not just to organizations and such, but also to people's  individual intellectual processes (and really all areas of life).  Like people naturally avoid "consider the opposite" type tools in their thinking. And even when it would be very revealing, people avoid thinking from other people's perspectives.

I also think its easy to be too negative on this kind of avoidance. At a fundamental level its there for a good reason (too much feedback is overwhelming),  its important  to be able to be OK that you are in fact avoiding some kinds of feedback so that you can grow what you do accept.

But obviously pointing out feedback avoidance is good.

Paypal and QuickBooks are now both accepting PPP applications (news story).

What does the beginning of your pitch sound like?

minor: this would look more professional if you changed the font to match the normal font. Its different here and looks weird.

A counter force is that at least some of those people would have found EA anyway or found GiveWell and donated to effective charities.

However, for lots of people (for example, me) the in person connection is going to make them a lot more excited than just finding out about the movement in the abstract. In my case, that's made me donate substantially more than I would otherwise.

I'm not sure if I'm donating to AMF this year, but we're hosting a Donation Decision Day in Seattle on December 28th, and there will probably be people there donating. Who should I contact if we have people that are donating to AMF?

Clean up and look good

This is one of the big benefits I've found from learning to dress well. People generally seem much more positively disposed to the weird ideas I talk about now that I dress well and have good social skills. People interpret weird ideas from high status people much more favorably than they do from less high status people.

I think the lesson here is that its useful to spend time learning to dress well, develop social skills and otherwise become high status. I have some advice on learning how to dress well (mostly for men).

Yes, I think this is right!

I plan EA meetups and attended the EA summit and give about 20% of my income. I haven't taken the pledge, but was thinking about it, and my guess is I will take it anyway. I would be more likely to take it and take it faster if you made the change.

I wonder if you've had a a poet look at the pledge. It would be nice if it also sounded poetic. For example, you might replace "a significant amount of good" with "much good", and I'm sure with more wordsmithing, you could develop real beauty.

Seattle Effective Altruists recent meetups:

• Dinner with Nick Bostrom
• Criticisms of EA discussion
• Existential risk discussion

Future meetups:

• Factory Farming documentary night (Earthling and Farm To Fridge)
• Style for Effective Altruists
• Short talk from Giving What We Can on the pledge

Myself:

• Advice on getting people excited about helping to organize an EA group.
• My resources on learning how to dress well for effective altruists.
• Helping Issa Rice to start an EA group at the local university.

I'm John, and I help organize the Seattle EA meetup group! I also think Bayesian statistics is the bees knees. I find it pretty fun to help EAs improve their fashion skills. Also, I love to dance to electronic dance music.