Effective Altruism Forum
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All of sjsjsj's Comments + Replies

Review of The Good It Promises, the Harm It Does
sjsjsj2
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Thanks for the thoughtful reply. That makes sense. I don't consider myself an EA, and read EA Forum 80% out of intellectual interest, 20% out of altruistic motives, so I'll leave my end of the conversation here (and perhaps subscribe to your blog!), but from the upvotes on your suggestion of a blog update, seems like it met with significant interest among EA Forum readers, so I'd encourage you to do that!

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David Thorstad
Agreed, and will do!
Review of The Good It Promises, the Harm It Does
sjsjsj10
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It would be worth cross posting each blog post here!

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David Thorstad18
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How about a blog update in a month or so about the post series I've written so far, lessons learned, and future directions, posted to the EA Forum?

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David Thorstad11
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Thanks! I always appreciate engagement and would be very happy to see any of my posts discussed on the EA Forum, either as linkposts or not.

I need a bit more independence than the EA Forum can provide. I want to write for a diverse audience in a way that isn't beholden primarily to EA opinions, and I want to be clear that while much of my blog discusses issues connected to effective altruism, and while I agree with effective altruists on a great many philosophical points, I am not an effective altruist.

For that reason, I tend not to post much on the EA For... (read more)

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Suggestions for effective homelessness donations in San Francisco?
sjsjsj7
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Fair point. Is there a consensus within EA that EA should only be focused on what are the most effective causes in terms of increasing total utility, vs there being space to optimize effective impact within non-optimal causes?

My personal interests aside, it seems like there would be an case to address this, as many people outside the current EA movement are not particularly interested in maxing utils in the abstract, but rather guided by personal priorities -- so improving the efficacy of their donations within those priorities would have value. And there ... (read more)

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ruthgrace
yes, this drives me a little bit crazy about EA. by definition "effective altruism" should include any kind of altruism that someone is trying to do effectively. But what is actually practiced by the capital letters Effective Altruism movement is actually "altruistic rationality". As Julia Galef mentions in this 2017 EAG panel, people have three buckets through which they spend their money: personal, personal causes (e.g. the university you went to or homelessness in the city you live), and EA causes (global make-the-world-better type things). Trying to guilt people to move money between buckets, e.g. "your $5 coffee in the morning is killing children in africa" is ineffective outreach. EA has got the third bucket covered, and I don't see why the second bucket shouldn't be included too. Getting people to think about philanthropy and volunteering more rationally in terms of effectiveness is generally good no matter what people's motivations are, and increasing people's rationality in the context of charity IMO will ultimately lead to more people naturally wanting to donate to the global EA cause bucket in the end.
Jason15
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You're fine, in my opinion.  Your post title is eight words. If people don't want to engage with the question you asked, that decision consumed two seconds of their time.

While I understand  and respect why people don't want to devote resources to charity selection within causes they view as relatively low impact, I think it's possible to apply importance, tractability and/or neglectedness to some extent to donation opportunities within most cause areas. And I think it's good to get people thinking more about those criteria, even if they are not thinking about them in the context of an cause area EA views as high-impact.

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lastmistborn10
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I think you're fine, I don't think that only the most effective causes should be discussed or pursued is a EA consensus and I really hope we aren't looking to dissuade people who want to be the most effective within their own framework of priorities as a norm.

Hope you find an org that does great work!

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Effective ways to find love?
sjsjsj1
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Great advice! I recommend Lori Gottlieb's "Marry Him" for more on what standards are appropriate (it's aimed at hetero women but I found it useful as a hetero man), and Logan Ury's "How Not to Die Alone" for more on a number of these topics.

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Ask Me Anything about parenting as an Effective Altruist
sjsjsj4
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Thank you for doing this!

My questions:

  1. Where did the time come from? What activities did you have to give up? How did that feel, emotionally?

  2. How did this change in going from one kid to two?

(I say this as someone who:

  • Can't really imagine working less and still being reasonably successful in my current line of work
  • needs a certain amount of sleep to be productive and happy
  • has a life full of other things that bring me joy and feel important to me

At the same time, I have a strong felt sense that I would like to have a child. So I am currently bet... (read more)

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Frank_R
I want to add that sleep training is a hot-button issue among parents. There is some evidence that starting to sleep-train your baby too early can be traumatic. My advice is simply to gather evidence from different sources before making a choice. Otherwise, I agree with Geoffrey Millers reply. Your working hours as a parent are usually shorter, but you learn how to set priorities and work more effectively.  
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Geoffrey Miller
Good questions. In reply: 1. The time for parenting, in my experience, comes mostly from spending less time watching less TV, playing computer games, and reading; doing less traveling and socializing with friends; and working in a different way -- cutting out wasted time on low-priority things, learning to say no to irrelevant distractions, and learning how to collaborate, outsource, and delegate more efficiently. It's very important to have a partner/spouse/co-parent who's smart, efficient, and pragmatic at organizing life, and figuring out good, sustainable, divisions of labor. 2. My older daughter (age 26) was fully grown when I had my younger daughter (age 6 months), so I haven't had the experience of raising two young kids at the same time. However, I was raising older daughter at the same time as I was helping to care for my teenage step-son, and task-switching between them could be challenging (i.e. not treating a toddler as if they're a teen, or vice-versa).  Regarding sleep: it's absolutely crucial to sleep-train a baby starting around 3-4 months old, using behaviorist learning principles that can be emotionally challenging to implement at first (e.g. ignoring baby crying for certain lengths of time), but that are hugely beneficial in the long run (e.g. having to wake up with them only twice a night, rather than six times a night.)  Once a kid is about 2-3 years old, they'll typically sleep through the night. And remember, young kids sleep MUCH more than adults -- our baby typically goes to sleep around 6:30 pm and wakes around 6:30 am -- plus has four 40-minute naps during the day. So there's quite a bit of time when they're just sleeping in their crib. Regarding the dangers of working less: I was very worried about this as a post-doc (age 30) having a kid, and being concerned about getting an academic job and tenure. However, I found that having a baby was enormously motivating. The book I'd been procrastinating about writing for 3 years suddenly got
Long Covid: mass disability and broad societal consequences [Cause Exploration Prizes]
sjsjsj3
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Siebe, thanks for this, and sorry to hear you're suffering from long COVID! Would you be open to posting a link to this on LessWrong? I think the analysis would be of personal interest to many there, independent of its merits as a cause area.

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SiebeRozendal
I'll post it there in a bit then!
How be productive before your baby turns one
sjsjsj6
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I've been thinking a lot lately about whether I want to have kids given I also want to have a life beyond my kids, and this was very helpful!

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ruthgrace
I'm glad you liked it! My kids are still pretty young, but I'm told it gets much easier as they get older, at least in terms of having enough time and sleep to do things you want to do. Anyone who has older kids -- I'd love to hear how your productivity potential has changed based on how old your kids are.
Ways of improving one's empathy and emotional intelligence?
Answer by sjsjsj2
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As someone who is not very empathetic by nature, I found Authentic Relating practice (check out, for example, www.authrev.org) very helpful for cultivating empathy, as it literally focuses on and trains "getting someone else's world." It also trains awareness of and ability to share your own emotional and somatic experience, which is central to emotional intelligence more broadly. I liked it because it was fun - it felt very connecting (I would leave events with a feeling similar to having cuddled with people, even when no cuddling had taken place - oxytoc... (read more)

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College Public Service Pipeline
sjsjsj2
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You may want to look at Teach for America and Venture for America as potential models

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Mason Quintero
I'd been looking into Teach for America a little but I'm looking into Venture for America now and it is super interesting thank you!
Bayesian Mindset
sjsjsj5
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This was really great. As someone who has been lurking around LW/EA Forum for a few years but has never found reading the Sequences the highest-return investment compared to other things I could be doing, I very much appreciate your writing it.

A thought on something which is probably not core to your post but worth considering:

You said:

The dream behind the Bayesian mindset is that I could choose some set of values that I can really stand behind (e.g., putting a lot of value on helping people, and none on things like “feeling good about myself”), and focu

... (read more)
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kokotajlod15
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+1. That paragraph to me reads like: "Here's a neat trick by which you can forcibly self-modify to care about fewer, simpler, easier-to-measure things! Yay!"

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SoGive is hiring! Analysts wanted to lead evaluation of charities
sjsjsj3
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Makes sense, thanks! It may be worth highlighting that more proactively when you do outreach within EA (and there may be nuanced ways to communicate that even generally).

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SoGive is hiring! Analysts wanted to lead evaluation of charities
sjsjsj7
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"Our approach has similarities with that followed by charity analysis organisations like GiveWell and Founders Pledge."

To put it bluntly, why should someone go to (work for, consult the recommendations of, support) SoGive vs other leading organizations you mention? Does your org fill a neglected niche, or take a better approach somehow, or do you think it's just valuable having multiple independent perspectives on the same issue?

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Matt_Sharp11
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Fair question!

GiveWell and Founder's Pledge both do excellent work, so I don't think it would be right to suggest SoGive's approach is fundamentally better - indeed we often build on the work of these two organisations. However, as you say, there is some value in having multiple independent perspectives on a topic. 

We are aiming to fill a neglected niche, namely the application of an EA/cost-effectiveness approach to a much broader set of charities than those of most other EA organisations. Think Charity Navigator, but with a focus on impact rather th... (read more)

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Answer by sjsjsj2
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There are non-profit consultancies like FSG, Bridgespan, Dalberg, and the tiny Redstone Strategy Group which do this sort of work. I believe they themselves are for profit and so charge significant fees. Not familiar with anything within EA but then I am somewhat on the periphery of EA so there could well be something that exists. Agree that this seems like an intriguing place for organizations with EA expertise to add value!

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Time-sensitive, potentially high-impact opportunity to help get passport holders out of Afghanistan
sjsjsj8
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Here's a direct link to the form for people who don't want to hunt through the twitter thread https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfitym3vRQKDjEMNaK3j5D7SCYVbIhBruIMClUaK0DkP9uO-g/viewform

Thank you for this post and the context on the credibility and impact of this effort!

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How can I help first-year university students to settle on their academic interest?
Answer by sjsjsj1
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I like Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett - one of the best books I've read on the topic.

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Charities I Would Like to See
sjsjsj7
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Given the recent post on the marketability of EA (which went so far as to suggest excluding MIRI from the EA tent to make EA more marketable - or maybe that was a comment in response to the post; don't remember), a brief reaction from someone who is excited about Effective Altruism but has various reservations. (My main reservation, so you have a feel for where I'm coming from, is that my goal in life is not to maximize the world's utility, but, roughly speaking, to maximize my own utility and end-of-life satisfaction, and therefore I find it hard to get e... (read more)

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Dawn Drescher
You don’t have to be concerned about somewhat outré ideas (more outré than AI risk I guess) becoming popular among EAs since their tractability – how easily someone can gain widespread support for scaling them up – will necessarily be very limited. That will make them vastly inferior to causes for whose importance there is such widespread support. There may be exceptions to this rule, but I think by and large it holds.
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MichaelDickens
Yeah I definitely understand that reaction which is why I was not sure it was a good idea to post this. It looks like it probably wasn't. Thanks for the feedback.
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tomstocker
I think there are also a lot of non-selfish reasons for not wanting to breed a load of rats and protect insects that even entemologists think don't have a concept of suffering / pain that's in any way equivalent to what we consider morally valuable.
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kbog
I don't understand what's off-putting about optimizing far-future outcomes. This is a good sketch of what we are talking about: http://www.abolitionist.com/ But apparently even people who call themselves "effective altruists" would rather downvote than engage in rational discussion.