Gordon Seidoh Worley's Quick takes

This is a short note to advise you against something called CouponBirds.

I don't know much about them other than they're creating lots of spam in a bid to soak up folks who are bummed about the loss of Amazon Smile. They've sent me emails and posted spammy comments on posts both here and on Less Wrong (I report them each time; they keep creating new accounts to post).

If you were thinking of using them, I encourage you to not because we should not support those who spam if we want to live in a world with less spam.

This question on the EA Facebook group got some especially not EA answers. This seems not great given many people possibly first interact with EA via Facebook. I tend to ignore this group and maybe others do the same, but if this post is representative then we probably need to put more effort in there to make sure comments are moderated or replied to so it's at least clear who is speaking with an EA perspective and who isn't.

Reading this article about the security value of inefficiency, I get the idea that a possibly neglected policy area for EAs is economic resilience, i.e. the idea that we can increase welfare of people both in the short and long term by ensuring our economies don't become brittle or fragile and collapse, wiping out welfare gains from modern economies and cutting off paths to greater welfare gains through economic growth in the future, or at least setting such growth back, causing harm, or making it economically unviable to work on averting existential risks.

Seems possibly related to other policy work focused on things like improving institutions for similar reasons, but more directed at economic policy rather than institution design.

Many people want the world to be better.

I feel like there's a lot of people who take this desire for a better world and then hope that they will be the one to make it all better. Maybe they'll discover some grand idea that will improve many things and lead us to salvation!

I don't think that's what we need though. We mostly need all us little people to just be a bit nicer, a bit more trusting, a bit more compassionate, and then not quite so many grand schemes will be required because we'll find we're already living in a better world.