80000 is overloaded with its own burdens and does not have optimal resourcefulness to effectively develop a new practical large-scale initiative. Announcing the Good Technology Project has to grow as a new grassroot movement and organization.
Ilya
Karma: 5
I am very happy to see Announcing the Good Technology Project exploring its mission. This is very unique what you are trying to advance. I am 100% supporting.
Chris and Patrick have made the Podcast via radio a valuable economical resource to communicate and learn without visual component, thus enabling blind or low-vision people to learn and share the EA experiences, and also via low-speed internet .
I did not offer you to start a local chapter.
Vincent, thank you referencing The High Impact Network, which stimulated my further comment to Uri, and an opportunity to meet Brooklyn members of THINK.
Hi Uri, I guess there is no modern (21st century) data yet on potential return of localized outreach because the Oxford-style EA mentality is very young, though the great minds thousand years ago have found the best answers to the challenge of best purpose/meaning of human life. My intuition tells me that the most effective way to actualize EA causes would be through creation of small teams/groups/collectives able of sustainable economical and ideological exchange with the environment. My assumption is that members of such a group recognize their need for harmonious interconnection. Think of a living organism in which all organs work in unity and harmony. A more or less normal organism does not have what you call “management overhead”. Complexity of physical human body, with all its “major and minor” organs, comprised of hundreds of millions of cells, is much greater than complexity of a small (3 to10 person) team. If you are interested and free in principle of forming a small project team for sustainable propagation, I’d like to chat with you in skype.
Uri, it is my understanding that a better EA model of a startup would be a collective one, than individualistic. Your business will grow faster by creating and growing a larger team. For example, if your current team needs 12 month of full time work to complete the startup phase, then by increasing the team 3 times, the work may be accomplished in 3 month.
I am interested to learn nature of your startup for more qualified communications with you.
Michelle, my great respect for work you and your organization are doing.
I am not a native English speaker, and it will take me long time to get 10 karmas, unless members of this forum accelerate me.
I am not a member of GWWC. Not Yet. I even did not know 3 weeks ago that EA-minded organizations exist. My remarks to you this post are as follows:
“to improve the lives of others” sounds better to me than ” to help people in developing countries”.
“Pledge” sounds heavy loaded of many meanings, confusing people and potential donors. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pledge Words like anticipate, intend, expect coordinates with more people.
By locking people into giving 10% or more of what they earn, you lock out people who may be willing to give less than 10%; and do not include people who may want to donate wealth they have not earned but inherited.
Phrase “I make this pledge freely, openly, and sincerely.” is a kind of artificial or antiquated or redundant. People volunteer to donate, so there is no point to impose pledges, unless you wish to have an elitist club, which has merits.
A version of improved text becomes more democratic, readable, and friendlier.
“I recognize that I can use part of my income to do a significant amount of good. Since I can live well enough on a smaller income, I anticipate that for the rest of my life or until the day I retire, I shall give percentage of what I earn, or whatever I can, to whichever organizations can most effectively use it to improve the lives of others, now and in the years to come.”
I sent 2 days ago a private message to your mail box at this forum. Did you receive it?
We must educate public and politicians and promote policies of human services decisions based on optimizing cost-effectiveness for total benefit of human population. Foe example, dogs for blind people can be trained in other countries at a fraction what it costs in America.
Evan, your suggestion of usability testing makes sense to me. I just don’t have enough energy or experience to undertake such work alone. Can you help in setting up a test activity/project?
Peter, I agree that more people will be educated, better sooner than later, into giving by example. The main obstacle is that today’s public education systems do not recognize relevance of effective teaching, in rational-meaningful ways, basic priorities/ values of social harmony and peace. Crucial to any advancement of effective giving is creating sustainable flourishing connectivity among individuals who acknowledge primacy of altruistic inclination for survival and happiness of humanity. I believe that at this time the focus of our efforts has to be on building connectivity network that will be near-optimal to “receive” all potential participants. It seems to me that currently most adherents of EA ideas, and I am one of them, do not clearly understand, or has not yet internalized, what it means to be effectively interconnected as a cohesive pro-altruistic organization. I wish you, and/or other EA leaders, address the EA group connectivity problem in a separate post or essay. Thank you!
Neil, I agree with your sentiment that declarative phrase “effective altruist” is an ideal/abstraction. No mortal can be true (100%) effective altruist. Term “effective altruist” will confuse most people. It also infers ideology “effective altruism”.
I feel that translating declarative abstract meaning into operational average-person words shall help better sustain common sense of what we want to do. Take popular key words, having altruistic flavors, such as voluntarism, charity, giving, etc., and decorate them with qualifiers that imply a degree of effectiveness relatively to an average person cognition. For example, phrases like Charity Wise, Giving It Right, Smart Givers, Giving With Wisdom, etc.
Can’t get it how the content of your essay relates to the notion of this extreme altruism, which is by definition is practical concept having its goal to do more now rather than in 10 years, let alone 100 years. In last 100 years millions of pages have been written by academics and lay people, yet 0.01% of that “mental sweat” had constructive utility to the humankind.
Spreading efficiently effective altruism is absolutely necessary, and needs a right educational methodology for all segments of demographics. I propose that this forum attempt bringing in willing and able people who shall form a Work Group that can create Effective Altruism Education Program (EAEP).
There have always been some effective altruists “discarded” around the world. But only in the 21st century, thanks to the advancement of the internet and skyrocketing existential threats, such people have ways to connect into a cohesive viable group, thus making a kernel of the world to come.
My first effective altruism (EA) activity was spending time and energy looking up in the internet several altruistic phrases, such as “rational altruism” “naïve altruism“ , “wise altruism“, “mature altruism“, “genetic altruism”, “pragmatic altruism”. I am interested in understanding how a person’s worldview may effectively transition from naïve to mature altruistic states of mind. Any ideas?
To me development of category “reducing suffering/connecting” is the most interesting and meaningful as a seed from which everything optimally (effectively) grows. I wish to see at least 1 out of 100 intellectuals to ask question about hierarchy of life purpose and meaning, and then what makes their life effective relatively to life purpose.