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.
Glad this question-and-answer happened!
A meta note that sometimes people post questions aimed at an organization but donât flag it to the actual org. I think itâs a good practice to flag questions to the org, otherwise you risk:
- someone not at the org answers the question, often with information thatâs incorrect or out of date
- the org never sees the question and looks out-of-touch for not answeringâ
comms staff at the org feel they need to comb public spaces for questions and comments about them, lest they look like theyâre ignoring people
(This doesnât mean you canât ask questions in public places, but email the org sending them the link!)
(Writing personally, not organizationally)
Iâm happy people are trying experiments like this!
Thinking about other ways that people incorporate each otherâs judgement about where to donate: often it involves knowing the specific people.
I think some people who knew each other through early EA /â GWWC did this â some had a comparative advantage in finance so went into earning to give, and others had a comparative advantage in research or founding organizations so went into nonprofits. But they made heavy use of each otherâs advice, because they knew each otherâs strengths.
Itâs also common to do this within a couple /â family. My husband spent 10 years earning to give while I worked in social work and nonprofits, so heâs earned the large majority of what weâve donated. Early on, the two of us made separate decisions about where to donate our own earnings (though very informed by talking with each other). Later we moved to making a shared decision on where weâd donate our shared pot of money. This isnât necessarily the best system â people are biased toward trusting their family even in domains where the person isnât very competent, and you can see examples like the Buffett family where family members seem to make kind of random decisions.
I feel good about people pooling judgement when they know the strengths and weaknesses of the specific other people involved. I feel much less excited about pooling judgement with people whose judgement I know nothing about.
In 2020 when I asked you about lead policy work, you werenât optimistic that people without strong networks and expertise could make much progress on policy advocacy. Has your view changed?
I found this a clear explanation of the costs and benefitsâthanks for writing it up!
A similar issue: lack of iodization in Europe, the region where children have the highest rates of low iodine. https://ââwww.who.int/ââpublications/ââi/ââitem/ââ9789241593960
Iâve added a link to the section of the CEA mistakes page that outlines these.
>emails to those accepted to the EAGxAustralia 2023 conference but who did attend
Was this meant to say âdid not attendâ?
Just a note that as an American then-Quaker, I went to a âRight Sharing of World Resourcesâ event in 2006. This post is correct that there wasnât an emphasis on effectiveness, but on frugality and solidarity with the global poor.
My understanding is that there wasnât any direct connection between these Quaker efforts and the early effective giving projects that became part of EA.
Also, youâre always welcome at the EA peer support group.
Hi Emrik,
I wanted to flag the outside view is that stopping all communication with other people seems like a very bad idea. If I understand right from your link, Maria is a spirit-animal rather than another person in the usual sense of the word.
My best guess is that isolation will not improve your ability to help others, but will create a complete echo chamber that wonât be good for your wellbeing or your ability to help others.
(I think there can be some variations on this that make sense. Like I have a family member who can only write science fiction when heâs been away from people for several days, so for a long time he structured his life to be pretty isolated in order to write books. But he was still in touch with friends and family at intervals.)
It sounds like youâre in a difficult place, and I really hope youâre able to find other people you trust to help you work out how you want to approach things.
[Edited a bit since I think my tone was off, thanks quila for identifying some of that]
For people interested in this topic, Iâve found Alice Evansâ writing interesting.
My impression is that Jaan Tallinnâs interest in rationalit- and EA-related projects, going back a long time, was one factor in Estonia.
My experience is that itâs more possible to avoid current conflicts of interest, but as people work in the same ecosystem they often have multiple interactions in different contexts over time. Iâd want people to keep in mind that the person in their group now may later end up being their colleague, funder, etc. To me, this is still a reason to seriously consider mental health resources outside the community.
Thanks for your post on quick ways to test suitability for bio work!
A post by the former Alvea folks, in case it helps you get in touch with them.
This is the Scott Alexander summation of it that sticks in my memory most: âif youâre against witch-hunts, and you promise to found your own little utopian community where witch-hunts will never happen, your new society will end up consisting of approximately three principled civil libertarians and seven zillion witches. It will be a terrible place to live even if witch-hunts are genuinely wrong.â
I donât know about that, your other work sounds pretty great!
Welfare standards on farms like larger cage sizes, stunning before killing, etc donât have obvious benefits for humans. Arguably there are downstream benefits by making meat more expensive and thereby causing less of whatever indirect effects meat consumption creates.