Hey Y’all, I’m Mar! I’m an undergraduate student studying Arts and Humanities with a focus in community engagement and a minor in Sustainable Natural Resource Recreation Management.
Learning about EA was entirely a coincidence. I started seeing more and more recommended tweets that interested and/or inspired me. I like the emphasis on reason and rationality, the acceptance of people of diverse world views, and that everyone seems genuinely kind. I followed more accounts, and saw “EA” in many of the bios. I had literally no idea what that meant, and didn’t think much about it until I noticed the majority of people I followed were identifying as Effective Altruists. I started to read more about it, and I like many of the ideas and values.
I feel lucky to have found EA. I’ve been frustrated with my college and degree path. I’m in a small liberal arts program that produces and encourages unrealistic, unproductive, echo-chamber ideas and culture. Some examples are: a non-acceptance of political or economic ideas other than communism or socialism, valuing identity politics over factual information, none of my community engagement classes involving doing community engagement, and hypocritical ideas on the value of human lives. I initially loved this program and believed much of that myself, until living in a kinda-anarchist housing cooperative caused me challenge and re-evaluate a lot of the social and economic beliefs I held. EA addresses a lot of the concerns I have about the world, and does so in a way that feels a lot less harsh and judgemental than my my college community.
I’m drawn to EA because of the positive critical thinking, the acceptance of diverse beliefs, the kindness, and the action. I want to learn more about global sustainability, philosophy, and AI and how it can be beneficial in community engagement.
Some Concerns I Have: There seems to be a really strong emphasis on EA’s being smart and good at science things. I’m a liberal arts girl, and I’m worried that there isn’t much value in that here. Also, I could totally be wrong, but it seems to be a more male dominated community. Which isn’t necessarily bad, just confusing to me.
Random Fun Facts About Me: As if this intro isn’t long enough, here’s more.
I have a cat! Her name is French Toast (I will gladly provide unlimited cat pics)
I’m a vegetarian! And I have a pretty bad dairy allergy so my diet is like 99% vegan
Some things I like to talk about: Decriminalizing drugs, gender and feminism in country music, consent/sexual violence/and sex work, making art
Sociology major from a small liberal arts college here, and resonate with a lot of what you’re saying. I wrote about my journey into EA here, in case that’s helpful:
Fwiw my view is thay you can add a lot, but you’ll have to work a little bit harder to figure out where the best place is for you.
In my case, I have a good fit with community building and operations-type roles, and now product management also.
I wrote my undergrad thesis on social movements, which was partially influenced by EA and I think helped me think more systematically about movement building. I think figuring out ways to explore areas you are particularly interested in through classes could be really interesting (one of the benefits of liberal arts is flexibility on coursework and essays!)
More generally, doing good effectively is hard, and can be scary sometimes. None of us have all or most of the right answers, even if we use big words and fancy numbers and sound confident about specific subclaims. We’re all in this difficult, potentially arduous journey of trying to figure out how to do the most good. There’s no guarantee that we’ll figure it all out, but we just have to give it our best shot, and approach these questions with curiosity, and dedication, and careful thought.
Hi! Unfortunately I’m about an hour and a half away from U of M, and my college doesn’t seem to have an EA group. I will definitely check out the list of humanities ideas though, thank you!
Kudos to you for caring and wanting to contribute!
Regarding your vision to contribute from the fields of art and humanities, I can tell you my personal thought on the matter—which only represents me, but maybe you will identify with it: with the progress of human knowledge and technology, the possibility of human society (and of every detail in it) to change the world is growing at an exponential rate.
This means that the most effective thing that can be done today for the sake of the future, is to pass on to future generations the desire to improve the world. Every effort we make to improve the world will translate into greater impact if we invest it in preserving the ideology. For example, if each generation invests 95% of its effort in spreading the ideology (of EA and related ideologies) to future generations, and 5% in searching for solutions with the tools we have today (the 5% can be seen as a kind of “dividends” from the investment of preserving the ideology), I believe That the future will be much better than if we put most of our efforts into finding solutions right now.
Fortunately for you, the humanities and arts can contribute greatly to efforts to preserve and propagate ideologies.
But this is not a simple task at all! For it to be effective, the messages themselves need to be relevant for the long term—more conceptual and less specific (for example, probably environmental advice that is important will not be relevant in 100, 200 or 5,000 years; but the understanding that all animals deserve rights will be relevant in the future as well).
In addition, the task of transferring ideas to the distant future is very difficult in itself. But it is possible: it has happened with a number of philosophical ideas, social and political ideas and religions.
I believe this could be a direction for what you are looking for.
I think your concerns are definitely valid. EA has very much a quantitative, numbers-focused bent to it, and that tends to attract a lot of men, which probably goes a long way towards explaining the demographics. (EA is around 70% male, according to the 2020 survey) For instance, computer science is ~80% male, and is also a very common degree path among EA’s. So you’re definitely right both that men are more common, and that there’s a strong emphasis on scientific ability and intelligence in EA.
That said, as you mentioned, one of EA’s greatest strengths is that they’re open to other ways of viewing things, so having a different view can sometimes be a good thing. It’s tough in some ways, since you might not want to follow the same path as other EA’s and it might be harder to find a niche. However, there’s diminishing returns to even highly-valuable skill sets, so having a rarer skill set is often a good thing, since less people can do what you can do.
To use some made up numbers (because EA’s love numbers :P) if EA values computer science 10x more than liberal arts, but there’s 20x more computer scientists in EA than liberal arts majors, a liberal arts skillset could be twice as valuable as a computer science one.
Even a liberal arts program can change the world! I’m working on pain and I need anecdotal evidence that Dr David Hanscom’s methods work. You can help if you know anyone with chronic pain- the problem is that the solution seems a bit off the wall, you just write your thoughts/emotions/feelings out for 5 minutes on a piece of paper, rip it up and throw it away.
Hey Y’all, I’m Mar! I’m an undergraduate student studying Arts and Humanities with a focus in community engagement and a minor in Sustainable Natural Resource Recreation Management.
Learning about EA was entirely a coincidence. I started seeing more and more recommended tweets that interested and/or inspired me. I like the emphasis on reason and rationality, the acceptance of people of diverse world views, and that everyone seems genuinely kind. I followed more accounts, and saw “EA” in many of the bios. I had literally no idea what that meant, and didn’t think much about it until I noticed the majority of people I followed were identifying as Effective Altruists. I started to read more about it, and I like many of the ideas and values.
I feel lucky to have found EA. I’ve been frustrated with my college and degree path. I’m in a small liberal arts program that produces and encourages unrealistic, unproductive, echo-chamber ideas and culture. Some examples are: a non-acceptance of political or economic ideas other than communism or socialism, valuing identity politics over factual information, none of my community engagement classes involving doing community engagement, and hypocritical ideas on the value of human lives. I initially loved this program and believed much of that myself, until living in a kinda-anarchist housing cooperative caused me challenge and re-evaluate a lot of the social and economic beliefs I held. EA addresses a lot of the concerns I have about the world, and does so in a way that feels a lot less harsh and judgemental than my my college community.
I’m drawn to EA because of the positive critical thinking, the acceptance of diverse beliefs, the kindness, and the action. I want to learn more about global sustainability, philosophy, and AI and how it can be beneficial in community engagement.
Some Concerns I Have: There seems to be a really strong emphasis on EA’s being smart and good at science things. I’m a liberal arts girl, and I’m worried that there isn’t much value in that here. Also, I could totally be wrong, but it seems to be a more male dominated community. Which isn’t necessarily bad, just confusing to me.
Random Fun Facts About Me: As if this intro isn’t long enough, here’s more.
I have a cat! Her name is French Toast (I will gladly provide unlimited cat pics)
I’m a vegetarian! And I have a pretty bad dairy allergy so my diet is like 99% vegan
Some things I like to talk about: Decriminalizing drugs, gender and feminism in country music, consent/sexual violence/and sex work, making art
Sociology major from a small liberal arts college here, and resonate with a lot of what you’re saying. I wrote about my journey into EA here, in case that’s helpful:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/kE3FRC5gq9QxMrn3w/what-drew-me-to-ea-reflections-on-ea-as-relief-growth-and
Fwiw my view is thay you can add a lot, but you’ll have to work a little bit harder to figure out where the best place is for you.
In my case, I have a good fit with community building and operations-type roles, and now product management also.
I wrote my undergrad thesis on social movements, which was partially influenced by EA and I think helped me think more systematically about movement building. I think figuring out ways to explore areas you are particularly interested in through classes could be really interesting (one of the benefits of liberal arts is flexibility on coursework and essays!)
Welcome to the forum! I don’t know where you go to college, but UMich appears to have an active EA group. Often local connections are helpful.
One idea: if you are interested in research, Lizka (who manages the forum and worked with me last year in a research fellowship) wrote up a list of humanities research ideas for longtermists.
More generally, doing good effectively is hard, and can be scary sometimes. None of us have all or most of the right answers, even if we use big words and fancy numbers and sound confident about specific subclaims. We’re all in this difficult, potentially arduous journey of trying to figure out how to do the most good. There’s no guarantee that we’ll figure it all out, but we just have to give it our best shot, and approach these questions with curiosity, and dedication, and careful thought.
Hi! Unfortunately I’m about an hour and a half away from U of M, and my college doesn’t seem to have an EA group. I will definitely check out the list of humanities ideas though, thank you!
Kudos to you for caring and wanting to contribute!
Regarding your vision to contribute from the fields of art and humanities, I can tell you my personal thought on the matter—which only represents me, but maybe you will identify with it: with the progress of human knowledge and technology, the possibility of human society (and of every detail in it) to change the world is growing at an exponential rate.
This means that the most effective thing that can be done today for the sake of the future, is to pass on to future generations the desire to improve the world. Every effort we make to improve the world will translate into greater impact if we invest it in preserving the ideology. For example, if each generation invests 95% of its effort in spreading the ideology (of EA and related ideologies) to future generations, and 5% in searching for solutions with the tools we have today (the 5% can be seen as a kind of “dividends” from the investment of preserving the ideology), I believe That the future will be much better than if we put most of our efforts into finding solutions right now.
Fortunately for you, the humanities and arts can contribute greatly to efforts to preserve and propagate ideologies.
But this is not a simple task at all! For it to be effective, the messages themselves need to be relevant for the long term—more conceptual and less specific (for example, probably environmental advice that is important will not be relevant in 100, 200 or 5,000 years; but the understanding that all animals deserve rights will be relevant in the future as well).
In addition, the task of transferring ideas to the distant future is very difficult in itself. But it is possible: it has happened with a number of philosophical ideas, social and political ideas and religions.
I believe this could be a direction for what you are looking for.
Good luck!
Welcome to the forum!
I think your concerns are definitely valid. EA has very much a quantitative, numbers-focused bent to it, and that tends to attract a lot of men, which probably goes a long way towards explaining the demographics. (EA is around 70% male, according to the 2020 survey) For instance, computer science is ~80% male, and is also a very common degree path among EA’s. So you’re definitely right both that men are more common, and that there’s a strong emphasis on scientific ability and intelligence in EA.
That said, as you mentioned, one of EA’s greatest strengths is that they’re open to other ways of viewing things, so having a different view can sometimes be a good thing. It’s tough in some ways, since you might not want to follow the same path as other EA’s and it might be harder to find a niche. However, there’s diminishing returns to even highly-valuable skill sets, so having a rarer skill set is often a good thing, since less people can do what you can do.
To use some made up numbers (because EA’s love numbers :P) if EA values computer science 10x more than liberal arts, but there’s 20x more computer scientists in EA than liberal arts majors, a liberal arts skillset could be twice as valuable as a computer science one.
Hi Mar,
Even a liberal arts program can change the world! I’m working on pain and I need anecdotal evidence that Dr David Hanscom’s methods work. You can help if you know anyone with chronic pain- the problem is that the solution seems a bit off the wall, you just write your thoughts/emotions/feelings out for 5 minutes on a piece of paper, rip it up and throw it away.
More details here: https://stuartwiffin.substack.com/p/pain-and-what-to-do-about-it
If you can get someone to try it, please post results here.
Thanks,
Stuart