I’m quite familiar with burnout accounts, but perhaps that’s because my wife and I both burned out, and we tend to have more people in our surroundings who share about their experience. A broader study would be quite useful.
Agreed about the value of 10% vs. 20%. The follow-up post will address this question using some actual Fermi estimates.
The movement already looks pretty serious in current PR.
Loyalty norms and tightness at the same time result in a smaller movement, of course. Many people choose to avoid engaging with the movement due to the general unspoken feeling of “you’re not doing enough unless you meet our high expectations”—in fact, one commented exactly this in response to this post. You and I probably have different estimates on the consequences of this to the EA movement.
My general take is that getting more donors to think about the question of “how can I do the most good with my dollars” is going to make the world significantly better.
Agreed on weird cause funding likely being better
Very much agreed about the dangers of bringing in non-aligned people. For the sake of this post, I’m presuming that softcore EAs are value-aligned.
Appreciate your comments about Intentional Insights’ focus on effective giving spreading the movement (or rather its ideas) without that tradeoff, means I didn’t have to bring it up and appear potentially self-promotiony :-)
Many people choose to avoid engaging with the movement due to the general unspoken feeling of “you’re not doing enough unless you meet our high expectations”—in fact, one commented exactly this in response to this post.
Datapoint—I too have felt unsure whether I’m doing enough to justifiedly call myself EA. (I have both worked for and donated to MIRI, ran a birthday fundraiser for EA causes, organized an introductory EA event where I was the main speaker, and organized a few EA meetups. But my regular donations are pretty tiny and I’m not sure of how much impact the-stuff-that-I’ve-done-so-far will have in the end, so I still have occasional emotional doubts about claiming the label.)
Kaj, thank you for sharing! You totally deserve to call yourself an EA and you are indeed a datapoint indicating one of the reasons I’m writing this piece :-) Thank you for all you do and consider sharing about it on the Accomplishments thread.
Hi Julia. My interpretation of the two links is that Gleb was using you and Jeff as examples of “hardcore EAs,” and would like more articles about celebrating softcore EAs along the same lines as that article.
Thanks for this thorough response (upvoted)!
I’m quite familiar with burnout accounts, but perhaps that’s because my wife and I both burned out, and we tend to have more people in our surroundings who share about their experience. A broader study would be quite useful.
Agreed about the value of 10% vs. 20%. The follow-up post will address this question using some actual Fermi estimates.
The movement already looks pretty serious in current PR.
Loyalty norms and tightness at the same time result in a smaller movement, of course. Many people choose to avoid engaging with the movement due to the general unspoken feeling of “you’re not doing enough unless you meet our high expectations”—in fact, one commented exactly this in response to this post. You and I probably have different estimates on the consequences of this to the EA movement.
My general take is that getting more donors to think about the question of “how can I do the most good with my dollars” is going to make the world significantly better.
Agreed on weird cause funding likely being better
Very much agreed about the dangers of bringing in non-aligned people. For the sake of this post, I’m presuming that softcore EAs are value-aligned.
Appreciate your comments about Intentional Insights’ focus on effective giving spreading the movement (or rather its ideas) without that tradeoff, means I didn’t have to bring it up and appear potentially self-promotiony :-)
Datapoint—I too have felt unsure whether I’m doing enough to justifiedly call myself EA. (I have both worked for and donated to MIRI, ran a birthday fundraiser for EA causes, organized an introductory EA event where I was the main speaker, and organized a few EA meetups. But my regular donations are pretty tiny and I’m not sure of how much impact the-stuff-that-I’ve-done-so-far will have in the end, so I still have occasional emotional doubts about claiming the label.)
Kaj, thank you for sharing! You totally deserve to call yourself an EA and you are indeed a datapoint indicating one of the reasons I’m writing this piece :-) Thank you for all you do and consider sharing about it on the Accomplishments thread.
I’m confused about how you use the same article as an example of looking “serious” in PR and as giving “softcore EAs the recognition they deserve”.
Linch is right about my perspective, guess it didn’t come off clearly
Hi Julia. My interpretation of the two links is that Gleb was using you and Jeff as examples of “hardcore EAs,” and would like more articles about celebrating softcore EAs along the same lines as that article.