Founder of Overcome, an EA-aligned mental health charity
John Salter
Karma: 1,157
It sucks when posts are downvoted without explanation. Here are some reasons I think this was downvoted:
”The rebuttal is read by people who agree with the YouTuber. They might read the rational arguments but again emotions are stronger. They do not feel understood by the rebuttal and this leads them to dismiss the counter-arguments even if they are really good on an emotional level. This decreases trust in EA even further, and increases trust in the critic.”
It’d be good if this had a source attached to it, or if there was some argument as to why it’s the case“how unacknowledged personal shadows of EA leaders can affect the community.”
It isn’t explained what a shadow is, and this part seems wildly speculative and unhelpful; It isn’t clear how one would go about improving one’s shadow
Can you give us a breakdown of the cost of treating each additional person?
E.g. 70% salary for facilitator, 15% recruitment, 9% admin, …
It is indeed. Likely Google Meets to be precise
Friendly reminder
This is how all intervention suggestions should be written.
Clear. Concise. Concrete.
Kudos!
Hey Daniel
Welcome to the forum! To get more helpful comments, try the following:
Don’t write the title in ALL CAPS
Tell us more about the africans who are looking for volunteering opportunities (e.g. if it’s for you, post your CV )
Try the EA Anywhere slack channel, or a slack channel for the cause areas you’re interested in e.g. the EA mental health slack.
If you can earn hundreds of dollars per hour, why are you instead spending hundreds of hours doing interior design? Couldn’t you hire someone more skillful, at a lower rate, to do the same thing only better?
Counterpoint: If nucleur war is made less likely, the expected value of ALLFED decreases because the likelihood of its work being useful decreases. There is definitely value in considering neglectedness at high levels of abstraction (i.e. cause areas)
I liked this video. It does a really nice job of pointing out the callousness of the reporting.
...but email them anyway! Worst thing they can do is say no.
If you try the other suggestions, and nothing works, drop me a message! (If you’re interested in global mental health / psychology)
Novel points about a complex subject, written clearly and engagingly. Nicely done!
There’s an annoying trend of funders using non-descriptive names. It makes it harder to remember what they do. It seems mutually negative for a bunch of reasons.
1. Makes you appear lower down search rankings for relevant terms e.g. “Farmed Animal Welfare Funder”
2. Makes it harder to remember what they do, so people forget and have to click on their website over and over to remind themselves
→ more relevant people forgetting what you do and thus not applying & more irrelevant people viewing your information (thus wasting their time)
Compare and contrast to something like “Mental Health Funding Circle” or “EA Animal Welfare Fund” where it’s immediately apparent to both the relevant and irrelevant.
Resolute proved successful so we’ve doubled down.
* more coaches
* dramatically increased training
* more specialists
This is an advert for two such specialists.Our coaching isn’t designed for effective altruists specifically. Rethink Wellbeing is much better positioned than us to offer this type of thing long-term. That being said, I’ll keep donating it to EAs so long as we have spare capacity.
Warning: brutally honest take that’s critical of your plans
It doesn’t seem like either of those paths is the most impactful for you based on the information presented. There doesn’t seem to be any evidence that you’d be an especially good fit for either. It seems like you have little background or capabilities relevant to either medicine or AI.
Don’t get me wrong, you’re evidently very capable; it’s outrageously difficult to get into graduate medicine.I can’t comment on AI, but I’ve worked in global health. What proportion of the most impactful people in global health have medical degrees? I’m not familiar with anyone suggesting this as being an efficient way to get into global health. We don’t know much about your situation, so generic advice is the best I’ve got—here are some paths worth considering:
* found, work at, or volunteer for a global health startup
* do a global health masters
* work at WHO / UN to build connections
* apply to Charity Entrepreneurship
* do internships to figure out the conditions under which you do your best work
I’m open to feedback from disagreevoters
Good point. Thank you!
Strongly upvoted. People massively underestimate how many EAs struggle emotionally and the consequences it has on their impact. It goes all the way up to the most senior people. They’re willing to admit it privately, but few are brave enough to post about it publicly. We need more posts like this!
40 places remaining
“we can still aim for “the greatest good for the greatest number”—it’s just that this number is no longer an integer.”
Beautiful