I think this is a great idea, and I was really interested, and also touched, by the stories people have already posted, so thank you all! Holly, I love the sentiment of “an extra dose of empathy and mutual appreciation” – I feel like to some extent EA culture, or at least that of its online spaces like this one, is very good at hiding the many meaningful personal relationships that I know the community has fostered.
I found EA in late 2012, just after I’d started my first degree in Oxford. At the first meeting of the science fiction society (which I then never ended up going back to), someone pointed me towards HPMoR. I then looked it up when I got back to my room and read a bit of it, and then found someone talking about EA in the comments section. I never did read the rest of HPMoR until a long time later, and apart from that I’ve never interacted with the rationalist community, so I always feel like this origin story is amusingly mismatched to me… Anyway, I then read about EA a bit on the internet, generally thought it was a great idea, and it sat around in the back of my mind for a while. About a year later, I think, I started regular EA-guided donations.
I know for a fact that I’ve changed a whole lot in the last six years, which I’m happy about, because I really don’t like six-years-ago me. When I started university (studying physics) I was – not remotely to say that I think all of these things are bad, of course, only some of them – very analytical in my approach to most things. I was entirely emotionally inept – I didn’t really form emotional friendships (at least, not ones that were emotional from my side); I sometimes treated people rather badly, enough that I’m pretty surprised looking back that some of my friends stayed with me, and I just really didn’t understand most people’s emotional needs, which often led me to be very judgemental and superior, including on moral issues. I liked having very long, theoretical conversations with my fellow students late into the night (that hasn’t changed!), and I liked being reactionary and expressing opinions that were different enough to be shocking to others. Morally I think I was a pretty rigid deontologist.
(As a point of interest, for a while afterwards, I held a really weird position of just-about-moral-realism, where I thought that what was, universally and really, right and wrong for one person, might be entirely different for another in the same situation – I thought that real morality existed, but depended on the actor about whom the question was being asked as much as the action. I had this way of visualising it that was of there being a little “moral bubble universe” attached to each consciousness that was real, but that was only true for that one person, and each person had a moral sense pointing into that space, that could tell them only about what was right for them.)
Once I encountered EA (which was at the time when it seemed to almost entirely concern charitable donations), I did agree with it wholeheartedly; being good is good, and being better is better. But, to be uncharitable to my earlier self, I also liked it because it let me dissociate morality and caring, and because the analytical, counter-intuitive, and just plain unusual nature of it fit well with my, I suppose, aesthetics of ideas at the time.
I didn’t do a lot more with EA other than read about it and direct my donations, and donate increasing (but still small) amounts for a long while after. In 2015 I finished my physics degree and moved to Cambridge, to start a second undergraduate degree in medieval languages. I read a lot more about EA, on the internet and Doing Good Better once that came out, and also started donating more, and eventually took the Pledge last year. However I didn’t do anything with the Cambridge EA group other than go to one formal hall and hang about on their mailing list. Looking back, I think this was because my plan at the time was firmly to remain in academia in the humanities, and I think I had some guilt over the fact that as someone who felt like I knew a fair bit about EA by now, should probably be using it to direct my career, but didn’t want to and so felt vaguely uncomfortable (although of course I shouldn’t have) about the idea of mixing with lots of core EAs.
Compared to the me described above, by maybe two years ago, I’d changed a whole lot (fortunately) – I’d become actually vaguely emotionally capable, both in understanding others’ feelings and my own. I’ve been able to make a wonderful group of close emotional friendships, and I think (hope?) that I’ve become a much more pleasant person to know since I became able to care. While I certainly do still like to be analytical, and think things through properly (and this is a good thing), my opinions have mostly become a whole lot more mainstream and acceptable on many matters as I worked out that on thing after thing, the norms that society’s settled on are actually often pretty good to follow – I have also entirely changed on political opinions, from pretty rigidly conservative to pretty radically left-wing. I’m now certainly a consequentialist morally speaking, although I haven’t worked out precisely what kind yet. (Preference utilitarianism appeals the most to me, but doesn’t satisfy, and I’m nowhere near a satisfying position on population ethics.)
I definitely still fully identify with EA; in some ways it’s the most prominent belief that I feel I’ve actually stuck with, but my reasons for appreciating EA have definitely changed. Obviously a big part of it is still that EA is simply morally correct. However I feel now, if I may risk getting somewhat floaty, more like I’m an effective altruist because I care about people, because I feel like I’m part of a global community of humanity, and it’s tragic that there are so many people who suffer, people who are just like the friends I love in everything except that they were born in the wrong house; it’s tragic that we can’t help them all, and EA is important to me because tells me how we can make the world the biggest little bit less terrible that we can. I also love the idea of EA as a real community of people dedicated to doing good.
Soon after starting my masters course (still medieval languages) I realised I was much less certain about doing a PhD than I had thought, and didn’t apply for one, instead planning to take a year out and think about what I wanted to do. Since then, I had a bit of an EA renaissance (not that I’d particularly had an off period), started reading things a lot more, listening to the podcasts, went to a couple of EA Cambridge events, talked about things more with the one of my closest friends who is very involved in the Cambridge community. When I read the 80,000 Hours article about operations work, that really clicked with me as I didn’t feel most of the other direct work profiles had, and I ended up getting advice from a couple of CEA people, and now plan to work at something relevant for the next year while I’m committed to living in Cambridge with my friends here, then look for something directly effective after that.
Thank you also for posting something that I felt confident enough to reply to – I’ve been reading the forum for ages but never yet managed to comment on anything. Hopefully it will be easier now! And I’m sorry that this got a little long...
I think this is a great idea, and I was really interested, and also touched, by the stories people have already posted, so thank you all! Holly, I love the sentiment of “an extra dose of empathy and mutual appreciation” – I feel like to some extent EA culture, or at least that of its online spaces like this one, is very good at hiding the many meaningful personal relationships that I know the community has fostered.
I found EA in late 2012, just after I’d started my first degree in Oxford. At the first meeting of the science fiction society (which I then never ended up going back to), someone pointed me towards HPMoR. I then looked it up when I got back to my room and read a bit of it, and then found someone talking about EA in the comments section. I never did read the rest of HPMoR until a long time later, and apart from that I’ve never interacted with the rationalist community, so I always feel like this origin story is amusingly mismatched to me… Anyway, I then read about EA a bit on the internet, generally thought it was a great idea, and it sat around in the back of my mind for a while. About a year later, I think, I started regular EA-guided donations.
I know for a fact that I’ve changed a whole lot in the last six years, which I’m happy about, because I really don’t like six-years-ago me. When I started university (studying physics) I was – not remotely to say that I think all of these things are bad, of course, only some of them – very analytical in my approach to most things. I was entirely emotionally inept – I didn’t really form emotional friendships (at least, not ones that were emotional from my side); I sometimes treated people rather badly, enough that I’m pretty surprised looking back that some of my friends stayed with me, and I just really didn’t understand most people’s emotional needs, which often led me to be very judgemental and superior, including on moral issues. I liked having very long, theoretical conversations with my fellow students late into the night (that hasn’t changed!), and I liked being reactionary and expressing opinions that were different enough to be shocking to others. Morally I think I was a pretty rigid deontologist.
(As a point of interest, for a while afterwards, I held a really weird position of just-about-moral-realism, where I thought that what was, universally and really, right and wrong for one person, might be entirely different for another in the same situation – I thought that real morality existed, but depended on the actor about whom the question was being asked as much as the action. I had this way of visualising it that was of there being a little “moral bubble universe” attached to each consciousness that was real, but that was only true for that one person, and each person had a moral sense pointing into that space, that could tell them only about what was right for them.)
Once I encountered EA (which was at the time when it seemed to almost entirely concern charitable donations), I did agree with it wholeheartedly; being good is good, and being better is better. But, to be uncharitable to my earlier self, I also liked it because it let me dissociate morality and caring, and because the analytical, counter-intuitive, and just plain unusual nature of it fit well with my, I suppose, aesthetics of ideas at the time.
I didn’t do a lot more with EA other than read about it and direct my donations, and donate increasing (but still small) amounts for a long while after. In 2015 I finished my physics degree and moved to Cambridge, to start a second undergraduate degree in medieval languages. I read a lot more about EA, on the internet and Doing Good Better once that came out, and also started donating more, and eventually took the Pledge last year. However I didn’t do anything with the Cambridge EA group other than go to one formal hall and hang about on their mailing list. Looking back, I think this was because my plan at the time was firmly to remain in academia in the humanities, and I think I had some guilt over the fact that as someone who felt like I knew a fair bit about EA by now, should probably be using it to direct my career, but didn’t want to and so felt vaguely uncomfortable (although of course I shouldn’t have) about the idea of mixing with lots of core EAs.
Compared to the me described above, by maybe two years ago, I’d changed a whole lot (fortunately) – I’d become actually vaguely emotionally capable, both in understanding others’ feelings and my own. I’ve been able to make a wonderful group of close emotional friendships, and I think (hope?) that I’ve become a much more pleasant person to know since I became able to care. While I certainly do still like to be analytical, and think things through properly (and this is a good thing), my opinions have mostly become a whole lot more mainstream and acceptable on many matters as I worked out that on thing after thing, the norms that society’s settled on are actually often pretty good to follow – I have also entirely changed on political opinions, from pretty rigidly conservative to pretty radically left-wing. I’m now certainly a consequentialist morally speaking, although I haven’t worked out precisely what kind yet. (Preference utilitarianism appeals the most to me, but doesn’t satisfy, and I’m nowhere near a satisfying position on population ethics.)
I definitely still fully identify with EA; in some ways it’s the most prominent belief that I feel I’ve actually stuck with, but my reasons for appreciating EA have definitely changed. Obviously a big part of it is still that EA is simply morally correct. However I feel now, if I may risk getting somewhat floaty, more like I’m an effective altruist because I care about people, because I feel like I’m part of a global community of humanity, and it’s tragic that there are so many people who suffer, people who are just like the friends I love in everything except that they were born in the wrong house; it’s tragic that we can’t help them all, and EA is important to me because tells me how we can make the world the biggest little bit less terrible that we can. I also love the idea of EA as a real community of people dedicated to doing good.
Soon after starting my masters course (still medieval languages) I realised I was much less certain about doing a PhD than I had thought, and didn’t apply for one, instead planning to take a year out and think about what I wanted to do. Since then, I had a bit of an EA renaissance (not that I’d particularly had an off period), started reading things a lot more, listening to the podcasts, went to a couple of EA Cambridge events, talked about things more with the one of my closest friends who is very involved in the Cambridge community. When I read the 80,000 Hours article about operations work, that really clicked with me as I didn’t feel most of the other direct work profiles had, and I ended up getting advice from a couple of CEA people, and now plan to work at something relevant for the next year while I’m committed to living in Cambridge with my friends here, then look for something directly effective after that.
Thank you also for posting something that I felt confident enough to reply to – I’ve been reading the forum for ages but never yet managed to comment on anything. Hopefully it will be easier now! And I’m sorry that this got a little long...