I proposed the Nonlinear Emergency Fund and Superlinear as Nonlinear Intern.[1]
I co-founded Singapore’s Fridays For Future (featured on Al Jazeera and BBC). After arrests + 1 year of campaigning, Singapore adopted all our demands (Net Zero 2050, $80 Carbon Tax and fossil fuel divestment).
I developed a student forum with >300k active users and a study site with >25k users. I founded an education reform campaign with the Singapore Ministry of Education.
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I proposed both ideas at the same time as the Nonlinear team, so we worked on these together.
I find that asking EAs (or anyone, really) for open-ended feedback tends not to yield novel insight by default. EAs tend to have high openness, and as long something passes the bar of “this has plausible theory of change, has no obviously huge downside and is positive EV enough to be worth exploring” , it isn’t subject to particularly intense scrutiny. Consider also that you have thought about the problem for days/weeks whereas they’ve only thought about it for maybe 10-20 minutes
Haven’t found a 100% perfect solution, but usually I express my 2-3 most pressing doubts and ask them whether there’s a possible solution to those doubts. It scopes the question towards more precise, detailed and actionable feedback.
Alternatively, if the person has attempted a similar project, I would ask them what goals/principles they found most important, and 2-3 things they wish they knew before they’d started.