Here’s some stuff which I may consider writing when I have more time. The posts are currently too low on the priorities list to work on, but if anyone thinks one of these is especially interesting or valuable, I might prioritize it higher, or work on it a little when I need a break from my current main project. For the most part I’m unlikely to prioritize writing in the near future though because I suspect my opinions are going to rapidly change on a lot of these topics soon (or my view on their usefulness / importance / relevance).
1) Where Does EA take root? The characteristics of geographic regions which have unusually high numbers of effective altruists, with a eye towards guessing which areas might be fertile places to attempt more growth. (Priority 4⁄10, mostly because I mostly already have the data due to working on another thing, but I’m not sure to which growth is a priority)
2) Systemic Change—What does it mean in concrete terms? How would you accomplish it within an EA framework? How might you begin attempting to quantify your impact? Zooming out from the impact analysis side of things a bit to look at the power structures creating the current conditions, and understanding the “replaceabilty” issues for people who work within the system. (priority 3⁄10, may move up the priorities list later because I anticipate having more data and relevant experience becoming available soon, but I’m ).
3) A (as far as I know novel) thought experiment meant to complicate utilitarianism, which has produced some very divergent responses when I pose it conversation so far. The intention is to call into question what exactly it is that we suppose ought to be maximized. (priority 3⁄10)
4) How to turn philosophical intuitions about “happiness”, “suffering”, “preference”, ’hedons” and other subjective phenomenological experiences into something which can be understood within a science/math framework, at least for the purposes of making moral decisions. (priority 3⁄10)
5) Applying information in posts (3) and (4) to make practical decisions about some moral “edge cases”. Edge cases include things like: non-human life, computer algorithms, babies and fetuses, coma, dementia, severe brain damage and congenital abnormalities. (priority 3⁄10)
6) How are human moral and epistemic foundations formed? If you understand the “No Universally Compelling Arguments” set of concepts, this post is basically helping people apply that principle in practical terms referencing real human minds and cultures, integrating various cultural anthropology and post modernist works. (priority 2⁄10)
That very EA survey data, combined with Florida et all The Rise Of The Megaregion data which characterizing the
academic/intellectual/economic output of each region. It would be a brief post, the main takeaway is that EA geographic concentration seems associated with a region’s prominence in academia, whereas things like economic prominence, population size, etc don’t seem to matter much.
Systemic Change—What does it mean in concrete terms? How would you accomplish it within an EA framework? How might you begin attempting to quantify your impact? Zooming out from the impact analysis side of things a bit to look at the power structures creating the current conditions, and understanding the “replaceabilty” issues for people who work within the system. (priority 3⁄10, may move up the priorities list later because I anticipate having more data and relevant experience becoming available soon).
Would be highly interested in this, and a case study showing how to rigorously think about systemic change using systems modeling, root cause analysis, and the like.
Here’s some stuff which I may consider writing when I have more time. The posts are currently too low on the priorities list to work on, but if anyone thinks one of these is especially interesting or valuable, I might prioritize it higher, or work on it a little when I need a break from my current main project. For the most part I’m unlikely to prioritize writing in the near future though because I suspect my opinions are going to rapidly change on a lot of these topics soon (or my view on their usefulness / importance / relevance).
1) Where Does EA take root? The characteristics of geographic regions which have unusually high numbers of effective altruists, with a eye towards guessing which areas might be fertile places to attempt more growth. (Priority 4⁄10, mostly because I mostly already have the data due to working on another thing, but I’m not sure to which growth is a priority)
2) Systemic Change—What does it mean in concrete terms? How would you accomplish it within an EA framework? How might you begin attempting to quantify your impact? Zooming out from the impact analysis side of things a bit to look at the power structures creating the current conditions, and understanding the “replaceabilty” issues for people who work within the system. (priority 3⁄10, may move up the priorities list later because I anticipate having more data and relevant experience becoming available soon, but I’m ).
3) A (as far as I know novel) thought experiment meant to complicate utilitarianism, which has produced some very divergent responses when I pose it conversation so far. The intention is to call into question what exactly it is that we suppose ought to be maximized. (priority 3⁄10)
4) How to turn philosophical intuitions about “happiness”, “suffering”, “preference”, ’hedons” and other subjective phenomenological experiences into something which can be understood within a science/math framework, at least for the purposes of making moral decisions. (priority 3⁄10)
5) Applying information in posts (3) and (4) to make practical decisions about some moral “edge cases”. Edge cases include things like: non-human life, computer algorithms, babies and fetuses, coma, dementia, severe brain damage and congenital abnormalities. (priority 3⁄10)
6) How are human moral and epistemic foundations formed? If you understand the “No Universally Compelling Arguments” set of concepts, this post is basically helping people apply that principle in practical terms referencing real human minds and cultures, integrating various cultural anthropology and post modernist works. (priority 2⁄10)
You may have seen that we analyzed this a bit as part of the EA Survey. I’m curious what data source you have?
That very EA survey data, combined with Florida et all The Rise Of The Megaregion data which characterizing the academic/intellectual/economic output of each region. It would be a brief post, the main takeaway is that EA geographic concentration seems associated with a region’s prominence in academia, whereas things like economic prominence, population size, etc don’t seem to matter much.
Would be highly interested in this, and a case study showing how to rigorously think about systemic change using systems modeling, root cause analysis, and the like.