sky

Karma: 369

I write about ideas and resources I like, along with some ideas for making concepts more clear to me and others who come from a humanities background but are digging into the tools EA gives us to build stuff we care about. I have academic and informal training in conflict studies and language studies, so I’ll write about that too.

I got interested in EA via GiveWell when it started and got a bit more involved in EA when 80K started. I ascribe to the “keep your identity small” idea and see EA as a really useful set of tools and important questions, though not the only set of tools and important questions someone might consider when doing good. I’m a member of EA DC.

I’m also a Community Liaison at CEA (www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/team)

Outside of EA, I’m involved in the Deaf community and interpreting field/higher ed. I’m generally interested in how people learn what they learn, how we effectively relate to ourselves and each other, and how to apply those ideas to mentoring and resolving conflict.

Fun things = acro-yoga, cross fit, 1:1 conversations about ideas, reading while laying in hammocks, scuba

sky 30 Jul 2021 2:37 UTC
7 points
on: A contact person for the EA community
Sky here, with an update from CEA’s Community Health team:
I was previously listed in this post as an additional contact person. I’m taking extended leave and will be unavailable after July 30 as a contact person. We’ve edited this post to remove my info but we want you to know who to chat with going forward:
- Julia Wise is available as described above. She’s currently on partial parental leave and working a few hours per week. Starting August 9, she will return full-time to CEA.
Other resources:
- For group organizers, Catherine Low is an excellent first point of contact and can help you connect with any other CEA staff or EA resources: catherine@centreforeffectivealtruism.org
- Nicole Ross will be working on some questions related to DEI and brand strategy and may be available to discuss those topics: nicole.ross@centreea.org
- For advice about media inquiries or EA comms: media@centreea.org
Personal note:
I’ve really enjoyed past conversations with many of you about topics we care about: thinking seriously and humbly about impact, media and EA communications, intercultural connections and diversity, mentorship and morale, and more. My C/EA colleagues and many of your peers are happy to hear from you on these topics too.
I’ve been very appreciative of support from CEA colleagues and EA community members while I’ve been managing health issues over the past couple years. I see we’re in a community that wants to help each other, so I hope you do reach out if and when you need it. I’m taking some time to prioritize healthcare now and may return to C/EA as a consultant in the future. Much love in the meantime. I’ll look forward to crossing paths when we do!

sky 26 Apr 2021 17:23 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Harry_Taussig’s comment on: CEA update: Q1 2021
Thanks for asking. I’m not able to say more at this point about that specific creator.
I think you’re asking a good, implied question I share though: which comms channels would be most promising, for creating or sharing additional EA content?
I’m interested in analysis of those sorts of questions, and see them as part of the strategic comms role we’re hoping to hire for this year.
(I work at CEA).

sky 29 Mar 2021 0:41 UTC
17 points
on: Why I prefer “Effective Altruism” to “Global Priorities”
I have some data that may be relevant to folks with interest in this topic*:
I work for CEA, and this quarter I did a small brand test with Rethink’s help. We asked a sample of US college students if they had heard of “effective altruism.” Some respondents were also asked to give a brief definition of EA and a Likert scale rating of how negative/positive their first impression was of “effective altruism.”
Students who had never heard of “effective altruism” before the survey still had positive associations with it. Comments suggested that they thought it sounded good - effectiveness means doing things well; altruism means kindness and helping people. (IIRC, the average Likert scale score was 4+ out of 5). There were a small number of critiques too, but fewer than we expected. (Sorry that this is just a high-level summary—we don’t have a full writeup ready yet.)
Caveats: We didn’t test the name “effective altruism” against other possible names. Impressions will probably vary by audience. It could still be the case that “EA” puts off a sub-set of the audience we really want to reach. (E.g. if we found that highly critical/truth-seeking people in certain fields were often turned away by “EA,” I’d consider that a concern. We don’t have that data).
I do think this is encouraging, but doesn’t settle the question. Testing other brands and sub-brands may still be a good idea. Testing brands within very specific sub-audiences is also harder to do. CEA is currently considering trying to hire someone to test and develop the EA brand, and help field media inquiries.

*I think this post may have been written after I gave Max the info that he posted on my behalf here so I’m cross-posting.

sky 29 Mar 2021 0:31 UTC
8 points
in reply to: MaxDalton’s comment on: Some quick notes on “effective altruism”
Thanks for sharing that info, Max. It was an interesting first pass at some of these questions.

sky 19 Mar 2021 19:28 UTC
1 point
on: AMA: Tom Chivers, science writer, science editor at UnHerd
What are your thoughts on solutions journalism? Does it have much traction among science writers you know? Do you personally use it or promote it as a framework for writing?

Do you think this is a good/bad idea?:
I have the hunch that EA and solutions journalism could be a good match. E.g. EAs in journalism could join the solutions journalism network and seek solutions journalism angles to their editors. EA projects that think they would be well-served by public media coverage could seek to build relationships with strong solutions journalists and make themselves available for stories when they have something going on that the journalists are interested in. I’m not a journalist myself, and think the SJN approach is still small, so I’m curious if you see this area growing.

sky 19 Mar 2021 16:45 UTC
31 points
in reply to: Cullen_OKeefe’s comment on: What Makes Outreach to Progressives Hard
I haven’t read this whole thread, so forgive me if I’m re-stating someone else’s point.
I think there’s another explanation: they have a hypothesis about you/EAs/us that we are not disproving.

My experience has been that people in any numerical or social minority group (e.g. Black Americans, people with disabilities, someone who is the “only” person from a given group at their workplace, etc), are used to being met with disappointing responses if they try to share their experiences with people who don’t have them (e.g. members of the numerical or social majority group that they are different from). Most of us have had this experience at least some of the time, maybe as EAs! People get blank stares, unwanted pity or admiration, or outright dismissal and invalidation (e.g. “it can’t be all that bad” or “you’re just playing the [race/poverty/privilege/ whatever] card”). This is definitely the kind of conversation people see over and over again on the internet. So, until proven otherwise, that’s what people expect. Majority group members are expected to be ignorant of what life is really like for people who experience it differently. I think this is a rational expectation at least some of the time. The hypothesis then goes: EAs look like majority group members and often are, ergo anything EAs say about which problems are “most important” is assumed to be somewhat ignorant. Maybe people see it as well-meaning or callous ignorance. Regardless, ignorance is assumed as most probable, because it’s true of most people. (I think EAs and progressives also have different models of when ignorance matters the most and when differences matter the most, but that’s a different thread).

I’ve usually taken the view that I don’t get to assume people will see me as an informed, compassionate person on the progressive left until I disprove the hypothesis above. If the first thing I say is something like why local US poverty issues are “less important” than other issues, I’ve just reinforced the hypothesis rather than disproven it. It sounds like denying the reality that they know is true—they’ve seen the real-life people impacted and/or read their stories or studied the human impact of these issues. At least in my case, it’s not true that they struggle to think of people in other countries as real people too. (My progressive friends have often lived abroad, have family in other countries, or work in immigrant communities). It’s a trust issue. If they see me denying that local issues are “real/important,” I must be ignorant, and worse, I must be unwilling to be bothered with the real-life experiences of people different from me. Why should they trust anything I say after that about helping people? “But Africa though!” sounds like a deflection, not a genuine consideration or a sincere, compassionate challenge of their own thinking about poverty.

When I speak first about things we both care about and share sincere examples of the ways that I do see and care about the depth of personal stress that US poverty and racial disparities have on people I actually know, I haven’t had a progressive friend respond by saying that poverty in other countries didn’t matter. I brought it up second though, and that seems to make a difference. If someone trusts that I am a caring, informed person, not a callous ignorant one, we can expand the scope of the conversation from there.

Fwiw, I can’t think of a time this has led to changed actions on their part.

sky 1 Mar 2021 6:46 UTC
3 points
in reply to: sky’s comment on: Why EA groups should not use “Effective Altruism” in their name.
To be clear, this also means I don’t think everyone should look at PISE and think “we should definitely change our name too!” I think we don’t have enough information from this one example to make a claim that strong.
I thought this was a thoughtfully-shared example and am glad Koen wrote it up so people could share their thinking.

sky 20 Feb 2021 14:35 UTC
29 points
in reply to: Stijn’s comment on: Why EA groups should not use “Effective Altruism” in their name.
Though I like thinking about words with a skeptical lens, I am not convinced this is a large concern. The name of a new thing will produce both predictable and random reactions from humans.
My expectation is that rational, intelligent, self-critical, scientifically literate humans are humans, which comes with a certain degree of randomness to their behaviors. There will be variations in what they feel like doing on a given day, and a low-stakes decision like “Do I want to go to this presentation by a group I haven’t heard of?” is not much evidence either way of someone’s thinking skills. If the ideas the group is presenting attract those individuals in their particular context, and they hit upon a name that helps rather than distracts from that goal, that seems solid.

sky 7 Oct 2020 22:20 UTC
7 points
on: Introducing LEEP: Lead Exposure Elimination Project
Congrats on the launch! This may be a stretch, but if you’d find it helpful to connect with any of these folks: https://youtu.be/DbplLXRQquI or the Data Science for Social Good team at U of Chicago to see if they have additional contacts, let me know and I can connect you.

sky 12 Sep 2020 23:23 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Joey’s comment on: How have you become more (or less) engaged with EA in the last year?
Joey, could you say more what you mean by “concepts...that connect to impact”? I’m interested in examples you’re thinking of. And whether you’re looking for advances on those examples or new/different concepts?

Turning percentages back into people: personalizing quantification

sky12 Sep 2020 14:30 UTC

24 points

0 comments3 min readEA link

sky 5 Sep 2020 21:05 UTC
10 points
in reply to: abrahamrowe’s comment on: EricHerboso’s Shortform
Quick meta comment: Thanks for explaining your downvote; I think that’s helpful practice in general

sky 5 Sep 2020 20:48 UTC
13 points
on: sky’s Shortform
Quick thoughts on turning percentages back into people
Occasionally, I experiment with different ways to grok probabilities and statistics for myself, starting from the basics. It also involves paying attention to my emotions, and imagining how different explanations would work for different students. (I’m often a mentor/workshop presenter for college students). If your brain is like mine or you like seeing how other people’s brains work, this may be of interest.
One trick that has worked well for me is turning %s back into people
Example: I think my Project X can solve a problem for more people than it’s currently doing. I have a survey (N=1200) which says I’m currently solving a problem for 1% of the people impacted by Issue X. I think I can definitely make that number go up. Also, I really want that number to go up; 1% seems so paltry.
I might start with:Ok, how likely do I think it is that 1% could go up to 5%, 10%, 20%?
But I think this is the wrong question to start with for me. I want to inform my intuitions about what is likely or probable, but this all feels super hypothetical. I know I’m going to want to say 20%, because I have a bunch of ideas and 20% is still low! The %s here feel too fuzzy to ground me in reality.
Alternative: Turn 1% of 1200 back into 12 people
This is 12 people who say they are positively impacted by Project X.
This helps me remember that no one is a statistic. (A post which may have inspired this idea to begin with). So, yay, 12 people!
But going from 1% to 5% still sounds unambitious and unsatisfying. I like ambitious, tenacious, hopeful goals when it comes to people getting the solutions they’re looking for. That’s the whole point of the project, after all. Sometimes, I can physically feel the stress over this tension. I want this number to be 100%! I want the problem solved-solved, not kinda-solved.
At this point, maybe I could remind myself or a student that “shoulding at the universe” is a recipe for frustration. I love that concept, and sometimes it works. But often, that’s just another way of shoulding at myself. The fact remains that I don’t want to be less ambitious about solving problems that I know are real problems for real people.
I try the percents-to-people technique again:
- Turn 5% of 1200 back into 60 people. Oh. That’s 48 additional people. Also notice: it’s only 60 people if we’re talking about 48 additional people, while losing 0.
- Turn 10% back into 120 people. 108 additional people, while losing 0.
- Turn 20% back into 240 people. 228 additional people, while losing 0.
- So, an increase of 5% or 20% is the difference between 48 or 228 additional people reached. I know about this program because I work on it, and I know how much goes into Project X right now to reach 12 people. I’m sure there are things we could do differently, but are they different enough to reach 228+ additional people?
Now this feels different. It’s humbling. But it piques my curiosity again instead of my frustration: how would we attempt that? Could we?
- What else do I need to know, to figure out if 60 or 120 or 240 (...or 1000, or 10000) is anywhere within the realm of possibilities for me?
- Do I have a clear idea about what my bottlenecks or mistakes are in the status quo, such that I think there are 48 more people to reach (while still reaching the 12)? What processes would need to change, and how much?
- This immediately brings up the response, “That depends on how long I have.” (Woot, now I’ve just grokked why it’s useful to time-bound examples for comparison’s sake). We could call it 1 year, or 3, or 10, etc. I personally think 1-3 years is usually easier to conceptualize and operationalize.
- Also, whatever I do next, it’s obviously going to take notable effort. I know I can only do so much work in a day. (I probably hate this truth the most. This is definitely where I remind myself not to should at the universe). Now I wonder, is this definitely the program where I want to focus my effort for a while? Why? What if there are problems upstream of this one that I could put my effort toward instead? …aha, now my understanding of why people care about cause prioritization just got deeper and more personally intuitive. This is a topic for another post.
To return to percentages, here’s one more example. Percentages can also feel daunting instead of unambitious:
- Going from 12 to 60 people is a 400% increase. (Right? I haven’t miscalculated something basic? Yes, that’s right; thank you, online calculators). 400%! Is that madness?
- Turn ’400% increase’ back into 4 additional people reached, for every 1 person reached now.
That may still be daunting. But it may be easier to make estimates or compare my intuitions about different action plans this way.
If you (or your students) are like me, this is a useful approach. It gets me into the headspace of imagining creative possibilities to solve problem X, while still grounding myself within some concrete parameters rather than losing myself to shoulding.

sky 1 Sep 2020 22:33 UTC
10 points
on: sky’s Shortform
Webinar tomorrow: exploring solutions journalism [for EA writers]:
If EA journalists and writers are planning to cover EA topics, I think a solutions journalism angle will usually be the most natural fit.
The Solutions Journalism Network “train[s] and connect[s] journalists to cover what’s missing in today’s news: how people are responding to problems.”
The Solutions Journalism Network is having a webinar tomorrow: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Qcbxqd-uRvyvy1OnvVaIPg
Solutions journalism
“Can be character-driven, but focuses in-depth on a response to a problem and how the response works in meaningful detail
- Focuses on effectiveness, not good intentions, presenting available evidence of results
- Discusses the limitations of the approach
- Seeks to provide insight that others can use”
This is still a less common media angle. The quality of coverage will clearly still vary a lot depending on one’s research, editorial input, etc, but this is a better fit than many other media angles one could take to cover topics of interest to you in EA.
More info on this type of journalism: https://www.solutionsjournalism.org/

sky 10 Jun 2020 22:24 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Danny Lipsitz’s comment on: EAGxVirtual Unconference (Saturday, June 20th 2020)
Definitely, I think for many people, the donations example works. And I like the firefighter example too, especially if someone has had first responder experience or has been in an emergency.
I’m curious what happens if one starts with a toy problem that arises from or feels directly applicable to a true conundrum in the listener’s own daily life, to illustrate that prioritization between pressing problems is something we are always doing, because we are finite beings who often have pressing problems! I think when I started learning about EA via donation examples, I made the error of categorizing EA as only useful for special cases, such as when someone has ‘extra’ resources to donate. So, GiveWell sounded like a useful source of the ‘the right answer’ on a narrow problem like finding recommended charities, which gave me a limited view of what EA was for and didn’t grab me much. I came to EA via GiveWell rather than reading any of the philosophy, which probably would have helped me understand the basis for what they were doing better :).
When I was faced with real life trade-offs that I really did not want to make but knew that I must, and someone walked me through an EA analysis of it, EA suddenly seemed much more legible and useful to me.
Have you seen your students pick up on the prioritization ideas right away, or find it useful to use EA analysis on problems in their own life?

sky 10 Jun 2020 2:23 UTC
8 points
in reply to: Danny Lipsitz’s comment on: EAGxVirtual Unconference (Saturday, June 20th 2020)
I’m excited about this! I actually came here to see if someone had already covered this or if I should ☺️. I’d love to see a teacher walk through this.

Here’s an idea I’d been curious to try out talking or teaching about EA, but haven’t yet. I’d be curious if you’ve tried it or want to (very happy to see someone else take the idea off my hands). I think we often skim over a key idea too fast—that we each have finite resources and so does humanity. That’s what makes prioritization and willingness to name the trade offs we’re going to make such an important tool. I know I personally nodded along at the idea of finite resources at first, but it’s easy to carry along with the S1 sense that there will be more X somewhere that could solve hard trade-offs we don’t want to make. I wonder if starting the conversation there would work better for many people than e.g. starting with cost-effectiveness. Common sense examples like having limited hours in the day or a finite family budget and needing to choose between things that are really important to you but don’t all fit is an idea that I think makes sense to many people, and starting with this familiar building block could be a better foundation for understanding or attempting their own EA analysis.

A message to community members, in light of global protests for racial justice

JoanGass8 Jun 2020 22:19 UTC

41 points

0 comments2 min readEA link

sky 21 May 2020 11:13 UTC
1 point
on: Call notes with Johns Hopkins CHS
I also found this helpful—appreciate it

sky 18 May 2020 14:26 UTC
1 point
in reply to: AnonymousEAForumAccount’s comment on: Racial Demographics at Longtermist Organizations
Thanks for adding that resource, Anon.

sky 4 May 2020 14:58 UTC
33 points
on: Racial Demographics at Longtermist Organizations
Thanks for doing this analysis! My project plans for 2020 (at CEA) include more efforts to analyze and address the impacts of diversity efforts in EA.

I’d be interested in being in touch with the author if they’re open to it, and with others who have ideas, questions, relevant analysis, plans, concerns, etc.

I’m hopeful that EAs, like the author and commenters here, can thoughtfully identify or develop effective diversity efforts. I think we can take wise actions that avoid common pitfalls, so that EA is strong and flexible enough as a field to be a good “home base” for highly altruistic, highly analytical people from many backgrounds. I’m looking forward to continued collaboration with y’all, if you’d like to be in touch: sky@centreea.org.

sky

Turn­ing per­centages back into peo­ple: per­son­al­iz­ing quantification

A mes­sage to com­mu­nity mem­bers, in light of global protests for racial justice

Turning percentages back into people: personalizing quantification

A message to community members, in light of global protests for racial justice