Hi! My name is Charlie, and I am the new executive director of Effective Altruism Norway. I was born and raised in the USA, but I have lived in Norway now for the last 10 years and have dual citizenship.
My interests include animal welfare, future history, politics, and meta-EA questions
Hi Ben,
Thanks for the clarification! I am sorry i misunderstood your position. If I reflect on how I think I misunderstood the idea myself, I think its because I see a full time job as a type of relationship. Typically in a relationship there are not goals to meet or timeframes; I have never told a girlfriend, “I expect to feel Z way in 6 months so lets come back in 4 months and see if we are on track.”
Thats a dramatic comparison, but the dynamic is still a little skewed between me and the other person in the relationship in this situation. If I was friends with someone and they told me, “I like you, and I think we could be even better friends in 2 years if you do X,Y, Z, so lets come back to this in 1 year and see where you stand. Dont worry, this wont necessarily affect our friendship, its just something I could expect from you”, then I would struggle to see how failing at improving our relationship in this particular way would not negatively effect our relationship regardless of what you say.
To try to explain it another way, in the example above we are tying goals to the relationship, not setting goals “within” the relationship. The relationship becomes dependent on the goals.
This if of course also very normal in work, your job is very dependent on your performance, but I think framing it in this way can just have a strong interpersonal effect that I would struggle to wrap my head around. It is important for people to feel that they are good enough as they are, not just good enough as their last piece of work.
Saying that, I think goals are great and I love ambitious multiyear goals to keep people aligned and motivated. I think having a project as the primary framework for looking at the employment relationship can make the relationship more angsty than it needs to be.
Of course all of the nuances here could just be a language problem, and we are all working in the same spirit :) In fact, when you first said tours of service I thought of the management trainee programs larger corporations have where you try different departments and geographies in a 2 or 3 year period.
HI,
Could you clarify your section about connecting projects with journalists? I am not sure I understand entirely what you are looking for. Are there are particular journalists you have connections with already, is there a particular geography or topic you are thinking of, etc.?
Also, does this meant that CEA wants to coordinate and do outreach on behalf of all affiliated organizations and groups?
Thanks so much!
Charlie
Hi Ben,
While I appreciate the sentiment of a tour of service, I would also like to highlight the asymmmetrical power imbalance of a tour of service. As I understand it, the difference between contractual work and your tour of service is the spirit of the work relationship: a mutual understanding between the employed and the employer.
However, the only person in that relationship that could extend the relationship, or make it permanent, is the employer. This is to the disadvantage of the employee, and for all practical purposes is no different than a time-limited contract for the employee.
Why would it not be possible to have the spirit of the tour of service and still offer full-time employment? No one gives or accepts a full-time position with the anticipation that they will work their until the retire anyways, so I dont understand what advantages this has for the employee. If after two years an employee feels that their position isn’t worthwhile for them, then they can quit, as many do after 4 years regardless of their contract. A company can fire a person, in some countries, for their role being redundant if the work isn’t necessary anymore. In that case a person can file for unemployment, which they could not do under a time-limited contract.
If the logic for the tour of service is due to the role being temporary or having uncertain funding, then I would suggest that the role is both in practice and spirit just a contracting gig, with all of the moral hazards that accompany those hiring practices.
TLDR: It would be a shame if we just cross our fingers and hope everything goes well in Space for the next 100 years. Also maybe we can all play nice and one day have a space elevator or 10. Its stimulating to imagine the far future when we are orbiting suns throughout the universe, but until then we first have to play nice and figure out how to reliably get off of Earth.
If the future of humanity is dependent on moving beyond earth, then any longterm plans are dependent on us being able to regularly escape Earth’s gravity well with ease and low cost, at least while we are still dependent on Earth.
Ignoring any Deus Ex Machina like an AGI that comes and sorts out all of our problems, we will have to make sure that escaping Earth’s atmosphere remains possible based on our own efforts and problem-solving. Not getting the next 100 years right could be a type of “lock in” that is frustrates future human flourishing.
Currently the main issues I see for access to outerspace.
Militarization of space, or the problem of states, or the problem of global coordination, the potential issue of ultrawealthy private actors
Satellite-killing missiles
Satellite-killing satellites
Rocket-killing missiles or rockets
Drones- murderbots for rockets or even aircraft
Rogue space development, aka the desire for glory. How do we manage potential net negatives that can be ignored due to the desire for glory?
The Kessler Syndrome—Garbage production in LEO could spiral out of control to the point that it is extremely risky, potentially impossible, to launch anything out of Earth’s atmosphere for a significant period of time (10s to 100s to 1000s of years).
The pure difficulty of exiting Earth’s gravity well
Cost
Technological hurdles
Access to appropriate launch sites
Control of powerful actors over access to space
Space Governance
Currently it is the Internationl Telecommunications Union which regulates Low Earth Orbit and sets the requirements for satellite retirement and safety.
Coordination
Planning out the future.
I cant imagine that we can afford many space elevators in the nearer future, so we will probably have to find a way to place nice here without causing any wars or destroying the elevator before it is built.
One (of many, surely) Assumption: Anthropcentric focus, I am not sure if I actually believe humanity should be separated categorically from our ecosystem. When I say ‘we’, I am saying whatever we decide is ‘us’ will probably go into space eventually.
If you are interested in this topic get in touch, I want to begin writing a series of posts first establishing why space is important and explaining immediate concrete issues that we need to address before becoming an extra-earth phenomenon. Its stimulating to imagine the far future when we are orbiting suns throughout the universe, but until then we first have to play nice and figure out how to reliably get off of Earth.
Hi Will,
How do you feel this book fits into the fidelity model of communication advocated by CEA?
Thanks!
I see in your guesstimate you used Expected Impact instead of Expected Value, could you please make your spreadsheets public so we can criticize them? I am not attacking you as a person, only your intelligence. Its for the good of the future of humanity.
We have a potential new member, Monica, who is an actual tram conductor. I am tired of philosophers telling me what to do, so we are recruiting experts into the community. She should be able to resolve the trolley problem in under 10,000 words with only one game theory matrix.
@IanDavidMoss, thanks for the reply. I would love if you could go a little deeper into what is an institution to you. How do you characterize it, and why is this nomenclature important? I just would like to go back to my apples to apples comparison question. My first instinct is that comparing Meta to Blackrock to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation to the Office of the President of the USA to the CCP Central Commitee is going to create some false parallels and misunderstandings of degree of importance or possibility for change ( I will just call this power).
I would suspect that the amount of power of the President of the USA is orders of magnitude greater than the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. So while they might be on a long list together, they are a bit like comparing our moon and the Sun. So we would have a magnitude issue.
In addition we would have a capabilites issue. The office of the President is much more powerful than Mark Zuckerberg, I would argue, but Meta can also do things that the President could only dream of. Facebook has been an incredible tool for spreading information, both for good and nefarious purposes. The US government could only wish for that ability to reach peoples’ brains.
These thoughts lead me to imagine what you final recommendations will look like, and I am not sure. I suspect you will discover that you end up making very specific suggestions for different insitutions. Other than a standard 80k be flexible and build up your career capital suggestion, I think it might be difficult to give thematic recommendations that are equally useful in all of the types of organizations you tackle here.
It is an interesting analysis, but how do you propose to have any influence over these institutions? For example, how would you go about,”Ensuring that Alphabet’s corporate board of directors is well-educated about AI safety issues”? How would you influence Amazon? What would be the intention of the intervention? How would you influence the office of the President of the USA? The importance of these “institutions” seems self-evident, but what you would actually do to change things, and what exactly you would want to change, seem to be more salient questions.
Another question is if you comparing apples to apples when comparing Amazon to Congress. What makes them both institutions, and what is useful about creating a category that includes both of them? Would you use the same interventions?
Hi Jordan,
Thanks for the interest! I am not sure what form this would take, or if I am the right person to be doing it, but if something happens to come up I will keep you in the loop
Thanks Gidon! Would you think this is a useful exercise to try?
Oh Wow, that’s a really fun idea. Thanks for sharing! It’s like someone was writing an EA fantasy series.
Hi Gidon! Thanks for the thoughtful reply.
Sorry if I got lost in the difference between a pitch and an explanation in your post. When we talk about one minute or equally short explanations of EA, I tend to think of them as pitches. In the EA world, I tend to think of long form education and discussion such as a fellowship program as an explanation. I like the distinction, but I would also suggest the line between the two isn’t clear cut. I think this is also indicated when your suggested guidelines are directed to both pitches and explanations.
My interpretation of what you wrote was that you felt that EA pitches were neither very good at attracting people nor explaining EA very well to them either, so its interesting to hear you think the pitches are good.
I like you suggestions, and I love the example of buying a car in your one minute pitch. Its a wonderful illumination of the idea that it’s “the thought that counts” in being kind, but in little else.
If I was to take a step back, though, I would also argue that knowing your audience is very important for even when explaining EA, as not every person looking to learn about EA is interested in all aspects of EA. Lots of people want to do more with their donations, but dont care about epistemics or consequentialism.
Lots of students want to figure out how to use their time and energy best, but dont worry about earning to give just yet.
Others are completely preoccupied by the philosophy of the far future, and couldnt care less about giving what we can.
Some people only care about the fact that EA is so strong on factory farming, but think AI is a fantasy.
There are not that many people who are concerned with knowing the whole of EA and being able to chart it. Most of those people participate in this forum. Knowing the true state of EA is a meta question more than anything to me, and not always useful to the average supporter. (I can talk about this more, but it would take some sapce.)
What the people who need an explanation to EA probably need most an explanation of how EA is relevant to what they care about. We need to frame EA for the audience we are addressing, and until they become fully engaged in EA, a true complete charting of EA for them is probably unnecessary, and for many I suspect overwhelming.
So for me, it goes back to knowing your audience. How can EA help them be better at what they want to do? How can they help us be a better movement? That is a key to building greater engagement, in my opinion.
Also, does anyone have an up-to-date mapping of EA right now?
Hi Gidon,
Thanks for this, a really interesting way to think about the problem!
I think one rule of thumb that can help people simplify the framing problem is to know who your audience is. I am not sure that there is a universal framing that can be applied to all situations, and trying to abstract explanations to the points of having a framework of explanations might lead to some over-efficient explanations.
I think your criticism of the website is right fair, but I believe it has more to do with writing to the wrong audience rather than giving a poor explanation. You mention this when you say that the wording might not appeal to someone who does not tend to think very analytically in daily life, but I do not think that the problem is not that it is not clear enough. The problem is that the text does not capture the reader.
I do not think that the point of a lot of our introductory pitches should to transfer the most bits of information, but rather to get people on the right track, interested and attracted to the idea.
I might argue this is more of a copywriting issue than a clarity issue.
I dont think that there is a 1st degree understanding of EA, and then further degrees of complexity that you understand as you go along. To be able to parse your explanations in this forum post to the degree that you do already requires a high degree of EA expertise. If someone understands all of the information you are trying to transmit in your explanation here, then they are already long past the point of requiring an introduction to EA.
Thanks for this, that was a great write up. I see the author hasn’t written anything since then, unfortunately.
How did you come across this?