Actually, Habiba, I think there is one more thing that you do during calls and is somewhat subtle: as noted elsewhere most impactful career paths require doing unconventional things and are very challenging. Talking to you helped me feel less scared of trying out these things, and supported me 😊.
Perhaps this is less relevant to people with lots of social contact with other people in the community, but even my family does not understand yet why would I not want to aim for a nice peaceful career since “you can do good in any job”, and the kind of problems that we worry about are not popular.
Perhaps we should create some position in local communities for this kind of support, though 🧐?
I second this! It’s a big psychological boost for someone (like me in 2019) to go from just reading lots about problem areas and the normative/empirical arguments for them, to actually talking with people who are engaged and believe in the ideas. Definitely helps reduce the heuristic of ‘this is weird and I don’t personally know anyone else who thinks this, so I shouldn’t put much stock in it’.
omg writing a comment adding another useful thing we can do = the best kind of positive feedback :P thank you! And I’m really pleased that helped!
And yes I think this is definitely another thing we try and do! It can be really helpful to have a call with someone who shares similar values with you especially when the things you’re considering seem less familiar to friends / family. It’s really quite a privilege to sometimes be the first person involved in the EA community that people speak to :)
I think that local EA group leaders / members can play a similar function. Though there’s some nice complementarity − 80k is very keen to connect people up with folks in their local EA community too and I think groups can suggest folks chat to the 80k team.
fwiw, on the last point, my current plan is to do this kind of thing in local groups—I’m hoping to get funding for peer support in EA groups, basically to try and have this effect you speak of!
Actually, Habiba, I think there is one more thing that you do during calls and is somewhat subtle: as noted elsewhere most impactful career paths require doing unconventional things and are very challenging. Talking to you helped me feel less scared of trying out these things, and supported me 😊. Perhaps this is less relevant to people with lots of social contact with other people in the community, but even my family does not understand yet why would I not want to aim for a nice peaceful career since “you can do good in any job”, and the kind of problems that we worry about are not popular. Perhaps we should create some position in local communities for this kind of support, though 🧐?
I second this! It’s a big psychological boost for someone (like me in 2019) to go from just reading lots about problem areas and the normative/empirical arguments for them, to actually talking with people who are engaged and believe in the ideas. Definitely helps reduce the heuristic of ‘this is weird and I don’t personally know anyone else who thinks this, so I shouldn’t put much stock in it’.
omg writing a comment adding another useful thing we can do = the best kind of positive feedback :P thank you! And I’m really pleased that helped!
And yes I think this is definitely another thing we try and do! It can be really helpful to have a call with someone who shares similar values with you especially when the things you’re considering seem less familiar to friends / family. It’s really quite a privilege to sometimes be the first person involved in the EA community that people speak to :)
I think that local EA group leaders / members can play a similar function. Though there’s some nice complementarity − 80k is very keen to connect people up with folks in their local EA community too and I think groups can suggest folks chat to the 80k team.
fwiw, on the last point, my current plan is to do this kind of thing in local groups—I’m hoping to get funding for peer support in EA groups, basically to try and have this effect you speak of!