I’m currently a co-director at EA Netherlands (with Marieke de Visscher). We’re working to build and strengthen the EA community here.
Before this, I worked as a consultant on urban socioeconomic development projects and programmes funded by the EU. Before that, I studied liberal arts (in the UK) and then philosophy (in the Netherlands).
Hit me up if you wanna find out about the Dutch EA community! :)
Ah yes, that would be handy. I can’t see a way of doing that, unfortunately.
Pro-tip, if you have an iPhone, Apple’s podcast app now has transcriptions for most podcasts, including this one :)
I’ve heard from a lot of people that they’ve got a lot of value from this book. I’ll be honest, I started it but didn’t finish it. It didn’t sit right with me at the time.
I found The 2-Hour Cocktail Party to be far more valuable. I’d recommend it to anyone organising events, particularly social meet-ups.
Pros:
Short and to the point
Gives you a clear (and very detailed) algorithm to follow
I used it to host a gathering and it was a success
Despite it being tailored to a very specific scenario, I’ve used the advice in other scenarios and it’s worked well
Cons:
The author makes a big thing out of the importance of icebreakers and name tags. I didn’t follow that advice and it was absolutely fine. His advice is unusual for a US party but I think even more unusual for an EU party, so I didn’t want to risk it (people were already weirded out by relatively small things, e.g., a weeknight party for no reason and an RSVP page)
The advice is tailored to a very specific scenario (~15-person weeknight social gathering)
Big +1, thanks for bigging up Imma (and the Dutch EA community!)
Yeah I think I agree with you, and I think considering those three levels to be appropriate is consistent with the statement ‘I think most people should think of EA as little more than a hobby’.
I feel like pushing the ‘treat it like a hobby’ thing is good at the mo because I see a lot of people in the EA community feeling they ought to do more, and then they feel bad when it doesn’t work out, and that sucks. I worry they begin to tie their self-worth to whether they are a ‘good EA’ or not. I want to be like, hey, take it easy, you’re doing a good job—y’know?[1]
I’m reminded of when I spoke to a therapist at my uni because I was struggling with anxiety and perfectionism. I wanted to get the best grades and do great things, but in pursuing that goal so relentlessly it was a) undermining my ability to study well and b) making me unhappy. He reminded me that being a student was only a small part of my life. I was also a friend, a partner, a citizen, a son, etc., and these parts of my life were all equally valuable (if not more so).
I might take a different approach if I was talking with a member of the general population. Rutger Bregman’s School of Moral Ambition does that. He’s very much, ‘Yo, you’ve got all this potential, you should be more morally ambitious’. But then again, maybe I wouldn’t because the most thorough definition of EA I know of is non-normative, and I’m glad this is the case.
I thought 80k’s episode on altruistic perfectionism was great and we could do with more of it.
Thanks for the kind words! Glad you found my framing helpful :)
Oh but I did put ‘donate some money’ in my ‘hobby’ list—or am I misunderstanding you?
The latest episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast is about Derek Parfit.[1] It’s an interview with his biographer (and fellow philosopher) David Edmonds. It’s quite accessible and only 20 mins long. Very nice listening if you fancy a walk and want a primer on Parfit’s work.
My quick take: I think most people should think of EA as little more than a hobby.
For example, I like bouldering, so I often:
Practice
Do it with friends
Consume content to learn more about it
Talk about it with friends (if they like it, I talk about it in detail; if they aren’t really interested, I might just respond to a ‘How are you?’ with ‘Good thanks! Got a new PB at the bouldering gym yesterday so spirits are high!’)
So it’s important to me and I get a lot from it, but it’ll only ever be a small part of my life.
I don’t care if I’ll never be a professional athlete, or even if I never win a local competition. I’m happy to simply do it, to hang out with others who like doing it, and to share the highlights with people who are interested in what I’m up to.
I think EA should be the same for most people. If they like the idea of helping others as effectively as possible, they could consider:
Practicing (e.g., donate some money and apply to the odd job if it looks like it’ll be a good fit)
Doing it with friends (e.g., volunteer together, run a group together, start a side project together)
Consuming content to learn more (e.g., browse the forum occasionally, listen to the odd podcast, read the odd report)
Talking about it with friends (e.g., ‘Hey I was reading about this cool charity LEEP and I think you’d really like em! They...’ etc etc)
But that’s it. It’s not a big deal if you don’t end up ‘getting an EA job’ or donating €€€€€€€€.
Would love to but didn’t feel best placed/didn’t have time. Just wanted to encourage people to disagree vote instead of downvote, or at least explain why they’re downvoting.
Noting that I disagree with this comment so I’ve disagree voted. But I don’t think this means I should necessarily downvote it as well, which is what people seem to be doing. But please correct me if I’m wrong!
Looks like Charity Navigator is taking a leaf from the EA book!
Here they’re previewing a new ‘cause-based giving’ tool—they talk about rating charities based on effectiveness and refer to research by Founder’s Pledge.
I’m thinking about power. I don’t (yet) liken EA to environmentalism because power is far, far more centralised in EA. As you mentioned, this is probably because we’re small and young. I expect this will change in the future.
Interesting question! Some quick thoughts below.
Right now I think of EA Netherlands as the national organisation for effective altruism. Our mission is to build a community of and for effective altruists in the Netherlands. We mainly do this through:
outreach and education (target group: proto-EAs), e.g., media engagement, social media, intro programme, etc.
organising (target group: local group organisers), e.g., 1-1 support, training, etc.
GCR fieldbuilding (target group: GCR professionals), e.g. AIS retreat, etc.
network development (target group: existing EAs), e.g., EAGx, EA office, etc.
Models I use to guide my thinking: mobilising and organising + SMS, ND, FB, and PUPO). I don’t really think of us as running a national group, which is how CBG recipients are often described.
We aren’t currently a membership organisation but (without having looked into it much yet) I tentatively think we ought to be.
I don’t think ‘professional association’ is quite the right framing—mainly because it feels a bit weird to think of professional effective altruists. Maybe EA ought to be just a research field, but it’s more than that at the moment.[1]
Therefore, from this list of civil society institutions (which includes professional associations), I’d say we’re more like a voluntary association or a social movement organisation, similar to the NAACP or a national Greenpeace organisation.
GCR feels more analogous to psychology. Both are primarily research fields, both have people who work on them professionally, so I think it makes sense for both to have professional associations.
Interesting! I didn’t see this, will check it out
@Christoph Hartmann has developed a tool that might be useful! Might try to see if we can use it at EAGxUtrecht. Below is a message he sent me explaining it:
idea for EAGx: Last time I went I loved the program but I felt facilitating interaction especially outside core conference hours could’ve been easier. I built an app that would make it super easy for people to find each other to go to a restaurant, go bouldering, discuss longtermism, go to a bar, etc. Would love to bring this to EAGx: https://letss.app/
Does anyone know who it was from the Future Fund whom Stewart reports as behaving rather rudely during their call? He says it was the head of the Fund, which would be Bedstead, but that seems unlikely to me. Obviously this is a very minor issue compared to everything else that happened re FTX, but this is still embarrassing.
Ha yes that would have been helpful of me, I agree! Unfortunately, I can’t remember much, it was a couple of years ago. I remember experiencing a significant vibes mismatch in the section on excluding people (but maybe I was just being close-minded) and frustration with its wordiness.