I’m 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, I’m interested in folk dance and trying to keep up with my three children.
I think I don’t understand what the purpose of a regional US EA electoral group would be. We had a slack channel for east coast organizers, but there wasn’t much to coordinate about.
I loved meeting Nick at EAG! I knew he worked on public health in Uganda, but we also chatted about choices he and his wife have made to better fit in with their local community, like spending at a level comparable to the better-off of their Ugandan neighbors rather than more typical expat levels. His energy and positivity wowed me.
[I don’t have knowledge of specific charities, sorry.] From a quick search, it seems most such charities focus on the US because the US is the only high income country where most boys are circumsised despite most parents not having a particular religious reason for it. In other countries where it’s common, it’s typically for religious or epidemiological reasons.
My guess is that change could come from medical angles (Claude thinks it’s important that the American Academy of Pediatrics states the benefits outweigh the risks) and from norm-changing in hospitals. This might parallel the pro-breastfeeding initiatives in many hospitals, where they no longer offer formula unless you ask for it, etc. With breastfeeding I think it gets clumsily carried out at times, and sometimes results in excessive pressure on parents who have good reasons to prefer something different.
My understanding is that these general assemblies work by people literally coming to the same room to vote (even during covid). Willingness to spend a day on this is part of how you screen for who’s invested. In a country the size of the US, the time and money costs of travel to any one location would be much greater.
I think there’s an important difference between “have I ever seen this in the history of any EA org” and “do I think it’s a current trend / do I think it happens more in EA than other spaces.” The title points to the first, and I think what’s meant is the second.
>my initial guess here would be that EA is roughly net neutral
Yes, I think the null hypothesis is a good starting point. Sometimes I see people starting from the guess that EA has a bad effect, and that’s not what the evidence suggests.
Minor note on clarity: I found the title confusing because “humanitarian” typically means “benefitting humans”, and I think the claim here is “a method that’s already been used to benefit humans could be used to benefit fish.”
Hi! You might check out posts under the workplace advocacy tag: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/topics/workplace-advocacy
I didn’t grow up to donate everything, but I had that goal when I was about your age. My writing from my 20s has some stuff that you might find relevant or useful: http://www.givinggladly.com/
Also Charles Gray of the “world equity budget.”
A counter-example of a movement that had a burst of success, then an embarrassing decline, then revived: the early animal welfare movement. From my summary: “Lost steam after an initial burst of fundraising. Office was closed and they met in coffee houses. Main staff member was jailed for the society’s debts, another staff member continued working as a volunteer. Fortune turned when Princess Victoria (later Queen) and her mother decided they liked the organization, became the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.”
My best guess is that EA didn’t really engage much with this, because they never engaged much with starvation relief as an intervention.
The closest thing I can remember is holding up Norman Borlaug as an example of a very impactful career (implicitly in favor of bioengineering food).
A model I think is interesting, though I don’t favor it as a good fit for an international field / movement like all of EA: When talking to EA groups in Nordic countries (EA Norway, etc), I was surprised at the extent of membership and elections as the basic means of operating any group there. If I understand right, members pay a fee to be members, and the expectation is that everyone will travel to an in-person annual meeting to vote for various leadership roles. This helps address the question of who’s involved enough to get a vote.
Coming from a geographically big country, it kind of blew my mind that everyone turns up in person at one location to vote. (“Surely you did it online during covid?” “Not in Sweden!”) It’s one way of making membership a bit costly, but it does favor members in the city where the voting is held.
I also notice that when I talk to people in some roles there, like the elected community contact person, they often don’t have much experience because they were elected less than a year ago.
People with more understanding of this system would probably have more to say about its pros and cons.
Huh, I didn’t realize this. My guess is that this is largely because most animal advocacy projects are based in the West, and most ducks are farmed in Asia. From: https://worldostats.com/animals-wildlife/duck-population-by-country/
I really like it when people write up experiences from areas that are uncommon for EAs to choose! Thanks for a very interesting read.
To be painfully accurate (hey, it’s the Forum), I think my first donation was actually a bit under this. Jeff donated a larger amount that was probably part of the same transaction.
Good writeup!
Pathways is another online treatment program. There are also workbooks like The Pain Management Workbook.
EAs are a relatively young population, with a lot of years before most will die naturally. From the EA Survey: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/z4Wxd2dnTqDmFZrej/ea-survey-2024-demographics#Age
Many EAs also believe that this may be “the most important century”, and that many pivotal decisions (e.g. around AI) will happen within the next few years or decades rather than being just as influenceable in 2080 or so.