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Nitpick: The first link leads to https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/3mnLZtbeBSWZqQCLb/cisac.fsi.stanford.edu/stanford-existential-risks-initiative, which is a dead link. I think you mean to link to cisac.fsi.stanford.edu/stanford-existential-risks-initiative.
I think this point from the Black VegFest 7 points of allyship (for the white vegan community) is reasonably straightforward:
White vegans/ARs will respect the sanctity of Black space and will not enter unless their presence is necessary. Black space is for the growth and betterment of Black people. Allyship and being accomplices begins with white people learning to respect Black space.
My understanding is that there can be spaces for only Black people to discuss, though white people can participate if necessary (presumably, if they are invited). Part of allyship is allowing for these spaces to exist.
That said, I’m still very confused by the second sentence of this quote:
There is no such thing as an equal playing field under white supremacist imperialist capitalist patriarchy. In the current system, white people have the power to usurp anything Black lives create simply by being white.
EDIT: oh okay the last one makes slightly more sense in context:
Recognize that where and how you live and work affects everything around you. There is no such thing as an equal playing field under white supremacist imperialist capitalist patriarchy . In the current system, white people have the power to usurp anything Black lives create simply by being white. White people deny loans to Black people in neighborhoods they ignore and in neighborhoods they take over. The tiny loans white people do offer Black businesses are often predatory and insufficient and still create a dependency on whiteness to be kind or agreeable. This is all Redlining. It continues today despite being made illegal in 1968. White people deny grants to us and redistribute them to large 100 year-old white organizations due to the grandfathering of a racist system that has modified its tone but not changed its actions. When the excuse is not financial stability, small white organizations who seemingly appear out of nowhere “win” resources because they knew someone white.
I found this post to be quite refreshing compared to the previous one criticizing Effective Altruism Munich for uninviting Robin Hanson to speak. I’m not against “cancel culture” when it’s cancelling speakers for particularly offensive statements they’ve made in the past (e.g., Robin Hanson in my opinion, but let’s not discuss Robin Hanson much further since that’s not the topic of this post). Sometimes though, cancelling happens in response to fairly innocuous statements, and it looks like that’s what ACE has done with the CARE incident.
Sure, debate may involve a lot of techniques that are counterproductive to truth-seeking, and I wouldn't want people to write on the EA Forum like it's a debate, for example. However, I think there are many places where it would help to be able to convey more convincing arguments even if being more convincing doesn't improve truth-seeking—speaking with non-EAs about EA, for example.
Are there recordings of the debates? I'd be interested in watching them.
If necessary, it might be good to frame the arguments from religious texts as connecting with traditional Jewish thought, not in a way that demands a belief (or lack of belief) in the literal accuracy of the Talmud—basically what (my understanding of) Reform Judaism does. It might be good to intersperse religious arguments with secular arguments as well.
Out there, though, you can meet real people, with their own rich and complex lives; you can make real friends, and be part of real relationships, communities, and institutions. You can wander cities with real history; you can hear stories about things that really happened, and tell them; you can stand under real skies, and feel the heat of a real sun. People out there are doing real science, and discovering real things. They’re barely beginning to understand the story they’re a part of, but they can understand. You can understand, too; you can be a part of that story, too. No one knows, yet, what’s going to happen.
This is beautifully written, and it helps me feel more appreciative of our world. I think I'd still prefer the experience machine in this scenario though, just due to the hedonic difference.
I ended up making a post based on Kuhan's. It's somewhat shorter and has less of a focus on careers. I ended up getting 14 reactions (for reference, I have a bit over 600 friends on Facebook). I wonder if accompanying the post with a new profile picture would have been a good way to get more engagement haha.
My birthday is today! For the past two years, I did birthday fundraisers, but this year, instead of gifts or donations, I’m asking for just five minutes of your attention.
In eighth grade, I discovered a social impact–oriented career site called 80000hours.org and learned about a new social movement called effective altruism.
Previously, I knew about various issues like environmental degradation or extreme global poverty, but never really knew what to really do about it. I had learned a bit from UNICEF posters around school about how cheap it was to provide essential goods and medicine in parts of the developing world, but never saw any examples of ordinary people taking that opportunity seriously.
I had learned about income inequality of the United States, but not the much more extreme inequality on a global scale. It turns out that someone making $70,000 per year is in the top 1% of the global income distribution, while 700 million people live on less than $2 per day (~$700 per year, and this is adjusted for lower cost of living in poorer countries). Millions of people—often children—die each year of easily preventable ailments such as malaria and vitamin A deficiency.
Similarly, all I knew of animal farming was idyllic illustrations on milk cartons and meat packaging, and never learned about the horrific conditions in which farmed animals are raised in truly are, and the terrifying scale of the cruelty. Over 40 billion land animals and 40 billion fish from factory farms were killed for food in 2019, but the issue gets little attention compared to other well-known causes.
And then there’s the issue of safeguarding our future. Existential risks to civilization are estimated by philosopher Toby Ord and others to be more than 10% likely in the coming century, partly due to potential misuse of emerging technologies such as synthetic biology or advanced artificial intelligence. But if all goes well, human history is just beginning. Humanity could survive for incalculable years, reaching heights of flourishing unimaginable today.
So in tenth grade, I decided to take the Giving What We Can pledge to donate 10% of my income in my future career* (1% of my 红包🧧 money while a student lol) to high-impact charities. As I struggled with depression through high school due to chronic sleep deprivation and academic stress, the commitment to trying to make the biggest positive impact on the world that I could was something that kept me going.
*Dear siblings: yes, I will make sure to build up months of savings and pay off student debt first, etc.
If these ideas sound interesting to you, I’d appreciate it if you could read https://80000hours.org/key-ideas/ to learn more about the most effective problems to work on and how you might use your career to address them, directly or indirectly. If you prefer to read it in batches, you can subscribe to the newsletter at https://80000hours.org/community/. And if you’re interested in checking out high-impact, vetted charities, check out the charity evaluation research at https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities and https://founderspledge.com/research.
Some things I do: