I donât know the time it takes or the direct tradeoffs but it seems possible that sharing EA content over an audio medium could be higher impact that other forms of community building, as the reach of a podcast is potentially worldwide. Really depends on the empirics. I am a podcast superuser though so Iâm aware that Iâm atypical and just because Iâd like to listen while i do the dishes rather than read that isnât universal!
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If youâre open to adding more content, I would consider reading, say, the most upvoted forum post each month (or even each week if the reaction is positive and you have the time). The EA Forum Podcast is, as far as I know, inactive these days. And nonlinear is doing text to speech but it isnât as good, imo.
Thanks for reviving this! I have rarely gotten around to watching youtube videos of EAG content, but I have listened to most episodes of this podcast :) To directly answer you question, I would suggest adding audio from all the publicly posted youtube videos from recent EAGs (e.g., these), as soon as they are available ( unless there was bad audio quality or some other circumstance that would make it not work in an audio format).
I also think that this would benefit from starting each episode with a short bit of music and a voiceover describing what the podcast is, as well as a very brief âset upâ for what the episode will cover. I would be happy to compose some intro music for it, I have done so for other podcasts and projects including some EA ones like the EA Forum Podcast and Happier World youtube videos. Send me a DM if you want to talk more and thanks again!
Strong agree with the connotation of retreat being associated with leisure/âopulence and that this is an optics issue. I think this is hard to answer in the abstract and the event should probably just pick a name that corresponds to what is happening. E.g., AI governance learning weekend; EA [City] community gathering weekend; etc
I wrote a forum post a few years ago that recommends these exact strategiesânice to see we came to the same conclusions!
Interesting, it wasnât that one but thatâs a similar idea. I think this one I saw was more abstractâlike this one is focused on specific cause areas but I think the one I saw had stuff about evidence and reason and doing the most good.
Hi Yitz! Our long term planâa very high levelâis to (1) do outreach to Jewish communities and spread EA ideas to those communities, and (2) to build a community of Jews involved in EA. We currently have a number of projects in the works including EA fellowships and materials aimed at different Jewish audiences (including different denominations as well as demographics such as for bânai mitzvah age Jews). Iâll send you a DM with more info and my calendly if youâd like to learn more!
I kind of would like to see an EA version of one of these type of yard signs that are very popular where I live. I think I saw someone propose this but I forget where, doesnât seem like it was on the forum. If you decide to do this you should probably have a forum post or contest or something to pick the exact language.
I know this isnât the central part of the post but Iâm not sure the title is really clickbait. It seems like an accurate headline to me? I understand clickbait to be âthe intentional act of over-promising or otherwise misrepresenting â in a headline, on social media, in an image, or some combination â what youâre going to find when you read a story on the web.â Source.
A real clickbait title for this would be something like âThe one secret fact FTX doesnât want you to knowâ or âGrantmakers hate him! One weird trick to make spending transparentâ
This post clearly articulates a lot of the related thoughts Iâve been having and discussing with other organizers; well done. I will add my quickly dashed off thoughts, coming in particular from the perspective of a EA group organizer:
1. The time/â money trade off is real, particularly for mostly volunteer-led groups where volunteer capacity is our main bottleneck. Nonetheless, in my view being cognizant of trade offs when allocating resources is core to EA, and it is a real loss when we just vaguely gesture at the time/âmoney trade off and spend money without really thinking deeply about its best use. I advocate taking a rule utilitarian approach to thisâeven if in any given situation it might be more time that it is âworthâ to really think hard about whether spending funds on something is the best use of those fundsâeven within a more narrow framework like a groupâs overall goalsâit is still worth doing as a rule. This also reinforces the norms of talking explicitly about trade offs, cause prioritization, and thinking strategically.
2. This is anecdotal of course, but I have directly seen people express discomfort when our group spends money on, e.g., paying for food and drinks or renting a âniceâ space for an event. Attendees have directly said in feedback following these events that they are uncomfortable spending this money, and it doesnât seem to align with our EA values. Is this discomfort enough to have tangible consequences like they stop being engaged? Unclear. Moreover, I think it is quite possible that having a ânicerâ event may still be justified by attracting more people, more types of people, and/âor having the people there have a better time. Iâve advocated collecting data about, for instance, how many people come to similar events, one that is catered and one that is not. Such data collection of course also takes time and energy. In general I am pretty skeptical that the marginal dollar spent on food and particularly alcohol at an event is doing much good but without any data this view is very loosely held.
3. FWIW, Matt Yglesias has expressed something in this vein on the 80k podcast:Matthew Yglesias: I was interested when I started hearing about people I know going to effective altruism conferences. I thought to myself, that actually doesnât sound very effective altruism-y. I always associate effective altruism with ideas like, âMaybe donât do the conference, just give the money â that airfare could do a lot of good in the world.â
Re: sending full posts via email: Aside from separate services like substack recommended below there are several wordpress plugins that do this. (I looked into this a while ago when I was working on eaforjews.org but ultimately I decided not to do this for that site). Would be happy to help you set one of these up on your site, Iâd estimate it would take less than an hour.
+1 to GTD
I donât have an answer for you, but I hope and expect the EA Market Testing Team will come up with some good suggestions!
Howeverâmy intuition is there isnât one âbestâ elevator pitch because the persuasiveness will depend on the context and the person giving and receiving the pitch. So the value of a generic elevator pitch might be less than you think.
For instance, if EA coms up naturally in the context of charitable donations, I often talk about how excited I was when I learned about GiveWell, and how their research made me confident that there were charities out there reliably and transparently saving childrenâs lives and helping those in extreme poverty. Through that starting point mention the two main parts of EA, (1) the project of of doing research and finding evidence about how to best help others (2) a community of people committed to acting on that evidence to help others as much as possible with our given resources. In contrast, if EA comes up in the context of animal welfare issues I sometimes talk about the Good Food Institute and how excited I am for the prospect of plant or cell based meat as a way to help animals in a more sustainable way than convincing the world to eat less animal products.
To generalize from those examples, and to echo the advice from Giving What We Canâs excellent guide to talking about EA, I think generally we can have success introducing EA by talking about things that personally excite you about it and providing concrete examples.
The website Labdoor tests supplements for quality and recommends several b12 brands. I donât recall which one I ended up purchasing, I think the NatureNow? (I remove the pills from the container so I can store them more easily)
A related recommendation is the excellent 80k podcast with Mike Berkowitz which is about preserving liberal democracy in the US, so it is broader than just voting rights but includes useful information and recommendations on that front.
Also this video details the process he used to make the song with DeepMindâs Jukebox.
This isnât really what youâre going for but I find this Christmas song that was generated using AI to be quite funny.
Just wanted to add my voice to the chorus of appreciation for your work Aaron. I have an RSS feed of the forum and read at least the title of just about every post and it is really valuable for me. Great work and best of luck in your next endeavors!
Thanks Gordon! I think an pan-interfaith group would be great! Iâd love to compare notes and hear more about what your group is up to.
In the first sentence I think you mean SF?
If you are actually looking for meetups in DC there are plenty including one tonight :) More info about this monthâs events here :) {edited to add the link is https://ââlinktr.ee/ââea_dc]