I just saw this post and came onto this comment thread to post that (had the Amazon link open and everything)! I’m home living with family for the holidays and while moving my bookshelf a few days ago I came across ‘Children Just Like Me’. It led me down a whole pathway of reflections about how much I loved that book as a kid and whether it was something that prompted me toward EA values.
I must have read it at least half a dozen times as a child, as I can remember parts verbatim. I am so amazed that other EAs grew up reading it! Wow, this has made my day. I’m tempted to order a copy for my little cousin now.
This reminds me of a pretty excellent Simone de Beauvoir quote: “We must decide upon the opportuneness of an action and attempt to measure its effectiveness without knowing all the factors that are present.” (From The Ethics of Ambiguity) I quite like this quote, because I don’t interpret it as an argument against trying to measure and predict the consequences of an action, but rather, as an expression of the fact that uncertainty and incomplete information is a fact of life, and we must at some point act anyway rather than becoming paralysed by this. We should always be at least passively open to the possibility of new and unknown factors, and compassionate toward people (including our past selves) who have made mistakes or held views that turned out to be incorrect.