I’m a contact person for the effective altruism community: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/hYh6jKBsKXH8mWwtc/a-contact-person-for-the-ea-community
Please feel free to contact me at julia.wise@centreforeffectivealtruism.org.
I work at CEA as a community liaison, trying to make the EA community stronger and more welcoming. I also serve on the board of GiveWell.
Besides effective altruism, I’m interested in folk dance and trying to keep up with my three children.
There’s also a previous update from an earlier stage of this work: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/zgHWeMBPnCMvdoZvz/ea-will-likely-get-more-attention-soon
I’ve had pushback about not being vegan/vegetarian, but I perceive it to be a thing a small fraction of EAs push other people on rather than a general norm.
The Astral Codex Ten post linked above covers this—for some people, nightmares and blood pressure seem to be connected, and prazosin (a blood pressure medication) can reduce nightmares. The problem being that sometimes it lowers blood pressure too much and makes people dizzy.
Agree, that part was great!
Hi Barry—really sorry to hear about the bad time you’ve had, and glad you’re coming out of it. I wanted to be sure you’ve seen this earlier survey: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/FheKNFgPqEsN8Nxuv/ea-mental-health-survey-results-and-analysis There was also a 2021 EA mental health survey connected to the EA Mental Health Navigator, though I’m not sure the results have been written up. It might be worth talking to Emily Jennings of that project if you haven’t. She’s at ea.mh.navigator@gmail.com
I can understand why people want more info. Jacy and I agreed three years ago what each of us would say publicly about this, and I think it would be difficult and not particularly helpful to revisit the specifics now.
If anyone is making a decision where more info would be helpful, for example you’re deciding whether to have him at an event or you’re running a community space and want to think about good policies in general, please feel free to contact me and I’ll do what I can to help you make a good decision.
Some notes from CEA:
Several people have asked me recently whether Jacy is allowed to post on the Forum. He was never banned from the Forum, although CEA told him he would not be allowed in certain CEA-supported events and spaces.
Three years ago, CEA thought a lot about how to cut ties with a person while not totally losing the positive impact they can have. Our take was that it’s still good to be able to read and benefit from someone’s research, even if not interacting with them in other ways.
Someone’s presence on the Forum or in most community spaces doesn’t mean they’ve been particularly vetted.
This kind of situation is especially difficult when the full information can’t be public. I’ve heard both from people worried that EA spaces are too unwilling to ban people who make the culture worse, and from people worried that EA spaces are too willing to ban people without good enough reasons or evidence. These are both important concerns.
We’re trying to balance fairness, safety, transparency, and practical considerations. We won’t always get that balance right. You can always pass on feedback to me at julia.wise@centreforeffectivealtruism.org, to my manager Nicole at nicole.ross@centreforeffectivealtruism.org, or via our anonymous contact form.
I think there are a lot of partners out there (including where both are EA, but one is maximizing harder than the other) who feel similarly!
Another relevant post: You have more than one goal, and that’s fine
Related: workforce participation by women in India is very low (~20%) and has been dropping, partly because women and their families are worried about harassment or violence at work or while commuting. The actual rates of workplace or commuting violence may not be happening as often as violence in the home, but it may cause bigger changes in behavior.
Upvoting for honesty on under-the-surface things!
Good point! I think of this thing as “cred”—for example I’ve never been a manager, but I’m the longest-serving member of staff at CEA and have cred of various kinds that’s not related to my formal role in the organization. So I should think about how to use that responsibly.
Even if the content of talks is fairly similar at the EA Globals in different cities, the vibe among attendees tends to be different. In SF there will be more people in tech, more in AI safety, more people involved in niche subcultures. There hasn’t been an EA Global in DC yet, but I’m guessing the attendees will have more people in policy work and academia, with a more mainstream cultural vibe.
Thanks, updated!
I’m writing about this kind of thing on my blog: https://juliawise.net/category/children-and-parenting/ I’m hoping to do some interviews with EAs about their choice to have or not have children and what led them there. I’d be excited to see more work here by others, too!
My gut-level feelings about the future changed, but it’s not at all surprising to me that other parents like Abby had a different experience. I didn’t mean to make a claim about what other people’s experience was.
I agree with Abby that it’s a mistake to read Caplan as meaning that parenting won’t be hard. It will definitely be hard, especially in the early years. It just doesn’t have to be quite as hard as current upper-middle-class US norms would have you think.
Interesting how “none of these” is more popular in younger brackets—I wonder if there’s some other category people identify with, or just more into not picking existing categories on surveys or something?
It’s definitely a bigger job than I can do on my own! As I said, staff at several organizations plus a communications advising firm are working on this.
We’re also keeping an eye out for possible hires who are familiar with both media/communications work and EA. If that sounds like you, feel free to let me know (julia.wise@centreforeffectivealtruism.org) and I can let you know if we have a job posting.
That list is almost identical to what I started with, yes! :)
In several cases the projects are already working on their own media outreach, but we’ll be trying to help where we can (perhaps introducing them to journalists they weren’t already in touch with) and to help smaller projects that might not have a media plan yet.
When I was more active in Quaker circles, I’d hear versions of a quote attributed to Mother Teresa: “we are not called to be successful, but to be faithful.” There was a lot of attention to trying to do good, but the focus was on following where you were being spiritually led, and being in relationship with those you were helping, not effectiveness. Like if you felt a spiritual leading to help people in some ineffective way, people would have thought that was fine.