AI safety + community health
pete
Karma: 498
For transparency, though, I personally focus and donate to organizations closer to what 80,000 Hours is talking about, because I think huge public health threats have an outsized impact on poverty and wellbeing.
I’m also surprised to see this—lots and lots of EAs focus on wellbeing / reducing global poverty (see Givewell for helpful summary). Obviously reducing risk of nuclear war, etc, has implications for poverty, but try GiveWell for a more direct focus.
Generally speaking, organizations that tend to do well in EA clear a higher bar of rigor on theory of change. For example, being able to show an ROI comparable to one of GiveWell’s top recommended charities, or have some sort of global multiplier effect (ex: reducing risks of future pandemics.)
Your organization seems off to a great start and will probably continue to thrive in the social impact community—if you’d like to learn more about what EAs tend to care about, take a look at the problem profiles on 80,000 Hours.org.
One element of personal fit that’s not mentioned is the choice to have kids / become a primary caregiver for someone — see bessieodell’s great post. Current impact calculations don’t include this by default, which I think creates a cultural undercurrent of “real EAs don’t factor caregiving into their careers.”
Is this in addition to the more frequent (compared to previous annual) polls already being taken by 80k?
Love seeing this type of thinking on the Forum. Thanks for writing.
I’m skeptical that a business leader, on average, is more stuck in the status quo than a politician—especially given the massive influence business has in policy. That said, great post!
The second part of this strategy is having IRL relationships I trust to tell me if something important slipped through my filter. This involves some trust, but has worked well for me. I can’t imagine how many hours I’ve gotten back.
I have what I call a “gopher” strategy. When it’s time for an election, I poke my head up and research the candidates, then choose. Then I shut the news off (literally, blocking it on my devices) for the rest of the time. If there’s an issue I want to learn about in depth, I read longform articles or books. This keeps me better informed and less outraged than I would be otherwise.
Phenomenal post. Nice categorization, super clear and compelling.
What are the hidden costs and benefits to working full-time on x-risk reduction? (Including research, policy, etc.)
Really thoughtful responses, thank you. I tend to think the idea of intrinsic worth popular in the West stems from Christian influence but haven’t found defense for it outside Christian frameworks
There’s a popular plugin called Kill News Feed that helps, for anyone looking for something like this
Supportive of anything that gets EA off of Facebook. But also, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it? The Facebook meme page is working—let it live in the wild, maybe.
Great post. EA is a mixed blessing for the many folks who tend toward anxiety. There’s always something more to be thinking about, always a career plan to sharpen, always more to donate. Guideposts like this one can help folks manage the firehose and make EA healthier & more sustainable than other social impact communities. I’m thinking of 2017ish Climate Twitter, which kept saying something like “to exist as a person is a crime against the planet.”
One question : “a person’s right to be alive is not tied to their past or future altruistic impact.” I agree with that statement but haven’t heard much of a philosophical justification for it. Do you know where I could learn more about the idea of intrinsic worth and how it relates to consequentialist morality?
Great tip, Geoffrey—hadn’t heard this before, look forward to trying it.
Sent this to a friend building a career plan immediately. Fantastic post.
Update: Friend said “Wow, awesome article. That really was comforting.”
Excellent initiative—this increases my confidence that we can create organizations that truly scale and achieve significant impact
I’m sorry, and I really wish you guys the best of luck! It’s super competitive and many great orgs don’t clear the hurdle.