A thought about the question whether to donate now or later: why would I invest money in myself or my own career, if the expected return on an investment in someone else is greater?
Total (altruistic) human potential might increase more if I donate to SCI which indirectly improves the education of many people, or to CFAR to pay for someone else’s workshop rather than go to the workshop myself.
How and why could this thought be wrong ( or right?)
I have a similar experience for EA in the Netherlands. My post may sound somewhat negative, but I decided to continue writing it to reduce possible bias towards success stories.
We are a very small meetup group, and the most frequent attendees do not even live in the same city—the density of people interested in EA is very low. We meet near the train station in Utrecht, which is a city in the centre of the country. Convincing people from your local network to a meetup in another city is difficult (I managed twice). The large travel cost, low popularity of donating money and unfamiliarity with EA are big thresholds for potential attendees.
I always have great time during the meetups and met really awesome people, got a lot of new insights, and some people reported the social support has been useful.
Mental energy cost is significant for me too. I don’t see this as something really bad.
My rough guess is that in a city where very few people are already interested in EA, organizing a meetup is probably not worth it (depending on how much you value your time). EA Netherlands falls below this threshold, although we decided to keep going. Alternative EA or LW events do not exist at reasonable travel distance. The nearest are Frankfurt for EA and Brussels for LW.
Does anyone know (from experience) good articles/books on not-necessarily-AI technology risks or non-AI technology risk?
Is “Global Catastrophic Risks” by Bostrom worth reading in this context? It’s from 2008; my concern is that it might be outdated.
Sorry, the date was wrong. It is 14 December, not 7 December.
There is a lot of discussion about what to DO in the context of EA. But for everything I do, there is something else that I don’t.
What have you decided NOT to do, because it has a (somewhat) lower priority than other things?
Things that I downprioritized:
some recreational activities: playing the guitar, cooking, baking cakes, reading novels.
I quit volunteering in an online education project. It was low time cost anyway.
meditating (would that increase productivity more than the time spent on it? I don’t really care about the other benefits.)
keep an EA blog, because there are already good ones. My comparative advantage would be to write in Dutch to a local public, but that’s a small group of people who can easily read English.
You might want to ask local group organisers to distribute the survey among their members.
This could lead to good habits, but it might also make you focus on details rather than the big picture. Thinking EA too much can be exhausting, make you feel more guilty than necessary or you could become estranged from the people you meet in everyday life.
On the thoughts you sum up, you might add:
Is the small mistake I made today really bad?
Is this small thing a good step in the way to a greater goal?
For example, I always forgive myself if I happen to spend a few dollars more in the supermarket than absolutely necessary in order to eat healthy, and I there are a lot of bigger mistakes I should forgive myself as well. It’s more important to spend enough time on my career and donation strategy.
For those who are reading along, Ryan is referring to this. I mention CFAR as an example. There might be (identifiable) better giving opportunities somewhere in the world.