A person committed to reason, equity, kindness, and simple living. I’m here for interesting discussions and broader perspectives than those I normally get locally. I live with my two cats (Oliver and Keziah [Kizzie]) and sometimes rescue animals, too.
My career is in analysis and grant writing, and I also have a background in coding (Python, C++, R, etc.). I‘m the owner / operator of Altitude Information Services (AIS), a small, human-centered firm offering fundraising and evaluation services to nonprofits and startups, with an eye toward increasing their own program effectiveness. I’m also a grad school dropout, looking for any opportunities to continue my research outside of academia.
Aside from EA in and of itself, my ethical orientations include moral realism, veganism, longtermism, bioconservatism and existential / societal risk reduction, especially related to AI. My goal is the abolition of all current AI systems, the permanent end to all AI capabilities research, and a global, constitutional acceptance of the natural human condition and a human-driven, non-automated world. My third main focus is looking for ways to make EA philosophy and community more accessible to working-class people and to reduce elitism in the community.
My passions include chess, hiking, kayaking, rock climbing, and backcountry skiing, and I also really love learning languages (I speak English, Spanish, and Japanese, and am studying Chinese and Russian).
Last and least, I’m non-binary and greatly prefer they/them pronouns.
Outsider here! I dropped out of grad school years ago and was never really involved in the “elite” academic or professional scene to which most EA members belong. The term “effective altruism” was familiar to me since my student days in the early ’10s, but I didn’t really know much about it until very recently (the whole OpenAI scandal brought it to my attention, and I decided to explore the philosophical roots of it all over the holiday).