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Amber Dawn

4219 karmaJoined Sep 2019

Bio

I'm a freelance writer and editor for the EA community. I can help you edit drafts and write up your unwritten ideas. If you'd like to work with me, book a short calendly meeting or email me at ambace@gmail.com. Website with more info: https://amber-dawn-ace.com/

Comments
215

Topic contributions
70

Thanks for writing this! I’ve long been suspicious of this idea but haven’t got round to investigating the claim itself, and my skepticism of it, fully, so I super appreciate you kicking off this discussion.

I also identify with ‘do I disagree with this empirically or am I just uneasy with the vibes/frame, how to tease those apart, ?'

For people who broadly agree with the idea that Sarah is critiquing: what do you think is the best defence of it, arguing from first principles and data as much as possible?

I have a couple of other queries/scepticisms about the power-law argument. I haven’t read all the other comments, so sorry if I repeat stuff said elsewhere.

1. Does it empirically hold up even assuming you can attribute stuff to individuals?
You focus a lot on critiquing conceptual idea of the individual impact of one person (since most actions happen in the context of other actions and actors). I think I also have empirical disagreements with the claim even if we can tease out what impact comes from which person. 

It feels to me like EAs sometimes over-generalize that finding from global health interventions — where I don’t doubt that it holds up — to other domains, where it hasn’t been established (e.g., orgs working in longtermist causes, or people compared to their peers, or actions one takes in one’s career). It’s possible that there *is* more discussion and substantiation of this idea out there, but I just haven’t seen it.

Like, even if we accept that (per your example) the President does have much more impact than the average person, or (per Jeff’s example above) a larger donor has more impact than a smaller donor to the same charity, can I generalize that to the actions available to me personally, or to questions of how impactful ‘overall’ I can be compared to my peers? What’s the empirical justification for such generalizations?

2. Is the bar low? Does this depend on how you define the space?

Benjamin Todd, in the article you linked, claims that the power-law pattern has been found in many areas of social impact. I’m sure this is true, but I want to point out that this is kind of contingent, not a law of nature. E.g., I’d guess this is due to some combination of ‘there’s not a culture of measuring outcomes and prioritization in general philanthropy’ (that’s kind of the whole point of EA) and/or ‘the world is very complicated and it’s hard to know ex ante (and sometimes even ex post) what will work/what did work’. 

Like, if there were a culture shift in philanthropy across the board meaning that interventions would only be funded or carried out if they met some effectiveness bar, would we still expect interventions to be power-law distributed? Surely less so?

To frame this another way, imagine I said to you ‘the nutritional value of foods follows a power-law distribution’, and you were like ‘hmm’, but then it turned out that among ‘foods’ I was counting inedible objects like chairs and rocks and grass. So yes, only a minority of objects have most of the nutritional value, but anything we’d call food is in the heavy tail, and this is a kind of silly frame.

This point isn’t fully worked out but yeah, I wonder if ‘what counts as the distribution’ is kind of socially constructed in a way that’s not always helpful.  
 

I guess I weakly disagree: I think that motivation and already having roots in an issue really are a big part of personal fit - especially now that lots of "classic EA jobs" seem highly oversubscribed, even if the cause areas are more neglected than they should be. 

Like to make this more concrete, if your climate-change-motivated young EA was like 'well, now that I've learnt about AI risk, I guess I should pursue that career, ?', but they don't feel excited about it. Even if they have the innate ability to excel in AI safety, they will still have to outcompete people who have already built up expertize there, many of whom will find it easier to motivate themselves to work hard because they are interested in AI. 

(On the object level, I assume that many roles in climate change and gender equality stuff are in fact more impactful than many roles in more canonical EA cause areas). 


 

Thanks for writing this! As others have said, thank you for trying to do this valuable work even if it didn't work out. 

I haven't read everything so sorry if you mention this elsewhere but I'm confused about:

-'Of the three studies we found that measure the effects of facility-based postpartum family planning programming on pregnancy rates, two found no effect (Rohr et al. 2024; Coulibaly et al. 2021), and one found only a 0.7% decrease in short-spaced pregnancies (Guo et al. 2022).
This suggests that facility-based programs may have limited to no effect on reducing unintended pregnancies despite increasing contraceptive uptake.'

Why might programs increase contraceptive uptake but not reduce unintended pregnancies? Is it mainly because many who take the contraceptives are in the postpartum insusceptibility period anyway? 

I think I've never gotten real feedback! It's possible I'm not promoting it often enough/not making specific requests of people, so people don't know it's an option.

This is a cool idea!

FYI, if you're excited about one of these ideas but struggling to actually get it drafted and posted, I can help with that. I wrote more here:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/4towuFeBfbGn8hJGs/amber-dawn-s-shortform?commentId=C6Z7u57FHh6nYqo4N

Since the season of Draft Amnesty is upon us, a bit of mild self-promotion: you can hire me to help you turn your unwritten thoughts and messy drafts into posts. 

For example:

-if some sections of your post are in your head but not yet on the page, I can help you draft them
-if you feel self-conscious about your draft, I can quickly review it and fix or flag the biggest issues
-if you feel ugh-y or uncertain about posting or finishing your post, or if you have anxieties about posting more generally, I can talk you through that
-I agree with the Forum team that it can be very valuable to share even unpolished and unfinished drafts, but if you'd like to publish a more polished post, I can help with editing and structuring

I have collaborated on a bunch of Forum posts.

Happy drafting! 

Thanks for the shout-out! I just want to add that I also offer writing coaching, for those who want to learn how to make their own writing clearer and more effective. 

TLDR: freelance writer and editor interested in (mostly) part-time and contract work. I’m particularly interested in finding more clients for writing coaching (see below). 

Skills & background: I’m a freelance writer and editor: here’s my website and here’s my personal blog. You can also read many of my posts (both personal and collaborative) here on the Forum.

I’ve worked with several EAs and EA-adjacent people, writing or editing blogs, website content, internal organizational documents, podcast transcripts, fiction and more. I’ve also designed an educational module on IFS therapy concepts and worked as a facilitator for the EA Forum. 

Previously, I’ve worked as an ESL and secondary school teacher, and I spent some time pursuing an academic career in Classics (specialising in Greek and Roman philosophy), which also involved working as an instructor and teaching assistant. I think I’m good at teaching and related skills, such as explaining things simply, empathetically listening and responding to people’s problems, thinking of creative solutions, and making plans. I’m actively interested in finding more teaching-adjacent work.

Location/remote: London – most of my work is remote but I’m willing to meet face-to-face in London. I’m not interested in relocating. My working hours are roughly 9.30ish-5.30ish UK time, but I'm happy to work a little later than that sometimes to accommodate people in Pacific Time!

Availability & type of work: I’m mainly interested in contract or part-time work, but would also consider full-time roles if they are an especially good fit. 

I’m interested in offering: 

Writing coaching: I’ve only had a few one-off clients so far for this but I think it went well. Generally, I think I might be a great fit for this because it’s at the intersection of my two skillsets, writing and teaching.

Editing, proofreading, and review: I’m happy to proofread things, offer light or intensive editing, and give feedback on your drafts. In general, I’ll engage with the content of what I’m editing and tell you if something doesn’t make sense or doesn’t land right.

Content writing help: you describe your ideas, and I’ll write them up into a finished draft. 

Debugging, problem-solving, sympathetic listening, and accountability.

I’m starting a series on ideas that have changed people’s lives: the first post is on the Alexander technique. If you’re interested in funding one of these posts, let me know (this will help me to prioritize the project more). 

Here’s a list of questions that I’d be interested to research.


I’m open to work that doesn’t come under any of these headings but that I might be a good fit for: feel free to reach out and ask.  

Resume/CV/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amber-ace-4b8a261b1/

Email/contact: Feel free to email me at ambace@gmail.com, DM me on the Forum, or book a short meeting if you’re interested in hiring me or would like to learn more.
 

I don't agree that EA requires current venal systems to exist. For example, in a state communist society, or an anarchist society, or a libertarian society, you can still imagine people trying to work out how to do the most good with their resources. Of course current EAs work within current systems, but that just seems necessary to get anything done. 

I think it's "poor intellectual etiquette" to require people to comment along with votes: if I posting, I'm interested in whether readers find it valuable or not, even if they understandably don't want to prioritize explaining why they think I'm right or wrong. 

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