I think I (and some other EAs) are in a possibly rare category of being young, healthy, and having unusually high financial, etc stability so we can take time off our work/studies and other projects to fully focus on this.
In addition, some of us may have especially relevant skills. (For example, many of us have extensive amateur or professional experience on analyzing tail risks).
While I agree that there should be a strong prior against EAs working on disaster relief, I think this is plausibly different from other disaster relief situations because it’s likely to be unusually bad and humanity is unusually ill-prepared relative to previous disasters.
I’m tentatively more optimistic about new projects than about donating money or joining existing orgs, since this seems like an important space to move fast on.
[Question] Are there good EA projects for helping with COVID-19?
I think I (and some other EAs) are in a possibly rare category of being young, healthy, and having unusually high financial, etc stability so we can take time off our work/studies and other projects to fully focus on this.
In addition, some of us may have especially relevant skills. (For example, many of us have extensive amateur or professional experience on analyzing tail risks).
While I agree that there should be a strong prior against EAs working on disaster relief, I think this is plausibly different from other disaster relief situations because it’s likely to be unusually bad and humanity is unusually ill-prepared relative to previous disasters.
I’m tentatively more optimistic about new projects than about donating money or joining existing orgs, since this seems like an important space to move fast on.