You note that CEA and 80K don’t seem to be struggling for funds.
What makes you say that? (Not saying I don’t agree, just am unsure)
arikr
Karma: 248
Possible suggestion (for Julia): Posting the thread a day or two in advance will allow people to submit questions early (and vote on which questions they want to see answered), so that Holden’s time can be maximized by giving him more questions to answer on Monday. So that he’s not waiting on Mon, ready to answer questions but with no unanswered questions available.
(This only applies if you think that otherwise there might not be enough questions posted to fully utilize the 3 hours)
I’d like to echo a strong concern that karma based voting will lead to groupthink etc.
I’d feel substantially better if it was karma based upvotes only, and no karma based downvotes. Karma based downvotes allow community insiders to effectively kill posts.
[Link] A Modest Proposal: Eliminate Email
Could you explain how Slack is better on these fronts than email? My intuition is that Slack would be worse on these fronts than email (I think in part because I’ve seen one or two medium posts that talk about the always on IM culture and how it makes it harder to do focused work).
Yes, I hear your thoughts that if the culture was a certain way, then it wouldn’t be an issue.
I resonate with the author’s point though too, that because the marginal cost of email is now so low, it requires an explicit cultural intervention to improve the harm-benefit tradeoff of email.
The cultures didn’t have the problem, then email came around, now they do have the problem, so in some ways the problem is both the culture and the tool, and could be solved by modifying either.
I like this!
Bonus points if the org used software to encourage this, e.g. making the inbox not visible without a second “yes, I’m sure” click unless it was during the email checking hours.
[Link] A great set of free book summaries and notes
[Link] Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
Ah, sorry. That’s my mistake! I’ve fixed that now by adding it to the OP.
Aaron what would you recommend so that this post has a fresh chance to get visibility? Deleting and re-posting it, leaving it as is, or something else? Thanks!
[Link] Book Review: The Secret Of Our Success | Slate Star Codex
What books or bodies of work, not about EA or EA cause areas, might be beneficial to EAs?
My suggestions so far:
“The Secret of Our Success” https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ZpuYSQaLd5uMEoSxK/link-book-review-the-secret-of-our-success-or-slate-star
“Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World” https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/FuztztEKAAfWqpYTY/link-why-generalists-triumph-in-a-specialized-world
Other suggestions and brief summary of what you’ll get out of them:
“SPIN Selling” and “To Sell is Human.” Sales seems to be an often undervalued but important skill, these are good “how” and “why” books, respectively.
“Feeling Good Together” about why marriage counseling generally doesn’t work and how to have good relationships
“Why We Sleep” about the benefits of sleep
“Trust Surrender Receive” about MDMA and how many of our challenges come via trauma
“The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team” about how to enable a team to be productive and collaborate well
“Don’t Shoot The Dog” about reinforcement learning and animal training (you’ll see positive and negative reinforcement everywhere after you read this book)
“How To Get Lucky” about how to be luckier and have more good things happen for you
[Link] Ideas on how to improve scientific research
Thanks, fixed.
@AaronGertler it seems there’s a bug when pasting a link in between braces ().
[Link] Articles about using incentives to improve safety and reduce criminal justice system costs
[Links] Serendipity and discovery, and a tool for making progress on hard questions/problems
I think the “how” is roughly:
If you do not know the steps to your goal with high confidence, then do the following:
You can imagine that you’re looking at a map, and your distant goal is somewhere on the map, but the map is blurry / not yet revealed all the way to your distant goal
So then identify what options you *do* know the steps to (the ones that _are_ visible on the map), and then pick the option from those that is most novel
This is because the more novel it is, the more likely it is to reveal large and unexpected portions of the map, potentially including the part that gives you a visible path to your distant goal
So when uncertain, identify the most novel thing you know how to do/achieve, and repeat that, and that’s likely the best (albeit very roundabout!) route for getting to your distant not-yet-visible-path goal.
If the above is intriguing, I’d highly recommend watching the video – I think it’s a very well spent 15 minutes if watching on 2x speed.
Thanks very much for posting this series. Thorough!