You mean like sortition? https://www.sortitionfoundation.org/what_is_sortition
Jemma
I feel like it would be more appropriate for the organisation to have its own page, while information about the book could be divided as appropriate between that page, and those of effective altruism and Peter Singer.
Point 2 confuses me on an empirical level. I don’t know many people whose social/leisure life largely consists of locked-in regular weekend/evening plans that they can’t change if a work opportunity (or anything else) comes up. More importantly, whether the fun activities are flexible seems to be unrelated to their cost. In fact, the commitment/cost relationship is usually negative—it’s often cheaper to pay for, say, sport and exercise classes if you lock in a series of lessons rather than paying casual entry. Likewise, casual commitment-free leisure like drinking alcohol or going to a restaurant can be much more expensive per hour than a regular commitment like playing on a friendly soccer team.
I’m not disagreeing with the post’s final paragraph—I recently decided against picking up a particular sport largely because it seemed self-indulgently expensive. But I don’t think that point 2, in particular, is factually true, even if you agree that you should reduce your leisure time to work more.
In my experience, this overvaluation of depression, or fear about what might happen if you feel happier, is a really common concern among some types of creatives (though in their case it has more to do with inspiration than motivation). In both cases, I’d say it’s probably an incorrect perception that results from the depressive state itself.
This may be a touch too philosophical, but I enjoyed Derek Parfit’s essay ‘Personal Identity’, as I think that it provides a brief insight into one of the central concerns of this major EA thinker.
“if one thing starts to go wrong it can have a ripple effect on the rest of your body”
Absolutely can confirm, especially if the initial injury is lower in your body. For me, a temporary sporting injury to my knee caused a slight gait alteration that then triggered a relapse of a neck injury.
Also, I second any recommendation to switch from a laptop setup to desktop. A laptop should never be your main workspace. At the very least it needs to be elevated with a separate mouse and keyboard, and I’d recommend getting a separate monitor so you can set it up as a desktop. I did the former step during the aforementioned neck pain flare-up, and the latter just recently. It sounds trivial, but I’ve also found that having more screen space facilitates tasks in a way that has given me a sustained improvement in what must have been barely-perceptible frustration. It reduces cognitive load, I guess, not having to (e.g.) constantly relocate that tab/window you were using to research the thing you were writing.
This is also a fantastic lifehack for searching for information on websites whose own search bar functionality is… subpar.
Although I can’t comment on the sense of community felt by the local residents, I observed and to some extent experienced this in Spain. I’d say the key was the combination of high urban density and availability of shared spaces. Another factor could be the low price of eating/drinking outside the home - - I’d say this facilitates socializing since it’s easier to say “Let’s meet at X at 9pm [Spanish people have dinner very late!]” rather than having to prepare your house to host guests. There’s a joke that you only go into a Spanish person’s flat for a wake (which is an exaggeration, but somewhat based on truth).
Someone also mentioned to me that it is culturally more normal in Europe for people to socialize after work, likely due to some of the factors I mentioned. Cal Newport recently implied that this may have been the case in other countries pre-television. It’s also socially acceptable to take children to most events, even late into the evening.
Unfortunately, these aren’t really cultural characteristics, as I’d say it’s fundamentally based in the high urban density.
A problem with this post is that its conclusion that the “left” poses more “risk” is based on the number of individual perceived objections from the left. However, even if this were true, this conflates the number of separate issues with some attempt at a measure of the overall “magnitude” of risk, without taking into account the number of people complaining based on each objection, and/or the “intensity”/impact of their complaints. Which, as Halffull points out, could in any case even be a positive impact if they’re identifying a real problem with EA.
I don’t want to be overly pedantic, but there are also inconsistencies in this post, which make its conclusion even about the number of objections appear stronger than it is. The total number of objections from the left is increased by the separate listing of several instances of closely-related criticisms of Peter Singer (autism rights, disability rights, and others). In contrast, in the “problems with the right wing” section, similar complaints of abortion-related objections and zoophilia are listed in the same point. This inconsistency increases the apparent number of left-wing objections, a number on which the author then bases their conclusion.
I also think that research is lacking, as a recent podcast (80000 Hours? Someone help me if you can remember; it’s really hard to search content on podcasts) suggested that the rise of extreme right-wing populist nationalist politics is creating risks in the nuclear warfare space.
Another thing is that the EA survey consistently suggests that most EAs are left-wing. Anecdotally, most of those I know seem to be reformist, centre-left. Both the statistics and my experience suggests that the centre left, perhaps those who are disillusioned with more extreme leftist positions such as proposals for revolutionary communism, may be a significant source of people coming into EA—often bringing with them motivation, experience of community organising and other useful skills.
Is there an official place for real-time chat among virtual attendees? If not, would it be okay for me to create an unofficial Discord or similar? Again, absolutely amazing work putting this together so quickly Amy.
I wonder whether Development Media International would be a particularly good choice at this time, not only for preventing COVID-19, but also because it is a charity that is likely to be more able to continue its regular operations during a pandemic (versus, say, charities that distribute bednets or medicine).
My university group is planning to do a reading group around this book next year. While discussing how we’d all get access to a copy without each individually buying one, we discovered to our delight that it’s available through our university library as en e-book. Just putting this out there because if any other student group is planning something similar, check if your uni library has or can get e-book access, too.
Another option would be to buy it for your university library, but ask them (or ask a sympathetic philosophy professor to ask them if students can’t directly request this) to put it into short loans, 2-hour loan, high use, or whatever your university calls the section for books that can only be consulted for short periods. But the e-book is way more convenient and will thus probably increase the number of people who read and attend your group each week/fortnight/month.
Also, there are many ways that frugality can boost productivity that aren’t mentioned in this post. A major one would be that living in an apartment, rather than a large(r) house with a garden, substantially reduces the time spent on home cleaning and maintenance.
“EAs make sacrifices by being prepared to accept the substantial probability of themselves never having impact. This would be hard to take psychologically, but might be the right thing to do in a crowded talent space.”
My impression has always been that even the most qualified person who goes into the most promising field (say, for example, AI risk reduction) has a low absolute chance of being the person to make a breakthrough in that field, but rather, that part of the point of EA was to get more talented people into those fields (e.g. by increasing the number of jobs) to increase the chance that a breakthrough will be made by someone.
Excellent idea, and highly detailed and informative post.
I was reading an article recently which suggested that scholars who speak English as an additional language can struggle with the expectation to write their work in English—especially in fields such as philosophy where prose expression forms the bulk of academic articles (less of an issue in the sciences). The article concluded that there should be more opportunities for translation, so that authors can express their ideas in the language they are most proficient and comfortable in. Perhaps this would be something for EA to think about offering? i.e. could offering to pay for translation of articles/books by non-native English speakers working in high-impact research areas essentially improve their productivity compared to them having to write in their non-native language? I’ve also never seen an EA event in which the speaker spoke through an interpreter, for example, but if someone did prefer to use one, it would be good for this to have been considered/offered as an option.
Also, one thing I’ve both read and personally noticed learning and teaching languages is that even very advanced speakers will usually do maths in their native language, and it can be hard to communicate orally about numbers in your non-native language. If you are doing a presentation at an EA event and mentioning numbers or percentages, it could be helpful (both for English as an Additional Language speakers and general accessibility) to display those figures on your slides also.
Thanks again for the excellent post!
Have GiveWell examined many charities addressing maternal and neonatal health? Childbirth is a situation in which the worst-case scenario is the death of two people, one of whom literally has their whole life ahead of them, the other of whom is also relatively young and may have other young children who would suffer extreme emotional hardship from the loss of their mother (as well as the suffering caused to her partner and other relatives and friends, of course). In The Life Equation, a woman receives a caesarian which seems to save her baby (and, if I recall correctly, also herself) from near-certain death. Also, it seems like relatively basic healthcare attendance during delivery can significantly reduce the risk of long-term complications to mother and baby, like obstetric fistula or disabilities arising from hypoxia during birth.
I don’t feel qualified to comment on this myself, but I found an interview with Peter Singer that touches on the topic of politics and EA, published yesterday. One relevant extract:
“[Singer] proudly recalls how many of his own students have been turned towards Effective Altruism and have decided to integrate it into their future lives. He then briefly alludes to students’ political leanings, and I decide to probe a little further, asking, more generally, about how the philosophy plays out in the political domain.
“It’s clearly political in so far as it is trying to get away from the views of people on the right, like Ayn Rand. It is a movement away from the idea that it is good to be selfish, that somehow under capitalism people thinking and acting selfishly works under this hidden hand to do the most good. It doesn’t do the most good, and we need to think about directly aiming at doing good for people who don’t have the same chance to get into the global economy. So in that sense it is taking a stance against a certain political and economic thinking. On the other hand, it is also taking a stance against the idea that the solution to all these problems is a revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist system. It is saying, look, capitalism has been around a long time, it doesn’t look like we are going to overthrow it very soon and it is not clear what the best alternative would be. So while we are here, let’s try to do what we can within that system. In fact, it is kind of ironic that sometimes Marxists object to this, and yet that is exactly what Engels did. He was a capitalist running a factory in Manchester, and without his financial support, Marx wouldn’t have had the leisure to write the works that he did.””
Full article: https://cherwell.org/2019/05/17/interview-peter-singer/
General vegan movement, including to a greater or lesser extent people becoming vegan for health, environmental, and/or animal suffering reasons
Left-wing people who are disillusioned with the prospects of/normally promoted avenues for systemic change or the ability to help people in other countries
People who are accustomed to donating money, e.g. for religious reasons: potentially a large demographic but may be hard to sway donations, though I have had some success introducing GiveWell to people who have left religion and are looking for secular charities
Hey Amy and Barry, thanks so much for pulling this together, and so quickly—incredible work!
I would like to use the Grip agenda website to add items to my agenda (i.e. not just view it) but it won’t let meas I haven’t registered. I fear that this means I also won’t be able to click through to the live streams when they happen. Maybe I’m just missing a registration link somewhere, but this might be a bug where only people who were actually registered for EAG SF are able to interact with the agenda (and, potentially, view the livestreams).
Just thought I’d bring this to your attention! Again, amazing work getting this event up so fast on a new platform.
ETA: I just reread and saw this:
On Saturday morning, you can visit the agenda page to see a link to the broadcast.
It’s already Saturday evening here, but I think it is not yet Saturday morning in SF! So maybe the links will appear in the agenda then. It would still be great, if the feature is simple to activate, for non-attendees to be able to add items to their agenda—but I 100% understand if this is not possible, and will just make my own agenda manually. :)
To what extent, if any, have online sources (such as Less Wrong) influenced your thinking, as compared to “traditional” philosophy?