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.
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.
Many of us have found our goals and desires shift a lot over time. I think there are some commitments flexible enough to be a good idea (like Iâm happy I took the 10% pledge), while others lock you in in ways that wonât be good for your long-term impact. My own sense of the best ways to have impact has changed a lot over time. This is also true for many others in the community.
Aside from other things that people value after retiring, there are forms of mentorship and contribution that can last long after youâre no longer doing a standard workweek. Peter Singer is 79 and retired as a university professor but still seems to have a busy speaking and writing schedule. The closing speaker at EAG Boston 2023 was then-93-year-old geneticist Matthew Meselson, speaking about his work preventing biowarfare and about preventing future pandemics.
I agree with Denkenberger that thereâs a lot of uncertainty about what life will look like in a few decades, including uncertainty about any given career, if careers will even be a thing, if money will be less useful or more useful, etc.
Being pulled between your parentsâ wishes and your own is always tough! Wishing you the best in your decisions.
I think a charity that only existed to do this would have trouble getting charitable status; e.g. I think the Berkeley REACH wasnât able to get approved as a nonprofit because it didnât have a clear enough benefit to society.
There are some projects like this that charities can fund as part of a wider portfolio, e.g. the shorter fellowships Ollie points to, or career development grants. But â3 years of explore whatever seems best to youâ sounds like a stretch to me.
One barrier is that nonprofits/âcharities typically canât fund this sort of thing.
Thanks for voicing this!
Some places to connect:
- Magnify Mentoring aims to support people from underrepresented groups in pursuing altruistic work. I suggest checking them out if you havenât already!
- Iâm not sure how active it is, but some EAs started a Facebook group EAs from immigrant backgrounds. I know family expectations about what you do with your career and money is a very common theme among people Iâve talked to among EAs whose families moved from lower-income to higher-income countries.
How do you get the yellow box with the draft amnesty text to put at the top?
My husband and I realized that we both likely would have moved to the Bay for work if we werenât married to each other and putting down roots in his home city. Thereâs a lot of benefit weâve had from living near his family, and near the folk dance community through which we metâBoston is a hub of that.
Weâre lucky that one of us was from a city that has turned out to be a pretty good location for EA involvement, and a good location for in-person work in biosecurity. I have a lot of empathy for people who didnât happen to have that as a starting point.
Hey, Iâm sorry things have been feeling so bad!
Ultimately, I see the goal of EA as more good experiences and less suffering. When you have a day thatâs ok instead of awful, when you make music that gives you satisfaction, when you have a good lunch or a good nap or a good experience of any kind, thatâs a win. Youâre not just here to create achievements, youâre here as a living being whose experiences matter.
Iâd echo Dave that talking to somebody (beyond LLMs) seems like a good idea.
If youâre not already getting medical/âmental health care for depression, Iâd strongly suggest that too. I think this overview by Scott Alexander is a good place to think through some options, or maybe skip to some recommended steps for treating depression.
Justisâ piece If youâre unhappy, consider leaving is worth a read for anybody who feels like theyâre not âsucceedingâ at EA.
I was in a conversation recently about how organizers usually donât have managers. A board member of a city group said to the organizer of that group, âShould we start having regular calls every few weeks?â and the organizer said âYes please!â
If youâre an organizer with a board, or a board member of a group, consider if you should do regular management or accountability-buddy type calls!
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.