All of jwpieters's Comments + Replies

Hello forum, just checking in as the EAGxLondon team lead. A couple of things I'd like to say:

1. As Ollie notes, we had some problems with the venue. We're hoping to have a time in early April locked in soon and will send out an announcement when we do.
2. Why an EAGx in London? EA Globals have a high bar for admissions, but the UK has a large number of students who are newer to EA. We want to create an opportunity for them to attend an EA event this year and EAGx will be much more accessible for them.

Is the survey data closed access? If so, would it be possible to request access? I have a few questions of my own I'd like to try answer

Some very belated updates on this project:

In case it's not obvious, we didn't end up running this. There were a couple of reasons for that:

1. I personally didn't have the capacity to run a project of this size. Other residencies I attended required multiple staff members to run well
2. The Mexico EA Fellowship was targeting roughly the same demographic and happening at the same time. I didn't want to create competition for this and I think they had an advantage anyway (a more established LatAm community, coinciding with a local EAGx, and a strong team)

I probably ... (read more)

Wasn't sure where else to mention this – the search feature on the forum is pretty bad. I tried finding a post from Claire Zabel by searching "Claire Zabel". I couldn't find it because her username is actually "ClaireZabel"

I had previously decided to work on EA community-building full-time, and have now mostly changed my mind. I want to write up my reasoning for this. I don't think this will be entirely relevant to general movement strategy, but I think it's worth making legible for others

the question of whether we (i.e. anyone) should be doing mass outreach on the topic of AI Safety is over. It is happening.

This feels like a very hostile statement. It's not at all obvious that this question is over. 

I personally feel a lot more cautious about doing mass outreach. I think there's a decent chance people could accidentally do significant harm to future efforts. Policy, politics and advocacy are complicated - regardless of the area you're working in.

For what it's worth, I've spoken to Nik and I think some of the work he's doing is great. I'm especially excited about narrative testing.

Thank you for being open about this Max. I'm sorry to hear that it's been tough. I think this post in itself is really valuable. I imagine myself using it as a good example in the future to encourage people to prioritize their mental health.

I appreciate the work you've done to make CEA into an organisation that I really admire. I'm sure you'll do great things in the future. Best wishes!

I often use charity and thrift shops. The other day I was thinking about how it would be cool to have one that donates to GiveWell or something. 

Good job on trying this!

I'm optimistic about this test. Even as a community builder, I find all the community discussion overwhelming. The Forum has become a place I'm less likely to visit because something like half of the discussions don't feel productive for me to engage in.

Flagging that I may be interested in helping run both EA Infrastructure and AI safety versions of this

This seems great. This org has ties to pretty influential people. A couple of things I'm curious about:

1. What influenced this direction? (they mentioned the doomsday clock, but I imagine lots of other sources of influence)
2. Could we piggyback off of this to increase buy-in for x-risk reduction from people in their network? Maybe getting some of their high net-worth supporters to start moving money towards these causes?

There are some EAs hanging out in CDMX until the end of Jan (and maybe some after)

Agree that having a nomad friendly community near the US would be great

I think this is a nice simple breakdown of the concept.

A nitpick - I think having digital graphs rather than these photos would be a big improvement

[Epistemic status: I've never done recruiting, I don't run or have a position at an 'EA org' - feel free to ignore anything I say]

But, a couple of thoughts:

1. Your branding and copywriting could use a lot of work. It's not immediately clear to me that this organisation is legitimate.
2. I'm highly unlikely to apply for a job if I don't know who the hiring organisation is. The organisation and their mission is one of the primary reasons I'll apply anywhere. If you're doing "blind" hiring rounds, you'll need to accrue a lot more trust amongst top talent.
3. These roles

Related thought: should we be trying harder to do outreach to early stage startup founders? Could potentially be very high-EV from a funding perspective

It's a rough estimate. I think it's difficult to quantify the value of a conference for one individual

The idea of there being increased financial barriers to attending conferences concerns me a lot.

I'd hate to end up in a situation where lower income people or students are discouraged from even applying because they know they won't be able to afford it. I know it would be soul crushing for many people to receive an email saying they've been accepted, but be unable to consider attending due to financial barriers. 

I'd have a preference for smaller events where people are guaranteed funding if they need. I think that looking after a smaller group of peop... (read more)

I'd be excited about CEA hosting or supporting more virtual conferences. These are far cheaper than in-person events, are more accessible in many ways, and I'd estimate they capture about 60% of the value for an individual attendee that an in-person event does.

I could imagine 2-3 of these happening in 2023, perhaps including some for more specific audiences like the previous student summit. These would have the advantage of being able to have a much lower bar for entry (since costs don't increase as linearly as in-person conferences). They could therefore ... (read more)

I definitely agree with these points! The delay is entirely a failure on my part . This is definitely not the only event of its kind that will be run though and I anticipate another one will happen very soon after.

As an organiser, I am constantly amazed at how helpful everyone has been. Thank you to all the volunteers, speakers and attendees who have been so willing to contribute! I love this community <3

I'd also be very interested in the reverse of this. Is there anyone who has thought very hard about AI risk and decided to de-prioritise it?

Thanks for writing this Sam. I think there's a lot of value in hearing people's stories in this way

I share this concern, deeply. I think the EA community could be necessary for a lot of future impact. Risks to the community are therefore very bad. 

I'm curious about the term "community health" though. Maybe there are actually two distinct categories of things to track here? One is internal - how people feel and interact within EA - and the other is external - how the general public perceives EA.

I think people are always going to seek status or validation and people in EA are no different. Status in EA has a lot of massive upsides as well (you might have greater chances of getting funding/job offers). It's highly unlikely this will change. What we should be actively monitoring is how closely we're matching status with impact.

Also, I'm not sure if the title is good or bad. I think this post points to some important things about status in EA and I wonder if the misleading title makes people less likely to read it. On the other hand, I thought it looked funny and that made me click on it.

It's all about the Caleb points man

Low and middle income countries or LMICs

This would be for EA work being done in LMICs. I anticipate some more posts in this area soon.

This could apply to posts like:

• https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/gqAzR4BjbrNjzgcDf/introducing-animal-empathy-philippines 
• https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/zDktSTEstmy2X5big/geographic-diversity-in-ea
• https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/pXkt7oRczDrqvTu4B/cape-town-summer-ea-office 

Thanks for following up. This is very interesting. I'd like to think more about what lessons from the startup world might be applicable in our case.

I don't think the dichotomy being presented here is true. We can plausibly have both of these things. 
The claim that "Cape Town is not Africa" also doesn't seem very obvious to me. I can see the possible assumptions here maybe being something like "Africa must necessarily be a harsh environment to live in" or "some degree of material suffering is necessary to understand African perspectives." I don't think either of these are true.

I'm really interested in your perspective on this though. I'll reach out to discuss this further

One thing this post doesn't really touch on, which I would like more discussion about, is why we should establish new hubs in the first place. I think creating an EA hub that's as good as Berkeley or Oxford is actually really difficult, so we should plausibly spend a lot of time deciding whether it's worth the cost. We should weigh up the cost of new hubs with the cost of just trying to get people to move to an existing one. Sure, maybe not everyone can move to Oxford or Berkeley if they want to, but not everyone needs to live in a 'hub'. 

Maybe the fl... (read more)

I'm not sure what your background is, but I agree that getting in touch with local EA groups is a great place to start. We (University of Cape Town) would certainly be happy to have somebody offer help

I'll just add all mine in one comment, since I'm assuming you won't base your decision off the number of upvotes. Most of these are about movement-building, since that's probably what I spend most of my time thinking about

• The EA community should not be trying to grow.
  • This research would advocate for something like stronger gatekeeping/less outreach.
• Giving pledges (GWWC, OFTW) are no longer relevant for engaged EAs 
  • Perhaps linked to ETG becoming less of a priority
• Despite many community builders pushing for them, fellowships are not the best way to get

The video appears to now be private. Any chance I could get access to watch it?

As someone who has studied religion at university, I've been patiently waiting for more conversations about this. I'm not religious myself, but I'm looking forward to reading about these perspectives.

Unfortunately that is true. I would say that statistic might be misleading though as it largely depends on the area you're living in. Lower income areas account for most of the total murder in Cape Town the metropolitan area. Higher income areas (in which any expat would inevitably be living) are relatively safe. Overall though, you'd be correct in assuming that safety is more of a concern than in many European or US cities. But as far as anecdotal evidence goes, I have't been murdered yet.

This an absolutely shameless plug for my own city but I really think Cape Town (South Africa) would be an ideal location. 

• It's probably the safest and most accessible city on the African continent
• great infrastructure (the local government is reasonably competent compared to the national level)
• quite big tech and creative industries
• cost of living seems to be about a third of that in San Francisco
• lifestyle wise, I honestly don't know of any city with more natural beauty
• I'm also hoping to build up an EA community here (group housing etc. might happen some

I attended and thoroughly enjoyed your workshop! Thanks for posting these notes

I'm not aware of anything like this existing. Somebody make one please! I'd be happy to help out

I think this platform is absolutely fantastic and much needed. I haven't made a donation yet, but it seems like the user experience is very smooth.

Just one note: the link on the notification "Donations to Effective Crypto may not be tax deductible where you live. We think that you shouldn't worry too much about this, but just so you know." is broken.

I'm also eager to read it. This would affect the activities of quite a few groups (mine included). I can't currently think of any good reasons why the pledge should be controversial.

Hi, I'm Jordan. Aside from my full-time studies at the moment, I do some digital marketing and copywriting. I have also worked on films and have skills in audio production. I'm keen to join the channel!

Understandable. 1-2 hours a day seems like a reasonable time estimate.

I appreciate the precision :) I'd be interested to hear how your answers might differ depending on the time allocated.

I was thinking part-time. That would likely make any suggestions more relevant to most people.

CARE?

Perhaps it would be worthwhile to focus on books like those in this list of "most commonly planned to read books that have not been read by anyone yet"