Thank you for this post!

I really like combining the emotional access to these women's stories with the intellectual facts of the studies - often I only see people focus on the emotional side (and then I am unsure if I should really factually believe it, or it is just cherry-picked anecdotal stuff), or only on the intellectual side and leave out emotions entirely (which just leaves a whole bunch of low-hanging potential motivation go to waste), so combining the two is great!

Hi there :)

Yes indeed, burn events are based on the same principles as Burning Man, but each regional burn is a bit different just based on who attends, how these people choose to interpret the (intentionally) vague and contradicting principles, etc. :)

Hi Mila,

Yeah, I am involved in the Darmstadt local group (when I have the time, many many things going on.)

And wheee, would be glad to meet you too :)

Just regarding your last sentence: I disagree that it has any bearing whatsoever whether everyone else is excluding other's visions of the future or not.
No matter if everyone else is great or terrible - I want EA to be as good as it possibly can, and if it fails on some metric it should be criticised and changed in that regard, no matter if everyone else fails on the same metric too, or not, or whatever.

Hi all,

Moya here from Darmstadt, Germany. I am a Culture-associated scientist, trans* feminist, poly, kinky, and a witch.
I got into LessWrong in 2016 and then EA 2016 or 2017, don't quite remember. :)

I went to the University of Iceland, did a Master's degree in Computer Science / Bioinformatics there, then built software for the European Space Agency, and nowadays am a freelance programmer and activist in the Seebrücke movement in Germany and other activist groups as well. I also help organize local burn events (some but not all of them being FLINTA* exclusive safer spaces.)

Silly little confession: It took me so many years to finally sign up to the EA forum because my password manager is not great and I just didn't want to bother opening it and storing yet another password in there. But hey, finally overcame that incredibly-tiny-in-hindsight-obstacle after just a bit over half a decade and signed up. \o/

Thank you for linking to EAs love systemic change!
Now I am sad that "While some people should earn to give, we expect the right share is under 20%, and think that ‘earning to give’ is now more popular among the people who follow our advice than it ideally would be." seems to already have been the consensus in 2015; I know many many people who got into EA later than that and were still mainly told about that even from other EAs. I would have hoped (and assumed) we would be much much quicker at adapting to new information.

Oh, and that post with its ominous ending of "We don’t want to burn the existing system to the ground" also brings me back to the PhilosophyTube video: In the ending, Abigail just dispassionately asks whether we should work within the existing structures or overthrow them and then says to decide for yourself - instead of saying the (I think?) obvious thing out loud: hell yeah identify and overthrow any and all oppressive structures asap, but until then, use whatever structures there are to reduce suffering already, and also after, keep working within the new structures to keep doing better. Like, this is not a binary choice and no matter how big or small a "revolution" we will be able to pull off, we will never be done either way.