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EA projects update - October 2015

Great job everyone :)

I apologise if my posts sound like demands. It's not intended. At the least, I guess I have had trouble learning what I need to know, and finding the best way to get involved. I hope this can be seen as feedback worthy of discussion. Cheers

September Open Thread

russoxo9y-4

Hi Daniel, there is already discussion on this topic on the Facebook group.

Hi everyone! This is my point about us needing a better forum... Am I alone in this belief? Cheers

RyanCarey

Hey Russ, Facebook has a more volume of comments, whereas here there's comments that are often longer, with more thought invested and better average quality. Saying "the forum sucks, who's with me" is not helpful but constructive feedback is always welcome.

September Open Thread

russoxo9y2

Hi Tom, Thanks for the reply. What you say makes sense, but I still have the same concerns.

What's more, I don't know quite what it would mean for something to be the main EA website.

Something like this: https://www.unrealengine.com/ This is the Unreal Engine website. Similar to EA, it's a global community of creative people coming together to work on projects and share ideas. It has a useful FAQ, a learning section, a link to the wiki, a community section with a well structured forum and links to associated websites and groups. You can find everyt... (read more)

RyanCarey

Unreal Engine is a professional industry tool that's obviously able to have a more polished website than that of a fledgling social movement. It's fine to have aspirations to match them, and to want to pursue these with a sense of urgency, but people are only going to be able to recieve criticism in a positive spirit if you give them something concrete and constructive to work with - (more specific than 'well consolidated/organised'). What do you want?

September Open Thread

russoxo9y5

How "effective" is our forum? I apologise for the critical tone of this post. I know a lot of people are working very hard to do their best. I am very excited to see EA be the best it can be.

I imagine EA being a great gathering of ideas; the opportunity to learn and be part of important conversations; people coming together in an organised way.

EA should have an excellent website and a well structured forum. This is a very important foundation to generate sharing ideas and discussion. It also reflects on our image as an organisation. If we ar... (read more)

Evan_Gaensbauer

The name of this social movement, "effective altruism" actually came out of the name Centre for Effective Altruism, which was meant to be the name of one non-profit, not the title which carried much weight for an entire social movement. At least, as far as I know, that was the original intent. As a shorthand for people outside of Oxford all around the world interetsed in the idea of applying effectiveness to doing good and philanthrophy, the shorthand for this nascent global community of however many few dozen or hundred people constituting effective altruism when it started (five years ago?) was called "effective altruism". However, the name 'effective altruism' was sticky, and now it's stuck. A couple years ago, in retrospect, there was a couple conversation not just within the Centre for Effective Altruism, but publicly across the whole movement, about whether effective altruism was good name. Everyone agreed the movement and its ideas needed a name, and "effective altruism" is as good as any and in some ways didn't cause problems other names, e.g., "optimal altruism", wouldn't. That's some long context for where the words "effective altruism" came from, and why we slap them on different websites. The Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA), and its website, just represent the organization out of Oxford itself. "www.effectivealtruism.org" is a website meant as a global landing page for anyone who heard about effective altruism. It was built on behalf of the CEA by their outreach team "EA Outreach", which also organized the EA Global conferences this last summer. It's meant to be a first stop for someone who encounters effective altruism online for the first time, and they can sign up for an email newsletterfrom the Centre for Effective Altruism, but not much else. It's meant to be an intro and PR page, and redirects people to all manner of effective altruism websites which better serve the specific purpose or need of anyone with more specific questions of effective

RyanCarey

This website has links to others at the very top on the right. It's also linked from the Facebook group, and when the landing page (effectivealtruism.org) is redesigned, it'll be linked more prominently from there also. It was discussed that (at least) the landing page and the forum should have matching layout and links right across a top banner - it just didn't pan out, but probably it should be made that way later. As for multiple categories, well that was one of the top few criticisms of LessWrong, the site that this forum was built from. At the time of starting the forum, there was a resounding call for all the content to be lumped together into one feed. Nonetheless, people can comment straight away and only need five karma to post a new thread. Bottom line is: there are people who are thinking hard about how to connect these sites. The forum has good usage, and steadily growing readership. If we have new ideas for how to improve this further and speed things up, let's assess them and implement them.

RyanCarey

Hey Russ, as David Barry has mentioned regarding the division of labor between different discussion spots: "The rough sort of organisation that's emerged is: * Main EA Facebook group for free-wheeling discussion and links. I go through phases where I'll keep up with everything that happens there, but it's a busy busy place. * Local EA Facebook groups serve a similar purpose (and are the natural home for locally-relevant news) but the number of people and posts is less intimidating than in the worldwide group. * effective-altruism.com forum has more detailed posts. * r/SmartGiving doesn't really have much discussion but can be a decent curation of links."

Tom_Ash

Do you mean how much good does it do? I suppose the key questions there are how many people new to EA read it, how many of those "get into" EA partly as a result of this, and to what extent it strengthens the commitment of people who read it and are already somewhat into EA. As a broad social movement constituted by thousands of people around the world, effective altruism isn't the sort of thing which would (or should!) have a "main website". Both of the websites you mentioned belong to a particular organisation, the Centre for Effective Altruism, which shouldn't be seen as constituting or "owning" effective altruism. What's more, I don't know quite what it would mean for something to be the main EA website. There are many different EA introductions, articles, websites and discussion venues, serving many different functions. Insofar as it makes sense for them to direct people to the EA Forum, they can do so on a case-by-case basis, and insofar as it makes sense for the EA Forum to direct people elsewhere, it can also do so. For example, I help run the Effective Altruism Hub community website, and that points people looking to discuss EA to this Forum, the main Facebook group, and the full list of discussion venues on the EA Wiki. De facto, I'd say that the two most prominent places for EA discussion are this Forum and the main Facebook group, though both are run independently so they're not official central forums. As I mentioned there's a full list of discussion venues on the EA Wiki.

Political Debiasing and the Political Bias Test

russoxo9y-1

Hi Stefan, It is interesting to consider the possibility of people making more rational decisions when voting if they could learn to be more self-aware of their own personal biases. I hope that was a fair summary. I have a number of questions to throw at this concept: 1 - Does it really matter what the voters think anyway (is it a true democracy)? http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/04/14/us-oligarchy-not-democracy-says-scientific-study 2 - is it reasonable to expect that people would welcome their world views be challenged and debunked? (Or is this ... (read more)

You Can Now Make Any Event a Fundraiser for Effective Charities

russoxo9y1

Thanks for posting. I'm really excited to learn more about this :)

Effective Altruism Forum
EA Forum

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