UK Civil Servant and prolific tweeter (@EAheadlines)
Kirsten
Karma: 8,282
Thanks for posting this comment, I thought it gave really useful perspective.
“I don’t think we’ve had really any policy successes with regards to the Long Term Future”
This strikes me as an odd statement. If you’re talking about the LTF fund, or EA long-termism, it doesn’t seem like much policy work has been funded.
If you’re talking more broadly, wouldn’t policy wins like decreasing the amount of lead being emitted into the atmosphere (which has negative effects on IQ and health generally) be a big policy win for the long term future?
Almost everything that gets posted on the Forum has already been explored somewhere else. That doesn’t make it worth downvoting.
I agree that I’d rather we not completely censor jokes completely, but I find it very difficult to guess what people are comfortable with, in part because I think it’s very hard to say, “No I’m not comfortable with discussion of my appearance” as a public figure. I wouldn’t necessarily feel comfortable speaking up if people were joking about me anyways.
I really liked the tone of this post, it was funny and charming
These are great concrete examples, thank you so much for adding them!
4 Ways to Give Feedback to Job or Grant Applicants
Isn’t “buying time” more commonly known as “payment” or “wages”? “Bribery” is usually reserved for corruption
Hi Lexley, I’m sure Markus will come back with an answer, but I thought I’d suggest some other ways an undergraduate or new grad could build their knowledge and credibility:
a) Write a relevant essay or do a project for one of your classes. For example, if you’re taking a political science or economics class, you could write an essay about “Does [major theory we’ve studied] explain what we’re seeing in the current governance of AI?” You could share your essay for feedback on the Facebook group “Effective Altruism Editing and Review” and potentially even post it here, or post a summary.
b) Take an internship or job somewhere that you can learn about government or governance. For example, working in local or national government; working for a regulator; working for a corporate governance body like “fair trade” or “organic”; working for a tech company or lobbyist, especially if you can get a job taking notes for their boards or something like that. Pay attention to who’s making decisions, and who the decision-makers pay attention to—who has the power in different situations?
c) Read papers and articles in the area you’re interested in, and leave polite comments or questions. If a professor at your university has written a paper you think might be relevant, go to their office hours or ask to meet them and ask them some questions about how their work could be applied to AI governance. Consider starting a blog writing summaries or reviews of relevant papers and/or introducing some of your own thoughts. Consider going on Twitter, following people you admire, and replying to them occasionally.
I hope these ideas are useful and please let me know if you try them! I’m @Kirsten3531 on Twitter if you decide to go the Twitter route :)
Dear Hank and John is my favourite podcast. I’m so glad you found EA through it!
You can also help make short meetings happen by saying, “I’d love to talk about X. I think it’ll probably take about 15 minutes, but I’m happy to meet for the default half hour if we find we have more to talk about!”
HOWEVER if you offer a shorter meeting like this, make sure you do actually give your interlocutor a chance to gracefully exit after 15 minutes. They’ll be grateful you kept to your word!
It’s the consensus amongst effective altruists that purchasing from sweatshops is one of the best ways to help the global poor and alleviate their poverty
I don’t think that’s the case. Most EAs would say the best way to help the global poor is to donate to effective charities, not to buy from sweatshops.
This exercise was a little mean but made a useful point so was pretty interesting.
Rather than proving “editing for style and readability is quick and easy for everyone,” this made me think “wow there’s a huge opportunity here for more people to start using editors”!
The fact that you could clearly rewrite this comment presumably without subject matter expertise makes me think there should be more people asking you to edit their work for a small fee …
I largely agree. I’m not certain, but at the moment I don’t think it’s a good idea for people to run for office, recruit volunteers and fundraise as EAs. I am more optimistic about EAs running for office on their own merits. I’m also optimistic about EAs starting political advocacy organisations.
My guess would be GAP focuses on recruiting existing politicians. I would be surprised if it’s a pre-existing community, of which some people decided to run for office and other community members donated and volunteered?
I strongly upvoted this comment not because I have strong feelings about it, but because I think it’s excellent as a comment: it makes one clear, novel point with good formatting, useful links and appropriate evidence. If there was still a “comment prize” I’d nominate this one.
Thank you!
Hi Brian, I think this is a great question! There are a few things to consider:
-Some people find that making a habit of finding and donating to highly effective causes helps them develop habits they use later in their life. For example, Giving What We Can encourages students to donate 1% of they earnings. https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/about-us/frequently-asked-questions
-Some people find financial independence from their parents either virtuous or important from a practical standpoint (for example if it gives you more freedom to make your own decisions). I think it’s reasonable to care about that.
-You probably have a lower income as a student than you will at most other times in your life, and you certainly have less wealth. You might want to consider whether the money you earn could be used to save you time or help you learn more or make new connections as a student.
-You also might want to consider your financial security after you graduate. Could this money give you more time to look for a good job, rather than taking the first job offered?
I think this sounds easier than it would likely be in practice:
-there are a lot of topics that could be considered high impact depending on your beliefs, but are very polarised (for example, access to abortion)
-for topics that are less polarised, it can still require specialist knowledge to tell if legislation is likely to help or hurt
-some well-intentioned legislation makes things worse in ways that isn’t obvious from reading a headline
Overall it’s reasonable for someone to try this—lots of people do things like this, at varying levels of success! - but I wouldn’t recommend just anyone do it, I wouldn’t label it as an “EA consensus” but rather one person’s views about how legislation could improve wellbeing, and I would be prepared for the possibility of this project being net negative or having almost no impact.
Other suggestions for keeping cool:
-Ice pack/bowl of ice in front of or behind your fan
-Lukewarm shower or bath (too cold can make your body try to keep the heat in)
-Probably obvious, but don’t use your oven: try more cool foods like salads and sandwiches
-Keep an eye out for vulnerable people, including young children, elderly, and pregnant women, even if they’re normally in good health
I guess I was just wrong, I hadn’t looked into it much!