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.
Stuff I tell student organizers: Do more meta communication.
Represent the range of views that are in your group. If some people in your student group think âdo the normal thing in university and explore your career optionsâ and others think âdrop out to urgently work on 2-person AI safety projects,â represent to your group members that those are both views held in your group.
If you always serve vegan food, people will assume all EAs are vegan /â youâre supposed to be vegan if youâre in EA. I suggest saying something like âWe serve vegan food because thatâs what works best for the combination of people in our group, but itâs not that everybody is vegan.â About half the people in the EA survey are vegetarian or vegan.
I think the heads up was optional; thanks for doing it at all. But it felt weird that you included it in your comment, because a heads up to me doesnât really make a difference on the overall situation.
>FWIW I did send the CEA community health team a draft of this announcement.
Since you mention my team and you emailed me an FYI about 16 hours before this announcement went up, hereâs my opinion: donât hire someone with a fraud conviction for a finance or philanthropy role.
I thought the quiz was well made!
I came here and had the same thought!
I like how this model captures several different factors! Taste/âenjoyment is another factor that I think is key for a lot of people here.
As described, this doesnât seem to contain
- time with friends
- seeing family, especially if they donât live in the same city
- recuperation time if you get sick
I suggest having some tripwires built in, like âIf my closest friend says âyou are not ok, you should pause,â I will take X steps.â
The commitment as stated is âactually donated âŹ1 millionâ, unclear if donating part of a company counts.
>Palisade, Apollo, METR, MATS, Tarbell
For other readers who thought, âWait, are those not getting CG funding?â Almost all of those orgs have been funded by CG, most within the last year. Maybe not at the level Scottâs talking about though.
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
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.
In the example about careers, it could across that âdo the normal thingâ is a front for the more extreme thing. I think itâs worth spelling out: different people do have actually different beliefs about what you should do here.
In the example about food, itâs common that people assume Iâm vegan because I serve vegan food for EA dinners. Iâm not, and I donât want to create the impression that a specific diet is a required part of EA. (I should follow my own advice and flag this a little more clearly at my own dinners!)