This is really cool, love how structured and well laid out this is with a journey for people like me who don't quite have time to commit to a course but are happy to tune in and out as available. 

Learning about EA has revealed within me two distinctly different drives, both to achieve the same outcome: belonging. 

On one hand I want to share thoughts, hunches and instincts based on little more than experience in attempts to start discussions and hear others thoughts.

On the other hand I want my thoughts to be at least logical or rational enough that their sharing lowers friction for those receiving. 

When trying to write for the EA forums it feels like I'm hosting a party for guests whose expectations I'm unfamiliar with. 

I don't want to out myself as not belonging, but I have to risk that in order to a) improve my thoughts and b) find out better where I belong. 

The desire to belong within EA seems like a me problem, instinct tells me it's less EAs job to make me feel welcome than it is my job to know myself with more clarity (and thus have more confidence in the value of hunches and instincts even if they do get downvoted to oblivion as I fear they might). 

Is there a maximum effective membership size for EA?

@Joey 🔸 spoke at EAGx last night and one of my biggest take-aways was the (controversial maybe) take that more projects should decline money. 

This resonates with my experience; constraint is a powerful driver of creativity and with less constraint you do not necessarily create more creativity (or positive output). 

Does the EA movement in terms of number of people have a similar dynamic within society? What growth rate is optimal for a group of members to expand, before it becomes sub-optimal? Zillions of factors to consider of course but... something maybe fun to ponder. 

Compassion fatigue should be focused on less. 

I had it hammered into me during training as a crisis supporter and I still burnt out. 

Now I train others, have seen it hammered into them and still watch countless of them burn out. 

I think we need to switch at least 60% of compassion fatigue focus to compassion satisfaction. 

Compassion satisfaction is the warm feeling you receive when you give something meaningful to someone, if you're 'doing good work' I think that feeling (and its absence) ought to be spoken about much more. 

Ah yeah thanks for informing me.

Thoughts on the applicant feedback problem.

Could job application / grant application / whatever application feedback be outsourced?

Lack of feedback maybe causes a lack of improvement in applications (for jobs, grants, whatever) and keeps the entire pool of applicants (and therefore effective altruists) less competitive.

I wonder under what conditions people could benefit from one another's feedback being visible. For example if I applied for a job and was knocked back (e.g. an EA job) and not given any feedback, how could my information gap be filled in novel ways?

1. Maybe outsource feedback to different people such as a curated community of HR people incentivised to contribute to a feedback pool so that future job applicants are more prepared 
2. Maybe outsource feedback to an AI using specific training and specific templates so that questions are designed to surface blind spots
3. Maybe outsource feedback to structured industry specific mentorship / networking organisations 
4. Maybe the person who didn't hire me could visibly publish one detailed constructive criticism publicly, clearly deidentified or depersonalised

Considerations:

1. Maybe organisations have strong incentives to not show constructive criticism
   1. Perhaps those incentives are more important places to intervene or problem solve?
2. Maybe the cost of publishing high quality constructive criticism, done effectively with the right parameters, would offer enough return to be worth it
   1. E.g. a grants organisation publishing 'top 10 reasons we didn't go with x proposal'
      1. Is this too controversial? Could the balance be struck between informative and helpful without being condescending or offensive? 

If more people had more access to more quality feedback, would that likely improve 'things'?

Good points, to play devil's advocate it did take many decades for auto manufacturers to include seat belts by default.

It seems safety policy sometimes meets resistance by production / profit motive, despite clear evidence of cause of death.

It takes courage to put yourself out there and plant a flag in a hill (sharing an idea that you profess strong conviction in). 

I'm new too and lowkey I find it quite intimidating lol because there's literally people who post around here that have enormous influence out in the world and have done big things, so knowing all that I wanna say good on you for putting yourself out there!

I think what Camille is hinting at is something called 'the scout versus the soldier' mindset, if you're not familiar with it you may like to watch this Ted talk. 

There's also a really good forum guide which goes into it too, into the norms of writing around here and what kind of attitude is typically regarded highly (in other words how to write for this audience so they can receive your intended ideas with higher understanding and less misunderstanding). 

Check it out if you haven't already:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/yND9aGJgobm5dEXqF/guide-to-norms-on-the-forum 

Even though English isn't your first language (or second lol) you put the arguments forward really clearly. 

I believe I am picking up where you're going, and if you haven't already you may get a lot out of the book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. This human chevanism you're referring to creates lots of problems and offers a lot of utility when viewed rationally, it opens a lot of great discussions about language and how our expectations influence reality. 

When you're talking with ChatGPT it could even help to ask the robot to highlight the differences in the writing between soldier versus scout mindset, I haven't tried this myself but I certainly want to now lol! 

Thanks for sharing your thoughts Soe Lin!

Thanks for sharing this I haven't thought about having to fight with my family over hot water in so long. 

Or using the phone rather than the internet, for that matter. 

Or when my mum just yanked the card out of the cable tv box and that was that, no more access to quality shows. 

Or how inconvenient and annoying those big refedexes were, huge books full of maps that you had to pull over to flip back and forth through in order to drive somewhere you didn't know. 

Or the ability to just word vomit a problem and get recommended an excellent book to tackle it in precise ways that also takes context and meta info into account like when talking to an llm.

Or the fact that I can talk to relatives overseas without having to write a damn letter and wait weeks for a reply. 

The list actually goes on and on now that I think about it, I'm keen to come back in here in ten or twenty years to see what I find. 

You know what, I think I'll schedule an email reminder to do just that. 

[edit]

Cya then, hopefully. 

I like this discussion a lot thank you. 

Is it about safety? I imagine it's important to future generations as a significant artefact of history. A thousand years from now if we figure out how to make it there, probably people will treat the ISS as a kind of gateway / shrine / pilgrimage if they're hella nerdy and feel like getting off planet matters. Totally making this up. 

I do feel like politics and PR have played a big part in the space race since the start, nature of the beast. 

Possibly it's important for another longterm reason. If SpaceX is going to play the role of ferryman to future space exploring civilizations like it claims to want to do, they are essentially setting the standard. 

Other private space companies are all watching, even ones that don't exist yet (will look back through history). The choices that get made aren't just important here for their real and current impact, but potentially also for setting the precident for future decision makers. If we act with (at least visible) integrity in these choices then what impact might that have on the court of public opinion for how we expect companies to operate?