All of Michelle_Hutchinson's Comments + Replies

Good point, I hadn't appreciated that. Thanks! 

Those do seem like good compromises.

I think in general people find it easier to notice criticisms of things than appreciate positives. But I think having more 'picking out surprising positives' is a useful way of learning, and in addition leads to a much more appreciative environment than picking out negatives. 

I worry that we currently have overly high standards for writing about positives because in addition to it being kind of tricky to notice them, there are other difficulties around things like dislike of glorifying people. My guess is that we could create a happier, more collaborative community if we had slightly lower standards for appreciation / noticing the positives type discussions.

I'm really glad you found it helpful!

<3

I’m really excited that Zach will be coming on as CEO of CEA. After so many nominations and evaluations, it’s extremely gratifying to have found someone so qualified for the role. I’m grateful to the hard work everyone put into this, particularly to Max for coordinating and project managing incredibly smoothly, and for Oscar and Caitlin helping a tonne behind the scenes. 

Running CEA is an enormous responsibility, and one I’m glad to be able to trust Zach with. I very much look forward to watching him take CEA into the future.

Sorry to hear you didn't find what you were looking for in the 80,000 Hours career guide. You could consider checking out this website that maintains a list of social purpose job boards. I'd guess that going through some of those would yield some good options for full stack web-dev roles at organisations with a broad range of missions, hopefully including some inspiring ones!

Thanks for the announcement. I’m really glad to feel that EV is going to continue being in safe hands going forward (both given Rob’s extensive experience and knowing from personal experience how responsible he is). 

Thank you so much for your work on EV. Taking on a hugely complex organisation at a time of such turmoil was always going to be extremely challenging. You really stepped up at a time when many of us were struggling just to continue our usual jobs. And then over the start of 2023 instead of getting a break it felt as if a series of separate... (read more)

(I work at 80,000 Hours but on the 1on1 side rather than website.) Thanks for writing out your thoughts so clearly and thoroughly Nick. Thanks also for thinking about the issue from both sides - I think you’ve done a job job of capturing reasons against the changes you suggest. The main one I’d add is that having a lot more research and conversations about lots of different areas would need a very substantial increase in capacity.

I’m always sad to hear about taking away the impression that 80,000 Hours doesn’t care about helping present sentient creatures.... (read more)

:-p

Thank you for the prompt.

Thanks very much for all your work on EV over the years. Your contribution to my work and to me personally have been significant enough that anything in the way of ‘thanks’ feels kind of trite and inadequate, and hopefully obvious to you. But I still want to mark the change by expressing some of the gratitude I feel for the work you’ve done at EV over the years. 

Amongst other things, in your role stewarding EV you co-founded all three of the orgs I’ve spent my working life at (GWWC, 80k, GPI). In my (wholly unbiased! :-p) opinion, setting those up has... (read more)

Mine would too. Thank you for writing this!

Thank you for all your hard work as a trustee. I’m personally sad to know you won’t be on the board of the organisation I work for anymore. But I’m also excited that you get to put your full attention into your next venture. 

Being a trustee seems extremely difficult to do well at the best of times, given the amount of responsibility entailed without day to day involvement. Being a trustee for CEA/EV has seemed particularly unenviable to me, even before this year.

I felt kind of sceptical when we first set up CEA (now EV) about how long we’d manage to m... (read more)

Speaking for myself, my org would definitely be happy to reimburse travel. But I very much dislike travelling for a number of reasons including travel time and jet lag increasing the cost significantly. I don't want to be away from my family longer than necessary, in part because I already optimise fairly strongly for working long hours. So I'm most likely to go to EAGs nearby. Like Greg, going to another EA hub has advantages that sometimes offset the cost of needing to travel for me.

Nice! You might also be interested in this effective giving platform based in Denmark. I wonder if, until you get charitable status, it's possible you could partner with them to make donations tax deductible?

I'm sorry you've had such a tough experience. Thanks for turning it into something that can help others. 

Looks like a great program. Thanks for posting! 

Thanks, I really relate to this. It's helpful to hear about other people feeling similarly as I try to do a retrospective on the weekend and how to make things go better next time. 

I think another thing that can make it hard is guilt about the very fact that it feels hard. 'Surely this should be a good experience? Why can't I make it an unequivocally good experience?' is helpful for motivating me to be proactive about how to spend the weekend well. But they also bring guilt, and a feeling of being somehow broken. 

The search committee is Claire Zabel, Max Dalton and me. We've recently been appointed, so we're still figuring out our plans and how to communicate about them.

This is the kind of comment strong upvotes are for.

+1 

It seems pretty wrong to me that the thing causing SBF's bad behaviour was thinking what matters in the world is the longrun wellbeing of sentient beings. My guess is that we should be focusing more on his traits like ambition and callousness towards those around him. 

But it seems plausible I'm just being defensive, as a proudly self-identified utilitarian who would like to be welcome in the community.   

😹

For people interested in how to be a good board member, I also loved Holden's post on this. Boards seem to have a really strange set up, and I thought this article is the best explanation of that + what to do to deal with the weirdness I've read.

Thanks Niel, jokes are always funnier when thoroughly explained.

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Thank you for working on this - like Ben and Peter I really appreciated its existence, and the way it brought the community together. Thank you also for making the tough decision to put it into hibernation, and letting us know that was happening.  

Awww, thank you!

I’m grateful to the people fielding the Charities Commission enquiries. It’s great that the CC looks carefully into important potentially troubling cases for charities, but it creates quite a bit of work for the organisation. It’s really great that there are competent, caring, dedicated people tackling this so that I can continue my day job.

I think the people I'm around in this community are really surprisingly good at helping me live up to my values. Sometimes that's by role modelling it - I think I wouldn't have donated nearly as much as 10% over my life if I hadn't come across Giving What We Can. Some of it is by being willing to challenge me and point out hard things, and trusting me to take negative feedback in the kind spirit it's meant. A lot of it is just by suggesting specific new things to try that might make it easier to achieve my goals - even just small things like things to help me sleep and wake up so I'm less likely to be underslept.  

A few friends of mine organised a karaoke night the other day. Organising something like that and needing to get everyone started singing seems pretty intimidating to me. I’m really glad for other people doing it! Singing and dancing together without needing to stay up late or go to a club is just great.

I regularly work in two different office spaces, and both of them are just really nice to work in. It makes a big difference to my productivity and happiness to be able to work in an office alongside people working on similar projects, and for that to be somewhere that’s carefully optimised so that I have the equipment I need, good internet, quiet meeting rooms etc. I’m grateful to all the people making that possible, including Jonathan Michel, Josie Inaldo, Tom Hempstock, Balázs Rapi and Marco Pace.

I’m excited that we’re getting close to EAG Bay Area. EAGs are a huge undertaking, and they’re just incredibly well organised and thought through compared to any academic conference I’ve been to. The level of detailed planning to ensure that people can get as much out of it as possible is really impressive.

> "Howie Lempel - Seconded to Interim CEO of Effective Ventures Foundation (previously, CEO)" is not phrasing I've seen before

Yet more perils of a US / UK combined entity...

> Do you know how many?

6 last I heard, but I might be out of date. 

Hey Ruth!  Sure thing:

1. Thankfully, my husband's parents live an hour and a half's drive away, and have lots of space. My husband and son go there very week, staying over Friday night. Nic's parents look after Leo for much of Saturday and then Nic and Leo come home Saturday night. If Leo can't go to nursery for some reason for a few days, we all go stay there and Nic's parents help with childcare

We don't currently have any other arrangements. We had a babysitter coming one evening a week for a while, but when they stopped (after about 6 months) we di... (read more)

Thanks for this Shakeel. This seems like a particularly rough time to be running comms for CEA. I’m grateful that in addition to having that on your plate, in your personal capacity you’re helping to make the community feel more supportive for non-white EAs feeling the alienation you point to. Also for doing that despite the emotional labour involved in that, which typically makes me shy away from internet discussions.

Responding swiftly to things seems helpful in service of that support. One of the risks from that is that you can end up taking a particular... (read more)

Thank you for your hard work, Megan. Being a social worker sounds hard in itself to me. I think it's extremely generous and impressive that in addition to that you volunteer, and donate, and are vegan. That does sound exhausting, even without the community dramas that feel kind of incessant at the moment. 

It feels really tiring to me too. EA itself feels tiring. It's tiring that there's always more to do and that I could always be prioritising harder and helping others more. A thing that makes that bearable to me is working together - having a communi... (read more)

My main hesitation on this would be that I never really figured out how the difference between plausible meta-ethical theories was decision relevant.(I'm not sure if that counts as not liking it though - still interesting!)

Thirteen years last week, and counting

<3 

That's amazing news, thank you for sharing! 

Thank you all!

This is wonderful news. Thank you very much for getting that up and running.

Thank you for posting this. It very much speaks to how I’m feeling right now. I'm grateful you've expressed and explained it.

Thanks for sharing!

Happy to share! I forgot to say, I think I got this idea from Tara Mac Aulay

• 43
• Pretty rarely - just whenever I remember, which is probably only every couple of months
• Whenever I feel like it, though most often just after I've gone through my other anki decks, which I do around twice a week.

Anki goes up to really long time scales. If it's a memory you don't want to see too often you can click 'easy', and then its default time sequence will be something like: first day, 5 days later, a month later, a year later. 

I also have things in there for which I like seeing them pretty often, like baby photos of my son. It's not dissimilar to having a photo displayed in the house, except that instead of it being on show all the time it's brought to your full attention periodically.  

Tbc, I'm still a big fan of Lord Martin Rees' work!