Iâm one of the contact people for the effective altruism community. I work at CEA as a community liaison, trying to support the EA community in addressing problems and being a healthy and welcoming community.
Please feel free to contact me at julia.wise@centreforeffectivealtruism.org.
Besides effective altruism, Iâm interested in folk dance and trying to keep up with my three children.
I wonder if some of this is that most people donât ask questions with âmorally speakingâ in the phrasing.
Thanks for spelling this out! Re the call script: my understanding is that messages like these get recorded by staffers basically as âin favor /â opposedâ to whatever the legislation is. Is it worth having a shorter script, since the arguments are not making it into the record of who called about what?
Seconding this. Iâve heard both âyou could die from toxic shock syndrome if you donât clean your cup properlyâ and also there are something like 5 known cases and no deaths of TSS from menstrual cups. Getting the right balance of education would be important: conveying that cleaning the cup is needed, but itâs apparently unlikely to cause a serious problem with typical use.
Seems like a great reason for donors to give during their own lifetimes instead of setting up a long-term foundation.
Students for High Impact Charity was a project to support groups at high schools, but it had difficulty getting traction. Itâs hard to start a group from afar if youâre not a student or faculty there.
Vox piece about Foegeâs work.
In the US, Instacart has a âdietary preferencesâ setting where you can opt to have more shown to you from categories like vegan, vegetarian, organic, etc. But when I tried it, it seemed to show me basically the same as usual.
I think there are real downsides of mixing unrelated goals (in this case: improving livelihoods/âskills for educated people in LMICs, and getting work done).
remote work requires people who already have computer access, reliable internet, professional skills, and proficient English (or whatever language you need). So these are people who are already relatively well-off in their setting.
management capacity is often a bottleneck, so rather than onboarding people to things like deadlines and quality standards, for the sake of getting the work done efficiently you might rather pay a higher rate to get someone who doesnât need as much hand-holding. (Maybe this isnât relevant if the work you want done isnât itself aiming at a positive impact, and youâre ok with your widget business running less efficiently in order to offer a jobs program.)
If you have needs that can be met just as well by remote workers in LMICs, seems great! But I wouldnât start with the premise that this is your best option for improving the world.
Mostly to various projects on AI risk policy and communications, and a smaller portion to GiveWellâs recommended charities
For people interested in this type of content, Yale has/âhad a similar course called âLife Worth Livingâ, mostly from a religious rather than philosophy perspective. A variety of interviews with past guests: https://ââlifeworthliving.yale.edu/ââpractitioners
Top level post:
I havenât actually seen the evidence that the LessWrong community was particularly early on covid or gave particularly wise advice on what to do about it.
Iâm saying microcovid was a useful contribution on what to do about covid that came out of the rationality community.
To give an example of where rationalists produced a useful tool here, I found microcovid useful. For example, to convince my father that it was very low-risk for him to resume outdoor social activities.
In cases where there is an established science or academic field or mainstream expert community, the default stance of people in EA should be nearly complete deference to expert opinion, with deference moderately decreasing only when people become properly educated (i.e., via formal education or a process approximating formal education) or credentialed in a subject.
On the other hand, many early critiques of GiveWell were basically âWho are you, with no background in global development or in traditional philanthropy, to think you can provide good charity evaluations?â
I first heard of cluster headaches when I worked in a psychiatric hospital with a young man who was suicidal in part due to his cluster headaches.
I didnât realize how little access to standard treatments there is! Thank you for moving this forward.
I donât have reason to think that prioritizing womenâs careers is more common in EA than in other similarly educated groups. And within EA, I definitely think itâs still most common that women are doing more of the parenting work. But I wanted to highlight some examples to show that multiple configurations really are possible!
Hi Jessica! Some things you might check out if youâre not already connected:
- EA Connect, the upcoming virtual conference
- Magnify Mentoring which might have mentors with experience in connecting people in LMICs to areas where AI safety is more established
- The opportunities board, which tends to have more accessible roles than boards aimed at full-time jobs
I kept wondering âhow does this compare to sunlightâ in terms of radiation that reaches the living layers of your skin, etc. Might be worth including that.
Other comments make me think the language wasnât a big factor, but trying to model what my college-aged self would have asked before hearing about EA: âwhat career will help other people the mostâ /â âwhat career will make the world a better placeâ