This is the third in a sequence of posts taken from my recent report: Why Did Environmentalism Become Partisan?
Summary
Rising partisanship did not make environmentalism more popular or politically effective. Instead, it saw flat or falling overall public opinion, fewer major legislative achievements, and fluctuating executive actions.
Public Opinion...
I think right now EAs might be making a significant mistake by paying insufficient attention to the political realm. As EAs we tend to figure out what’s most impactful for us to work on and focus hard. That’s great! But there are various actions that are ‘non-delegatable’ - the extent to which an individual can do the action is limited (like voting, going to a protest, making hard money contributions to particular campaigns). It might be useful if we were all more in the habit of doing variou...
New Video from AI in Context: The Fall and Rise of Sam Altman
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AI in Context is excited to be back with our fourth video! For those just hearing from us, we make videos for 80,000 Hours, telling stories about transformative AI...
Maybe what humans need more than more advice is advice on how to actually apply advice — that is, better ways to bridge the gap between hearing it and living it?
So not just a list of steps or clever tips, but skills and mindsets for truly absorbing what we read, hear, discuss, and turning that into action. Which I feel might mean shifting from passively waiting for something to "click" to actively digging for what someone is trying to convey and figuring out how it could work for us, just as it worked for them.
Of course, not all advice will fit us, and that's fine. We can't expect to apply all advice we get, not even all advice that really resonates. Often, the greatest act of kindness we can do for ourselves isn't working to make ourselves more perfect, but understanding and accepting our imperfection and limitations.
However, realistically, I think the bigger reason we ignore most advice isn't that it's not for us — it's that we rarely pause to ask ourselves how it might look in practise or remind ourselves to follow through. That we waste the immense potential for transformation and for acquiring new habits and behaviours that's already out there.