I'm the Content Specialist at the Centre for Effective Altruism; I run the non-engineering side of the EA Forum (this platform). Please feel free to reach out! Email me at lizka@centreforeffectivealtruism.org or message me through the Forum.
Here's a post that explains my job a bit more.
A bit on my background. I recently finished my undergraduate studies with a double major in mathematics and comparative literature. I interned as a research fellow at Rethink Priorities in the summer of 2021, and was then hired by the Events Team at CEA. I've since switched to the Online Team. In the past I've also done some (math) research and worked at Canada/USA Mathcamp.
Some links I think people should see more frequently:
Some of my favorite of my own posts:
And you can see my Shortform notes here.
Posts
Topic Contributions
Comments
Thanks for posting this question! You can see an incomplete list of speakers from past EA Global conferences here: https://www.eaglobal.org/speakers/
And you can see lots of videos here: https://www.youtube.com/c/EffectiveAltruismVideos/featured
(Although you might already be aware of both of these resources.)
Thanks for this suggestion! You can in fact see your past upvotes, although the feature is really not easily discoverable right now, sadly.
I'll echo some of the other commenters: thanks for writing this, I appreciated the post! I don't entirely agree with everything you say, but I do really want to see more art and thought put into aesthetics. (On the other hand, I'm not sure how much of our resources we should put into this.)
You might be interested in:
- My question from January: "What are some artworks relevant to EA?"
- "FLI launches Worldbuilding Contest with $100,000 in prizes," also from January (I only skimmed the initial post and haven't looked at the submissions yet)
- The "Effective altruism art and fiction" topic
Thanks for this comment!
I think you're right that I'm proving too much with the broad argument, and I like your reframing of the arguments I'm making as things to be wary of. I'm still uncomfortable with longtermism-as-identity, though --- possibly because I'm less certain of the four beliefs in (0).
I'd be interested in drawing the boundaries more carefully and trying to see when a worldview (that is dependent on empirical knowledge) can safely(ish) become an identity without messing too much with my ability to reason clearly.
Fair point, thanks!
I think it's probably not great to have "effective altruist" as an identity either (I largely agree with Jonas's post and the others I linked), although I disagree with the case you're making for this.
I think that my case against EA-as-identity would be more on the (2) side, to use the framing of your post. Yours seems to be from (1), and based (partly) on the claim that "EA" requires the assumption that "you have to try to do the most good" (which I think is false). (I also think you're pointing to the least falsifiable of the assumptions/cruxes I listed for longtermism.)
In practice, I probably slip more with "effective altruist" than I do with "longtermist," and call people "EAs" more (including myself, in my head). This post is largely me thinking through what I should do --- rather than explaining to readers how they should emulate me.
I keep coming back to this map/cartogram. It's just so great.
Thanks for pointing this out! Yeah, the link was broken, but it should work now.
The shortform should in fact appear in recent activity -- not sure what happened there.
And I agree that we should grow and develop low-barrier ways of interacting with the Forum.
Thanks for pointing out that this is not discoverable! I've added a note about this to the user manual, but I agree that it should also just be easier to notice as you're exploring the platform.
Hi Chris, thanks for suggesting this! I'll add it.