Joseph Lemien

Karma: 2,916

I have work experience in HR and Operations. I read a lot, I enjoy taking online courses, and I do some yoga and some rock climbing. I enjoy learning languages, and I think that I tend to have a fairly international/cross-cultural focus or awareness in my life. I was born and raised in a monolingual household in the US, but I’ve lived most of my adult life outside the US, with about ten years in China, two years in Spain, and less than a year in Brazil.

As far as EA is concerned, I’m fairly cause agnostic/cause neutral. I think that I am a little bit more influenced by virtue ethics and stoicism than the average EA, and I also occasionally find myself thinking about inclusion, diversity, and accessibility in EA. Some parts of the EA community that I’ve observed in-person seem not very welcoming to outsides, or somewhat gatekept. I tend to care quite a bit about how exclusionary or welcoming communities are.

I was told by a friend in EA that I should brag about how many books I read because it is impressive, but I feel uncomfortable being boastful, so here is my clunky attempt to brag about that.

Unless explicitly stated otherwise, opinions are my own, not my employer’s.

Joseph Lemien 8 Dec 2024 14:54 UTC
8 points
3 ∶ 0
on: NYT—What if Charity Shouldn’t be Optimized
Overall, not one of the stronger critiques that I’ve read.
The “how could anyone put a numerical value on a holy space” snippet struck me. I’m no expert in measurement, but the answer to this question seems to be similar to “how do you measure how extraverted a person is?” or “how do you measure the sum total of all economic activity in a country?” or “how do you measure media censorship?” The answer is that you do it carefully, with the use of tools/assessments, proxies, parametric estimating, etc.
There is plenty of research that basically involves asking people “Would you rather have A or B,” and with clever research design you really can measure how much people value various intangible things.^[1] And I don’t even study or specialize in that area. So it stuck me as odd to have such an established set of solutions which weren’t even mentioned. How to Measure Anything is great, but there is also lots written about willingness to pay.
1. ^
  For anyone not familiar with that kind of research, a simplistic version would basically be asking people “Would you rather have an extra $100 each week or have a local art museum,” and by varying the numbers you can get an idea of what dollar value people put on that specific experience. For anyone familiar with the research, please forgive me for my vast simplifications.

Joseph Lemien 6 Dec 2024 22:47 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Joseph Lemien’s Shortform
Imperfect Parfit (written by by Daniel Kodsi and John Maier) is a fairly long review (by 2024 internet standards) of Parfit: A Philosopher and His Mission to Save Morality. It draws attention to some of his oddities and eccentricity (such as brushing his teeth for hours, or eating the same dinner every day (not unheard of among famous philosophers)). Considering Parfit’s influence on the ideas that many of us involved in EA have, it seemed worth sharing here.

Joseph Lemien 2 Dec 2024 14:44 UTC
3 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: quila’s comment on: quila’s Quick takes
I’ve most often read/heard this argument in relation to alcohol and marijuana. Something along the lines of “if we had never had this thing and we discovered it today, would we make it legal/illegal?”
I think of it in vaguely the same category as the veil of ignorance and other simple thought experiments that encourage us to step outside of our own individualized preferences.

Joseph Lemien 26 Nov 2024 19:14 UTC
4 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: JamesN’s comment on: Joseph Lemien’s Shortform
I think that describing it as a combination of anchoring with confirmation bias seems roughly accurate. Maybe there might be an element of availability bias tossed in as well, since we latch on to the most readily available answer?
I’m not sure, but I think that Julia Galef has spoken about the concept of explanation freeze in interviews or on podcasts, so you might be able to dig up a more detailed and expansive explanation. But with some cursory Google Searching I was only able to find passing references to it, rather than more full explanations.

Joseph Lemien 26 Nov 2024 17:26 UTC
6 points
4 ∶ 0
on: You are not too “irrational” to know your preferences.
I really enjoyed this. Several aspects resonated with experiences I have had (or that I have observed in-person). Overall, this struck me as very balanced & grounded advice, especially for a subculture that tends to put so much weight on intelligence and rationality. Thanks for taking the time and effort to write this.

Joseph Lemien 25 Nov 2024 21:44 UTC
4 points
0 ∶ 0
on: What small change in your self talk would make the world a better place if others adopted it too?
“My desires don’t match reality” or the inverse: “reality doesn’t match my desires.”
I don’t recall exactly where I picked this up; it feels vaguely inspired by Buddhist psychology, but maybe I picked it up in some Stoic readings somewhere. I really don’t remember.
This idea has helped me zoom out a little bit from situations that aren’t the way I want them, whether that is as big as having serious and painful medical issues or as quotidian as my dinner tasting bland. It can be applied to practically any situation in which I have the impulse to feel frustrated (or angry, or sad, or just about any other unenjoyable emotion). When I feel tempted to get worked up about something, I try to tell myself that all that is really happening is there a mismatch between these two things.

Joseph Lemien 25 Nov 2024 21:39 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
on: What small change in your self talk would make the world a better place if others adopted it too?
“The narrative I am telling myself about this is...”
I learned this phrase from a very close friend a few years ago, and I’ve found it helpful to nudge me away from explanation freeze and to remind me that how I view a circumstance is just one view, which not necessarily accurate reflect reality. I’ve found it particularly helpful for interpersonal situations, in which I think another person has made a mistake, or misbehaved, or which otherwise isn’t the way that I want it to be.

Joseph Lemien 25 Nov 2024 21:37 UTC
15 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Joseph Lemien’s Shortform
I’ve found explanation freeze to be a useful concept, but I haven’t found a definition or explanation of it on the EA Forum. So I thought I’d share a little description of explanation freeze here so that anyone searching the forum can find it, and so that I can easily link to it.
The short version is:
explanation freeze is the tendency to stick with the first explanation we come up with.
The slightly longer explanation is:
Situations that are impossible to conclusively explain can afflict us with explanation freeze, a condition in which we come up with just one possible explanation for an event that may have resulted from any of several different causes. Since we’re only considering one explanation at a time, this condition leads us to make the available evidence fit that explanation, and then overestimate how likely that explanation is. We can consider it as a type of cognitive bias or flaw, because it hinders us in our attempts to form an accurate view of reality.

Joseph Lemien 25 Nov 2024 21:32 UTC
5 points
0 ∶ 1
on: Concerns Arising At EAGx Virtual Around Imposter Syndrome
Welcome to the forum, Quinn. Glad to have you here. :)
I wonder to what extend the imposter syndrome in EA is unique to EA, and to what extent it is a broader societal trend of comparing ourselves to others. This could easily turn into a long rant on social media and how comparison is the thief of joy, but I’ll try to keep it concise: we generally only feel that we aren’t doing enough when we see other people that are doing more, and we usually have a very superficial glance^[1] at doing more. When I feel the worst about myself is when I’ve made the poor decision to scroll through Facebook or LinkedIn, and I see other people doing things that I wish I was doing (and I am confident that this is not unique to me). Mimetic desire at it’s finest. As you can imagine, I don’t often scroll through those things.
Maybe these trends are both exacerbated in EA because it is a fairly online community, and also because it is a fairly young community?
1. ^
  “Superficial” in the sense of us mainly seeing crafted images rather than seeing realities. I see that someone earns 250,000 USD per year and donates half, but I don’t as easily see A) the tradeoffs & sacrifices that person made in order to do that, or B) the fortune/privilidge/luck that allows that person to do that. Here is an image I think of often, from Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhapy.

Joseph Lemien 24 Nov 2024 17:41 UTC
8 points
3 ∶ 1
on: Open Wallets, Empty Hearts [linkpost]
I found this to be one of the better criticisms of EA that I’ve read. I appreciate that the tone wasn’t highly aggressive or strident, and that it mentioned the virtue of Julie Wise/Scott Alexander-type arguments of “let’s keep donating money for bednets.”

Joseph Lemien 19 Nov 2024 16:39 UTC
3 points
2 ∶ 0
in reply to: Manuel Allgaier’s comment on: Manuel Allgaier’s Quick takes
I went to high school in the USA, in the 2000s, so it has been roughly twenty years. I attended a public highschool, that wasn’t particularly well-funded nor impoverished. There were no ethics or philosophy courses offered. There was not education on moral philosophy, aside from that which is gained through literature in an English class (such as reading Lord of the Flies or Fahrenheit 451 or To Kill a Mockingbird).
There is a Facebook group for EA Education, but my impression is that it isn’t very active.
My (uninformed, naïve) guess is that this isn’t very tractable, because education tends to be controlled by the government and there are a lot of vested interests. The argument would basically be “why should we teach these kids about being a good person when we could instead use that time to teach them computer programming/math/engineering/language/civics?” It is a crowded space with a lot of competing interests already.

Joseph Lemien 14 Nov 2024 17:36 UTC
2 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Joseph Lemien’s Shortform
Some musings about experience and coaching. I saw another announcement relating to mentorship/coaching/career advising recently. It looked like the mentors/coaches/advisors were all relatively junior/young/inexperienced. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this. Most of this type of thing I’ve seen in and around EA involves the mentors/advisors/coaches being only a few years into their career. This isn’t necessarily bad. A person can be very well-read without having gone to school, or can be very strong without going to a gym, or can speak excellent Japanese without having ever been to Japan. A person being two or three or four years into their career doesn’t mean that it is impossible for them to have have good ideas and good advice.^[1] But it does seem a little… odd. The skepticism I feel is similar to having a physically frail person as a fitness trainer: I am assessing the individual on a proxy (fitness) rather than on the true criteria (ability to advise me regarding fitness). Maybe that thinking is a bit too sloppy on my part.
This doesn’t mean that if you are 24 and you volunteer as a mentor that you should stop; you aren’t doing anything wrong. And I wouldn’t want some kind a silly and arbitrary rule, such as “only people age 40+ are allowed to be career coaches.” And there are some people doing this kind of work that have a decade or more of professional experience; I don’t want to make it sound like all of the people doing coaching and advising are fresh grads.
I wonder if there are any specific advantages or disadvantages to this ‘junior skew.’ Is there a meaningful correlation between length of career and ability to help other people with their careers?
EA already skews somewhat young, but from the last EA community survey it looks like the average age was around 29. So I wonder why are the vast majority of people doing mentorship/coaching/career advising are younger than that? Maybe the older people involved in EA are disproportionality not employed for EA organizations and are thus less focused on funneling people into impactful careers? I do have the vague impression that many 35+ EAs lean more toward earn-to-give. Maybe older EAs tend to be a little more private and less focused on the EA community? Maybe older people simply are less interested, or don’t view it as a priority? Maybe the organizations that employ/hire coaches all prefer young people? Maybe this is a false perception and I’m engaging in sloppy generalization from only a few anecdotes?
1. ^
  And the other huge caveat is that you can’t really know what a person’s professional background is from a quick glance at their LinkedIn Profile and the blurb that they share on a website, any more than you can accurately guess age from a profile photo. People sometimes don’t list everything. I can see that someone earned a bachelor’s degree in 2019 or 2020 or 2021, but maybe they didn’t follow a “standard” path: maybe they had a 10-year career prior to that, so guesses about being fairly young or junior are totally off. As always, drawing conclusions based on tiny snippets of information with minimal context is treacherous territory.

Joseph Lemien 8 Nov 2024 16:10 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Expectations Scale with Scale – We Should Be More Scope-Sensitive in Our Funding
Thanks for writing this!
In a vaguely financial markets/efficient market hypothesis train of thought, if you can identify the ‘undervalued’ teams/organizations, there is (presumably?) some kind of benefit in that.
This may be ridiculously simplistic: I often think about how a person who invests $100 million and earns $1 million will be praised much more than a person who invests $100 and earned $20. In some contexts it matters “what are the absolute results” and in some contexts what really matters is “what were your results given what you had.” Sure, I would rather have $1 million than $20, but I’d want to find the person that can get a 20% return and provide them with additional resources.

Joseph Lemien 8 Nov 2024 16:06 UTC
4 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Gemma 🔸’s comment on: Expectations Scale with Scale – We Should Be More Scope-Sensitive in Our Funding
basic accounting ratios and financial analysis are quite helpful for getting a basic view on return on donations and high level valuations of charities.
Strongly agree. When I took a financial accounting course, learning about the ratios was the moment when my eyes really opened up and I saw how I could use these tools to make comparisons.

Joseph Lemien 8 Nov 2024 16:03 UTC
2 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Quick-take. Definitions are over-rated in EA
I think that this is very context specific, and will vary quite a bit. I think that it probably isn’t worthwhile to spend 30-60 minutes defining “fringe” when talking about fringe ideas. But plenty of concepts have fuzzy or ambiguous meanings, and in those situations clarifying what we actually mean can be useful to make sure we are talking about the same thing (such as ‘average income’, or ‘an EA organization,’ or ‘private information’).
But broadly speaking, I could see your claim being true. Definitions are important, but maybe not quite as important as EA norms and culture implies them to be.

Joseph Lemien 3 Nov 2024 18:38 UTC
8 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Clifford’s comment on: Clifford’s Shortform
I’m coming back to this after more than a year because I recently read the book Wild Problems: A Guide to the Decisions That Define Us. I found it to be a better-than-average moral guide to good behavior. It leans toward virtue ethics rather than deontology or utilitarianism. I recommend it.
It felt very practical (in the sense of how to approach life). It isn’t practical in teaching you a specific/isolated skill, but it is practical in that this nurtures a mindset, an approach, a perspective that will lead to better choices, better relationships, and a better life. To the extent that one’s life is like a garden that needs nurturing and cultivation, I think that Wild Problems is a pretty good does of care/water/sunshine.

Joseph Lemien 3 Nov 2024 14:55 UTC
10 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Joseph Lemien’s Shortform
What are the norms on the EA Forum about ChatGPT-generated content?
If I see a forum post that looks like it was generated by a LLM generative AI tool, it is rude to write a comment asking “Was this post written by generative AI?” I’m not sure what the community’s expectations are, and I want to be cognizant of not assuming my own norms/preferences are the appropriate ones.

Joseph Lemien 1 Nov 2024 13:58 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: VictorW’s comment on: EA is bad for mental health (and I’m tired of pretending it’s not)
Unfortunately, I don’t know of any good methods for distinguishing other than simply explaining in writing that these are general ideas rather than exact quotes.

Joseph Lemien 31 Oct 2024 16:25 UTC
9 points
3 ∶ 2
on: EA is bad for mental health (and I’m tired of pretending it’s not)
I think that this post is helpful, and has a lot of aspects with are ripe for discussion. I think that it might get more people to read it and to think about it if it were split into several smaller forum posts, with each subsection (such as EA devalues human life based on the arbitrary implications of capitalism and privilege) being it’s own post. Each of these subsections is its own arguments, and each also has quite a bit of nuance.
If that feels like too much work, I’d be happy to help you copy-and-paste, format, and share this as a series of smaller posts.

Joseph Lemien 31 Oct 2024 16:20 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
on: EA is bad for mental health (and I’m tired of pretending it’s not)
Hi Victor. I have a clarification question. For the quotes in this post (such as “Don’t do that even though you would love it, because you would have no impact.”), are those exact quotes, or are those your own phrasing/description of the types of things that you see and hear?