Great work! 

Have you considered translating it in other major languages, especially those with large existing EA communities like German, French or Spanish, or EA potential? 

A draft translation could be made with AI, and then EA communicators with high context (such as the EA Germany / EA Spain & LatAm organizers) could give feedback and adapt it to culture-specific norms. Once everyone is happy, small flag icons could link to the translation. 

Advantages: 
- The non-English EA content & communities would be a lot more accessible, and we might counterfactually reach more non-English speakers (e.g. older people who could be donors, senior policy-makers, ...)
- Non-English versions would be better. Even orgs like EA Germany who seem to have spent significant time updating their website don't have the capacity to build someone as professional as CEA does (for comparison, here's the German website: https://effektiveraltruismus.de/)
- Generally, more connections between the English & non-English versions, so everyone can find what they're looking for easily. Currently, effectivealtruism.org does not seem to the German version at all, and on the German website (effektiveraltruismus.de), the English flag icon at the top right does not link effectivealtruism.org either. 

Costs: 
- Mainly time costs by EA communicators (CEA, EA Germany, ...). Any other costs I missed?

Note that I'm not saying that the EA Germany website is a duplicate, it's not, just the "intro to EA" part could maybe be better connected. 



 

If at some point you're seriously considering downsizing the EA forum team or even shutting it down, maybe consider running a (simple) crowdfunding campaign for the EA forum among users, both to get funding and to get a better sense of how much users value having a value-aligned forum (optimizing for quality, usefulness & user happiness) instead of only a subreddit. 

My sense is that quite a lot of users value it quite a lot (just based on how much time people seem to spend on the forum), but I don't have data on it. 

Agree! 

To add to your point: Some EAs have told me in private that they struggle with various forms of online addiction (mostly Youtube, Facebook, but also Reddit, Linkedin etc), and it's hard for them to find a balance between getting the content they want but not spending too much time on it. 

I feel like the EA forum makes it a lot easier for users to find that balance compared to reddit etc, and I wouldn't be surprised if that counterfactually leads to many more hours spent on important EA work. 

It's hard to measure that as most people are hesitant to comment about this publicly or don't have a good sense of how much time they 'waste' on Reddit etc. If anyone here wants more data, an anonymous poll or mini survey could help. 

Yep, he occasionally shared memes in that group but left it a while ago. 

Thanks for sharing your story when we met in Berlin and writing this up! I saved it to read later. 

This made me think of an EA friend of mine, who spent a year after high school doing voluntary military service in Switzerland before embarking on his altruist (later EA) career. IIRC he found it helpful to learn discipline and grit early on in his career. I feel like focus, discipline and grit might be underrated skills in our current time of abundant distractions, and the military might be one of the best places to learn this. Other jobs in a high stress environment with supportive colleagues might also work, such as top management consulting firms, or multi-day silent meditation retreats like Vipassana. Not sure how well each translates to better focus at (EA) jobs. 

Curious if you have any thoughts on this!

I'd love to read high quality critiques of this, especially the suggested timeline and likelihood. If you know any, please share! 

I feel like mainstream people like EA until they understand the implications and are faced with their first trade-off for who to help. To keep them engaged, maybe the new CEA could skip the prioritization part and just focus on making people feel better about their first choice. 

I'm sure you had no bad intentions with this, but including a "buy a $100 ticket" offer to a fictional lottery with your actual PayPal link on an April Fools joke seems.. unnecessary maybe? Also, more importantly, a missed opportunity for Rickrolling :) 

Btw, Karl Lauterbach, the former German minister of health, has mentioned "effective altruism" in a press conference as a framework to help justify covid measures during the pandemic. If one of Germany's top ~10 politicians (at the time) can risk that, you can too ;)

Consider that, in addition to doing nothing yourself, you can also discourage others from doing anything. 

Write a nit-picky critique, say something vague like "I don't you should do this" without any further explanation, defer to authority. 

We need to ensure that no-one does anything if they're not at least 98% confident that they're the world's most qualified person to do the thing.