There is also the EA coworking discord server: https://discord.gg/5FGY4PyEcT
You can book a time to cowork with me here: https://calend.ly/coworkwithemily
emily.fan
Karma: 137
Why Many EAs Probably Undervalue Their Happiness
Blackpool Applied Rationality Unconference 2025
Blackpool Applied Rationality Unconference 2025
Cool project. Not sure why it’s getting so many downvotes; I’m guessing it’s because the content doesn’t feel tailored enough for the EA forum / doesn’t address the AI Safety considerations of the tool. It feels like a general ad to a general audience.
I do think the the EA community does have an interest in combatting disinformation given that we generally care about truth-seeking and improving institutional decision making.
What is the main difference between SPAR and AI Safety Camp?
Cool article! I enjoyed reading it. Seems like a great way to apply effective altruism style thinking into a different cause area.
My main takeaway from this is currently domestic aid is not neglected but highly ineffective. Making something that already has lots of resources going into it (and a lot more people willing to put resources into it) much more effective can be extremely impactful.
I’m curious how likely it is for US domestic aid to be a lot better given that a lot of people care about making it go well / political resistance.
Thanks again for this article!
The discord link no longer seems to work.
I have mixed feelings about this because I don’t know enough about the situation.
Conflicts:
There are things that people are naturally better at and worse at, and the law of comparative advantage does make sense vs. There are things that people could get good at but don’t because they don’t believe in themselves and don’t try aka imposters syndrome. (I think this may result in some lack of diversity in tech, STEM, EA, etc.)
I think the EA community might lean more towards trying really hard to match people with what they are good at / not bad at. I think the EA community may underestimate that when people try and want to get better at a skill (or that they aren’t good at something because they don’t believe in themselves and don’t try to get better), they can get much better at it and surprise themselves and others by how much progress they’ve made.
It seems to me that community building is what excites you a lot at the moment, which means that there is a lot of potential for improvement because you care about improving.
Are there other things that also excite you as well? It could be good to enjoy community building and try other things too (though I realize that this may come with a lot of emotional baggage)! (As someone who’s been rejected from community building grants, I still feel the emotional baggage and it still makes it hard to make clear-headed decisions)
CEA has a different perspective than the community members who are seeing the community building happen on the ground. I think that getting feedback from the people who in your community is more accurate. I agree with notabot that grant-seeking and community building are different skills. I also agree with Dancer with it being very plausible that CEA made the right decision given the little information they had, but it doesn’t mean that you did anything wrong with your community building.
EA Mental Health and nEArodivergent discord server: https://discord.gg/e6Nxy4N5xu Not super active at the moment, but it does exist.
EA Mental Health and nEArodivergent discord server: https://discord.gg/e6Nxy4N5xu Not super active at the moment, but it does exist.
This isn’t exactly related to the post, but I am a little bit wary about the connotation of more students should have internships / work experience at EA Orgs rather than corporate roles.
I talked to some EAs that say that it’s good for EA uni students to get a job outside of EA first. This makes me think that the issue of EA Orgs not having that many uni interns aren’t actually a big problem.
Why it may be good to pursue a corporate role:
Mistakes made earlier in my career will be much more low stakes
Experiencing the world outside the EA bubble
Skills such as dealing with people in a workplace, learning how a company runs things are transferrable
Financial independence from EA
Other personal reasons (financial independence in general, funding for self-improvement stuff like coaching and good therapy)
On the other hand, there are good reasons for EA Interships
EA internships can be good for community building because it makes uni students more excited about EA!
students can test fit for wide variety of cause areas sooner rather than later.
Depending on what you are interested in doing, the skills might be less transferrable (From Charity Entrepreneurship: “Our data shows that a founder who starts now and runs a charity for three years will outperform (at running a charity) someone who does two years work experience in a consultancy and then starts running a charity for a year.” -https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xHC9AYLGjMoZbEWkX/ce-who-underrates-their-likelihood-of-success-why-applying)
My knee jerk reaction was also that 30-40% was an unreasonably high number, however, I kind of disagree with “Unreasonably large estimates shouldn’t be allowed to frame the discussion just because we can’t reject them with model evidence yet” since it’s hard to know what numbers are reasonable in the first place. It also provides a good starting point to the discussion and to challenge my assumptions on why I automatically want to reject the 30-40%.
I feel like certain populations (particularly women) tend to underestimate their abilities, so I find this comment pretty discouraging. My current take is that a lot of people think they aren’t good enough for XYZ, but if they take a good stab at XYZ in an environment that is encouraging they may realize that they might be able to do XYZ after all.
I think that a lot of people naturally think that they are “not math people” when they could actually be much better at math.
And I don’t think that you don’t have to be the best at math or XYZ to contribute. I think that as long as you’re willing to put some effort and are open-minded and willing to grow, you’ll probably surprise yourself at how much you’re able to do.
@Olivia I’m honestly very impressed with you because you’ve shown a lot of good traits by making this post. It’s clear that you deeply care about making a difference. You were bold and took the initiative to open up about your insecurities. You were agentic in posting this on the forum. You’re willing to take feedback from the audience Keep it up!
++ having a sociology background is great Not sure, but I think Vaidehi may have also studied Sociology at a non-Ivy+ school as well, and she seems to have done some cool stuff in the EA community too.
Not sure how relevant this comment is, but as someone who studies more technical stuff, I am honestly impressed with people who study things like sociology. The sheer number of papers and essays you guys pump out and how you have to think about large social systems honestly scares me! English / history classes were some of the hardest for me in high school!
I also think you might find some of Cal Newport’s books helpful (So Good They Can’t Ignore You, maybe even How To Be A High School Superstar). He shares a lot of encouraging stories about people who become good at what they do without being super impressive beforehand!
I very much like that this post encourages inclusion of how much people are able (or willing to) contribute to EA.
It was very easy for me to talk to people telling me how important it was to have balance in my life and do some fun non-EA things, but then I would see examples of EAs who work long hours and love their work and feel like I’m not making as much of an impact as the people who make EA their life.
I think this post clarifies part of the confusion because it makes it explicit that it is healthy for the EA community to have both, and just because I am not ready (or will ever be ready) to be a dedicate doesn’t mean that it’s a bad thing just because I’m doing less EA stuff than an EA dedicate.
To me, I feel like this distinction feels less polarizing than “hardcore” vs. “softcore” EAs since I feel like dedicates are seen as good, and “softcore” doesn’t sound as nice of a phrase to describe people.
Articles like this are hard to write because the cause of stress and the solution for stress varies for different individuals, and you did seem to try to put the “taking stress personally” as a section which is good, but perhaps I think there could be more. Or perhaps I felt like this article didn’t seem to speak to me personally as much. However, it is evidence that you put in a lot of work to write up this article.
Thoughts on why this article didn’t really speak to me as much.
I do think that underlying causes matter a lot, and would appreciate if there were more elaborations on it. I agree that CBT in general is a good intervention to address a lot of these underlying causes, but therapist searching is extremely difficult, and therapy can be costly in terms of time and money.
Regarding elaborating on underlying causes: For instance, some people find it impossible to get enough sleep due to demands or perceived demands of their work or school. Some people might believe that they need to feel stressed or else they just wouldn’t get anything done. Some might be deficient in B vitamins, magnesium, etc. Some may have social anxiety. Some may be many of the ones I listed above.
Again, this article might not speak to everyone, which is ok. But just wanted to put in some thoughts in case you find it helpful. I think it’s great and inspiring that you took the initiative to start Effective Self-Help and it’s clear that you want to make it good! :)
This comment is late, but anyway...
Though I think there is value to having a more comprehensive survey like the one you have, I do want to pitch having a shorter survey for general comments with maybe 1 textbox.
The survey could be useful to collect new ideas, or just quick thoughts people wanted to share to Effective Self-Help. That way whenever someone has a new idea, they don’t have to click through a bunch of buttons on whether or not they’ve read the Effective Self-Help articles. I know that there is an option to email, but I find myself much more averse to emailing vs. filling out a form.
Although I do want to say that I make this comment as someone who sometimes has random ideas and wants to fill out a short form if I wanted to share something quick.
You can share screen on gathertown (I think I managed to do it before.) However, it seems like in the current gathertown setup (the way the desks are arranged and where videos can be streamed), I haven’t really found a way to see other people’s videos while working in the desk working area, though you can work in other areas and maybe see nearby people’s videos.
I do have a shameless plug to the EA coworking discord server though: https://discord.gg/5FGY4PyEcT where you can share screen! :)
As someone who fits into the trifecta I think it’s less about identities and more about upbringing / messaging associated with identities. I grew up in a family context with strong filial piety, respect for authority, lots of comparisons with other people which leads to feeling not good enough, EA is dismissed as something that’s stupid to do by “authority figures”.
I do think that I need to unlearn a lot from my family’s messaging. For me personally, I’d say it’s much more than 10-25% as a source of stress given how much I need to re-program my brain from all the messaging I received. I’d maybe say like 80%?