I was confronted with the fact that EA is not as big as I think it is and that Agriculture as well as systemic changes are not directly possible by EA, with that I agree in some part. What is available to EA, at least in terms of underdeveloped rural agricultural economies.
Knowledge, we have knowledge, and I believe the transfer of knowledge is crucial when conversing with farmers, so how do we transfer this knowledge we have to the farmers?
Mini-courses? No, mini-courses would work for people who have internet connection, maybe we could conduct large scale mini-courses where a local could help us devise a classroom type of learning setting and where we could engage a large population of people, while keeping costs down. Yes.
On the topic of mini-courses, the most beneficial way to go is to divide them in two types of production, animal and plant production, because a lot of the people who I read about today were in either of the two. I believe with good practices we could address both poverty in the rural populations but also increase the comfort of the animals, proper feed, proper water and things alike that contribute to animal wellbeing.
I have a lot of things to write about, but I’ll keep it short. I’ll make a more defined outline on how we can do this, and maybe you (the community can help me guide my efforts).
Also I think EA should focus a bit more on agronomy as a whole because food production is a large and unaddressed topic.
I love how I come here, have a quick take about slave labor, something I have directly experienced, and something I fought hard against, and having neo-liberal westerners down-vote me because they think I am talking out of my ass.
For the record, I know of worker rights violations, that were squashed because a judge got a hefty payment, never proven because the right people were greased. For hell’s sake, I as an activist get threats on the daily, stop invalidating my experience when dealing with corruption.
THE GENTRIFIED EA ORGS DOWNVOTED ME, seriosly tho, have you seen someone that is not top 10 attendee in an EA organization? Or someone really heavy on the volunteering experiences?
Also if you disagree with me, and downvote me, come in the comments, call me a dumbass, I don’t bite, I just like being provocative, I get the people going.
I didn’t downvote you (and actually agree with you), but I’m assuming that the people who did justify it by the combative tone of your writing.
Personally I think the forums are way too policing of overall tone. It punishes newcomers for not “learning” the dominant way of speaking (with the side-effect of punishing non native english speakers), and also deters things like humour that make a place actually pleasant to spend time around.
Thank you for the clarification, first off you pegged me as a bilingual, I guess it’s a good wild guess when I hate on westerners and diversity or lack there of.
I’ll make a post about my combative tone, I guess our backgrounds are different, for me being combative is good, it’s similar to passionate, it’s simply who I am at this point. Maybe not the best for casual conversations and civil discussions.
Although I would speculate that it would be harder for a Bryn Mawr graduate to successfully break into EA now than it would have been when EA was very, very young. So founding-era evidence may not be much evidence relating to OP’s claim that “EA organizations have become a gentrified refined versions of what they wanted to be.” (emphasis mine).
Of course I mean that, great that is one example, but most of the bigger EA organizations are packed with western talent, I will let go off of the 10 top schools point. Have you seen anyone that graduated at Addis Ababa or Trinidad or Cluj, I have not, I have interacted with primarily EU-western oriented people, the closest to diversity is that one random Ethiopian intern.
My point was, easterners are either discriminated against or EA is such an echo-chamber that you unconsciously discriminate against easterners.
I feel like EA organizations have become a gentrified refined versions of what they wanted to be. I look around and see close to no diversity, everyone is from a top 10 university, padded backgrounds and middle-upper western class. Where are the poor people? Do the poors not care about EA?
Is there a lack of talent? No.
It’s simply the bias of hiring the most padded resume, with the gazillion volunteer roles and internships, that the average Joe can’t afford because Joe is a poor.
I think you call out a really good problem, I did not downvote, but I may have an idea of why it was downvoted. The problem somewhat do exist, also with race and gender, but the issue might not be resume or hiring strategy (target schools) alone
Not 5 minutes in office, and they are already throwing the Nazi salutes.
Congratulations, Edelweiss was not just a netflix show, it’s reality.
And a great reminder, apart from the jews, there were slavic, roma, gay and disabled people in the camps as well. We can’t sit and just scoff at this, we need to fight back.
Who said we should “PaNdEr” to conservatives? That reads like a caricature of the recent post on the subject. If you’re claiming that there is a pro-pandering movement afoot, please provide evidence and citations to support your assertion.
I think the significant majority of people here—including me! -- are somewhere between unhappy to extremely upset over yesterday’s events, but that doesn’t justify caricaturing good-faith posts. If you have a concrete, actionable idea about how we should respond to those events, that would make for a more helpful post.
Your opening line seems to be trying to mimic the tone of mocking someone obnoxiously. Then you follow-up with an exaggerated telling of events. Then another exaggerated comparison.
Exaggerated is a big word, the guy threw three heils, while it’s a roman salute as well, nobody in the west uses it as a roman salute tho, just like the swastikas.
Also let’s not forget, Elon forsake his own blood for being transgender, do you think that the average random transgender person on the street would mean anything more than a pebble in his shoe? What did he call that? The WOKE BRAIN VIRUS....
We can’t let small transgressions pass by because they are small, every avalanche starts with a little bit of slippage.
People don’t like angry political comments here, they prefer a dispassionate tone. They also generally don’t like stuff that sounds like “left-wing activist”, even though most people here don’t identify as “right-wing” but as left/centre-left/centre/libertarian. Not to mention that whilst most people here are not pro-Trump, probably a small minority are, and they can strong downvote if they want to, and if you get no upvotes, that means low Karma even if most people aren’t bothered by what you said. Also, I think the Musk Nazi salute thing reads as “silly media bullshit” even to a lot of people who don’t like Trump, because they don’t think Musk is a “real fascist”*. Musk probably tends to get (too much of) the benefit of the doubt round here, because he shares a lot of preoccupations with the futurist, existential risk wing of EA, and because he is idolized in Silicon Valley as a great man (something that predates his public turn to the far-right.)
*(I think Musk is a real fascist, but I still kind of feel like that, because I don’t think he was actually signaling that he secretly loves Hitler, he was just trying to offend for shits and giggles. Very obnoxious, but not necessarily a sign that he is secretly working towards some sort of Nazi-style regime behind the scenes.)
1. Your style of writing doesn’t meet the standards of this forum. It’s vague and memey. I’m inclined not to be that bothered but it definitely is outside of the expected decorum of the forum.
2. You aren’t adding much to the conversation here, this is a pretty liberal forum and we already know Trump acts like a buffon and Elon is an anti-woke troll who has recently supported the AfD (I generally think people here are too quick to downvote things that feel low-effort, it’s probably directionally better if people spew a bit more garbage if that would generate more discussion and cause people to second-guess commenting less—and second I don’t think it’s so irrelevant that he did this although their are lots of other reasons to be concerned that are more concrete).
3. People here are on net not super involved in politics and might feel offended that you imply it is important since it hurts their ego, and since you write in a style that is not within the accepted standards it’s easy for them to express their discontent with your writing style even if the impetus to downvote is partially that they think you are being reactionary and disagreeing with their priors.
But yea I’d recommend writing something like ~ “The trump inauguration festivities have caused me to update towards thinking American politics is a more important cause area because x”. It still probably won’t be received particularly well here without being more quantitative/fleshing it out more but you won’t get 26 downvotes.
So I am basically the Trump of the forum, just not as influential or as rich as him lol.
I’ll address point by point, I would have made a post, but I am on timeout wooopsies.
My style of writing is really raw, stream of consciousness without thinking about what I type, I just type. I know I can be inflammatory sometimes, I like that way of communication, especially on sterile forums like this one, I feel like most of the posts here lack passion or a personal touch. They feel so well polished and digested, that they feel artificial at times. I like hot takes, I like angry posts and angry commenters.
I really am not, I feel like this forum is dead with posts or quick takes that are posted once or twice per day from the whole community. Even bad discussions in my opinion are better than no discussions at all, this place is a remake of silent hill most of the time.
People not being political on here is really weird for me because the whole of EA is affected directly by politics, from animal welfare to AI, everything is politics.
Anyways, thank you for your very constructive and well thought out response, thank you for taking the time, fairly new to posting on this forum and well I’ll probably melt in the pot, eventually.
For the record, while I don’t think your original post was great, I agree with you on all three points here. I don’t think you’re the only one noticing a lack of engagement on this forum, which seems to only get active whenever EA’s latest scandal drops.
I was confronted with the fact that EA is not as big as I think it is and that Agriculture as well as systemic changes are not directly possible by EA, with that I agree in some part. What is available to EA, at least in terms of underdeveloped rural agricultural economies.
Knowledge, we have knowledge, and I believe the transfer of knowledge is crucial when conversing with farmers, so how do we transfer this knowledge we have to the farmers?
Mini-courses? No, mini-courses would work for people who have internet connection, maybe we could conduct large scale mini-courses where a local could help us devise a classroom type of learning setting and where we could engage a large population of people, while keeping costs down. Yes.
On the topic of mini-courses, the most beneficial way to go is to divide them in two types of production, animal and plant production, because a lot of the people who I read about today were in either of the two. I believe with good practices we could address both poverty in the rural populations but also increase the comfort of the animals, proper feed, proper water and things alike that contribute to animal wellbeing.
I have a lot of things to write about, but I’ll keep it short. I’ll make a more defined outline on how we can do this, and maybe you (the community can help me guide my efforts).
Also I think EA should focus a bit more on agronomy as a whole because food production is a large and unaddressed topic.
We are using way too much plastic in agriculture, lowkey someone needs to find a replacement and fast.
Anyone has any pointers on startups for more innovative mulching materials?
I love how I come here, have a quick take about slave labor, something I have directly experienced, and something I fought hard against, and having neo-liberal westerners down-vote me because they think I am talking out of my ass.
For the record, I know of worker rights violations, that were squashed because a judge got a hefty payment, never proven because the right people were greased. For hell’s sake, I as an activist get threats on the daily, stop invalidating my experience when dealing with corruption.
You westerners have no idea how much corruption there is in the East. Like seriously.
THE GENTRIFIED EA ORGS DOWNVOTED ME, seriosly tho, have you seen someone that is not top 10 attendee in an EA organization? Or someone really heavy on the volunteering experiences?
Also if you disagree with me, and downvote me, come in the comments, call me a dumbass, I don’t bite, I just like being provocative, I get the people going.
I didn’t downvote you (and actually agree with you), but I’m assuming that the people who did justify it by the combative tone of your writing.
Personally I think the forums are way too policing of overall tone. It punishes newcomers for not “learning” the dominant way of speaking (with the side-effect of punishing non native english speakers), and also deters things like humour that make a place actually pleasant to spend time around.
Thank you for the clarification, first off you pegged me as a bilingual, I guess it’s a good wild guess when I hate on westerners and diversity or lack there of.
I’ll make a post about my combative tone, I guess our backgrounds are different, for me being combative is good, it’s similar to passionate, it’s simply who I am at this point. Maybe not the best for casual conversations and civil discussions.
Julia Wise, who works at CEA, studied at Bryn Mawr College.
(Another comment of yours makes me think by “top 10 attendee” you mean “has attended a top 10 university”.)
Although I would speculate that it would be harder for a Bryn Mawr graduate to successfully break into EA now than it would have been when EA was very, very young. So founding-era evidence may not be much evidence relating to OP’s claim that “EA organizations have become a gentrified refined versions of what they wanted to be.” (emphasis mine).
I feel like EA organizations have become a gentrified refined versions of what they wanted to be. I look around and see close to no diversity, everyone is from a top 10 university, padded backgrounds and middle-upper western class. Where are the poor people? Do the poors not care about EA?
Is there a lack of talent? No.
It’s simply the bias of hiring the most padded resume, with the gazillion volunteer roles and internships, that the average Joe can’t afford because Joe is a poor.
I think you call out a really good problem, I did not downvote, but I may have an idea of why it was downvoted. The problem somewhat do exist, also with race and gender, but the issue might not be resume or hiring strategy (target schools) alone
“wE sHoULd PaNdEr mOrE tO cOnsErvatives”
Not 5 minutes in office, and they are already throwing the Nazi salutes.
Congratulations, Edelweiss was not just a netflix show, it’s reality.
And a great reminder, apart from the jews, there were slavic, roma, gay and disabled people in the camps as well. We can’t sit and just scoff at this, we need to fight back.
Who said we should “PaNdEr” to conservatives? That reads like a caricature of the recent post on the subject. If you’re claiming that there is a pro-pandering movement afoot, please provide evidence and citations to support your assertion.
I think the significant majority of people here—including me! -- are somewhere between unhappy to extremely upset over yesterday’s events, but that doesn’t justify caricaturing good-faith posts. If you have a concrete, actionable idea about how we should respond to those events, that would make for a more helpful post.
Anyone want to give back criticism as to why I am getting down-voted?
Your opening line seems to be trying to mimic the tone of mocking someone obnoxiously. Then you follow-up with an exaggerated telling of events. Then another exaggerated comparison.
Exaggerated is a big word, the guy threw three heils, while it’s a roman salute as well, nobody in the west uses it as a roman salute tho, just like the swastikas.
Also let’s not forget, Elon forsake his own blood for being transgender, do you think that the average random transgender person on the street would mean anything more than a pebble in his shoe? What did he call that? The WOKE BRAIN VIRUS....
We can’t let small transgressions pass by because they are small, every avalanche starts with a little bit of slippage.
People don’t like angry political comments here, they prefer a dispassionate tone. They also generally don’t like stuff that sounds like “left-wing activist”, even though most people here don’t identify as “right-wing” but as left/centre-left/centre/libertarian. Not to mention that whilst most people here are not pro-Trump, probably a small minority are, and they can strong downvote if they want to, and if you get no upvotes, that means low Karma even if most people aren’t bothered by what you said. Also, I think the Musk Nazi salute thing reads as “silly media bullshit” even to a lot of people who don’t like Trump, because they don’t think Musk is a “real fascist”*. Musk probably tends to get (too much of) the benefit of the doubt round here, because he shares a lot of preoccupations with the futurist, existential risk wing of EA, and because he is idolized in Silicon Valley as a great man (something that predates his public turn to the far-right.)
*(I think Musk is a real fascist, but I still kind of feel like that, because I don’t think he was actually signaling that he secretly loves Hitler, he was just trying to offend for shits and giggles. Very obnoxious, but not necessarily a sign that he is secretly working towards some sort of Nazi-style regime behind the scenes.)
Multiple reasons.
1. Your style of writing doesn’t meet the standards of this forum. It’s vague and memey. I’m inclined not to be that bothered but it definitely is outside of the expected decorum of the forum.
2. You aren’t adding much to the conversation here, this is a pretty liberal forum and we already know Trump acts like a buffon and Elon is an anti-woke troll who has recently supported the AfD (I generally think people here are too quick to downvote things that feel low-effort, it’s probably directionally better if people spew a bit more garbage if that would generate more discussion and cause people to second-guess commenting less—and second I don’t think it’s so irrelevant that he did this although their are lots of other reasons to be concerned that are more concrete).
3. People here are on net not super involved in politics and might feel offended that you imply it is important since it hurts their ego, and since you write in a style that is not within the accepted standards it’s easy for them to express their discontent with your writing style even if the impetus to downvote is partially that they think you are being reactionary and disagreeing with their priors.
But yea I’d recommend writing something like ~ “The trump inauguration festivities have caused me to update towards thinking American politics is a more important cause area because x”. It still probably won’t be received particularly well here without being more quantitative/fleshing it out more but you won’t get 26 downvotes.
So I am basically the Trump of the forum, just not as influential or as rich as him lol.
I’ll address point by point, I would have made a post, but I am on timeout wooopsies.
My style of writing is really raw, stream of consciousness without thinking about what I type, I just type. I know I can be inflammatory sometimes, I like that way of communication, especially on sterile forums like this one, I feel like most of the posts here lack passion or a personal touch. They feel so well polished and digested, that they feel artificial at times. I like hot takes, I like angry posts and angry commenters.
I really am not, I feel like this forum is dead with posts or quick takes that are posted once or twice per day from the whole community. Even bad discussions in my opinion are better than no discussions at all, this place is a remake of silent hill most of the time.
People not being political on here is really weird for me because the whole of EA is affected directly by politics, from animal welfare to AI, everything is politics.
Anyways, thank you for your very constructive and well thought out response, thank you for taking the time, fairly new to posting on this forum and well I’ll probably melt in the pot, eventually.
Thanks for the time fam, have a good one.
For the record, while I don’t think your original post was great, I agree with you on all three points here. I don’t think you’re the only one noticing a lack of engagement on this forum, which seems to only get active whenever EA’s latest scandal drops.