Quick takes

A delightful thing happened a couple weeks ago, and it gives an example for why more people should comment on the forum.  My forum profile is pretty scarce, less than a dozen comments, most of them are along the lines of 'I appreciate the work done here!'. Nevertheless, because I have linked in some social media profiles and set my city in the directory, a student from a nearby university reached out to ask about career advice after finding me on the forum. I gave her a personalised briefing on the local policy space and explained the details of how to enter the UK civil service if she chose to do so.  Some internet activites are like little seeds that take no effort to plant but may lead to something nice, even months later. 

Applications for EA Global: San Francisco close February 1st. The event is February 13–15 at the Hilton Union Square. We're expecting over 1,000 attendees this year. For more information, visit our website or contact hello@eaglobal.org with any questions.

After hanging out with the local Moral Ambition group (sadly there's only one in Malmö), I've found a shorthand to exprss the difference in methodology compared to EA. Both movements aim to find people who aready have the "A," and cultivate the other component in them. Many effective altruism communities target people who already wish to help the world (Altruism), then guide and encourage them to reach further (be more Effective). Moral Ambition meanwhile targets high achieving professionals and Ivy Leaguers (Ambition), then remind them that the world is burning and they should help put out the fire (be more Moral).

Is there a running list of small, impactful & very capacity-constrained giving opportunities somewhere?

FarmKind is openly hostile towards veganism, which makes no sense. See this stunt here: https://www.gbnews.com/news/veganuary-actvist-meat-eating-campaign and this social media video in which they refer to people being "tricked into going vegan": https://www.instagram.com/p/DQuPg0VjMJf/ Obviously discouraging veganism is completely antithetical to reducing animal suffering, because: the vegan movement is the best pool we have for effective animal advocates; opposing veganism while ostensing to advocate for animals sends a weak moral message that reduces moral pressure on industrial farming; being non-vegan = funding industrial farming. What is the point of this?

Hey y'all, My TikTok algorithm recently presented me with this video about effective altruism, with over 100k likes and (TikTok claims) almost 1 million views. This isn't a ridiculous amount, but it's a pretty broad audience to reach with one video, and it's not a particularly kind framing to EA. As far as criticisms go, it's not the worst, it starts with Peter Singer's thought experiment and it takes the moral imperative seriously as a concept, but it also frames several EA and EA-adjacent activities negatively, saying EA quote "has an enormously well funded branch ... that is spending millions on hosting AI safety conferences." I  think there's a lot to take from it. The first is in relation to @Bella's argument recently that EA should be doing more to actively define itself. This is what happens when it doesn't. Because EA is legitimately an interesting topic to learn about because it asks an interesting question. That's what I assume drew many of us here to begin with. It's interesting enough that when outsiders make videos like this, even when they're not the picture that'd we'd prefer,[1] they will capture the attention of many. This video is a significant impression, but it's not the end-all-be-all, and we should seek to define ourself lest we be defined by videos like it. The second is about zero-sum attitudes and leftism's relation to EA. In the comments, many views like this were presented: @LennoxJohnson really thoughtfully grappled with this a few months ago, when he talked about how his journey from a zero-sum form of leftism and the need for structural change towards becoming more sympathetic to the orthodox EA approach happened. But I don't think we can necessarily depend on similar reckonings happening to everyone, all at the same time. With this, I think there's a much less clear solution than the PR problem, as I think on the one hand that EA sometimes doesn't grapple enough with systemic change, but on the other hand that society would be

I’ve seen a few people in the LessWrong community congratulate the community on predicting or preparing for covid-19 earlier than others, but I haven’t actually seen the evidence that the LessWrong community was particularly early on covid or gave particularly wise advice on what to do about it. I looked into this, and as far as I can tell, this self-congratulatory narrative is a complete myth. Many people were worried about and preparing for covid in early 2020 before everything finally snowballed in the second week of March 2020. I remember it personally. In January 2020, some stores sold out of face masks in several different cities in North America. (One example of many.) The oldest post on LessWrong tagged with "covid-19" is from well after this started happening. (I also searched the forum for posts containing "covid" or "coronavirus" and sorted by oldest. I couldn’t find an older post that was relevant.) The LessWrong post is written by a self-described "prepper" who strikes a cautious tone and, oddly, advises buying vitamins to boost the immune system. (This seems dubious, possibly pseudoscientific.) To me, that first post strikes a similarly ambivalent, cautious tone as many mainstream news articles published before that post. If you look at the covid-19 tag on LessWrong, the next post after that first one, the prepper one, is on February 5, 2020. The posts don't start to get really worried about covid until mid-to-late February. How is the rest of the world reacting at that time? Here's a New York Times article from February 2, 2020, entitled "Wuhan Coronavirus Looks Increasingly Like a Pandemic, Experts Say", well before any of the worried posts on LessWrong: The tone of the article is fairly alarmed, noting that in China the streets are deserted due to the outbreak, it compares the novel coronavirus to the 1918-1920 Spanish flu, and it gives expert quotes like this one: The worried posts on LessWrong don't start until weeks after this article was p

Praise for Sentient Futures By now, I have had the chance to meet most staff at Sentient Futures, and I think they really capture the best that EA has to offer, both in terms of their organisational goals and culture.  They are kind, compassionate, impartial, frugal - the things that I feel like the movement compromised on in the past years in pursuit of trying to save us from AI. I really hope this kind of culture becomes more prominent in the 4th wave of EA[1], with similar organisations popping up in the coming months and years.   PS.: I have friends at the org, so this obviously makes me biased:) 1. ^ 3rd wave described here in Ben West's post. If you go with this one, then what I'm describing would be the 5th wave.