Hey. Iām Jordan (jojo) Pieters. Iām currently the EA Global Content Coordinator at CEA, meaning I arrange all the talks, workshop and meetups at EAG conferences.
Previously, I was involved in a variety of EA community-building projects, including running EA Oxford for the 23ā24 academic year. I also have some experience in operations management.
Feel free to reach out if you want to share feedback on EAG, or have ideas for content!
Luke, I took part in the GWWC ambassador program you ran in 2021 and had the pleasure of interacting with you on a few occasions. Your enthusiasm and thoughtfulness were a part of what pushed me to deepen my involvement in the EA community and eventually go on to do community building full-time. I really appreciate the work youāve done to grow GWWC into an outstanding organisation. I wish you all the best!
In case you havenāt seen it, hereās a fireside chat we hosted with Ezra Klein in 2021. It might be cool to have him back at EAG though!
I share your inclination toward significant diversification. However, I find myself grappling with the question of whether there should be specific limits on this diversification. For instance , Open Philanthropyās approach seems to be āwe diversify amongst worldviews we find plausible,ā but itās not clear to me what makes a worldview plausible. How seriously should we consider, for example, Nietzscheanism?
I agree that thinking from first principles can be great but, as Iām sure youāre aware, itās super difficult! Do you have any thoughts on encouraging and/āor facilitating more of this kind of thinking in the community?
What do you think people in the EA community get wrong (or fail to sufficiently consider) when it comes to cause prioritisation?
Iām glad this now exists, and the leadership seems great! My impression is that work on restricting the growth of the farmed insect industry is similarly very funding-constrained. Given that, Iām curious about the decision to focus the foundationās efforts exclusively on scientific research rather than also supporting policy or advocacy work.
Hello forum, just checking in as the EAGxLondon team lead. A couple of things Iād like to say:
As Ollie notes, we had some problems with the venue. Weāre hoping to have a time in early April locked in soon and will send out an announcement when we do.
Why an EAGx in London? EA Globals have a high bar for admissions, but the UK has a large number of students who are newer to EA. We want to create an opportunity for them to attend an EA event this year and EAGx will be much more accessible for them.
Is the survey data closed access? If so, would it be possible to request access? I have a few questions of my own Iād like to try answer
Some very belated updates on this project:
In case itās not obvious, we didnāt end up running this. There were a couple of reasons for that:
I personally didnāt have the capacity to run a project of this size. Other residencies I attended required multiple staff members to run well
The Mexico EA Fellowship was targeting roughly the same demographic and happening at the same time. I didnāt want to create competition for this and I think they had an advantage anyway (a more established LatAm community, coinciding with a local EAGx, and a strong team)
I probably wouldnāt consider running it now:
Obviously, the funding situation in EA has changed significantly since the time we came up with this idea (FTX crash).
Iām also not sure how cost-effective/āuseful other residencies have been (Prague, Mexico City, Zanzibar). I would want some more data on these previous residencies before moving forward with more.
Wasnāt sure where else to mention this ā the search feature on the forum is pretty bad. I tried finding a post from Claire Zabel by searching āClaire Zabelā. I couldnāt find it because her username is actually āClaireZabelā
I had previously decided to work on EA community-building full-time, and have now mostly changed my mind. I want to write up my reasoning for this. I donāt think this will be entirely relevant to general movement strategy, but I think itās worth making legible for others
the question of whether we (i.e. anyone) should be doing mass outreach on the topic of AI Safety is over. It is happening.
This feels like a very hostile statement. Itās not at all obvious that this question is over.
I personally feel a lot more cautious about doing mass outreach. I think thereās a decent chance people could accidentally do significant harm to future efforts. Policy, politics and advocacy are complicatedāregardless of the area youāre working in.
For what itās worth, Iāve spoken to Nik and I think some of the work heās doing is great. Iām especially excited about narrative testing.
Thank you for being open about this Max. Iām sorry to hear that itās been tough. I think this post in itself is really valuable. I imagine myself using it as a good example in the future to encourage people to prioritize their mental health.
I appreciate the work youāve done to make CEA into an organisation that I really admire. Iām sure youāll do great things in the future. Best wishes!
I often use charity and thrift shops. The other day I was thinking about how it would be cool to have one that donates to GiveWell or something.
Good job on trying this!
Iām optimistic about this test. Even as a community builder, I find all the community discussion overwhelming. The Forum has become a place Iām less likely to visit because something like half of the discussions donāt feel productive for me to engage in.
Flagging that I may be interested in helping run both EA Infrastructure and AI safety versions of this
This seems great. This org has ties to pretty influential people. A couple of things Iām curious about:
What influenced this direction? (they mentioned the doomsday clock, but I imagine lots of other sources of influence)
Could we piggyback off of this to increase buy-in for x-risk reduction from people in their network? Maybe getting some of their high net-worth supporters to start moving money towards these causes?
There are some EAs hanging out in CDMX until the end of Jan (and maybe some after)
Agree that having a nomad friendly community near the US would be great
I think this is a nice simple breakdown of the concept.
A nitpickāI think having digital graphs rather than these photos would be a big improvement
By coincidence, I just came across this layer-hen genetics project that got funding from OP. I donāt know much about the work or how promising it might be.