Rockwell
An Incomplete List of Things I Think EAs Probably Shouldn’t Do
It is entirely dependent on the type of investigation and the laws of the municipality. Regarding trespass, often investigators will be employed by the facility they are investigating and onsite as part of their employment, while documenting conditions on camera. Increasingly, drone footage is used.
I think it is dangerous and harmful to make a blanket and public statement accusing a large number of orgs/individuals of illegal activity.
For those downvoting, is the disagreement factual, i.e. you believe animal orgs are routinely engaging in illegal activity? Or something else?
Woah, the vast majority of undercover investigations carried out by animal advocacy organizations are legal, which is why attempts to make them illegal (such as ag-gag laws in the U.S.) receive so much attention and pushback, with many either not passing or being overturned. I would greatly caution against even casually suggesting an organization is engaged in illegal activity. That said, as you’re possibly getting at in your final sentence, there is a big difference between active, intentional civil disobedience as part of a strategic campaign effort and lax disregard for the law for personal convenience or gain.
I have no personal insight on Nonlinear, but I want to chime in to say that I’ve been in other communities/movements where I both witnessed and directly experienced the effects of defamation-focused civil litigation. It was devastating. And I think the majority of the plaintiffs, including those arguably in the right, ultimately regretted initiating litigation. I sincerely hope this does not occur in the EA community. And I hope that threats of litigation are also discontinued. There are alternatives that are dramatically less monetarily and time-intensive, and more likely to lead to productive outcomes. I think normalizing (threats of) defmation-focused civil litigation is extremely detrimental to community functioning and community health.
[Question] Nuclear safety/security: Why doesn’t EA prioritize it more?
One reason I’m excited about work on lead exposure is that it hits a sweet spot of meaningfully benefiting both humans and nonhumans. Lead has dramatic and detrimental effects for not just mammals, but basically all animals, from birds to aquatic animals to insects.
Are there other interventions that potentially likewise hit this sweet spot?
I found this post very informative. Thank you for sharing.
Some miscellaneous questions:There was significant disagreement whether OP should start a separate program (distinct from Claire’s and James’ teams) focused on “EA-as-a-principle”/”EA qua EA”-grantmaking.
1. Is there information on why Open Phil originally made the decision to bifurcate community growth funding between LT and GHWB? (I’ve coincidentally been trying to better understand this and was considering asking on the Forum!) My impression is that this has had extreme shaping effects on EA community-building efforts, possibly more so than any other structural decision in EA.
There was consensus that it would be good if CEA replaced one of its (currently) three annual conferences with a conference that’s explicitly framed as being about x-risk or AI-risk focused conference.
Open Phil’s Longtermist EA Community Growth team expects to rebalance its field-building investments by proportionally spending more on longtermist cause-specific field building and less on EA field building than in the past
2. There are two perspectives that seem in opposition here:
The first is that existing organizations that have previously focused on “big tent EA” should create new x-risk programming in the areas they excel (e.g. conference organizing) and it is okay that this new x-risk programming will be carried out by an EA-branded organization.
The second is that existing organizations that have previously focused on “big tent EA” should, to some degree, be replaced by new projects that are longtermist in origin and not EA-branded.
I share the concern of “scaling back on forms of outreach with a strong track-record and thereby ‘throwing out the baby with the bathwater.’” But even beyond that, I’m concerned that big tent organizations with years of established infrastructure and knowledge may essentially be dismantled and replaced with brand new organizations, instead of recruiting and resourcing the established organizations to execute new, strategic projects. Just like CEA’s events team is likely better at arranging an x-risk conference than a new organization started specifically for that purpose, a longstanding regional EA group will have many advantages in regional field-building compared to a brand-new, cause-specific regional group. We are risking losing infrastructure that took years to develop, instead fo collectively figuring out how we might reorient it.In March 2023, Open Philanthropy’s Alexander Berger invited Claire Zabel (Open Phil), James Snowden (Open Phil), Max Dalton (CEA), Nicole Ross (CEA), Niel Bowerman (80k), Will MacAskill (GPI), and myself (Open Phil, staffing the group) to join a working group on this and related questions.
3. Finally, I would love to see a version of this that incorporates leaders of cause area and big tent “outreach/recruitment/movement-building” organizations who engage “on the ground” with members of the community. I respect the perspectives of everyone involved. I also imagine they have a very different vantage point than our team at EA NYC and other regional organizations. We directly influence hundreds of people’s experiences of both big-tent EA and cause-specific work through on-the-ground guidance and programming, often as one of their first touchpoints to both. My understanding of the value of cause-specific work is radically different from what it would have been without this in-person, immersive engagement with hundreds of people at varying stages of the engagement funnel, and at varying stages of their individual progress over years of involvement. And though I don’t think this experience is necessary to make sound strategic decisions on the topics discussed in the post, I’m worried that the disconnect between the broader “on the ground” EA community and those making these judgments may lead to weaker calibration.
I was also excited to meet Amish and he will be attending EAGxNYC this month!
Two Years Community Building, Ten Lessons (Re)Learned
I totally agree and almost didn’t proceed with this title. However, I would like to see more posts like this that present short, actionable ways to have an impact outside of donations and in a way that was a primary point of the post. How cool would it be if we had ten more posts like this? I’d happily spend that 20+ minutes each month completing the full list. Also, I’m unsure if there’s evidence of this but I have a general assumption people are more willing to take action for a cause area they don’t prioritize if they’ve already loosely committed to taking an action, such that not IDing the cause in the title might lead to more action. But very happy to be proven wrong on that!
Best Use of 2 Minutes this Month (U.S.)
I’m really glad you chose to make this post and I’m grateful for your presence and insights during our NYC Community Builders gatherings over the past ~half year. I worry about organizers with criticisms leaving the community and the perpetuation of an echo chamber, so I’m happy you not only shared your takes but also are open to resuming involvement after taking the time to learn, reflect, and reprioritize.
Adding to the solutions outlined above, some ideas I have:
• Normalize asking people, “What is the strongest counterargument to the claim you just made?” I think this is particularly important in a university setting, but also helpful in EA and the world at large. A uni professor recently told me one of the biggest recent shifts in their undergrad students has been a fear of steelmanning, lest people incorrectly believe it’s the position they hold. That seems really bad. And it seems like establishing this as a new norm could have helped in many of the situations described in the post, e.g. “What are some reasons someone who knows everything you do might not choose to prioritize AI?” • Greater support for uni students trialing projects through their club, including projects spanning cause areas. You can build skills that cross cause areas while testing your fit and achieving meaningful outcomes in the short-term. Campaign for institutional meat reduction in your school cafeteria and you’ll develop valuable skills for AI governance work as a professional. • Mentorship programs that match uni students with professionals. There are many mentorship programs to model this on and most have managed to avoid any nefariousness or cult vibes. • Restructuring fellowships such that they maintain the copy-paste element that has allowed them to spread while focusing more on tools that can be implemented across domains. I like the suggestion of a writing fellowship. I’m personally hoping to create a fellowship focused on social movement theory and advocacy (hit me up if interested in helping!).
Effective Altruism in New York City: Introduction
Wow, thanks so much for looking into this! If you have the time, I’m also curious about the demographic breakdown of those who listed Sam Harris.
This is great, thank you for all of your work on it! In future iterations, do you think you might look at which podcasts in particular are people’s entry point? We’ve seen an influx of people entering EA NYC via Sam Harris over the past several months and I’m curious what the podcast breakdown looks like and what lessons we can take from it.
The age-old Bodhi on Mulberry vs. Buddha Bodai on Mott battle has officially made its way to the Forum!
These are great updates, thank you for all your work on them! I’m especially excited about being able to search for posts by chronology. Two notes:
1. I would like to be able to search for a phrase, rather than just one word, using quotation marks like you can on Google. E.g. When I search “united nations” and look by time posted, I get a number of results with just the word “nations” and for “New York City” I get results for “new” and “city.” Being able to search with quotation marks around the full phrase would be very useful.
2. If you do add personalized recommendations to the front page, please only make it a small part of the page and very clear that it is user-specific. I like that I know what other users are generally seeing when they come to the Forum and I’m annoyed by e.g. news sites that show me overly catered results.We’ve been experimenting with recommendations on post pages first, and may also consider personalized recommendations on the Frontpage.
Just to hopefully quickly clarify this point in particular: There is a legal distinction between full-time employees and contractors that has legal implications, and I think EA orgs somewhat frequently misclassify. It’s totally possible Lightcone has long-term contractor or grant recipient relationships that are fully above board and happy for all involved; however, I know some organizations do not. This can be a cost-saving mechanism for the organization that comes at the expense of not just their adherence to employment law, but also security for their team (e.g. everything from eligibility for benefits, to increased individual tax burden, to ineligibility for unemployment compensation).