Iām 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, Iām interested in folk dance and trying to keep up with my three children.
My impression is that Jaan Tallinnās interest in rationalit- and EA-related projects, going back a long time, was one factor in Estonia.
My experience is that itās 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. Iād 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: āif youāre 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.ā
I donāt know about that, your other work sounds pretty great!
Exciting! Best wishes for the event!
Excited to see the tradition of absurd Guinness World Records for AMF continuing!
I was so sorry to learn this.
Some other resources:
5 steps to help someone who may be suicidal
Crisis resources around the world
Years ago Marisa was the first person to put in an application for several EA Globals, to where I was curious if she had some kind of notification set up. I asked her about it once, and she was surprised to hear that sheād been first; she was just very keen.
For others who were curious about what time difference this makes: looks like sex identification is possible at 9 days after the egg is laid, vs 21 days for the egg to hatch (plus an additional ~2 days between fertilization and the laying of the egg.) Chicken embryonic development is really fast, with some stages measured in hours rather than days.
I admire your drive to help others!
I do think early in my life I underweighted shopping around because I was so focused on frugality (and itās easy to be discouraged when job searches take a long time). Best wishes as you explore the options.
I appreciate you helping others learn from your experiences, and Iām sorry they were difficult ones. Thank you for flagging the risks here.
I donāt think this is correct; most of the US doesnāt have any age limit on informal jobs like babysitting and yard work. Itās typically legal for children of any age to work for their parentsā business. My ten-year-old is sometimes keen to earn money by washing windows or raking leaves for our neighbors, and I donāt see anything wrong with this as long as she can opt out when she wishes.
Hi, some thoughts from the community health team.
First, Iām sorry youāve had this bad experience ā we donāt want EA groups to be like this! I do notice that sub-areas within the same community can develop pretty different cultures, and Iām sorry youāve ended up in an area where the culture is so discouraging.
There are options for professional networking in EA outside your local group if you decide you still want to, for example:
EA Anywhere online group
EA Global and EAGx conferences, especially meetups for specific fields
There may be an online group for your career area
Youāve likely already considered this, but if you leave your field to avoid needing to interact with these people, thereās a question of whether other fields are significantly better. Basically any field will include some people who do shady things ā sites like Ask A Manager are full of people behaving badly in professional contexts. But interacting with a shady person in the same professional field is different from needing to work closely with them, and itās much more possible to choose to work for a team or an organization you generally feel good about.
You mentioned you donāt feel that comfortable talking to the community health team ā in case itās helpful, you can ask us questions about how we work, or raise things anonymously via this form. (Please leave a burner email or something if youād like us to get back to you!) You may want to talk to someone else at CEA, even if you donāt want to talk to our team ā for example someone on the groups team if you have concerns about a group organizer.
The ability to schedule when you want (as opposed to a therapist who only has a slot at 2:30 on Thursdays) is another benefit, especially compared to in-person therapy you need to travel to. I have a pet peeve about studies that donāt count the cost to beneficiaries of taking time off work, or whatever else theyād be doing with their time, to travel to and from an appointment during the workday.
There are no whistleblower systems in place at any major EA orgs as far as I know
Iāve heard this claim repeatedly, but itās not true that EA orgs have no whistleblower systems.
I looked into this as part of this project on reforms at EA organizations: Resource on whistleblowing and other ways of escalating concerns
Many organizations in EA have whistleblower policies, some of which are public in their bylaws (for example, GiveWell and ACE publish their whistleblower policies among other policies). EV US and EV UK have whistleblower policies that apply to all the projects under their umbrella (CEA, 80,000 Hours, etc.) This is just a normal thing for nonprofits; the IRS asks whether you have one even though they donāt strictly require it, and you can look up on a nonprofitās 990 whether they have such a policy.
Additionally, UK law, state law in many US states, and lots of other countries provide some legal protections for whistleblowers. Legal protection varies by state in the US, but is relatively strong in California.
Neither government protections nor organizational policies cover all the scenarios where someone might reasonably want protection from negative effects of bringing a problem to light. But that seems to be the case in all industries, including in the nonprofit field in general, not something unusual about EA.
Iām not aware of any EA organizations that provide financial rewards for whistleblowers, which seem like theyād be very tricky to administer without creating incentives you donāt want. The main example of financial rewards that Iām aware of is that the US government provides large financial rewards to whistleblowers whose evidence leads to the conviction of some fraud cases.
Iām not sure if anybody ever figured out how much the authors of this paper were joking. https://āāwww.dailymail.co.uk/āāsciencetech/āāarticle-2114430/āāSave-planet-genetically-engineering-humans-smaller-suggests-NYU-philosopher.html
Thank you for writing this up!
Itās helpful that you flag that the large majority of studies are done in the US. I would find it helpful in discussing interventions if the location is flagged moreāfor example, the cash transfers intervention is in rural Kenya. My impression is that these interventions donāt generalize well across different settings.
For people interested in this topic, Iāve found Alice Evansā writing interesting.