To what extent would people turn off if I told them that I give an amount that is unreasonable in their point of view? Or that I sometimes choose to deny myself something because I think I can do much more good to people far away. Making priorities that are not optimal for your own happy and comfortable lifestyle seems to be socially undesirable even if the people near to you don’t suffer from it. E.g. I tell I give $x per month, which they would not expect from any sensible person with a modest income and would definitely not see themselves doing. Would it be better if I did not mention any number?
ImmaSix
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.
You might want to ask local group organisers to distribute the survey among their members.
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.
Sorry, the date was wrong. It is 14 December, not 7 December.
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 It’s from 2008; my concern is that it might be outdated.
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.
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?)
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.
Can anyone think of small actions you can take to improve a specific skill? I am mostly looking for something concrete that you can do in one afternoon or less.
Examples:
improve your rationality with module on clearerthinking.org. Is this actually effective? It looks useful.
try out programming on code academy
I think the value of non-English EA groups is not their language, but mostly their location. In-person social support and discussion is not replaceable by any type of online communication even using the most modern technology.
It is worth noting that widely discussed EA actions and choices often have to be ‘translated’ to the job market and education system of the specific countries.
Good point. And North European countries are relatively rich, have a happy population, and a language related to English (English is relatively easy to learn). (warning: correlation, not necessarily causation).
A concern mentioned on 8000hours.org is a possible oversupply due to bootcamps. MOOCs might also contribute to this—you can learn programming anywhere without formal education. To what extent is this true?
What is in your company the difference between data science and ‘engineering’?
A lot of discussion is about web development, and most bootcamps focus on that. What other fields are particularly interesting? Most job descriptions I find are not about web development and data science. How much does the European job market differ from the US?
I’m afraid you are right.
If no other EAs live near you, you might consider to travel and couch surf in EA hubs. I’ve done this a few times in the UK, Switzerland and Berlin, and people were surprisingly welcoming.
Unfortunately I cannot reciprocate, because I live in a very EA-low area and will stay there in the future.
The possibility exists, but how many people have ever done this in practise?
Irrespective of how many other people do it (please don’t worry about that too much), I would encourage everyone to overcome their shyness and actually ask for help, information or social support by whatever medium. Personally, I felt delighted when someone sent me a question. Even though I am quite busy, responding was probably well worth my time.
Small idea: a second regular Hangout workathon at a time that is more friendly for European or Asian timezones.
Somewhat bigger: organize an EA-coworking weekend. People from different countries/cities come to together for a few days in a central place to on EA related or personal projects, for example finding out the destination of your next donation. This would require people to travel, but it might be worth it. I won’t have the resources to organize it myself in the next few months, but feel free to take over the idea.
Even bigger: organize more weekend camps. GBS Switzerland organized a few summer and winter camps in Switzerland, and there is the LessWrong community weekend. At the latter, a lot of people from outside hubs attended.
Another factor is that the less connected people are often shy about reaching out to the busy, high-performing EAs they don’t personally know.
Most of the discussion here has been about the facilities, mostly online like EAhub, skillshare, LWSH, EASH, buddy systems, hangout events, and meetups. Even when the facilities are excellent, user-friendlly and findable, people might be too shy to actually ask.
Overcoming shyness is something different from creating tools, and probably more difficult. What could we do about that?
Some ideas (it would be great if you came up with something better):
explicitly claiming that requests for help are welcome
example stories of how individuals got connected and benefited from the connection
possibility for anonymous questions
Some of them are already implemented to some extent.
Evan, I feel the same shyness about my giving behaviour. Ironically, is the social standard of being open about giving within the EA community that helps to overcome this.