MeganNelson
Bio
Participation4
Part-time Community Health Coordinator at EA NYC
Full-time social worker
All-the-time human
How others can help me
Be more kind.
How I can help others
Are you new to the EA community? Are you super-interested in the movement, but worried you might not fit in? Maybe you've been around for a while, and you have some concerns. Talk to me; I'm a non-cookie-cutter EA and it's okay for you to be one, too.
Are you interested in/currently doing EA community building? I want to hear from you, too! This work can be hard and we need to learn from each other and lift each other up.
Are you thinking about visiting (or moving to) New York City? Let me tell you why this is a) the greatest city in the world and b) an amazing place to do effective altruism! Or at least, let me help you connect with the local EA group and find the best vegan food.
Are you an EA-inclined social worker/considering a career in social work? (Look, it could happen! There's at least three four of us.) SAY HI! I've been doing this work for ten years and I still love it.
Posts 8
Comments18
Hi Louisa - when you have a minute, could you edit your comment to add links to the 80k articles that address these issues? It'd be an easy step towards connecting those messages with the people who could benefit from them (and who may well be inclined to read this particular Forum post and comments).
Thank you!
Thank you for writing this up, Severin. I think you're really onto something: EA communities can work as wonderful containers (borrowing your phrase!), as stable launchpads, and as supportive audiences for movement building. Trying to change the world is hard work, and having a community makes it easier.
I'm delighted to hear about your successes - you are empowering your community members to explore their own ideas and to put them into action. That's next-level community building!
This post makes me uncomfortable. I tried to talk to @Derek Shiller about making a 1% Spending What We Can pledge, and he muttered something about living in a van down by the river. Then he wrote a check to Shrimp Welfare Project.
Are we doing this right?
>There's often a big difference between castles and manor houses.
This came up several times during the course of our project, invariably from folks who live outside of NYC. No one on our team could figure out what they were talking about.
To try to find out, we secured a grant[1] to commission researchers at the Global Risk Lab at NYU to create a battery of specialized psychological tests. Unfortunately, no one on our team could accurately differentiate between the concepts of "castle" and "manor house", despite Josh and Lucius showing us flashcards until they burst into tears.
We're unsure of the cause of this cognitive blind-spot, but we strongly suspect it's because we're all a bunch of peasants.
- ^
The spare change we found under Jacob Eliosoff's couch cushions.
>How much did this cost?
Approximately $25million for the initial purchase, which when you consider the price of NYC real estate and the anticipated gain in NALYs (noodle-adjusted life-years) is an absolute steal.
>I understand they money didn't come from FTX sources, but where did it come from?
Rocky found a duffle bag full of money on the J train at 3am and I reverse-catfished a Facebook romance scammer. Alex and Arthur raised the balance of the down payment by busking at the Union Square subway station (they both play the accordion).
>There isn't any cell reception in the back corner. Do you plan on fixing this?
I'm glad you asked! Many members of the community find that avoiding cell phone use during periods of intense work helps them stay on-task. We anticipate that the back corner of our vegan dim sum restaurant will be an excellent place for sustained focus.
>please don't remove the drop ceiling!
I'm way ahead of you - I love it so much I've asked my building super to install a trendy "distressed" drop ceiling in my apartment!
Thank you for writing this and for posting it here. Thank you for sharing your own story and experience.
We all have a responsibility to this community, and to every community we're part of. I've been thinking for a while about bystanders, and how to encourage folks to think about "community health" not as law enforcement or emergency services, but as the atmosphere that we are all engaged with (for better or for worse, whether or not we realize it). The metaphor of a collectively shouldered burden is really good.
I hope your post is widely read. Please know that I appreciate it.
thank you!