FYI If finances are any constraint for you, community building is going to have a really hard time paying you much (as is the case for past and present full-time community builders).
Lakin
Karma: 296
start small
These kinds of things seem like they happen incrementally—they evolve, rather than coming into being as the result of a grand plan. What is the simplest, quickest way you could make Version 0 of this exist today?
That said, I’m not sure I’d trust that anyone who just did one if those was really well acquainted with the ideas or way of thinking.
Yeah I would probably have more experienced community builders fly in to help out.
I think it’s pretty weird that Melatonin is #1 in your list. I think it’s weird to suggest exogenous supplementation of something like that without an explanation of why melatonin is low to begin with. The efficient market hypothesis, but applied to your own biochemistry. Chesterton’s fence, etc.
The body isn’t a machine- as if you can just give it the right amounts of the right compounds and it will perform optimally.
It took me 112 seconds start-to-writing-this-comment for what it’s worth. (Update the title accordingly maybe lol? I would’ve been more likely to click if you said ’112s’ than ‘30s’.)
ty for the app! do you know of one for iOS?
On the vitamin D side: In I’m pretty skeptical of reductionist viewpoints in general such as here, ~”the single compound of ‘vitamin D’ placed into supplements has nearly the same effect as broad-spectrum UV on skin affects the body”. I wouldn’t be surprised if broad-spectrum UV had plenty of other effects that we have no idea how to look for, or for example if “UV → {this specific compound that is put in supplements}” is a poor approximation (maybe broad-spectrum UV causes the production of plenty of compounds that are also great, and we’re only inclined to supplement one).
E.g. Vitamin D2 could be an easy way to go wrong here (I’ve only ever criticism about the effectiveness of D2). If Vitamin D supplementation works at all, I would bet on D3, but I haven’t seen you make this distinction.
Overall I think this is pretty complex to make such general reductionist prescriptions (e.g. take ’Vitamin D3, X IUs everyday in the morning…”) unfortunately.
((Also, we might live in a world where the supplement Vitamin D3 is fairly ineffective, but it still causes the blood biomarker to increase, confounding all studies everywhere.))
I used to supplement Vitamin D3 for a few years, but I stopped when I heard about all of these subtle ways that it could be ineffective (or harmful). Instead, I took more walks outside, and I took my shirt off while in sunlight more often. I have also noticed I feel much better this way, quite calmer, and I suspect quite a bit more productive on these days, and I’ve never gotten that from a supplement.
On the light exposure side: 10,000 lux is still an order of magnitude less than sunlight! Also, I doubt these lamps emit any UV, and I expect that a lot of the effect of sunlight comes from UV and that which we cannot see.
Another structure I’ve been considering is converting the fellowship into a class. (At CMU student-taught classes are part of the culture and pretty common.) But I’m less excited about this than the idea I outlined in my other comment.
Hey Ashley, I’m glad someone else is thinking about this too. Here at CMU I’ve been thinking about this too, particularly because CMU students are so busy. I think we miss people who would otherwise be engaged because of the current structure of the intro fellowship.
What I’ve been thinking about is running something like an ‘EA Expo Day’ in the beginning of the semester. It would be a full day with talks and workshops with plenty of capacity. At the same time it would be early in the semester before students get busy. I have a hunch that more people would attend an Expo Day like this than complete the fellowship.
I’m also thinking about ways of making the fellowship more decentralized and fluid, and I intend to experiment with this next semester.
I’d love to coordinate with you on this if you want to do something together within PA!
Yeah, time constraints as expected. I think I found the title of this post a bit strong then.
Also, I would be surprised if light exposure + Vitamin D approximates daytime sunlight at more than 50% effect.
recording oneself sleeping for snoring/sleep apnea seems huge.
(sorry for the comment spam. I have lots more ideas too, feel free to email me, https://chrislakin.com/now.)
What about the effects of daytime sunlight on sleep? (I would be hesitant about confounding sunlight exposure with vitamin D supplementation, I think it’s unlikely that they’re equivalent.)
I’m surprised you haven’t mentioned temperature. E.g. buying a chilipad brought down my night-time insomnia by ~80%. (And I live in the northeast, too!)
Recently I’ve moved my bed directly next to my air conditioner, which has been great
Have you investigated the effect of night-time darkness?
https://www.pnas.org/content/116/24/12019
Also of blocking blue/green light? Though there’s only a handful of studies
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7229994/ - found a 58% increase in night-time melatonin (blocking just blue, though separately it might do well to block green too)
I think I have some more notes lying around somewhere if you need them
it is hard to think of what is ‘videoable/showy’ while while also effective. it seems to be different objectives unfortunately, but maybe this works out better in the long run as that’s how they get their audience
Would love if you could do this for the EA Intro Fellowship syllabus (e.g. here’s one syllabus, but note that the syllabus is continuously updating between semesters and different universities use different syllabi)
I’m surprised no one else has mentioned: https://guzey.com/books/doing-good-better/
I wonder what a reasonable cost-effectiveness/ROI estimate is for funding EAs trying to make billion-dollar startups.
Another point to add: It’s possible that last-minute planning of a retreat might make some people (read: women) hesitant to suddenly spend a lot of time with people they don’t know that well.