Investment professional for most of my career (equity research, managing prop investments for a financial group, private equity and VC advisory, investment algorithms). In my free time, I established an educational NGO and ran it for 13 years.
MBA (Oxon), MA (sociology).
Excellent post, thanks for sharing your experience! Strongly recommend for all group organisers
Let’s take the next decisive step and turn it into a proper guerilla underground movement! We must all scatter and during the day pretend to be effective egoists, but when the night falls we will show our real faces...
It’s nice to see this level of strategic leadership—thank you for sharing your plans. In my view, one of the top priorities for sustainable growth is attracting and retaining participants who have both strong commitment to altruistic causes and also the knowledge and good judgment to advance effective approaches. Perhaps we could start a focused discussion on EA Groups Slack about practical steps on how to improve outreach and bring in people who will genuinely strengthen the movement.
On a related note, I have a proposal (with some valuable inputs from @David_Moss) for a new event format designed to deepen connections in the EA community. In short, it’s retreat-style gatherings in informal settings during holidays (like Cyprus) that will feature plenty of open-ended social time, to spark fresh ideas and foster collaboration. Such interactions often build the kind of relationships that sustain long-term commitment. We prepared a detailed concept and I’d be glad to discuss this in more detail with CEA team how it can be piloted to complement existing EA Global events.
Why not add to this highly interesting event an option for online participation?
Vasco, I absolutely agree with you. My idea was just a small thought experiment to let those people who disagree to view this from another angle.
Worrying about shrimp may seem like a mild form of insanity—until one considers: what if there are powerful beings in the universe for whom we are like shrimp? )))
Intuitively, it’s all been very clear (to me, at least!) - but thanks for spending time on making those calculations. An extra argument to convince sceptics is always useful.
In one of his books, Gerald Durrell described in vivid detail how he extracted a particularly evil parasite living in an animal’s tail. The parasite lived inside and gradually ate the tail, and at the smallest alarm, it would hide deep inside the tail. Durrell added—I wish all those protesting to animals living in zoos and claiming animals lead far happier lives in the wild—I wish they all saw this!
I have my own cat shelter so I know too well how many risks cats are facing. In my cat zoo, there are for example a three legged cat and another cat that was hit by a car—if I did not happen to be nearby purely by chance and take her immediately to a clinic, she would have died.
Of course, people are unable to stop suffering of their own kind, not to mention other species. But it does not mean that we don’t need to do anything about it.
It’s great idea—I sent you my suggestion by dm
Sarah, thanks for the post, very interesting. 2 ideas:
1) Why not form a group of volunteers that will be a combination of:
- a focus group (to test new ideas or have quick surveys or something else) and—
an advisory group (to propose new ideas)?
2) Why not have a regular remote (text only or video) interview with an interesting (but maybe not so well-known) person from outside of EA? You could post a list of potential candidates (and broad topics) for such an interview (whom we may already know how to approach) and ask to vote. To add some extra weight to their votes, people could complement them with some specific questions to the “speakers” they choose. Of course, you could also choose some speakers solely at your team’s discretion.
This will: (a) generate new interesting content for the users and (b) at the same time will attract more attention to EA.
Just as an example—here is a research report on the Russian funding of war that was recently widely quoted—https://navigatingrussia.substack.com/p/russias-hidden-war-debt
The author is a top expert on Russia but he is not widely known outside of Russia-focused expert community, so he is clearly undervalued from the viewpoint of publicity. And there are a lot of such interesting people.
And finally, my strong view is that if suddenly EA forum disappeared it could not be substituted by any other platform—neither Reddit, nor Twitter, nor Substack nor something else. So please continue to move on!
We’re focused on AI safety, which no doubt is important. However, we should also consider the moral implications of potentially creating AI beings capable of:
a) thinking independently, i.e. beyond merely fulfilling human requests
b) setting their own goals
How can we ensure a future where humans and AI beings can co-exist, minimizing suffering for both and maximising the potential benefits of collaboration – from scientific discovery to solving global challenges?
This timeline is very interesting, and it leads to a question beyond just when: what happens when AI is capable of independent thought and goal-setting? We’re focused on mitigating risks, which is crucial. However, we should also consider the moral implications of creating beings capable of:
a) thinking independently, beyond merely fulfilling human-designed requests
b) setting their own goals
How can we ensure a future where humans and advanced AI can co-exist, minimizing suffering for both and maximising the potential benefits of collaboration – from scientific discovery to solving global challenges?
Dear Haris,
Thank you for the interesting comments.
As for Toby Ord’s answer, it was in a friendly personal message and I quoted part of it most relevant to the post.
Regarding that some ideas were not unique to the Fabians—you are absolutely right about Mill, one of the people who I admire. Unfortunately, at his time he was unable to do anything to implement his proposal—and I wanted to take into account not only the idea but the implementation, too.
Regarding the rest, I’ll be glad to discuss all this personally.
Best wishes,
Alex
“First of all, I want to tip my hat to AIM (formerly Charity Entrepreneurship)”
I think EA community could also be more proactive in helping more EA-aligned business people—potential future big donors—to appear.
Why not form a group of EA activists, who have business experience, in order to:
1) support EA-aligned people starting their business careers—to help them with advice and mentoring regarding how to be more effective and successful in their business careers
2) think about how to support EA-aligned people in their startup ventures (for example, by giving advice on strategy, marketing, fund-raising, investor-relations, etc.)
Marcus, do you want to discuss?
Executive summary: The Fabian Society, a group of British intellectuals, achieved remarkable social and political reforms through evidence-based research, strategic influence of key institutions, and patient advocacy—offering valuable lessons for modern movements like Effective Altruism.
Key points:
The Fabians succeeded through three main factors: attracting talented people and fostering collaboration, producing rigorous evidence-based research, and strategically spreading their ideas through effectively using media and through “permeation” of institutions.
Their seemingly radical 1887 program (universal suffrage, worker protections, public education) became mainstream democratic policies, demonstrating the power of patient, strategic reform.
The Fabians created lasting impact in particular through actively participating in legislative reforms, founding influential institutions (LSE), shaping the Labour Party, and influencing colonial independence movements.
Lessons for EA include: expanding conference reach through prominent speakers, creating informal international retreats, and developing comprehensive approaches to increase cooperation with governments and strategic partners.
Success required tolerance of diverse views, professionalism, and commitment to patient and methodical execution of long-term strategic goals.
I read this cross-post with great interest. I wonder if I can buy a franchise from Michael Huemer—I’d like to write a whole series of articles using his brilliant line of reasoning.
The first installment would be provisionally titled: “Be Grateful to Your Lord, You Lowly Serf.”
It would explain why the wealth gap between lords and serfs wasn’t a problem at all. After all, the lords protected their serfs from raiders, settled disputes, and maintained order. They trained for years to become warriors, risking their lives to preserve peace. Their horses and armor were expensive! True, the serfs did labor on the land, but the land was granted to the lords by God himself to own and protect—as any honest priest would be happy to confirm.
Besides, the lords carried superior genes and noble heritage, which they even generously shared with some serfs through the occasional exercise of droit du seigneur—not so much a “right,” really, as a touching act of feudal philanthropy.
Surely it’s only fair they received a larger share of the surplus!
Next in the series: “Ancient Rome—Slaves’ Paradise Lost.”