Data analyst at a consulting firm, previously ran an EA university group.
Rebecca
Karma: 1,523
I would be curious if he has observed in interactions a higher rate of people with ADHD in EA circles than otherwise, and if so, whether this observation should be action-affecting for movement building (what he thinks the reasons for it might be). Obviously highly speculative.
I interpreted the arrows to be causal and not just temporal. So effective giving is more often going to cause people to work in a priority path than it will cause people to not work in a priority path where they otherwise would.
Yeah I think it’s a very different calculation if your flight is up to 24 hours long. Also you can only take an exit row seat if you have the (physical) capacity to help in an emergency (e.g. can’t be flying solo with kids or elderly relatives, you have to be able to throw 20kg at a time, can’t have certain other impairments, have to be able to understand the language of the relevant country and so on), so I don’t know how scalable a suggestion that is.
Almost of the elements that make EA seem culty seem to me to hail from the rationality side of the movement: Pascalian reasoning, in-group jargon, hero worship, or rather epistemic deferral to heroes and to holy texts, and eschatology
The hero worship is I think especially concerning and is a striking way that implicit/”revealed” norms contradict explicit epistemic norms for some EAs
Hi Anthony. I would say that in the responses I’ve read where they use words like ‘honestly’, my reading of the tone was that they were going for a “tough love” approach. Using the word ‘honestly’ (when not said to manipulate people) often indicates the person is aware that what they’re saying may been seen as too harsh, but that they think what they’re saying is of enough value to others that it still merits saying (and sometimes may only have that value if said bluntly).
In contrast, my interpretation of the tone in your comments, using the word ‘disrespect’ a lot, asking for an apology etc, was that it was solely about providing value to yourself. For most people I know, the concept of feeling ‘disrespected’ by others, and going around demanding apologies for it, would never occur to them. Having that mindset is something I associate with arrogance, aggression and self-righteousness. I think in general people in this forum are wary of engaging further with people who appear to lack some level of humility.
Perhaps in certain circles it is expected that you ought to defend yourself in that way, in order to show that that what someone has said about you really is incorrect? But in the absence of social pressure in that direction, doing so suggests personality traits that some might be wary of.
We had that as well with EA USyd, but they were all security guards etc working on the campus, or some exchange students.
I think updating one’s LinkedIn with the minimum new information would be substantially easier than this, and potentially more likely than abandoning / procrastinating on the survey?
I think so
This is my impression and experience as well
Maybe she had temporarily dropped out at the time, and later was able to finish?
This isn’t the most valuable criticism, but I’m confused why you capitalise the N and not the T in ‘Non-trivial’?
FYI I found this quite difficult to parse, the grammar was fairly unclear in places. I’m sure there’s great advice here, but it would be helpful if it was a bit easier to read :)
I agree. I would actually go further and say that bringing imposter syndrome into it is potentially unhelpful, as it’s in some ways the opposite issue—imposter syndrome is about when you are as smart/competent/well-suited to a role as your peers, but have a mistaken belief that you aren’t. What Olivia’s talking about is actual differences between people that aren’t just imagined due to worry. I could see it come off as patronising/out-of-touch to some, although I know it was meant well.
That seems unusual to me but fair enough—however in this case we’re talking about a proper noun (the name of an organisation), not a common noun that happens to be in a title/heading (e.g. ‘Non-trivial Efforts to Improve the Future are Possible’).
It’s an issue insofar as people aren’t aware of it
I think Zvi mentions this at some point, but an alternative would be to frame the ‘criteria’ as very loose suggestions not requirements
Perhaps there could be tags for different ‘levels’ of technicality
Would be interested to hear what the problems/feelings in your case were :)
This is a super interesting and inspiring post. Are you able to expand a bit about what you mean concretely by leadership? It’s such a broad term that sometimes people are using different definitions of.
Are you able to expand a bit more on what you mean in “ I also think the subculture is stronger (and stranger) than many highly-committed EAs understand.”
Hi Evelyn, I would be very keen to hear about this! Especially your general thoughts on data science, as I’m not based in the US, though may apply for a US masters in future.