HPMOR and Privileging the Question got me into Less Wrong, and started me thinking about the idea that the problems I’d been hearing about weren’t necessarily the problems that would be best to work on.
I can’t think of a particular GiveWell article that pushed me further toward EA, though Excited Altruism helped me frame the way I was feeling about all of the ideas. Mostly, as I read their charity evaluations (and their past history of seeing certain charities, like VillageReach, underperform), I realized that glib assertions about impact were often wrong, and that deciding this sort of thing *correctly* -- in the absence of a functioning market—was going to be difficult and require that I rely on outside experts to some extent.
HPMOR and Privileging the Question got me into Less Wrong, and started me thinking about the idea that the problems I’d been hearing about weren’t necessarily the problems that would be best to work on.
From there, Money: The Unit of Caring and Efficient Charity: Do Unto Others helped me get interested in GiveWell.
I can’t think of a particular GiveWell article that pushed me further toward EA, though Excited Altruism helped me frame the way I was feeling about all of the ideas. Mostly, as I read their charity evaluations (and their past history of seeing certain charities, like VillageReach, underperform), I realized that glib assertions about impact were often wrong, and that deciding this sort of thing *correctly* -- in the absence of a functioning market—was going to be difficult and require that I rely on outside experts to some extent.
The last big step to get me fully enmeshed in the community was starting a student group. The articles with the most influence on that decision were Ben Kuhn’s reflections on starting the Harvard EA group.