Aaron Gertler 🔸

Karma: 19,634

I ran the Forum for three years. I’m no longer an active moderator, but I still provide advice to the team in some cases.

I’m a Communications Officer at Open Philanthropy. Before that, I worked at CEA, on the Forum and other projects. I also started Yale’s student EA group, and I spend a few hours a month advising a small, un-Googleable private foundation that makes EA-adjacent donations.

Outside of EA, I play Magic: the Gathering on a semi-professional level and donate half my winnings (more than $50k in 2020) to charity.

Before my first job in EA, I was a tutor, a freelance writer, a tech support agent, and a music journalist. I blog, and keep a public list of my donations, at aarongertler.net.

Aaron Gertler 🔸Nov 3, 2023, 9:55 AM
5 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Anyone tried to monetize a hobby with the intent of ETG?
Depends on the hobby and how good you are. Some things are relatively easy to monetize (you can teach lessons or do live performances), but even in those cases, you’ll be competing with people who do your “hobby” as their job, and you’re probably better off doing more of whatever your job is (working extra hours, freelancing...).
The thing I do is play games in tournaments, which is less common that streaming/gigging/etc., so this analysis may be of limited value, but: I’ve made something like $75,000 playing Magic: the Gathering and Storybook Brawl over the last four years (donating ~80% of that), but it took thousands of hours to do so, and a few unlucky turns of a card could have cost me most of the money. And I’m in the top 0.01% among people who try to play those games seriously in terms of success; many people roughly as good as me have put in more time to earn less.

Aaron Gertler 🔸Oct 18, 2023, 10:02 PM
3 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Lizka’s comment on: AMA: Six Open Philanthropy staffers discuss OP’s new GCR hiring round
Thanks! I’ve added a direct link to the roles now, to reduce potential confusion.

Aaron Gertler 🔸Oct 5, 2023, 10:50 PM

2 points

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Aaron Gertler 🔸Oct 5, 2023, 10:44 PM
11 points
3 ∶ 0
on: Should you leave bad reviews on low quality vegan restaurants?
I’m not sure how many stars you should leave, but I think there are ways to write a review that successfully convey both of:
1. This restaurant wasn’t very good
2. Vegan food is great and you should eat it
A very brief sketch of a review for a mediocre vegan restaurant:
“I was happy to find a vegan restaurant in AREA, and I thought it was cool they offered DISH. So I ordered that, as well as OTHER DISHES. Unfortunately, the food wasn’t great; I thought OKAY DISH was fine, but BAD DISHES had problems; DESCRIPTION OF PROBLEMS. The service was fine, ETC., ETC.
There are some much better vegan restaurants I’d recommend that aren’t too far from here; the DISH at RESTAURANT 1 is to die for, and RESTAURANT 2 has a great atmosphere for lunch dates. As for this restaurant, I’m giving two stars for food, three for service, and five for “not hurting animals”, since that’s a real advantage to this place over non-vegan options. I’ll average that to a three, but would still recommend the other vegan places I mentioned.”

Aaron Gertler 🔸Sep 26, 2023, 11:31 AM
40 points
9 ∶ 0
on: My life would be much harder without the Community Health Team. I think yours might too.
I really liked this post and agree with much of it.
I ran the Forum for a while. This involved handling interpersonal conflict. At worst, the conflicts on my plate were things like “an argument between two people” or “someone having a mild breakdown in text form”. These are relatively minor issues on the CH scale, but they were among the most stressful elements of my job; I’d get lost for hours trying to write the perfect moderator response, or arguing with someone in DMs about how I’d resolved a situation.
I’d find dealing with CH situations much more stressful — because of their severity, and because I wouldn’t even get to write a moderator response. I thrive on being able to explain myself, and forced silence/vagueness would drive me crazy. Instead of “using quotes from a public post to describe why we’ve banned someone for a week”, I’d have “using my best judgment about a story with multiple sides to explain why we’ve made a decision that will have a serious impact on the lives of multiple people, at least one of whom will be unhappy with the decision and possibly share their side on the Forum later”. And I might not even be able to say what the decision was!
So while I don’t know enough about internal CH matters to say that I’d agree with all their decisions, I appreciate that having to make those decisions at all — and face public scrutiny without recourse to transparency — is extremely difficult, and that there is no way to “win” every such decision.

Aaron Gertler 🔸Sep 20, 2023, 12:27 AM
3 points
2 ∶ 0
on: Mistakes, flukes, and good calls I made in my multiple careers
In retrospect it is crazy that I updated so much on only four rejections!
Does giving up after two rejections make me twice as crazy?
(I love the “mistake” vs. “fluke” distinction, and wish I’d thought to use it in my own essay.)

Aaron Gertler 🔸Sep 20, 2023, 12:22 AM
3 points
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on: Writing About My Job(s): Research Assistant at World Bank / IMF
This is an excellent post!
I really like seeing profiles of jobs that are closer to being “entry-level” for classic EA-flavored career tracks, to give people a better sense of what they’ll be doing early on (it’s common for other things, like the 80K podcast or EAG talks, to be focused on work from more senior people).

Aaron Gertler 🔸Sep 19, 2023, 7:21 PM
5 points
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on: Say sorry to the people who you (accidentally) ghosted at EAG
Upvoted for pointing out that replying to people is a nice thing to do.
But I disagree with “norm” — I prefer the framing “this is an especially nice thing to do”, where “norm” feels more like “you’ve done something a bit wrong by failing to do this”. (How people ;interpret the term will vary, of course, it’s possible you meant the former.)

Aaron Gertler 🔸Sep 19, 2023, 7:18 PM
2 points
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in reply to: Linch’s comment on: Say sorry to the people who you (accidentally) ghosted at EAG
I am roughly as high-profile as Linch (if we use Forum karma as a proxy, and why wouldn’t we?). Everything he says here also fits how I engage with EAG messages.

Aaron Gertler 🔸Sep 19, 2023, 7:12 PM
2 points
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in reply to: Vaidehi Agarwalla 🔸’s comment on: vaidehi_agarwalla’s Shortform
I also try not to use “EA” as a noun. Alternatives I’ve used in different places:
- “People in EA” (not much better, but hits the amorphous group of “community members plus other people who engage in some way” without claiming that they’d all use a particular label)
- “People practicing EA” (for people who are actually taking clear actions)
- “Community members”
- “People” (for example, I think that posts like “things EAs [should/shouldn’t] do” are better as “things people [should/shouldn’t] do” — we aren’t some different species, we are just people with feelings and goals)

Aaron Gertler 🔸Sep 13, 2023, 4:13 AM
4 points
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in reply to: Jens Aslaug 🔸’s comment on: You Should Write a Forum Bio
Welcome to the Forum!

Aaron Gertler 🔸Sep 8, 2023, 7:25 PM
23 points
8 ∶ 2
in reply to: pinkfrog’s comment on: A quick update from Nonlinear
Speaking as an advisor to the mod team who ran this past some active mods:
This isn’t something we’d issue a warning for in this context (describing a third party’s actions in a way that doesn’t seem aggressive or dismissive). In the context of a direct attack (e.g. “why are you bitching to us about something that doesn’t matter?”), it could make a comment seem more aggressive and might (weakly) push us toward more substantial action.
*****
Taking my advisor hat off, I generally prefer for the Forum to be less coarse, and I do see “bitching” as gendered (similar to e.g. “pussy”), so on balance I’d rather see “complaining”.
This is relatively minor in the grand scheme of my personal preferences for Forum comments, but I recognize that other people might (justifiably!) be more offended by the word than I am. As a cis male, I’ve seldom been accused of “bitching” about things; I’d guess that certain other Forum users aren’t so lucky.

Aaron Gertler 🔸Aug 30, 2023, 8:38 PM
2 points
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in reply to: EA Opportunity Board’s comment on: List of EA-aligned email newsletters (did I miss any?)
Added!

Aaron Gertler 🔸Aug 22, 2023, 9:10 PM
30 points
11 ∶ 0
on: An Elephant in the Community Building room
I’ve started feeling super guilty and sad about how much I, the EA community, have wasted on supporting my participation in various community building and research endeavors—I’m not really any more capable or competent at doing the things I’ve done than a local American graduate would have been.
I obviously know much less about you than you do. But speaking to my own experiences, the second part of this rings false:
- I wouldn’t hire someone to do something for me unless I thought they were the best person who would accept an offer. This makes me think that the people who hired you thought you were more capable and competent than the other available people.
- It’s easy to overestimate how many people are as capable and competent as you are — especially if you’ve spent most of your working life in a bubble where all the people around you were hired through an intense, selective process. I gave up on EA work for well over a year because I overestimated the world (or underestimated myself).
- Someone getting hired from a very different background, such that they had to struggle more and overcome greater barriers just to be competitive, seems likely to end up being more capable/competent than their average peer in the long run, even if they were roughly equal at the time they were hired.
  - If one person starts a 1600m race 50 meters ahead of someone else, but they’re both tied as they finish their first lap around the track, the person who started from behind is probably going to win. In this metaphor, you’re the person who seemingly started behind (though I’m making an assumption from very little knowledge); if I were looking for talented people to bet on, you’d stand out on that account.
  - More broadly, I’d guess this is part of the reason that such a large fraction of successful U.S. startups have at least one immigrant founder; at whatever point these founders successfully entered the American business scene, they were presumably growing / developing a bit faster, on average, than their local rivals.
I think the community-level questions you raise are worthy of much more discussion, and there’s no way I can address them fairly in the scope of this comment — but apart from that, I do endorse raising your own self-estimation a bit.

Aaron Gertler 🔸Aug 5, 2023, 10:32 AM
13 points
2 ∶ 0
on: How my view on using games for EA has changed
I was involved with Effective Giving Quest; that project ended for reasons unrelated to the difficulty of influencing people through game development. (It wasn’t really about making “EA games” — the goal was to convince pro gamers and developers to donate money from their ordinary work.)

Aaron Gertler 🔸Aug 4, 2023, 9:30 PM
29 points
4 ∶ 0
in reply to: Vaidehi Agarwalla 🔸’s comment on: University EA Groups Need Fixing
By “their actual prio”, which of these do you think they meant (if any)?
- The area where they could personally do the most good with their work
- The area that should absorb the highest fraction of EA-interested people, because it has the most strong opportunities to do good
- The area they personally cared most about, to the point where it would feel wrong to answer otherwise (even if they technically thought they could do more good in other areas)
I’ve sometimes had three different areas in mind for these three categories, and have struggled to talk about my own priorities as a result.

Aaron Gertler 🔸Jul 21, 2023, 12:12 AM
2 points
0 ∶ 0
on: U.S. Has Destroyed the Last of Its Once-Vast Chemical Weapons Arsenal
I reached out to some of the people working to make this day happen to say a few things: one, thank you for being part of making the world a safer place; two, thank you for following through after it lost all attention from the public; three, thank you for inspiring me to work in the same way.
This is outstanding!
For anyone reading who hasn’t tried it, I highly recommend sending nice notes to strangers who do good things; it’s a fun way to procrastinate, and it doesn’t take long to write a compliment that will make someone happy.

Aaron Gertler 🔸Jul 13, 2023, 10:18 PM
2 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Where do I fit in terms of AI risk?
Regarding point (2), you might find this post a good resource, though I’m not sure how much of the advice will be helpful in your circumstances.
A couple of other ideas that come to mind:
- Set up alerts for jobs on the 80,000 Hours job board that might fit your qualifications (start with a generous definition of “might fit”; you can always narrow down the alerts later). Or just look at the board every so often, set a filter, and skim through the listed jobs.
  - When looking at jobs, I recommend framing it to yourself as “it would be cool if one of these were randomly a good fit”, rather than the “ugh, everything seems like a bad fit”. I used to have the latter frame when I was job-hunting, and it made the process pretty aversive.
- Apply for a 1-on-1 session for 80K (if I hadn’t already). They currently speak to ~1/3 of applicant; seems worth a try.
  - I don’t know what the current demand is for hardware engineers interested in AI safety, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the supply was very low, implying that even a small change in demand could lead to some open opportunities. (That said, this isn’t my area and I might be totally wrong.)
As for point (1), I think you’d have more luck if you put that question in a separate post with a title like “is my circuit design job making a bad AI outcome more likely?” I think that title is more likely to draw attention.
I’d then crosspost that post to LessWrong, which has a bigger population of people with opinions on AI safety.

Aaron Gertler 🔸Jul 8, 2023, 6:21 AM
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Big Bass’s comment on: Radical Empathy
In my experience, the term “radical empathy” isn’t used very often when people explain these ideas to the public—I more often see it used as shorthand within the community, as a quick way of referring to concepts that people are already familiar with.

In public communication, I see this kind of thing more often just called “empathy”, or referred to in simple terms like “caring for everyone equally”, “helping people no matter where they live”, etc.

Aaron Gertler 🔸Jul 6, 2023, 10:26 AM
4 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Rejection thread: stories and tips
I wrote about getting rejected from jobs at GiveWell and Open Phil in this post.
Other rejections that shaped my career:
- Soon before graduating, I was rejected from Bridgewater, my dream job at that point, after full-day interview at their office. I got a bit of feedback here, along the lines of “you had trouble connecting the ground and the clouds” (however confusing that sounds, it’s how confused I felt at the time).
- I was rejected by The Onion for a writing position, and by the New York Times when I submitted a review to their newsletter for student writers. I wrote in detail about both rejections, including the content I submitted. (I still kind of like the sample Onion articles I wrote, but most of the headlines are total garbage.)
  - More relevantly, I was rejected by Vox when they hired their first set of Future Perfect writers. I figured it was because I had no professional experience, but then they hired Kelsey Piper, who had no professional experience and turned out to be incredible. A memorable case of “huh, I did not realize how outclassed I was here”.
- When I was in college, I tried many times to get work published in non-student publications and succeeded only twice (for something like a 5% hit rate). The two articles I pitched successfully took dozens of hours in total (one of them involved a multi-day trip) and earned me $100 in total, so maybe the other rejections were a blessing?
- Despite many applications, I never secured a “real” summer internship in college — some combination of “bad interviewer” and “mediocre GPA”, I think. Particularly painful was a rejection from Ideas42, a behavioral-science think tank, since I’d been reading several shelves’ worth of relevant books in the year leading up to that. (At the time, I conflated “knowing a lot of things” with “good at doing work”.)
- I was also rejected by McKinsey, BCG, and various other “normal” consulting firms that seemed to be hiring hundreds of my fellow students.
  - Looking back through my journal, I’m reminded that part of this might have been the fact that I sent out ten or so resumes with the wrong link — instead of my homepage, I was sending recruiters to a random, somewhat ominous image hosted on my blog. Shudder.
What links here?
- AnonymousTurtle's comment on Rob Gledhill’s Quick takes by Rob Gledhill (Aug 31, 2023, 11:42 PM; 7 points)