Would you like to live with EAs? Want to connect with EAs when you travel? If someone “granted” you free rent, freeing up your time, what EA project could you complete?
Airbnb changed the world by making productive use of people’s spare bedrooms and second homes. We at Nonlinear are trying a simple experiment to see if we can do something similar in EA - connecting EAs who have extra space with EAs who need space.
Picture an EA who works a regular job to earn money to pay rent. You might not have enough money to provide them a $50,000 grant, but you might be able to provide your spare room, which frees up the EA to work on something high impact. You’re like an angel investor, but for “impact housing”.
We made a spreadsheet where you can either seek roommates, find EA couchsurfing opportunities, or become a host, providing space for EAs. Patrons can offer accommodations either for free, at a reduced rental fee, or against some service (such as pet sitting).
Some benefits:
- Enable positive impact that would otherwise not happen
- Support a better use of otherwise vacant or under-utilized housing
- Fostering cultural, social, and intellectual exchange between groups of people
- Provide actually affordable housing to people all across the world
Examples of housing that might be available
- A room that just became available in your friends' flat and they would love to have EAs around
- You or your parents have a second home which sits empty much of the year
- A city apartment or studio that stays vacant for a few weeks/months a year and needs regular check-ups
- Your parents look for help with garden work and walking their dog in exchange for a room
- You're wanting to rent a house with a bunch of EAs and you want to find other like-minded people to join you.
- Your parents are empty-nesters and would love to have something like an exchange student around, but with a higher impact.
- A group of EAs in a city link up to rent a house together
Example use cases for guests
- Conducting an EA research project (e.g. if you received an LTFF grant or similar)
- Upskilling (e.g. learning technical ML skills)
- Engaging in local community building, particularly in areas where there is little EA presence (e.g. taking a leading role in forming a group)
- Launching a venture (e.g. startup, charity)
- Increased runway to give you the space you need to experiment or think about things
- Living with value-aligned people
- Opportunity to participate in or grow the local EA community
Benefits for hosts
- Create positive impact by enabling EAs to to work on projects they wouldn’t otherwise be able to
- Contribute growing the local EA community and be around more EAs
- Engage in stimulating conversations with EAs
- Find someone to take care of your pet, garden, or similar
Examples of houses available
Emerson Spartz's parents are Midwestern-wholesome empty nesters who would be thrilled to host a nice EA in one of their spare bedrooms. They live an hour from Chicago in a beautiful home surrounded by lush woodlands with a friendly dog and cat. His father, Tom, is a retired entrepreneur and mother, Maggi, runs a local nonprofit. This is a cozy retreat from the chaos of the world to work on something big.
Kat and Emerson’s Caribbean House
Emerson and I have a house on the beach in downtown San Juan, Puerto Rico, USA that we live in for half the year. While we're gone we want to fill it with EAs doing important work on longtermism. There’s room for ten people and you could potentially stay for one week to six months. Perfect for somebody who wants to be surrounded by an EA community and escape the winter months.
OK, how does it work exactly?
If you have space, list it on the spreadsheet. Potential applicants can reach out then you can select the people you think will do the most good with the space. We’re keeping the MVP simple for now.
If you’d like to help get more people using the platform, here’s an email/message template you can send to ask friends or family if they have any space they’d like to turn into impact.
If you’d like to receive updates about available EA housing, the EA Houses project in general, and other Nonlinear projects, subscribe to our newsletter.
Reminder that you can listen to this post on your podcast player once/if it reaches 25 upvotes using the Nonlinear Library.
Full disclosure: I'm thinking about writing up about ways in which EA's focus on impact, and the amount deference to high status people, creates cultural dynamics which are very negative for some of its members.
It's a divisive claim, and not backed up with anything. By saying 'bite the bullet', it's like you're taunting the reader to say "if you don't recognise this, you're willfully avoiding the truth / cowardly in the face of truth". Whereas for such a claim I think onus is on you to back it up.
It's also quite a harsh value judgement of others, and bad for that reason - see below.
This implies "some people matter, others do not". It's unpleasant and a value judgement, and worth downvoting on that alone. It also assumes such judgements can easily be made of others, whether they "Don't think about things well". I think I've pretty good judgement of people and how they think (it's part of my job to have it), but I wouldn't make these claims about someone as if it's definitive and then decide whether to engage / disengage with them off the bat of that.
But it's even more worth downvoting given how many - in my experience, I'll caveat - EAs end up disconnecting from the community or beat themselves up because they feel the community makes value judgements about them, their worth, and whether they're worth talking to. I think it's bad for all the 'mental health--> productivity --> impact' reasons, but most importantly because I think not hurting others or creating conditions in which they would be hurt matters. This statement you made seems to me to be very value judgementy, and would make many people feel threatened and less like expressing their thoughts in case they would be accused of 'not thinking well', so I certainly don't want it going unchallenged, hence downvoting it.
I think making a list of people doing things, and ranking them against your four criteria above, and sharing that with other people would bring further negative tones to the EA community.