I’m experimenting with “norms-pledges” to help reduce forum anxiety. Maybe it could be a good social technology IDK. Click [Show More] to read them all:
🕊 Fresh Slate After Disagreement Pledge: I hereby pledge that if we disagree on the forum, I will not hold it against you. (1) I will try not to allow a disagreement to meaningfully impact how I treat you in further discourse, should we meet in another EA Forum thread, on another website or virtual space, or IRL. I know that if we disagree, it doesn’t necessarily mean we will disagree on other topics, nor does it necessarily imply we are on opposing teams. We are most likely on the same team in that we both wish to have the most good done possible and are working in service of finding out what that means. (2) Relatedly, I pledge to not claim to know what you believe in future, I can only confidently claim to know what you wrote or believed at a given time, and I can say what I think you believe given that. I know that people change their minds, and it may be you or me who does so, so I understand that the disagreement may not even still stand and is not necessarily set in stone.
👨👩👧👦 No Gatekeeping Pledge: I hereby pledge that if I am seeking a collaborator, providing an opportunity, or doing hiring or anything akin to hiring, and you would otherwise be a top candidate if not for the following, I will try not to gatekeep: (1) If an opinion you’ve shared or broken-norm you’ve done (on the EA forum or elsewhere) is relevant in a potentially negative way to our collaboration, that I will ask you about it to gain clarity. I will not assume that such an incident means you will not be suitable for a role. I will especially try hard not to make assumptions about your suitability based on old or isolated incidents, or if your digital footprint is too small to get a good picture of who you are and how you think about things. (2) I will not penalize based on someone being a social or professional newcomer or being otherwise unknown to me or my colleagues. If the person is a top candidate otherwise, I will do my due diligence to determine cultural fit separate from that.
🤔 Rationalist Discourse Pledge: (1) I hereby pledge to try to uphold rationalist discourse norms as presented here and here, and comedically summed up here.
🦸♀️Preferring My Primary Account Pledge: (1) I hereby pledge that this is my main EA Forum account. I will never use multiple accounts to manipulate the system, as by casting multiple votes or stating similar opinions with different accounts. (2) I also pledge that, although I can’t be sure what comes, I strongly intend to not use an anonymous or different account (alt or sockpuppet), or any account other than this, my primary account. I pledge that I am willing to take on some reputational risks on this, my primary account, in service of putting truth, transparency, integrity, and a complete narrative over my own anxiety, and to give ideas I think are worth advocating for the best chance at adoption. Therefore I pledge that I will not use an alternate account out of general anxiety around personal or professional retribution or losing clout. CAVEAT 1: I reserve the right to use an alt account in cases where *specific* retribution or other danger can be expected in my particular instance. As example: I reserve the right to use an alt account out of concern about riling up a suspected stalker, specific known bad-faith actor, specific known slanderer, etc. CAVEAT 2: I also reserve the right to use an alt account for the benefit of others. Example: in cases where revealing my own identity would reveal the identity or betray the privacy of some other party I am discussing.
🙇♂️Humility in Pledging Pledge: I hereby pledge that I take these pledges for my own self-improvement and for altruistic reasons. It’s okay to disagree that pledges are useful and important for you. (1) I don’t expect others should necessarily take a norms pledge. I believe the pledges only work if people take them after deep consideration, and I don’t expect I can know all the considerations for others’ situations. Therefore I understand there may be situations that it is actually right that a user avoid taking a pledge. Therefore I will not judge others for not having taken a pledge, including that I will not dismiss other’s character if I see other accounts without a pledge. (3) Additionally, I don’t presume that others not taking a pledge means they would even necessarily act differently than that pledge would imply. I don’t assume their intentions are even different from mine. Perhaps a person is new to the idea or just trying to protect their energy by not opening themselves to criticism. (3) I won’t automatically dismiss a user’s reasoning if I see the user violating norms pledges I’ve made. I still will give their claims a chance to stand on their own merits. (4) If you see me violating a pledge I’ve taken, I will always appreciate if you bring it up to me.
Ivy Mazzola
Just scanning shortform for kicks and see this. Good thoughts and I find myself cringeing at the term “existential risk” often because of what you say about extinction, and wishing people spoke about utopia.
Can I ask your reasoning for putting this in shortform? I’ve seen pieces on the main forum with much less substance. I hope you write something else up about this. I think utopia framework could also be good for community mental health, while for many people still prompting them to the same career path and other engagement.
Sorry you are getting downvoted. You might want to emphasize what you say in your link:
”I view this drop as an experiment. My opinion is that smaller donors may need more to feel appreciated. While giving has a positive benefit on a person’s psychology, it’s easy to feel disconnected when you don’t see the benefits of your donations.”
I think this is good for information value and potentially as an actual intervention. I’ve spoken to people in the community I respect about doing something like this (actually, funding an EA artist to create materials relevant to the charity’s mission, to be sold as NFTs, eg, a portrait of an imaginary person who is helped by your donation, a picture of a utopia), and all found it interesting and worth exploring further. That said, I hadn’t thought about it from a standpoint of making donors feel more appreciated. I thought of it as more a marketing and virality opportunity among a community of people who are quite well off (because a picture is worth a thousand words).
[Edit: 3] Caveats:
1. Probably want to be sure it isn’t traced back to the EA movement* as an official intervention because NFTs get a lot of crap, especially from classical environmentalists for their carbon output (from what I hear, I actually don’t know about this). EA already struggles with elitist appearance, and articles about NFTs are kinda clickbaity right now.
2. Unless this is a really passive activity (which it probably is for you), I’m not sure this is best use of time for an EA. (I still think could be rather good use of time for an artist uninterested in doing non-art interventions though).
3. I don’t know why you picked GiveDirectly, and tbh that might be a bit of why you were downvoted too? It is explicitly seen as the baseline for effective charity, eg, what our “last dollars” will go to once all the better interventions have been funded. Other charities are calculated as multipliers of it. Eg, AMF is seen as something like 10x** as effective if you want to stick with global poverty and health. StrongMinds was recently evaluated to be about 12x as effective as GD. And that isn’t counting non-human, policy, and longtermist areas (though replaceability of donations is a whole can of worms, so I get why they aren’t ideal for a project like this). [Edit: I realize that not all charities have crypto wallets, but if the difference in impact is so large, perhaps messaging another charity to encourage them to get set up would be a good use of time]*I actually think this is less of a risk with actual art. It is more human, and art makes people’s hearts soften.
** Actually I think it’s higher but a quick google is showing 10x
As a community manager, I care a lot about maximizing the potential of any community member who is already deep enough on the EA engagement funnel to even be applying for a grant. In addition to the (very good) reasons in OP’s post, I want to see the grantmaking ecosystem become less centralized because:
1. Founders, scalers, and new projects are a bottleneck for EA and it is surprisingly hard to prompt people to take such a route. It seems to be a personality thing, so we should look twice before dismissing people who want to try.
2. Even if a project ends up underperforming, the opportunity to try scaling or starting up a project does give a dedicated and self-starting EA valuable experience. That innovator-EA may get more potential benefit from being funded than a lot of other ways that one might slowly gain experience. And funding the project should come with some potential positive impact, even if it isn’t the most impactful and exciting project to many grantmakers.
Similar tactics exist in the movement already: EA/80K recommends people enter the for-profit world to gain experience, which comes with near-zero positive impact potential during that time. EA also subsidizes career trainings, workshops, and even advanced degrees toward filling bottlenecks of all types.
Therefore, I’d also advocate for being a bit more lax in funding/subsidizing relatively cheap new projects or scale-ups which can help dedicated innovator/self-starter EAs gain career experience and yield some altruistic wins. (I admit that some funders may already be thinking this way, I don’t know!)
3. It is sad to me that dedicated EAs can essentially be blackballed in what I’d still like to think of as an egalitarian movement. I don’t think it is anyone’s fault (mad props to grantmakers and funders), but if the funding ecosystem evolves to be a bit more diverse, I think it would be good for the movement’s impact and reputation, at least via the mental health and value drift levels of EAs themselves. I’m not saying “fund everything that isn’t risky”, but that being gatekept/blackballed is a uniquely frustrating experience that can sour one’s involvement with the movement. Despite good intentions and a mature personality, it seems natural to stick more to the sidelines after being rejected the first time you stick your neck out and not given any recommendations for where else to apply for funding. The more avenues the movement has and the more obvious these avenues are, the less a rejection will feel like a blackball and prompt people to stop trying.
FWIW I really like the vetted kickstarter idea posted by Peter Slattery below. A bonus with an idea like that is that it will also keep E2Gers engaged. It is a lot more interesting than, say, donating to EAIF every year, and maybe they can get their warm fuzzies there too.- 6 Apr 2022 19:20 UTC; 15 points) 's comment on Issues with centralised grantmaking by (
To be honest, the overall (including non-EA) grantmaking ecosystem is not so centralized that people can’t get funding for possibly net-negative ideas elsewhere. Especially given they have already put work in, have a handful of connections, or will be working in a sort of “sexy” cause area like AI that even some rando UHNWI would take interest in.
Given that, I don’t think that keeping grantmaking very centralized yields enough of a reduction in risk that it is worth protecting centralized grantmaking on that metric. And frankly, sweeping such risky applications under the rug hoping they disappear because they aren’t funded (by you, that one time) seems a terrible strategy. I’m not sure that is what is effectively happening, but if it is:
I propose a 2 part protocol within the grantmaking ecosystem to reduce downside risk:
1. Overt feedback from grantmakers in the case that they think a project is potentially net-negative.
2. To take it a step further, EA could employ someone whose role it is to try to actively sway a person from an idea, or help mitigate the risks of their project if the applicants affirm they are going to keep trying.
Imagine, as an applicant, receiving an email saying:
”Hello [Your Name],
Thank you for your grant application. We are sorry to bear the bad news that we will not be funding your project. We commend you on the effort you have already put in, but we have concerns that there may be great risks to following through and we want to strongly encourage you to consider other options.
We have CC’ed [name of unilateralist’s curse expert with domain expertise], who is a specialist in cases like these who contracts with various foundations. They would be willing to have a call with you about why your idea may be too risky to move forward with. If this email has not already convinced you, we hope you consider scheduling a call on their [calendly] for more details and ideas, including potential risk mitigation.
We also recommend you apply for 80k coaching [here]. They may be able to point you toward roles that are just as good or a better fit for you, but with no big downside risk and with community support. You can list us a recommendation on your coaching application.
We hope that you do not take this too personally as this is not an uncommon reason to withhold funding (hopefully evidenced by the resources in place for such cases), and we hope to see you continuing to put your skills toward altruistic efforts.
Best,
[Name of Grantmaker]”
Should I write a quick EA forum post on this 2 part idea? (Basically I’ll copy-paste this comment and add a couple paragraphs). Is there a better idea?
I realize that email will look dramatic as a response to some, but it wouldn’t have to be sent in every “cursed case”. I’m sure many applications are rather random ideas. I imagine that a grantmaker could tell by the applicants’ resumes and their social positioning how likely the founding team are to keep trying to start or perpetuate a project.
I think giving this type of feedback when warranted also reflects well on EA. It makes EA seem less of an ivory tower/billionaire hobby and more of a conversational and collaborative movement.
*************************************
The above is a departure from the point of the post. FWIW, I do think the EA grantmaking ecosystem is so centralized that people who have potentially good ideas which stem from a bit of a different framework than those of typical EA grantmakers will struggle to get funding elsewhere. I agree decentralizing grantmaking to some extent is important and I have my reasoning here
[EDIT 2: Based on the responses I received, I am probably wrong here. I will probably delete my portion eventually to not deter future readers from applying for grants. Leaving it up for a while longer for epistemic reasons. FYI that reading this thread might be a poor use of time.]
Side note: I see you mention multiple times that community building is a good use of money, and I agree, but that hasn’t been what I have been seeing EAIF, the primary funder for CB work, go by. It is possible you are not using the term community building in the way I think of it, but:
Embarrassing context: I was refused by EAIF for FTE salary to do CB (in Austin, TX), and in response I: talked to many community builders, looked at past grant reports, dug through all the EA groups resources and relevant forum posts I could find, and spent most of my EAG London in 1:1s trying to understand. Result: It seems that funding for full-time community-building salary is not really a thing that happens (at least in America, outside of priority cities: NYC, DC, Boston, and the bay).
This to me says that funders (EAIF?) simply don’t believe in CB. Personally, I think that if something is worth doing at all, it is:
1. worth doing full-time (if the person leading the project thinks so)
2. bad to limit candidates only to those who would work part-time
3. worth doing sooner than later (and information would be yielded sooner from full-time work)
I’m not complaining (really, I got another opportunity). But honestly, I am semi-replaceable in the coming role (better than the second-best hire), whereas community building would have been a pure counterfactual. No one will be doing CB in Austin when I go, and it doesn’t seem that EAIF’s funders thought that was a loss worth preventing.
TLDR; I agree that CB could absorb so much funding, and I also agree that, except for large risks, the lean should be toward funding CB projects, to gain information at least. But it doesn’t look like EAIF thinks so.
[EDIT 1: This comment is getting some downvotes, and maybe that’s appropriate so it doesn’t rise too high, as it is off-topic. But if the downvotes are over differences in perspective, feel free to DM.
Also: Maybe EAIF is right to be very conservative or unexcited about fulltime CB work. Or maybe I’m wrong that they feel that way.
But I like the judiciousness and ambition framework, and I think it is valuable for people to speak up where they may have noticed a pervasive imbalance.
I’ll also add that I probably never would have spoken up, if I weren’t culturally allowed to drop it as a comment, so yeah thanks for reading.]
I’m so glad you guys are prioritizing this! Note that the comment ahead is focused on DMs. But I acknowledge incentiving DMs isn’t the only (or even best) way to encourage useful connections. Here goes:
Yes, I DMed an author of a post, he responded favorably, and we met at an approaching EAG to talk further. This was useful and we agreed to remain in each other’s networks, eg hear about successes to implement in our similar work, or be on hand for advice as needed.
Special context: He had posted a piece on a topic I had experience on. I agreed with his premise but not the weighting of the variables, which led him to sort of dismiss to the reader one variable I thought was key. He had written a request for feedback at the bottom so it was clearly okay to DM. I considered writing my message to him as a comment on the post but was nervous to stick my neck out on that particular issue in public, which in retrospect led me to make my dialogue even more open given that it was private, and which led to a more intimate connection.
What improvements this might suggest:
For the Author: There is something in here about increasing norms to request feedback, maybe a prompt button/form when you submit the post:
“We at the EA forum are trying to incentivize deeper connection: Are you (or a collaborator or assistant) open to receiving DMs or email in response to your post?
-Yes
-Yes but only of this type: [input private feedback you are really seeking]
-Yes but not of this type: [input private types of feedback you are worried you’d get swamped by]
-Yes but I strongly prefer feedback to be public comments for the good of discourse. However, private feedback is better than no feedback.
If you select yes, there will be an obvious tag at the top and bottom of your post indicating your preference. We still strongly recommend putting a section at the end of your post. These posts [embed a couple timeless posts with good example] provide a good blueprint.”
If going with the button option, a drop-down selectable list for types of feedback could also be good (eg, collaboration/job requests, private critique, social reasons, advice, request for advice from you, [blank]). Wow, just realized, imagine if you could put you are looking for “social requests” or something, and that was searchable along with topic tag. Good start to an intellectual social network! Okay moving on:For the Reader: There is also something here about increasing norms to DM things if unsure or intimidated. When I started writing, I started writing as a comment then realized I didn’t want to post it publicly. So I copypasted to a DM. I wonder if having “DMing is an option too” within that grey text in the initial empty comment box would be good? Have to word it so it doesn’t disincentivize public discourse.
UI could be more clear: Also, when I went to DM, I found it kinda hard to find the button on their profile. In at least one time past I assumed DMing wasn’t an option (and told my friend I was surprised you couldn’t DM on the forum, oops). Maybe it truly wasn’t an option back then, but I suspect whatever button back then didnt stand out to me. The current blue button (maybe different maybe not) to message also doesn’t stand out to me (though I found it, yay, and that your inbox is pretty obvious in your dropdown user menu clarifies that, yes, DMs are real thing, keep looking). On the user’s page, I really expected the DM button to be an icon in sequence with all the other icons under their username. But instead it is its own button far to the right of the screen.
Clarify norms: It was also unclear it me how much DMing is in norms or not. And I was pretty shy about it and didn’t reinvestigate the ability to DM for some time, because I wasn’t sure it would apply to me anyway. Eg, do people check their DMs? Is it socially seen as inappropriate and too intimate if you have no connections with the person, and if there is no email dropped at the end of the post, that is a signal that they don’t want to be reached at all? Some clarity on cultural norms would be good, somehow! (Though maybe this is redundant and points 1 2 and 3 would be the mechanisms to doing that)
Hope that helps. I tend to go on but hopefully a detailed user report and ideation is useful for impact. This is a high priority project! Again, I’m so glad you guys are prioritizing this!
Thank you for writing this. I worry a lot about university groups being led by inexperienced people who have only heard of EA recently, especially given the huge focus on university groups (so, so much more focus than on regional groups or professional groups)! EA seems to be really banking on universities**, so much so that we are kinda screwed if it is done poorly, and turning people off. Some thoughts and theories:
1. Experience of organizers:I bet the mentorship and training in the new University Group Accelerator Program will help, but also I am not sure how much time a mentor will have, and that still assumes only 25 hours of engaging with EA content. From the website:
“The program is designed for groups that… have at least two interested organizers where… at least one has engaged with high-quality EA ideas for at least 25 hours (e.g. completed an intro fellowship or equivalent) and is comfortable facilitating group discussions or could be with training”
I realize a low amount of hours is a given for this role if you want it to happen at all, but still. That could be enough for someone who is a natural conversationalist to integrate a lot of key lessons and have a deep understanding and mental infrastructure, but for a lot of people it won’t be enough that they can field concerns well and not sound like cultists (repeating things rather rote rather than being conversational). And tbh, some people won’t know what high quality content is. Is 25 hours with no focus on animal welfare enough? What about that being the almost sole focus? Or what about if most of those hours are topical discussion with other inexperienced fellows?
I would love to see the training materials for the UGAP program made public on the forum or on request to dedicated EAs, for red-teaming. Red-teaming community building is a great idea!
2. Conversationality and critiquesI absolutely agree about interfacing with people who are naturally critical and them being some of the best prospective members. This also reduces the cult vibe.. organizers should ideally be people who have thought through the problems deeply and definitely didn’t just grab onto the first thing or go with authority. Frankly, I don’t think this personality trait/intellectual inclination is something organizers can or should fake, and it is possible that student organizers should be interviewed for this ability. My heuristic is something like “If they couldn’t hang at a rat or EA group house late-night discussion, they shouldn’t be publicly teaching EA”. (at risk of sounding strict, these are very friendly situations!)
I would love to see some training to uni organisers on how to field rebuttals. Eg, “hm, I actually can’t answer that with the confidence I think it deserves. But I recommend you message X about it!” (are there people who can just field questions? Ask a forum librarian?) or “Just because of time limitations, I really want to circle back to this later with you.. can we chat after the session or over [messenger app]?”
3. On CultsThe cult thing is really problematic. Here are some known aspects of cults we don’t technically fit, but could do to ensure all EAs, especially organizers, are leaning more outside of:
-Zealots: Don’t be one.
-Separation from friends and loved ones: Happens accidentally due to value changes. Mentioning other people and commitments in your life other than EA might go a long way.
-The cult’s philosophy is the one great truth: Stress moral uncertainty and the different approaches to doing good within the movement. Discuss how EA has changed and how the philosophy doesn’t have any prescriptions written in stone except that the community welcomes people who try to do their best for the good of others using evidence and reason.
-One magical leader: No idolizing and err toward being open if you disagree with an expert. Emphasize the decentralized origin of ideas in EA. Also, if you bring up one expert, it is good to bring up others, eg why just peter singer, toby ord, will macaskill, or rob wiblin? Surely you can find a second person to support their claim? Or just say “some well-respected figures think X because Y” and don’t namedrop anybody unless requested.
-Tithes and pushing self-denial or frugality to increase the ability to tithe more: Why is this even promoted among broke college students when the community has funds for a good few years? I’d approach it as something EA ideals have pointed to in the past, and something some people still do. Let them hear about GWWC if they ask. Move on quickly to talking about direct work. EA initially had bad publicity because of talks about money, and we can thank our lucky stars that it isn’t a moral imperative to “fundraise” anymore! It’s great that people have been and are still donating, and thanks to them, organizers are free to use so many other framings in outreach and pitch other things that will be less unpopular and more impactful. So please do!
-Promising a great afterlife or great eventual reward: Immortality via simulation, cryonics, and utopian simulation are probably things to steer a beginner-friendly discussion away from if it happens to go there.Additionally, I’d love to see some training on how young EAs can talk to their families.. I recently met a wannabe student organizer who told me how tenaciously he was talking to his (Mormon) parents about EA, and cult bells were ringing even in my head. I gave him some advice, but the odds are there are more prospective-organizers out there doing that. As an ex-young-vegan, I get it. But EA really doesn’t need parents lobbying their child’s university that the EA student group is a cult and should be shut down. Nor do we need well-meaning parents posting on social media or sending emails warning their parent friends or religious leaders about EA student groups corrupting their kids.
4. CRM
CRM seems good, but it should be used transparently. Just ask people what opportunities they would like information about and what their favorite cause areas are, and anything else about them they’d like you to know. Say you will keep this information for now, but it can be deleted any time on request. It is so you can send them things like job and fellowship opportunities they will really like, or interesting events and intellectual pieces they will really like. Be clear that you are not affiliated with any opportunities, but just doing it as a helpful service to your members.
5. Maybe we can all can helpA good volunteer opportunity for EAs might be to reach out to your university organizers and try to mentor them a bit. Send them good pieces or teach them how to proactively use the forum and subscribe to the community-building topic tag. Invite them to the slack and facebook groups and share newsletters with them they might not know about. You could even show up to the first or last day of their fellowships if the student organizers think it would help. I am doing a bit of mentoring for University of Texas organizers slightly , but this post makes me want to do moreso.
**Side note, I really don’t get the focus on student outreach in general. At least 4 of the 6 bottlenecks named seem better sourced from professionals and regional connections (management, ability to really figure out what matters most and set the right priorities, skills related to entrepreneurship / founding new organizations, and one-on-one social skills and emotional intelligence) than from universities. Plus young people are probably better at spreading cultural memes, so we might have a bigger reputational risk with them.- Red Teaming CEA’s Community Building Work by 1 Sep 2022 14:42 UTC; 296 points) (
- 12 May 2022 21:40 UTC; 16 points) 's comment on A hypothesis for why some people mistake EA for a cult by (
Recently, but it’s complicated:
I applied mid-March to FTX Future Fund. They passed me on to EAIF, saying they felt EAIF was better equipped to evaluate the grant (Fair, but I had chosen FTX because I saw no full-time employment grants for community builders in EAIF’s past grant reports). To their credit, EAIF did reach out to my references and gave me an interview in early April (so they were probably on the fence). Then said no on April 15th.
P.S. I’m confident I could have gotten funding for part-time work, but I think the most impactful and innovative stuff for information value comes in the “later” hours, like designing and presenting workshops and courses. I could be thinking about this wrong but part-time work for an entire city is comparatively (and urgently) full of meetups, 1:1s, information dissemination, email, light outreach, and ops. Still important but not what I thought made the role most worth creating.
Thanks for your kind words. Most people have been surprised which has been affirming (much needed because rejections are the opposite). I got some in-person feedback suggesting EAIF saw risks to doing Austin CB too soon or with the wrong person (ouch).
I’m sure lots of people submit actually-risky projects who simply can’t see them as risky (or themselves as risky agents), so take my confusion with a grain of salt. The fund managers are people I genuinely respect. I’m just concerned that it was beaurecrat’s curse which is also modus operandi for non-uni CB all around. EA has some bottlenecks that early or mid-career professionals are better suited to fill than students. So I don’t want non-uni groups to be unhelpfully neglected.
I am aware of the reasons, and I still think it has been focused on to the neglect of other things. Perhaps I should have said extreme focus instead. Maybe that is budget consciousness (uni groups have in the past been run by free and cheap volunteers), but it doesn’t seem that should have been a strict consideration for a couple of years now. I’m not saying student groups aren’t good but that given bottlenecks and given CEA’s limited bandwidth, I don’t think it warrants the extreme focus and bullishness I see from many these days, to, I can only assume, the detriment of other programs and other experimentation. Almost all of those students will still be recommended to enter regular careers and gain career capital before they can be competitive for doing direct work, and it is unclear how many students from these groups are even going for direct work on longtermist areas. I think perspectives here might depend on AGI timelines.
Let me also clarify that I am talking about uni groups, as opposed to targeted skilling-up programs hosted at universities. I’m also guessing that that 2015 stanford group was a lot different than the uni groups today. 8 week intro fellowships didn’t exist then
Tbh I’ve had success with this approach. Usually, someone will say “like who?” and then I get to rattle off some names with a clause-length bio without making their eyes glaze over, because they proactively requested the information. Other times they won’t ask because they are more interested in the overall point than who thinks it anyway, and they probably already trsut me by that point. Sometimes I’d actually have to google anyway “well I know one was the head of this org and one was the author of this book, let me look those up” and then people are like “whatever whatever I believe you.” It is the ideas that matter anyway
In general, I think it is good to talk casually, and this kind of wording is very natural for me with the benefit that I don’t screw up my train of thought trying to remember names then anyway. If it isn’t natural for you (and I guess for many EAs it won’t be, now that you mention it) don’t do it
Thanks for responding! I’m actually super excited about UGAP and have already recommended the program to student organizers now that your applications are open (applications are open, people!). I do note that the 25 hour time commitment is for “at least one organizer”, but I also think mentoring will go a long way to make those 25+/- hours count for more. That’s great that you do interviews to determine quality and you clarify what quality content is.
Excited to see what comes of it :)
Thanks for saying that. I understand that grantmaking is complex and that some CB plans simply won’t be right to encourage. But I still don’t really feel this changes my expectation around community building being funded for full-time. Some questions that would go a long way to correct this impression if answered:
(FWIW I feel weird posting this publicly, [EDIT: and I don’t necessarily think you/EAIF should be expected to respond here] but I think it is important to ask these questions)
[EDIT: Also reading all this is probably not a productive activity for people who don’t work in CB or grantmaking]
Can you share how many of those organisers of non-american areas (Italy, Denmark, Czech Republic, Philippines) were mainly funded for FTE after doing PTE first? I know at least that in the Phillipines, some organizers were funded for part-time work first. I also remember reading one post by a part-time organizer (I think in the Phillipines) reflecting on that dilemma. S/he was lucky to get their full-time job to reduce to part-time, but wondering whether they should just quit their part-time job and work the remaining hours as EA Phillipine hours for free because there was so much to be done. This was very shocking to me. So, I’m glad to hear these areas have full-time organizer(s), but I wonder if that would have happened if a volunteer organizer came to you and said, “I want to make this my career, but I need to do it full-time and here are reasons I think it is impactful and relatively easy to prove out.”
Those full-time community builders you mentioned are still not in American cities. Can you by chance estimate how many applications you have gotten for full-time community building in American cities? (excluding the 4 priority cities that are now funded by CEA’s Community Building Grants program, not EAIF?) Assumption being that you denied all of them, but definitely interested to hear if you approved any, but the applicant didn’t take the role after all!
(Not really a question) Would really appreciate if you guys would eventually publish the types of regional community organizing and programming you are excited to fund? You can still encourage submitting innovative ideas you may not have even thought of yet, but if you list established activities you like, the assumption can be that a lot of default community organizing activities don’t make the cut (fair and I agree with this). I think clarifying this would have a big impact by helping people to create more impactful CB plans and making CB seem more skill-based and less vague and therefore a more desirable career path. The approval would still be contingent on the area and the applicant’s strength, but this would go so far. And if is just an applicant’s plans that aren’t quite right, you can advise them to revise and resubmit very easily.
Other grantees are encouraged to work full-time on their ideas if they have good ideas. And while I appreciate your response I still don’t get this vibe around CB. I think this is bad because I think that 1 FTE is usually worth much more than 2x0.5 FTEs. It is hard to do good work working part-time, and it is especially hard when you know that the people who are supposed to be better at evaluating good work than you don’t believe in you or your work enough to encourage you to do it full-time.
Some more details (all events in the past 1-3 months):
-I realize that students can only do PTE and didn’t lump University organizing in when forming this opinion.
-one community organizer in DC did tell me that my few months of doing unpaid CB part-time was nowhere near enough to go straight into paid fulltime work, although I wasn’t working at that time and was spending about 20 hours a week on CB and getting up to speed studying CB from EA and non-EA sources. I also had pre-covid CB experience.
-I shared my city plans at EAG and others in the field thought they were good. I do now think they could have been better, as I kept learning in the last month, but I also would have come to that conclusion while doing the work as well.
-I know personally of at least one big US city (much bigger than Austin) which was denied for FTE and a month later approved for PTE, though I think their plans may have improved in the interim.
[[URGENT]] Seeking people to lead phone-banking coworking for Carrick Flynn’s campaign today, tomorrow, or Tuesday in gather.town! There is an EA coworking room in gather town already.
This is a strong counterfactual opportunity! This event can be promoted on a lot of EA fb pages as a casual and fun event (after all, it won’t even be affiliated with “EA”, but just some people who are into this getting together to do it), hopefully leading to many more phone banker hours in the next couple days.
Would you or anyone else be willing to lead this? Please share! Hosts will be trained in phone-banking and how to train your participants in phone-banking.
DM me and/or CarolineJ if you are keen to help and we will add you to the slack with all phone banking instructions. It is easy! (I will be traveling a lot so DMing both of us is a good bet)
You can read more about Carrick’s campaign from an EA perspective here:
The best $5,800 I’ve ever donated (to pandemic prevention)
and
Why Helping the Flynn Campaign is especially useful right now
Read about the EA Gathertown space here:
EA coworking/lounge space on gather.town
Thank you!
Thank you for this well-thought-out response. I appreciate the effort it took you and Michelle to respond to me. I am leaning much more that I was wrong about all this then. And if LA’s application was initially part-time, that was one foundational wrong piece. I still wish that I could have received more details about my own application (the email specified that no feedback could be provided), but I will encourage more people I know to apply for CB work.
I have added a qualifier to my original comment that I am probably wrong. As this particular forum piece and the comments are likely to be revisited for some time (maybe years?), I will probably eventually redact my comment fully to not confuse and deter future readers about how supported CB work would be. Will leave it up for epistemic reasons for at least a week longer.
Thanks again!
Wow this looks to be an excellent piece (have only skimme but will read fully soon)! As well as being a great raw source of information, the page will help make discussing climate change with people new to the effective altruism philosophy much easier. You’ve really helped the whole community (and the other priority areas) with this one!
I think EA should have organized outreach at each US state’s top public university (or at least, most of the 50 top public schools by state). You mention two schools that perfectly illustrate this:
1. University of Texas at Austin:
You quoted Scott Aaronson that:
”These days I run the Quantum Information Center at UT Austin, where almost every year I meet undergrads who I would’ve been thrilled to have at MIT.”
Well, UT is Texas’s top public school (ranked #38 nationally).
Compare it to Texas’s premiere private institution, Rice University of Houston: Rice is technically “better” (#17 overall), but UT is 10x the size of Rice (yes, 10x! So many more potential EAs!) and $40K cheaper for a Texan (compare here, and wait for it to load).
Also, people from the south clamor to attend Rice—it is known colloquially as one of “the Southern Ivys”, and they pay the same as a native Texan. The incentives are such that more bright Texans will attend UT than Rice.
(FWIW, Scott’s point of comparison, MIT, is also private!)
2. University of Maryland at College Park:
You name UMD in your post, as the example university with 25% of SAT scores as good as 75% of Harvard’s.
Well, UMD is Maryland’s top public school (#59 overall).
Again, comparing it to the private institution that “beats it”, Johns Hopkins (#9 overall): UMD is 5x the size of JH and costs ~$50K less (compare here).
And people from all over America choose to attend JH (again, once you are looking at private institutions, location doesn’t matter), so JH isn’t really filtering for Maryland’s best and brightest. If anything, it is filtering it out!
Conclusion:
While I guess just looking for public universities in the national rankings works roughly as well, I think this is illuminating for what is going on here. Private institutions probably do a good job filtering for the best of people who are willing and able to attend a private institution, and they do filter nationwide. But many students are not willing or able to even participate in that race (and much of the race is rigged anyway). A separate sorting is going on in each state via the public universities.
If EA wants to reach all of the best of the best, rather than 80/20ing it, we need to operate within both sorting systems (private and nationwide vs. public and state-wide). EA has probably neglected public/state institutions far too much.
Action:
-I wonder how EA can be seeded at some of these top state schools if they don’t already have a group?
-I really appreciate all the gorgeous data in this post, and would love to see some comparing private to public universities
-Does this also apply to top schools by country compared to global listings? For example, should there ideally be outreach at each top uni for each European country rather than looking at the overall best schools in Europe? America is an outlier for comparing the prestige of our private unis vs our public unis, but it might still apply.- 7 Sep 2022 23:34 UTC; 5 points) 's comment on Say “nay!” to the Bay (as the default)! by (
[Edit: Also, FWIW, I am queer and didn’t have a problem with the wording at first, however on rereading I do think the first few lines need reworking. The summary sentence (MP is not worth worrying about) does hold true for EAs, but the positioning of the next sentence (it is mostly in the gay community) implies that is why MP is not worth worrying about. That is not why though. If Covid were limited to the gay community at first (or even ever), it would still be worth working on and worrying about. Regardless of whether or not MP is in the gay community, I think your thesis is that it is not worth worrying about EA’s because the transmission is pretty difficult and the risks of acquiring the infection are not so great. Therefore the harm you expect from MP is not very large compared to other things EAs could “worry about.”]
A reasonably affordable intervention I haven’t heard yet is disseminating actionable information to at-risk people:
1. Locality and Community-Based:
Step 1: Pick a high density area and find out where and how people can get a monkeypox vaccine in that area.
Step 2: Design well-formatted info and send to relevant people:
-Contact sex workers and inform them where they can get a free vaccine. (contact info is on escort directory websites)
-Contact swinger, sex, and kink clubs and email them a poster they can print and hang, or a graphic they can post on their social medias, that advises where to get monkeypox vaccines in their area. Also advice on how to deal with sheets and such to minimize risk of spread during play
-Same for gay clubs and hangouts, but probably more subtle as people don’t have sex there
Step 3: Repeat for other cities
2. Web-Based:
Use advertisments on relevant apps (like Grinder, FetLife, Tinder)
I think both of these could like, employ a couple people fulltime for a month or 3 but not longer. Very cheap interventions. If you advertise well (like, make taking action seem a perk, eg, “you can tell your partners that you are vaccinated”, “you can add it to your profile as a tag or show a photo of your vaccine papers and people will be impressed (we swear lol)”) it could have success
When I first came across this post, it had 10 down-votes. People who are down-voting, can you please explain why? To just down-vote seems unproductive.
One reason I can think this may be happening is that people who are down-voting are reading OP to be saying “I am not welcome to open discussion and new ideas” so they see no point in attempting to discuss. I don’t think that is an accurate view of the post however. And even if it were, it doesn’t help the other forum-goers who would like to see the opposing points made which are supposedly sound enough that some portion of EAs had no problem putting the post pretty deep in the negative.