Cross-posted from my Substack.
Epistemic status: I’ve puzzled over this for a long time but I’m not sure I came to the right answers. I'm sharing this partly because it might help others work on resource allocation, but mostly because some smarter reader might tell me how to do it better.
TL;DR:
* I he...
With the AI windfall, mental health may be taken increasingly seriously by mainstream EA. There’s increasingly room to explore the cause area and answer some of the biggest uncertainties; at the same time, costs of the most effective interventions are continuing to fall. StrongMinds is now treating for ~$35, about a third of GiveWell’s best guess from a few years ago, and is expected to...
Seeing some conversations about lack of social graces as a virtue reminded me that I wanted to say a few things in praise of professionalism.
By "professionalism" I mean a certain kind of forthrightness and constancy. The professional has an aura of assurance that judgment falls on the work, not the person. They compartmentalize. They project clearly defined boundaries. They do the sorts of things professionals do.
Professionalism is not a subculture. The professional has no favorites or secret handshakes. Or, at its best, professionalism is the universal secret handshake, even if it's only a handshake offered, as it were.
You will be treated with respect and consideration, but professionalism is not a virtue of compassion, nor even generosity. It might have been a virtue of justice. It is a virtue of curiosity.
I also think it overlaps surprisingly with professionalism as generally conceived.