All of Michelle_Hutchinson's Comments + Replies

Thanks for this, and for your work on Felicifia. As someone who's found it crucial to have others around me setting an example for me, I particularly admire the people who basically just figured out for themselves what they should be doing and then starting doing it.

Fwiw re THINK: I might be wrong in this recollection, but at the time it felt like very clearly Mark Lee's organisation (though Jacy did help him out). It also was basically only around for a year. The model was 'try to go really broad by contacting tonnes of schools in one go and getting hype going'. It was a cool idea which had precedent, but my impression was the experiment basically didn't pan out. 

Sorry I wasn't clear: We not only don't object to replication - we're actively enthusiastic about it.  I think a healthy ecosystem has a bunch of different people trying to do the same thing and seeing how they go. 

Since I run the 1on1 team, I'm not well placed to comment on what 80k as a whole plans to do. 

You're right that the majority, but not all, of people we talk to have some interest in helping others over the longterm as well as present day. I expect that to continue being mostly true, at least over the coming year.

Thanks, I found this list really interesting!

Thanks, I found this really interesting. 

[I’m an EAIF grant manager, but I wasn’t involved in this particular grant.]

I’m sorry you’ve been having a frustrating time in your community building work. As you say, rejections sting even in the best of circumstances, particularly when it feels counter to the narrative being portrayed of there being funding available. Working hard to help others is difficult enough without feeling that others are refusing to support you in it.

It seems very difficult to me to accurately represent in advance what kinds of community building EAIF is and isn’t keen to fund,... (read more)

Great work writing this up and putting it out there for feedback! I think it's always difficult to give much of a view as an outsider, but it sounds to me like you've been feeling insecure for a while due to lack of savings, and so taking a paying job sounds like a good idea. It seems like you're not actually keen on doing a masters, and it doesn't seem obvious you need one to do what you're aiming for. So deciding against doing one sounds very reasonable to me. Both your options sound good though!

Thank you for sharing this! I just love hearing stories of pledgers around the world, and what's motivated them to pledge and to keep giving. I grew up not knowing anyone who donated this much, and assuming I wouldn't either. It's still kind of incredible to me that there are so many people promising to do this for the rest of their lives, and doing so joyfully rather than out of pure obligation. I'm glad you (rightfully) feel proud of doing it. I cannot wait to live in a world where not a single person needs to die of malaria. 

Thanks so much for this comment. I find it incredibly hard not to be unwarrantedly risk averse. It feels really tempting to focus on avoiding doing any harm, rather than actually helping people as much as I can. This is such an eloquent articulation of the urgency we face, and why we need to keep pushing ourselves to move faster. 

I think this is going to be useful for me to read periodically in the future - I'm going to bookmark it for myself.

Thank you for this prompt Devansh! We really look forward to hearing from people :-)

That's really nice to hear!

<3

Noted, thanks guys.

Yes, we will be. Thanks for asking!

I'm not exactly sure of these people's views, but they're all effective altruist coaches, so you might be interested in checking out their websites: 

Tee Barnett
Daniel Kestenholz

Anne Wissemann

80,000 Hours actually doesn't only coach people already focused on a priority career path, though it is more useful for people who have a similar understanding of impact to 80,000 Hours' understanding. We currently talk to around 50% of people who apply for coaching.

I think it probably depends on how much more clarity you think you'll get from thinking solo about it for a bit, and how likely it is you'll find the solo thinking motivating. I think the conversations do tend to be more useful if you have a sense of what you'd most like to get out of them. But thinking through your career is often both difficult and aversive, so chatting to us early in the journey can be most sensible for some people, to get more clarity on how to think through things and what to read in order to make your plan. We're also happy to speak to someone more than once, so you might like to chat to us when you're first starting to think through things and then again when you have more clarity.

Thanks for taking the time to do such a rigorous study, and also for writing it up and thinking through the implications for other EAs!

Thanks for this feedback. I had a go at rewriting that our 'why wasn't I accepted' FAQ. It now reads: 

Why wasn’t I accepted?

We sincerely regret that we can’t advise everyone who applies. We read every application individually and are thankful that you took the time to apply. It’s really touching reading about people who have come across 80,000 Hours and are excited about using their careers to help others.

We aim to talk to the people we think we can help most. Our not speaking with you does not mean we think you won’t have a highly impactful career. W... (read more)

This is not quite an answer to your question, but I thought you might get a lot out of this podcast - it at least is vivid evidence that you can have a lot of impact despite finding it hard to get out of ugh fields and suffering from depression. 

I agree the finance example is useful. I would expect that in both our case and the finance case the best implementation isn't actually mutually exclusive funds, but funds with clear and explicit 'central cases' and assumptions, plus some sensible (and preferably explicit) heuristics to be used across funds like 'try to avoid multiple funds investing too much in the same thing'. 

That seems to be both because there will (as Max suggests) often be no fact of the matter as to which fund some particular company fits in, and also because the thing you care... (read more)

+1

Thanks for finding and pasting Jonas' reply to this concern MichaelA. I don't feel I have further information to add to it. One way to frame my plans: I intend to fund projects which promote EA principles, where both 'promote' and 'EA principles' may be understood in a number of different ways. I can imagine the projects aiming at both the long-run future and at helping current beings. It's hard to comment in detail since I don't yet know what projects will apply. 

Here are a few things: 

• What proportion of the general population might fully buy in to EA principles if they came across them in the right way, and what proportion of people might buy in to some limited version (eg become happy to donate to evidence backed global poverty interventions)? I’ve been pretty surprised how much traction ‘EA’ as an overall concept has gotten. Whereas I’ve maybe been negatively surprised by some limited version of EA not getting more traction than it has. These questions would influence how excited I am about wide outreach, a

Speaking for myself, I'm interested in increasing the detail in my write-ups a little over the medium term (perhaps making them typically more the length of the write up for Stefan Schubert). I doubt I'll go all the way to making them as comprehensive as Max's. 
Pros:

• Particularly useful for donors to the fund and potential applicants to get to know the reasoning processes grant makers when we've just joined and haven't yet made many grants
• Getting feedback from others on what parts of my reasoning process in making grants seem better and worse seems mor

Answering these thoroughly would be really tricky, but here are a few off-the-cuff thoughts: 

1. Tough to tell. My intuition is 'the same amount as I did' because I was happy with the amount I could grant to each of the recipients I granted to, and I didn't have time to look at more applications than I did. Otoh I could imagine if we the fund had significantly more funding that would seem to provide a stronger mandate for trying things out and taking risks, so maybe that would have inclined me to spend less time evaluating each grant and use some money... (read more)

No set plans yet.

Thanks for the feedback! 

I basically agree with the conclusion MichaelA and Ben Pace have below. I think EAIF’s scope could do with being a bit more clearly defined, and we’ll be working on that. Otoh, I see the Lohmar and CLTR grants as fitting fairly clearly into the ‘Fund scope’ as pasted by MichaelA below. Currently, grants do get passed from one fund to the other, but that happens mostly when the fund they initially applied to deems them not to fall easily into their scope, rather than if they seem to fall centrally into the scope of the fund the... (read more)

Speaking just for myself: I don’t think I could currently define a meaningful ‘minimum absolute bar’. Having said that, the standard most salient to me is often ‘this money could have gone to anti-malaria bednets to save lives’. I think (at least right now) it’s not going to be that useful to think of EAIF as a cohesive whole with a specific bar, let alone explicit criteria for funding. A better model is a cluster of people with different understandings of ways we could be improving the world which are continuously updating, trying to figure out where we t... (read more)

It's so hard to implement... Thank you for letting me know! Really good to know what parts of posts people find useful. 

I definitely feel lucky to be at such a fortunate time in history when absolute poverty is so much lower than it has been over the millennia past, and when we have the chance for so much less suffering and more happiness than ever before. I also really appreciate being part of the EA community. This year's isolation has really brought home to me how much it means to me to be surrounded every day by kind people working for the same goal. 

I'm less sure of the specific framing of 'EA as an opportunity', because  so much of EA is about preventing suf... (read more)

<3

Hi anon, Michelle here. I work for 80k. I think 80k probably shouldn’t have a discussion about the career decisions of a particular staff member on the Forum, but I’m happy to share some thoughts on this general issue. 

First off, I hate that our hiring sometimes makes things difficult for others, when we’re all aiming at the same thing and the stakes are so high. As you point out, this is an especially tricky issue for 80k because people are in the habit of listening to our career advice and because our whole mission is to fill roles at other organisa... (read more)

Reporting back like this seems really useful for others considering whether to do this. Thanks!

Relevant for people trying to get funding for a project: 

People could consider writing up their project as a blog post on the forum see if they get any bites for funding. In general, I think I'd encourage people looking for funding to do more writing up one page summaries of what they would like to get funded. It would include things like: 

• Problem the project addresses
• Why the solution the project proposes is the right one for the problem
• Team and why  they're well suited to work on this

I'd guess if you write a post like this there'd be quite ... (read more)

I love the specificity of your 'How to pick a name' section. I imagine that will be really useful in helping people follow through finding a good name.

This sounds like a great idea! 

Thanks for this feedback! It's really useful to know that this would make it easier to put yourself out there. We're in the process of changing the application form to connect better with our career planning process, to hopefully make filling it out a commitment mechanism for getting started on making a career plan (since doing so is often aversive). As part of that, we aim to send people a google doc of the relevant answers in a readily shareable format and encourage people to send it to friends and others whose judgement they trust.

I also find it pretty ... (read more)

It is extremely upsetting for people to apply and get turned down, especially if they found 80k materials at some emotional time (releasing they are not satisfied with their current job or studies). It is very hard to not interpret this as "you are not good enough".

I am so sad that we are causing this. It is really tough to make yourself vulnerable to strangers and reach out for help, only to have your request rebuffed. That’s particularly hard when it feels like a judgement on someone’s worth, and more particularly on their ability to help others. And ... (read more)

By focusing on people "for whom you’ll have useful things to say", you talk to people who do not need additional resources (like guidance or introductions) for increasing their impact. The contrafactual impact is low. For example, testimonials on the website include PhD Student in Machine Learning at Cambridge and the President of Harvard Law School Effective Altruism.

I don’t quite agree here. I was counting ‘additional resources’ like guidance and introductions as ‘things to say’. So focusing on people for whom we have useful things to say should incre... (read more)

A month-long period of reviewing the application is prohibitive and disappointing.

I agree this is too long, and I’m sad that it was actually longer than this at times. Right now I’m mostly managing to review them within a week, and almost always within 2 weeks. I wouldn’t want to promise to always be able to do this, but it’s much easier now we have a team of people working on advising.

I have an impression that 80k accepted a long time ago that that wait time will just have to be pretty long.

I'm actually really keen to avoid us having long wait time... (read more)

Thanks for sharing your view. It’s useful for us to get an overall sense of whether others think our work is useful in order to sense check our views and continue figuring out whether this is the right thing for us to focus our time on. It's also important to hear detail about what the problems with it are so that we can try to address them. I’ll respond to your points in separate comments so that they’re easier to parse and engage with.

I'm afraid I don't really know anything about discord (me and tech are not the best of friends...), but from your description it sounds good! I think there is some EA activity on discord, so maybe you could build off that. I don't know anything about the form it takes or how to find it though unfo - but I'm guessing others on this forum do.

This sounds great to me! I'd be tempted to try out things in existing infrastructure first, like trying it out in the careers discussion fbook group, or the open thread you mentioned.

Other options that come to mind:

• Look at the EA London community directory for people who would likely have relevant comments on your plan and reach out to them. This seems like it might be more likely to get a reply than a general call, and the person might have more relevant comments than a random person would. But they would likely have less time because they're not select

only principles which are both robustly good and disputable seem worth teaching

This sounds false to me: You might think different kinds of principles work better and worse for different people's styles, and lots of principles are non-obvious. In that case, it seems worth someone learning about a tonne of different principles and testing out to see if they help or hinder their personal style of management.

Thank you very much for this post! As you say, it's great to have examples of how people think through their careers, what options they chose and why. Useful for others to learn from and also help each other feel less alone in making these hard decisions and going through the frustration of applications. 

I'd be particularly interested in hearing more about why you don't see cybersecurity and formal verification as promising: in particular whether your view is that EAs should be aiming to build up expertise in these, or whether you think they are useful skills for a number of EAs to have, it's just that their use will come in the future (or in a country other than Israel).

Thanks, this is all really useful to hear! It makes me think that it's somewhat likely I've just generally not found the right courses / types of training.

I wonder if one thing that's going on is that I'm making the enemy the perfect of the good. The courses I've done like the global health short course at Imperial felt interesting and fun to me, but not very efficient: I learned a bunch of things that I wouldn't use alongside what I would, and the learning per unit time could have been higher. But on the other hand, it's pretty likely that although I coul... (read more)

Thanks!

My learning goals for the year are somewhat intertwined, where one is 'forming more views' and another is 'developing better models of the world'. The things I'm doing are each somewhat focused on each, partly because I only want to form sensible / well informed views, and partly because I think I'll only feel comfortable forming views if I am in some sense conscious of knowing about a topic. The thing most focused on the 'forming views' side is writing - where that doesn't need to be shared with anyone. But a few other things I'm doing: 

Pay more atte... (read more)

>Just setting up weekly meetings with someone else who's at roughly the same level of seniority and who also wants more "management"/"mentorship"

I really like this idea. I had a set up like this when I had a hands off manager, with a friend who didn't have a manager. I found it really helpful. For others who are keen on this but don't have a particular friend they'd like to do it with, there's a Facebook group for finding such accountability partners.