Patrick Gruban 🔸

Pa­trick Gruban’s Quick takes

EAGxBer­lin 2024

• Patrick Gruban 🔸Dec 11, 2023, 9:39 PM

  16 points

  12 ∶ 0

  on: I spent a lot of time and money on one dog. Do I need help?

  Thanks for sharing! My intuition would be that the behavior of your friends are net negative for the EA movement as they risk demotivating you in your work and making it seeming like EA has standards that many people don’t want to follow. It took me some years to grasp the bandwidth of attitudes and behaviors that are compatible with adhering to the shared values and this delayed my switching to direct work. In that sense I would agree with the parallel you drew from the vegan community. That being said I feel myself self-censoring more what I post online since becoming more active, as I am aware of being judged by some people in and out of the community. I’m not sure if this is a good thing.

• Patrick Gruban 🔸Dec 11, 2023, 8:52 AM

  11 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: JamesÖz 🔸’s comment on: EA Ger­many’s 2023 Re­port, 2024 Plans & Fund­ing Gap

  As Effektiv Spenden is active in the field of effective donations from small-scale donors to high-networth individuals in Germany, we see our advantage mainly in helping people get into more impactful careers. For these, we broadly see the top skills and high-impact career paths 80,000 hours have identified as good guidance. We think that career impact has a heavy-tailed distribution, with most of the impact EAD will have coming from supporting a few individuals.

  One important consideration is whether EAD can contribute to reducing AI x-risk. One credible worldview sees the development of transformative AI within years as likely, making the AI alignment a field that needs experienced talent very soon. Under this worldview, it seems most important to reach professionals who can be convinced to work on this problem now.

  Continuing to reach out to students and people earlier in their careers to think about cause prioritisation seems more important in the worldview of longer timelines to transformative AI or if EA can contribute less to the field than in previous years. We think both worldviews are credible enough to contribute resources to them.

EA Ger­many’s 2023 Re­port, 2024 Plans & Fund­ing Gap

• Patrick Gruban 🔸Dec 7, 2023, 2:56 AM

  37 points

  8 ∶ 0

  on: EA thoughts from Is­rael-Ha­mas war

  Thank you for writing and publishing this here, Ezra!

  As I already wrote to you in another channel, first of all, I want to say that I’ve been thinking of all of you I know in the EA Israel team since the terrorist attacks and you and your family after I heard that you were called up to the army reserves. I can’t image what you have been going through. The piece at least gives a glimpse, which I found very valuable to read.

  The piece reminds me of You have more than one goal, and that’s fine in the sense that the acute situation of war, of fearing for the lives of loved ones, is a different bucket to the peacetime situation of impartial altruism.

  A formative experience for me was being part of a student exchange in high school with Israel. Most of our group of Germans lived with Israeli families while I was at a Palestinian’s house. I was able to spend time with Israelis and Palestinians and hear stories of violence and trauma. Since then, I’ve been very sceptical of outsiders trying to weigh in on the conflict, especially one-sided and simplistic statements. I like how you phrased it: “Most of those people have no idea what’s going on, and may be acting against the best interest of the people they claim to care about.”

• Patrick Gruban 🔸Nov 17, 2023, 5:33 AM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: calebp’s comment on: calebp’s Shortform

  Concerning 2 I think from an organization’s perspective it might be even helpful to have a salary agreed with you that makes it easier to replace you and so calculate a realistic runway for the organization.Then you can still voluntarily reduce the salary and claim it as donation. This is what I’m doing and it helps with my own budgeting and with that of my org. I was inspired by this post: https://​​forum.effectivealtruism.org/​​posts/​​GxRcKACcJuLBEJPmE/​​consider-earning-less

Res­tau­rant So­cial at Cuno B

EA Ger­many’s Mid-Year Up­date 2023

• Patrick Gruban 🔸Sep 12, 2023, 3:28 PM

  25 points

  8 ∶ 0

  in reply to: James Herbert’s comment on: An­nounc­ing the Meta Co­or­di­na­tion Fo­rum 2023

  Seeing the other replies, it seems the specific experience of running a national EA organisation is not specifically represented, although, in our (EA Germany) case, Anne Schulze is part of the community. Bigger EA organisations like ours (>100 members, supporting 27 local/​uni groups, providing fiscal sponsorship/​employer of record services, having a community health contact, etc.) might bring an additional perspective.

  However, I see that having a representative for each sub-group would make for a big forum and that it’s okay to have people who represent multiple perspectives.

  What links here?

  • Rockwell's comment on An­nounc­ing the Meta Co­or­di­na­tion Fo­rum 2023 by Sophie Thomson (Sep 12, 2023, 5:44 PM; 50 points)

• Patrick Gruban 🔸Aug 22, 2023, 4:56 PM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Pic­nic at Englischer Garten

  We’re here: https://​​maps.app.goo.gl/​​nm6CxEdjFQJmH3XK9

Pic­nic at Englischer Garten

• Patrick Gruban 🔸Aug 16, 2023, 5:26 AM

  9 points

  4 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Austin’s comment on: Ozzie Gooen’s Shortform

  After transitioning from for-profit entrepreneurship to co-leading a non-profit in the effective altruism space, I struggle to identify clear metrics to optimize for. Funding is a potential metric, but it is unreliable due to fluctuations in donors’ interests. The success of individual programs, such as user engagement with free products or services, may not accurately reflect their impact compared to other potential initiatives. Furthermore, creating something impressive doesn’t necessarily mean it’s useful.

  Lacking a solid impact evaluation model, I find myself defaulting to measuring success by hours worked, despite recognizing the diminishing returns and increased burnout risk this approach entails.

• Patrick Gruban 🔸Aug 16, 2023, 5:12 AM

  4 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Ozzie Gooen’s comment on: Ozzie Gooen’s Shortform

  Thank you, this very much resonates with me

• Patrick Gruban 🔸Aug 14, 2023, 4:49 AM

  8 points

  3 ∶ 0

  on: EA Poland 2023 – the first update

  Thank you for writing this up, I’m happy to see so much going on in Poland and was impressed when I visited EAGxWarsaw and talked to active members there.

Get­ting into an EA-al­igned or­gani­sa­tion mid-career

EAGxBer­lin 2023

• Patrick Gruban 🔸Jul 13, 2023, 8:53 PM

  12 points

  3 ∶ 0

  on: Con­sider Earn­ing Less

  Thank you for the inspiration! I reduced my salary from now to the end of the year and will be able to contribute a mid-four-figure amount more due to saved social security costs compared to donating it. Additionally, it helps save taxes as only 20% of salary is tax-deductible in Germany.

  This post was pretty impactful!

• Patrick Gruban 🔸Jun 13, 2023, 5:37 PM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: So­cial Pic­nic in Englischer Garten

  Moved here: https://​​maps.app.goo.gl/​​av4zW8iKvgpF5xjz6

• Patrick Gruban 🔸Jun 13, 2023, 5:06 PM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: So­cial Pic­nic in Englischer Garten

  Location: https://​​goo.gl/​​maps/​​keAja4k48LHFg1uH6