Random thought related to activities that require little skill but feel meaningful and arguably contribute to the broad project of EA: I sometimes find myself wondering how I can be one among at best a handful of people who publicly celebrate and cheer for some EA-related work or project. For example a couple of months ago I was part of a small audience for a public talk by an AI researcher who shared advice and talked about her work. The talk itself was interesting and useful for me, but it also felt really meaningful and positive to spend some thoughts and emotions just celebrating her work, feeling grateful that there’s one more person with altruistic intentions and the competence to do difficult things, and me being able to radiate some positivity and gratitude in her general direction. I have the impression that we would be an even nicer community if we did more of this and that simply doing this is already a meaningful and noteworthy contribution.
ETA: Thanks a lot for writing this, Fabienne. I relate a lot to experiencing drops in self-worth because of comparisons with people that in expectation are able to have much more positive impact than I, and also know of others who experience the same, which as you say is really unfortunate.
Random thought related to activities that require little skill but feel meaningful and arguably contribute to the broad project of EA: I sometimes find myself wondering how I can be one among at best a handful of people who publicly celebrate and cheer for some EA-related work or project. For example a couple of months ago I was part of a small audience for a public talk by an AI researcher who shared advice and talked about her work. The talk itself was interesting and useful for me, but it also felt really meaningful and positive to spend some thoughts and emotions just celebrating her work, feeling grateful that there’s one more person with altruistic intentions and the competence to do difficult things, and me being able to radiate some positivity and gratitude in her general direction. I have the impression that we would be an even nicer community if we did more of this and that simply doing this is already a meaningful and noteworthy contribution.
ETA: Thanks a lot for writing this, Fabienne. I relate a lot to experiencing drops in self-worth because of comparisons with people that in expectation are able to have much more positive impact than I, and also know of others who experience the same, which as you say is really unfortunate.