Can you clarify your view on suffering to me? Are you saying that suffering is undesirable simply because we made it so? I would say there is something more to it, since all animals try to avoid, not only humans. Humans mostly try to avoid and when they don't they sometimes come up with elaborate ideas on how to justify suffering, e.g. saying it's a catalyst for self-development. 

I experienced people being very honest with me but it might be because I mostly interact with AI safety people 

I guess a solution here could be color coded badges e.g. red one says "Please don't photograph me and if you accidentally included me in a picture, don't share that picture)"

I really like the website. It has nice design. 

I would try to talk to people at EAG or EAGx and ask for total honesty. I would say that most people might think it's low impact.

I gave it about 15 minutes to come up with some reasons why people might be reluctant to support you: in general EAs don't focus that much on climate change. Out of all the things that you can do for climate change, planting trees doesn't seem to be the most effective thing to do. You can read about it here. Also, there is a bunch of organizations already doing that (and they also roughly plant 1 tree per dollar). 

 

I think that badges with names on EAGx and EAGs are a bad idea. There are some people who would rather not be connected to the EA movement - some animal advocates or AI safety people. I feel like I'm speculating here, but I imagine a scenario like this:

1. Some people take a picture at EAG
2. The picture gets posted online
3. The badge and the person are in that picture, somewhere in the description/comments something says EAG/EA/AI safety or something similar
4. Some people find it at some point, or other people notice it and connect things
5. Some political opponents of that person make everyone aware that this person has connections to EA brand (think about the upcoming movie and FTX) or that that person receives money from some specific sources.  

The only use cases for names on badges I can see are that you can:

• Have people recognize you right away. You don't need to tell your name to everyone
• People can take a picture of your badge to keep in touch with you later.
• Security can verify that you are the person on the badge

I see people using the badges for the first two things from time to time but I don't think it's a huge use case. Some alternatives for third use case:

• Badges with pictures make it even easier to verify that the person on the badge is the person. This is nice but introduces a lot of friction
• Just show your ticket to security

I think there should at least be an option to have badges that don't have names, and that it should be normalized to have badges like that. It's not obvious to some people that they can cover their badge. Other options include:

• Optional name badges (let people choose)
• First names only
• Pseudonyms/handles
• Color-coded privacy preferences

Does the promise have a website? Do you happen to know how many people have taken the promise so far? BTW There is a notion page where EAs can sign up to host others so it's kind of like promise already.

"why do i find myself less involved in EA?"

You go over more details later and answer other questions like what caused some reactions to some EA-related things, but an interesting thing here is that you are looking for a cause of something that is not.

> it feels like looking at the world through an EA frame blinds myself to things that i actually do care about, and blinds myself to the fact that i'm blinding myself.

I can strongly relate, had the same experience. i think it's due to christian upbringing or some kind of need for external validation. I think many people don't experience that, so I wouldn't say that's an inherently EA thing, it's more about the attitude. 

 

I'm a huge fan of self-hosting and even better writing simple and ugly apps, in my dream world every org would have its resident IT guy who would just code an app that would have all the features they need. 

Do people enjoy using Slack? I hate Slack and I think that Slack has bad ergonomics. I'm in about 10 channels and logging into them is horrible. There is no voice chat. I'm not getting notifications (and I fret the thought of setting them up correctly - I just assume that if someone really wanted to get in touch with me immediately, they will find a way) I'm pretty sure it would be hard to create a tool better than Slack (I'm sure one could create a much better tool for a narrower use case, but would find it hard to cover all the Slack's features) but let's assume I could. Is it worth it? Do you people find Slack awful as well or is it only me?  

not if the ai increases intelligence via speed up or other methods which don't change the goals.