EA Forum Bot Site
EA Forum

Take the 2025 EA Forum Survey to help inform our strategy and prioritiesTake the survey
Hide table of contents
by Emrik, Arepo
2 min read 1

28

Coworking spaces
Frontpage

NOTE: I no longer offer to build houses for the needy, but the place is still up and worth checking out. : )

Arepo’s EAGT initiative has had some great feedback and a steady influx of new users, so we really want to push for it to become a major EA hub. But it will rely strongly on network effects to live up to its potential. To grow it into the long-term hub we’re dreaming of, it needs to reach the point where word-of-mouth recruitment exceeds the rate of attrition, part of which is attracting a long-term user base.

So! This post is to let people know that if any remote orgs or local groups or other EA clusters wish to move in, we can (for free) build bespoke virtual offices for your group in the map either on the main map or accessible via a doorway. You can see some examples of office spaces in the screenshots at the end of this post, and GT offers many more templates which we could add customised versions of to our map. And of course you’d always be welcome to join the other EAs in the central area!

Initiatives like TEAMWORK (Berlin), Trajan House (Oxford) and a planned project in New York aim to host local EA organisations in a common office space. This has community benefits for reasons that we need not go into here, and feedback on the impact has been great. I think some of the benefits of projects like that can be captured in an online space like we’re trying to build—ideally while also offering the social aspect of an EA retreat.

What’s in it for you?

  • Connect your team to a growing EA network - source input on difficult problems, make your org more visible, maybe even find new staff
  • Get reliable coworking (and, if you want socialising) options for a small team however scattered your timezone
  • Have convenient private meeting area which in many ways has a better UX than Zoom et al
  • Help guide the norms and feel of the space so it can develop into something with a little bit of your org’s flavour
  • Just enjoy the vibe - find out why our current members are so excited about it

What’s in it for us?

More people! Per above, this is just a huge win for us, since it helps to ensure the space will be around for a long time to come.

Ping me or Arepo (Sasha on GT) if you’re interested :)

Examples

Every local section has signs leading to them from the main area
Forest office for EA Philippines
Winter pass leading to the Canadian offices & meeting rooms
AMF offices


 

28

0
0

Reactions

0
0
Comments1


Sorted by
New & upvoted
Click to highlight new comments since:
krystal_h3
0
0

I’ve been really enjoying using this space - thank you for setting it up! It operates very smoothly and there’s almost always been someone online for co-working (which is rare for someone based in Australia.)

Reply
More from Emrik
194
EA coworking/lounge space on gather.town
Arepo, Emrik, leillustrations🔸
· · 3m read
26
26
154
In favour of compassion, and against bandwagons of outrage
Emrik
· · 2m read
33
33
155
Briefly, the life of Tetsu Nakamura (1946-2019)
Emrik
· · 2m read
5
5
View more
Curated and popular this week
 ·  · 4m read
 · 
Note: This post was crossposted from the Open Philanthropy Farm Animal Welfare Research Newsletter by the Forum team, with the author's permission. The author may not see or respond to comments on this post. ---------------------------------------- > Why ending the worst abuses of factory farming is an issue ripe for moral reform I recently joined Dwarkesh Patel’s podcast to discuss factory farming. I hope you’ll give it a listen — and consider supporting his fundraiser for FarmKind’s Impact Fund. (Dwarkesh is matching all donations up to $250K; use the code “dwarkesh”.) We discuss two contradictory views about factory farming that produce the same conclusion: that its end is either inevitable or impossible. Some techno-optimists assume factory farming will vanish in the wake of AGI. Some pessimists see reforming it as a hopeless cause. Both camps arrive at the same conclusion: fatalism. If factory farming is destined to end, or persist, then what’s the point in fighting it? I think both views are wrong. In fact, I think factory farming sits in the ideal position for moral reform. Because its end is neither inevitable nor impossible, it offers a unique opportunity for advocacy to change the trajectory of human moral progress. Not inevitable Dwarkesh raised an objection to working on factory farming that I often hear from techno-optimists who care about the issue: isn’t its end inevitable? Some cite the long arc of moral progress; others the promise of vast technological change like cultivated meat or Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) which surpasses human capabilities. It’s true that humanity has achieved incredible moral progress for humans. But that progress was never inevitable — it was the result of moral and political reform as much as technology. And that moral progress mostly hasn’t yet extended to animals. For them, the long moral arc of history has so far only bent downward. Technology may one day end factory farming, just as cars liberated w
 ·  · 1m read
 · 
This is a personal essay about my failed attempt to convince effective altruists to become socialists. I started as a convinced socialist who thought EA ignored the 'root causes' of poverty by focusing on charity instead of structural change. After studying sociology and economics to build a rigorous case for socialism, the project completely backfired as I realized my political beliefs were largely psychological coping mechanisms. Here are the key points: * Understanding the "root cause" of a problem doesn't necessarily lead to better solutions - Even if capitalism causes poverty, understanding "dynamics of capitalism" won't necessarily help you solve it * Abstract sociological theories are mostly obscurantist bullshit - Academic sociology suffers from either unrealistic mathematical models or vague, unfalsifiable claims that don't help you understand or change the world * The world is better understood as misaligned incentives rather than coordinated oppression - Most social problems stem from coordination failures and competing interests, not a capitalist class conspiring against everyone else * Individual variation undermines class-based politics - People within the same "class" have wildly different cognitive traits, interests, and beliefs, making collective action nearly impossible * Political beliefs serve important psychological functions - They help us cope with personal limitations and maintain self-esteem, often at the expense of accuracy * Evolution shaped us for competition, not truth - Our brains prioritize survival, status, and reproduction over understanding reality or being happy * Marx's insights, properly applied, undermine the Marxist political project - His theory of ideological formation aligns with evolutionary psychology, but when applied to individuals rather than classes, it explains why the working class will not overthrow capitalism. In terms of ideas, I don’t think there’s anything too groundbreaking in this essay. A lot of the
 ·  · 15m read
 · 
The fact that the ITN framework[1] can help us prioritize between problems feels almost magical to me.  But when I see ITN BOTECs in the wild, I’m often very skeptical. It seems really easy for these estimates to be inadvertent “conclusion-laundering” — regurgitating the author’s opinions in a quantitative or more robust-seeming form without actually providing any independent signal. And even when that’s not the case, the bottom-line estimates can seem so noisy and ungrounded that I trust them less than my fuzzy, un-BOTECed intuitions. So I'm[2] sharing notes on some pitfalls that seem especially pernicious and common to (i) help BOTEC authors avoid these issues, (ii) nudge readers to be somewhat cautious about deferring to such estimates, and (iii) encourage people to supplement (and/or to replace) ITN BOTECs with other approaches.  Note: I expect the post will make more sense to people who are already somewhat familiar with ITN and estimation. (See other content for background on the ITN framework or on BOTECs/fermi estimates.) It's also a fairly informal post — more like “research/field notes”  than “article”. As always, expect mistakes.  Brief outline of my views * ITN BOTECs are useful for quick comparisons of well-defined, reasonably narrow problems that are of a similar kind (and that we can picture solving), like malaria and diabetes.  * The further we stray from this “safe zone” — e.g. if the problems we're evaluating are loosely scoped, very broad, or speculative/hard to picture, or if there are significant structural differences between them — the less we should update on the results.  * (Although the BOTECs can still be useful as exercises for prompting richer discussions and clarifying the problems) Specificw pitfalls (outside the safe zone) include: 1. Illusions of tractability: ITN BOTECs may rely on (and obscure) unwarranted optimism about the fraction of a problem that we can realistically make progress on * → Make sure the way
Relevant opportunities
4
Research Engineer @ Timaeus
Sara Recktenwald, Jesse Hoogland, Stan van Wingerden
· · 3m read
0
0
42
The Bone-Chilling Evil of Factory Farming
Bentham's Bulldog
· · 7m read
0
0
67
Upcoming EA conferences in 2025
frances_lorenz, Arthur Malone🔸
· · 3m read
4
4
View more