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* GOAL 3 is a social enterprise that created IMPALA, a patient monitoring and digital platform system for low-resource settings. There is also a GOAL 3 foundation that raises funds to ensure underserved communities will be reached.
* A recently completed report from Rethink Priorities calculated IMPALA to have a cost per DALY averted of $7–17 in paediatr...
This month effective altruism has gotten lots of attention, including a cover story in The Economist. It feels pretty surreal to be on the receiving end of it. But I feel grateful these ideas have caught on, and even more grateful for the drive, earnestness, and compassion of so many people who took strange but well-argued ideas seriously and then actually acted on them....
Note: This post was crossposted from the Coefficient Giving 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.
Subtitle: On vegan advocacy, effective altruism, and FIFA
I turn 40 today. Here are some hot takes.
On factory farming
1. Our biggest challenge is salience. If factory farming led the evening news, it wouldn’t last lo...
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How would a therapist diagnose an EA mindset?
I wonder why I’m drawn to EA — particularly in terms of my personality. For example, I have a tendency to justify things (sometimes myself) and endorsing EA principles might simply be an extension of this. EA principles allow me to justify my choice of career, lifestyle, values, diet, etc.
Does anyone else see EA as an extension of their deep desire to justify things? Since justification is a defensive process, I wonder whether this has any relation to self-esteem or self-worth.
And, if EA doesn't relate to a desire to justify things, is it simply another form of social signalling? Except we're signalling to philosophers and computer scientists, who have unusual values (thus the unusual signals).
How would a therapist diagnose the EA mindset? That’s to say: if I began therapy tomorrow, and told my therapist, ‘I feel obliged to donate 10% of my income to charity. I feel obliged to work for an organisation trying to solve the world’s most pressing problems. I feel obliged to do both of these because I think that they could minimise the needless suffering of others more than any other course of action I can think of'. What conclusions would they draw about my personality?
You might find it helpful to look at this ethnography of an EA group. Also relevant is this analysis of the Big Five personality traits of respondents to the Rethink Charity community survey. It has statistical flaws, but one takeaway is that most EAs are high in openness. Finally, there's this Global Optimum Podcast episode on the personality of EAs.
Justification and signalling explanations don't seem especially compelling to me because in some sense, everything is justification and signaling. Also, I'm not sure if you're hinting at this, but it's unlikely that you'll be diagnosed with a mental illness just for being drawn to / believing in EA, unless it significantly impedes your everyday functioning. Since I'm not a therapist, I don't think I can comment further on what a therapist would say.