Part-time Community Health Coordinator at EA NYC
Full-time social worker
All-the-time human
MeganNelson
Karma: 985
Hi Louisa—when you have a minute, could you edit your comment to add links to the 80k articles that address these issues? It’d be an easy step towards connecting those messages with the people who could benefit from them (and who may well be inclined to read this particular Forum post and comments).
Thank you!
Thank you for writing this up, Severin. I think you’re really onto something: EA communities can work as wonderful containers (borrowing your phrase!), as stable launchpads, and as supportive audiences for movement building. Trying to change the world is hard work, and having a community makes it easier.
I’m delighted to hear about your successes—you are empowering your community members to explore their own ideas and to put them into action. That’s next-level community building!
We wouldn’t be the first uh, social movement to spread our message via BBQ seitan.
We are 94% certain that this is the greatest thing that EA NYC has ever done.
This post makes me uncomfortable. I tried to talk to @Derek Shiller about making a 1% Spending What We Can pledge, and he muttered something about living in a van down by the river. Then he wrote a check to Shrimp Welfare Project.
Are we doing this right?
>There’s often a big difference between castles and manor houses.
This came up several times during the course of our project, invariably from folks who live outside of NYC. No one on our team could figure out what they were talking about.
To try to find out, we secured a grant[1] to commission researchers at the Global Risk Lab at NYU to create a battery of specialized psychological tests. Unfortunately, no one on our team could accurately differentiate between the concepts of “castle” and “manor house”, despite Josh and Lucius showing us flashcards until they burst into tears.
We’re unsure of the cause of this cognitive blind-spot, but we strongly suspect it’s because we’re all a bunch of peasants.
- ^
The spare change we found under Jacob Eliosoff’s couch cushions.
- ^
We’ve also ordered ten custom lazy-susan tables from Japan.
>How much did this cost?
Approximately $25million for the initial purchase, which when you consider the price of NYC real estate and the anticipated gain in NALYs (noodle-adjusted life-years) is an absolute steal.
>I understand they money didn’t come from FTX sources, but where did it come from?
Rocky found a duffle bag full of money on the J train at 3am and I reverse-catfished a Facebook romance scammer. Alex and Arthur raised the balance of the down payment by busking at the Union Square subway station (they both play the accordion).
>There isn’t any cell reception in the back corner. Do you plan on fixing this?
I’m glad you asked! Many members of the community find that avoiding cell phone use during periods of intense work helps them stay on-task. We anticipate that the back corner of our vegan dim sum restaurant will be an excellent place for sustained focus.
>please don’t remove the drop ceiling!
I’m way ahead of you—I love it so much I’ve asked my building super to install a trendy “distressed” drop ceiling in my apartment!
Thank you for writing this and for posting it here. Thank you for sharing your own story and experience.
We all have a responsibility to this community, and to every community we’re part of. I’ve been thinking for a while about bystanders, and how to encourage folks to think about “community health” not as law enforcement or emergency services, but as the atmosphere that we are all engaged with (for better or for worse, whether or not we realize it). The metaphor of a collectively shouldered burden is really good.
I hope your post is widely read. Please know that I appreciate it.
I’m heartened to hear that this project is underway, and I’m looking forward to being able to use this information to make our communities (local and global) better. Thank you, Catherine, Anu, and Łukasz!
Please feel free to reach out to me if I can be helpful. I don’t have data to share at this time, but I want to support and encourage you in this work if I can.
I agree! Thank you to the Forum mods and the CEA Community Health Team for doing the hard jobs that make our community possible.
That said, I’d like to suggest that the absolute best way to thank them is to please not make their jobs any harder.
Even if you’re “one of the good guys”, think about how you can extend and expand that goodness through the community by promoting norms and values that steer us away from future problems. We all have a part to play in supporting a healthy EA community.
Seconding this. As someone who grew up with a strong Christian identity that I no longer hold, my conversations about faith and EA with JD and other EA for Christians folks have been very positive.
Enthusiastic agree! I would also love to see this at an EAGx, and to see basic financial literacy information brought to student groups as well.
It doesn’t have to (and probably shouldn’t) be super-advanced, but giving folks a basic understanding would go a long way.
Be honest with your mentees. Share your feelings of concern and diminished confidence. Your value as a mentor isn’t that you have nothing left to learn; it’s that you’re slightly further along the learning process and you’re willing to share.
So, here you are, learning your way through the current crisis (as we all are!). To my mind, the advice and guidance that you can offer now is even more important, because the lessons that you’re learning (against hubris, towards greater humility and carefulness) are worth sharing.
Model the behavior you want to see in your mentees. Don’t quit now. Learn and try to to better.
I was on the fence between posting this under my name vs. using an anonymous account. I decided to go ahead, because this is something I’ve discussed with other folks and it’s something I feel pretty strongly about. I wanted to write this comment both to validate your experience and to say a few words about how I see the path forward.
I’ve had those experiences too: feeling dismissed, shut down, or like I’m not worth someone’s time.
But—and maybe this is because I have a stubborn, contrary, slightly masochistic, “oh yeah? I’ll show you” streak—I stuck around. I’m not saying that this is the only way to go; if hanging out with other people in the EA community is causing you pain, I don’t want that for you and it is 100% OK to go and do your own thing.
But if you can: stick around.
Because here’s the thing: not everyone is like that. I’d go so far as to say that folks with the attitude above are in the minority. There are SO many humane, warm, kind people in this movement. There are people with a sense of humor and a healthy bit of self-doubt and a generous willingness to meet others where they are. When I hang out with them, I feel inspired to work harder and do more good and to continue to be part of this community. And I’ve made it my task to find those people, encourage them, and make sure they stick around too.
If you (and I’m addressing anyone reading this, not just James) have a vision for what you want a given community to look like, you can stick around and help bring it to life. We get to create the communities we want to be a part of—how awesome is that? For my part, that’s what I’m striving to do. And I’m here to encourage others to do the same.
I’m piggybacking on Rocky’s comment. Keerthana, I’m so sorry to hear that you had this experience in the EA NYC community (and beyond), and I’m grateful to you for talking about it.
As Rocky said, this is the kind of issue that we are thinking about and trying to address. If anyone reading this would like to discuss concerns about EA NYC community health and culture, please feel free to reach out using the (anonymous) form above or to email me at megan@effectivealtruism.nyc.
Thank you for this post! I’m a loud-and-proud advocate of the “big tent”. It’s partly selfish, because I don’t have the markers that would make me EA Elite (like multiple Oxbridge degrees or a gazillion dollars).
What I do have is a persistent desire to steadily hack away at the tremendous amount of suffering in the world, and a solid set of interpersonal skills. So I show up and I make my donations and I do my level best to encourage/uplift/motivate the other folks who might feel the way that I do. If the tent weren’t big, I wouldn’t be here, and I think that would be a loss.
Your new GWWC member’s EAGx experience is exactly what I’m out here trying to prevent. Here is someone who was interested/engaged enough to go to a conference, and—we’ve lost them. What a waste! Just a little more care could have helped that person come away willing to continue to engage with EA—or at least not have a negative view of it.
There are lots of folks out there who are working hard on “narrow tower” EA. Hooray for them—they are driving the forward motion of the movement and achieving amazing things. But in my view, we also need the “big tent” folks to make sure the movement stays accessible.
After all, “How can I do the most good, with the resources available to me?” is a question more—certainly not fewer! - people should be encouraged to ask.
thank you!