I made a list of what I call “life gems”—those rare and precious things in my life that were easily introduced and have enabled me to “level up” in the amount of positive impact I create. It’s obviously not exhaustive, but I started it ~3 months ago and have been adding to it since as things occur to me.
On motivation:
The System 1 / System 2 framework
Audiobooks—I otherwise struggle to get through books (h/t Sarah Morgan?)
Token payments to an EA friend every time I continue a bad habit or fail to sustain a regular, good habit (h/t Niel Bowerman and Sam Hilton)
Planning when exactly I will work on tasks so that my current to-do list is always short, otherwise I am tempted to do the quick—and usually less important—tasks in order to shorten the list as quickly as possible (h/t Sam Hilton)
On rationality:
The ‘regression to the mean’ phenomenon (h/t Toby Ord)
On practical ethics:
The idea of astronomical waste (h/t Ben Hoskin and Nick Bostrom)
The idea that if you’re not sure where your meat comes from, the harm of factory farming is so great that you should hardly ever take the chance—this is what first made me a vegetarian (h/t a conversation with Marc Crosby although it may be significant that it was still me who came up with the argument)
Figures comparing direct suffering caused by various animal foods (h/t Brian Tomasik)
The implication of the prevalence of r-selected species for wild animal suffering (h/t probably Oscar Horta, David Pearce or Brian Tomasik)
“A quick test of the assertion that enjoyment outweighs pain in this world, or that they are at any rate balanced, would be to compare the feelings of an animal engaged in eating another with those of the animal being eaten.” (h/t Brian Tomasik and Schopenhauer)
Graphs comparing what we’d be prepared to pay for an extra QALY for ourselves, vs what we actually pay for ourselves, vs what the NHS would pay for others, vs what various HIV treatments/prevention methods cost, vs what deworming costs (h/t Toby Ord)
The idea that contributing to collective action has value because of the small chance that you tip the balance (h/t Toby Ord)
The idea that you should choose a cause to focus your career on before thinking about your comparative advantage, because the scale of the differences between causes dwarfs the scale of the differences in your future talents (h/t 80,000 Hours)
The idea that doing good now through donating and direct work at the expense of investing in yourself long-term implies a surprisingly low confidence in the altruism of your future self (h/t Robin Hanson)
The idea that the way you evaluate a startup is different from the way you evaluate an established organisation (h/t Rochelle Harris and CEA)
On normative ethics:
The realisation that deontology and virtue ethics collapse into consequentialism much more easily than one of the other ways around
On metaethics:
The argument that “If nihilism is true, it doesn’t matter what I do, so I might as well assume it’s false.” (h/t DanielLC)
On teamwork:
The notion of having a ‘blaming mindset’ - giving it a bad name helps me to recognise and stop it (h/t Adam Freeman)
The notion that everyone is just fighting a hard battle (h/t Will Jefferson and Ian Maclaren)
On my social life:
The notion of permanent singlehood as a lifestyle choice
On money:
An awareness of the risks of developing expensive new habits / increased standards of living i.e. huge future expense for temporary boost in happiness thanks to the hedonic treadmill
On everything:
Committing to weekly reviews with someone else that include the question “How can we improve this process?” (h/t Niel Bowerman and Sam Hilton)
It’s a good exercise. It helps you have more realistic expectations of how much future self-improvement you can expect, or how often you will be able to really help someone else improve. The content is interesting too, as indications of what efforts you and others could make to help someone else become more impactful.
4⁄22 from 6 years of social/professional relationships with EA types who are hot on personal development
3⁄22 from my 2nd-8th years with the pre-EA/EA community
2⁄22 from 2 years of independent thought prompted by reading philosophy and having a utilitarian friend at sixth form
1⁄22 from 3 years of colleagues at non-EA orgs (Oxfam retail and a “digital transformation” consultancy startup)
1⁄22 from independent thought plus ~7 years of knowing sexually diverse communities via university and EA
1⁄22 from 26 years of family
1⁄22 from really mixed sources
(+ the Robin Hanson one that I want to take off the list in light of the value drift post)
Takeaway: My first year of being part of an EA-type community was disproportionately valuable.
I wonder how other people’s experiences compare, and if they’re similar, the extent to which that implies that we should focus community-building on brief intense immersion and retention-wise simply optimise for something like subscribers to a quarterly newsletter.
That was great, I’ve read about a lot of those things already, but it gave me some more reading material. Fantastic!
The one I’d never really heard anyone say was “An awareness of the risks of developing expensive new habits / increased standards of living i.e. huge future expense for temporary boost in happiness thanks to the hedonic treadmill.”—Where did that idea come from?
I suppose a variety of places, and it’s just particularly relevant to people who try to donate what they can. The term “hedonic treadmill” I probably first encountered via felicifia.org or David Pearce.
I made a list of what I call “life gems”—those rare and precious things in my life that were easily introduced and have enabled me to “level up” in the amount of positive impact I create. It’s obviously not exhaustive, but I started it ~3 months ago and have been adding to it since as things occur to me.
On motivation:
The System 1 / System 2 framework
Audiobooks—I otherwise struggle to get through books (h/t Sarah Morgan?)
Token payments to an EA friend every time I continue a bad habit or fail to sustain a regular, good habit (h/t Niel Bowerman and Sam Hilton)
Planning when exactly I will work on tasks so that my current to-do list is always short, otherwise I am tempted to do the quick—and usually less important—tasks in order to shorten the list as quickly as possible (h/t Sam Hilton)
On rationality:
The ‘regression to the mean’ phenomenon (h/t Toby Ord)
On practical ethics:
The idea of astronomical waste (h/t Ben Hoskin and Nick Bostrom)
The idea that if you’re not sure where your meat comes from, the harm of factory farming is so great that you should hardly ever take the chance—this is what first made me a vegetarian (h/t a conversation with Marc Crosby although it may be significant that it was still me who came up with the argument)
Figures comparing direct suffering caused by various animal foods (h/t Brian Tomasik)
The implication of the prevalence of r-selected species for wild animal suffering (h/t probably Oscar Horta, David Pearce or Brian Tomasik)
“A quick test of the assertion that enjoyment outweighs pain in this world, or that they are at any rate balanced, would be to compare the feelings of an animal engaged in eating another with those of the animal being eaten.” (h/t Brian Tomasik and Schopenhauer)
Graphs comparing what we’d be prepared to pay for an extra QALY for ourselves, vs what we actually pay for ourselves, vs what the NHS would pay for others, vs what various HIV treatments/prevention methods cost, vs what deworming costs (h/t Toby Ord)
The idea that contributing to collective action has value because of the small chance that you tip the balance (h/t Toby Ord)
The idea that you should choose a cause to focus your career on before thinking about your comparative advantage, because the scale of the differences between causes dwarfs the scale of the differences in your future talents (h/t 80,000 Hours)
The idea that doing good now through donating and direct work at the expense of investing in yourself long-term implies a surprisingly low confidence in the altruism of your future self (h/t Robin Hanson)
The idea that the way you evaluate a startup is different from the way you evaluate an established organisation (h/t Rochelle Harris and CEA)
On normative ethics:
The realisation that deontology and virtue ethics collapse into consequentialism much more easily than one of the other ways around
On metaethics:
The argument that “If nihilism is true, it doesn’t matter what I do, so I might as well assume it’s false.” (h/t DanielLC)
On teamwork:
The notion of having a ‘blaming mindset’ - giving it a bad name helps me to recognise and stop it (h/t Adam Freeman)
The notion that everyone is just fighting a hard battle (h/t Will Jefferson and Ian Maclaren)
On my social life:
The notion of permanent singlehood as a lifestyle choice
On money:
An awareness of the risks of developing expensive new habits / increased standards of living i.e. huge future expense for temporary boost in happiness thanks to the hedonic treadmill
On everything:
Committing to weekly reviews with someone else that include the question “How can we improve this process?” (h/t Niel Bowerman and Sam Hilton)
It’s a good exercise. It helps you have more realistic expectations of how much future self-improvement you can expect, or how often you will be able to really help someone else improve. The content is interesting too, as indications of what efforts you and others could make to help someone else become more impactful.
This was the thing that made me go vegetarian.
Do you know if anyone has done a more recent analysis of this kind of thing? He lists quite a few caveats/reservations at the end of this post.
I think these can be categorised as follows (as of Oct 2017):
8⁄22 came from my 1st year with the “pre-EA” community (felicifia.org/reducing-suffering.org (4), Toby Ord (3), the rationalists (1))
4⁄22 from 6 years of social/professional relationships with EA types who are hot on personal development
3⁄22 from my 2nd-8th years with the pre-EA/EA community
2⁄22 from 2 years of independent thought prompted by reading philosophy and having a utilitarian friend at sixth form
1⁄22 from 3 years of colleagues at non-EA orgs (Oxfam retail and a “digital transformation” consultancy startup)
1⁄22 from independent thought plus ~7 years of knowing sexually diverse communities via university and EA
1⁄22 from 26 years of family
1⁄22 from really mixed sources
(+ the Robin Hanson one that I want to take off the list in light of the value drift post)
Takeaway: My first year of being part of an EA-type community was disproportionately valuable.
I wonder how other people’s experiences compare, and if they’re similar, the extent to which that implies that we should focus community-building on brief intense immersion and retention-wise simply optimise for something like subscribers to a quarterly newsletter.
That was great, I’ve read about a lot of those things already, but it gave me some more reading material. Fantastic!
The one I’d never really heard anyone say was “An awareness of the risks of developing expensive new habits / increased standards of living i.e. huge future expense for temporary boost in happiness thanks to the hedonic treadmill.”—Where did that idea come from?
I suppose a variety of places, and it’s just particularly relevant to people who try to donate what they can. The term “hedonic treadmill” I probably first encountered via felicifia.org or David Pearce.
Have you seen this?: https://conceptually.org/about/
Yes. And I think the fact that I find it pretty useless is a good reflection on our community :-) …rather than a poor reflection on the creators!