I’m very interested in this!! thanks for sharing
ruthgrace
I’m currently working on productionizing some copper products in a manufacture engineering / product management role. Reuseable grocery bags and gloves. The gloves idea is my friend Ben WR’s. I think the grocery bags will work fine because it’s a sewn product and we found some 99.5% copper mesh, but the gloves project is more risky because the copper yarn is 30% copper but 70% polyester and may not retain the same antimicrobial properties. So we will have to find some way to test it.
Overall I think it would be nice to have a better barrier between things that may be contaminated outside your home and cleanliness inside your home. Copper isn’t perfect but at least after 4 hours you can be sure it doesn’t have any coronavirus on it. If the products sell well, I’ll see if I can find a way to add UV disinfecting light to the inside of the bag.
I know the CDC said that surface transmission is unlikely but … i don’t really buy it.
Yes, I’ve seen many wonderful talks within EA about operations, that is, running effective organizations. (I’m having trouble finding the links but I think there was at least one panel and on talk at EAG SF 2018) And I ran a panel about logistics at scale at EAG 2017 (https://www.eaglobal.org/talks/logistics-at-scale-panel/).
I wish there were were more about how to actually DO the work directly. I’ve met a few individuals here doing research projects and thinking about how to do things that don’t necessarily have industry experience, and I worry that people’s calibration for what’s feasible and how industry works might be too far off to make effective recommendations.
To provide a real world example, there was a very prescient research poster at EAG SF 2019 showing that in an epidemic where the USA would not be able to rely on out of country medical supplies, the amount of time it takes to start a factory is too long and therefore we should invest in this area. I spoke with the author to ask what he thought about supply chain issues, like getting all the skills, equipment, and materials to make supplies, and he hadn’t thought of it and realized that it would be a bigger issue than spinning up factories.
To take a step back, I believe that ‘effective altruism’ lower case is something much bigger than people with money earning to give to existing charities, and people good at math calculating which charities to give to. Though I imagine both of those activities will remain crucial to the movement.
Hello!! I think I’ve seen you speak at local hardware events before. So cool to see you in a different context :)
Hey, if anyone is interested or already immersed in engineering physical goods or supply chain/logistics as their skillset, I want to be your buddy. DM me!
I have a 17 month old! Something that really helps me have the right mindset is to think about what the point of having a baby is for me, and that’s to enjoy the baby. Not to try to force him to be whatever way or optimize for anything.
Other parents, I have a question for you… Are you having issues with sleep? I find that since I had my son, I’ve been getting sleep deprivation related insomnia, which really kills my productivity/mood/etc for a couple days each month. Anyone had this issue and found a way to fix it?
It’s nice to know it’s not just me! I’ll keep experimenting to see if I can improve things...
As someone who does software and is interning at an established non profit in San Francisco (just doing research, not software engineering), I agree with your points, and I want to get a little bit deeper into the reasons why.
First, I think a lot of the really impactful technical is like, somebody’s working on a report and they need to make a pie chart, and they’re not that good with Google sheets. And the technical volunteer is really good at Google sheets and can finish the task in 10 minutes. But to get to the point where the technical volunteer was connected to this task, they’ve had to attend months of weekly meetings where there weren’t any technical tasks available. And that time is good time spent understanding the context of the work that the organization does, but won’t feel worth it if the technical volunteer’s goal for their involvement is to make technical contributions.
Also, I think it’s really difficult for non-technical people generally to describe the problem they want a technical person to solve, in a way that makes sense. Like, it’s not going to be the way it is at your typical tech job where your manager gives you the specs of the project and you just make it happen the way they asked. People are going to ask you for stuff that isn’t possible or is scoped differently from what they need, and to prevent making something that they aren’t actually going to be able to use, it’s likely that you will spend more time talking to people to learn about their work and how you can best help them than actually coding. And that skill of figuring out how to best help somebody by talking to them is a skill that I think most software engineers don’t actually have, unless they are also entrepreneurs who do that kind of thing regularly.
My recommendation for people who are good at computer stuff generally (doesn’t have to be as deep as software engineering, but if you are handy with WordPress, and Google sheets, you can be really useful already) who want to help out is to make an effort to be part of the community that is working on a problem that you care about. That way, you will get the context of what exactly people are trying to do, and understand the nature of the work, and when it becomes clear that a technical solution would be really helpful, people trust you to do it in a way that will be helpful, and there’s no friction with trying to onboard you because you are already there.
More people should write posts like these!! Do you think it would be helpful for people to write posts at the beginning of the 10 years? Like how they are thinking about their decisions, with the intent of revisiting in 10 years? That might be an easier way to get material if you don’t mind waiting 10 years, haha
Yes, this!! I would be very interested in talking to more people who are preparing themselves (building career capital, for example) for a project that doesn’t exist yet. If this is you (or has been you in the past), please send me a message! There’s a lot more uncertainty in a path like this, but I think more people doing it really raises the bar for what can be possible for EA to accomplish.
Add entries I missed in the comments! What are changes in the world that you appreciate, and how much did they cost?
Want to chat with me about movement building? My DMs are open!
Which personality result did you get? Is any of it accurate?? Post in the comments below!
Also if you are one of the people I named and want me to correct something, I will do it! Just comment or DM me. I hope I am providing enough comedic value to justify a little roasting...
I totally agree, and I think this is super exciting!! It looks like someone has already provide really great comprehensive feedback on improvements to the main Effective Altruism article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_altruism):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Effective_altruism/GA1
I started working on these. I could use some community input on the definition of Effective Altruism—see my post on the Talk page, here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Effective_altruism#Definition_of_Effective_Altruism
The proposal passed!! Everyone who’s interested should add themselves as a participant on the official wikiproject! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Effective_Altruism
Right! And I think we need some clarification of terms. We can’t be calling people who are passionate about, say, effective solutions for homelessness in New York City, “non effective altruists”. That’s divisive and also kinda rude.
I think similar to “chocolate milk” and “milk chocolate”, we should have effective altruists, and altruistic rationalists. The second word is the main thing. Anyone who is trying to do any kind of good effectively should be able to call themselves an effective altruist. People who are passionate about doing the most good possible without any bias towards specific people or causes can be called altruistic rationalists. And of course, anyone can do both types of activities, without feeling any shame or guilt.
I think generally any kind of criticism of people trying to do good without first having built a relationship on common ground leads to “soldier mindset” where people become defensive about their actions. People who donate money or time by default expect to be thanked and feel good about it, in proportion to the amount of money or time that they donated. I suspect it’s always more productive to build a relationship with someone and find out what motivates them to give, and share relevant organizations or articles in line with their motivation, as opposed to approaching with foremost intention to convince people to change. And EAs should definitely have a scout mindset about this—There’s lots of reasons people might not think primarily of effectiveness when donating, and they’re not things we should change about people, but things we can build on. E.g. maybe some people donate to what’s convenient, or what they read about from a specific publisher that they trust, or this organization did a presentation at their church. That’s good to know.
I wish that the effective altruism movement was instead called altruistic rationality. I can’t think of a better term than “effective altruism” for optimizing any kind of charitable giving or volunteering that most people in developed countries participate in, but it’s difficult to integrate that with the current effective altruism community, given that trying to get people to switch cause areas up front is ineffective and makes people think poorly of the movement. I support both types of activities but the fact that altruistic rationalist activities are called effective altruism, and the fact that most causes are commonly called “non-EA causes” in this movement prevents a broader effective altruism movement from forming.
The interesting thing about the strategy described in “How to create a vegan world” is that it would encourage people who don’t think about morality at all to start eating more plant-based foods. I think if EA really executed on the content of my post, this could happen with charitable giving. Imagine if we were able to get 10% of the population of developed countries to think of effectiveness when they thought about charities or charitable giving, within their chosen cause area. Maybe it would shift the funding landscape just enough so that more effective charities within a cause area have better SEO and show up first on a Google search. That’s what I would love to see.
Thanks, this is really cool !!! I’m interested to see how it compares with Vasagel too—i met the founder at a previous EA global