It's sometimes a bit of a slog but also relatively short and I was constantly impressed by the scope of the book and the variety of interesting ideas for something written in the 1930's.

I recently read Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon after a conversation in which someone said that it inspired them to think about longtermism related ideas way before they had heard of effective altruism.

It covers a fictionalised history of the universe from the beginning to end, more like a documentary or a textbook than a novel with characters and plot. It's from the point of view of someone who is picked up from a hill in England and then moved around the galaxy and observes other civilisations in a variety of  times throughout the life of the universe.

It's written in 1937 and was said to inspire people like Arthur C. Clarke, Freeman Dyson and Jorge Luis Borges and includes speculation on civilisational unity and collapse, space exploration, metaverse, future technology, genetic engineering and existential risks.

There is also an Airtable version of that directory that is more up to date, I'll update the google sheet 

Is engagement the thing you want to optimise for over impact or are the two highly correlated for you?

I don't think I've ever called myself an effective altruist, part of it is the small identity idea mentioned in the original post and another part is that it doesn't seem correct to call myself effective when there are large uncertainties about the prioritisation of causes and interventions, so new evidence could come up showing I was actually very ineffective.

On a more practical level, it's easier to have conversations with people who are newer to EA or are sceptical of certain aspects of it when I'm not calling myself an EA and making it seem like something you are either in or out of.

It's also probably easier to find flaws in a topic when it isn't part of your identity, it reduces the chance of defensiveness, and I think I should try and make it easy to always be open to potential problems in EA.

Generally for most engagement there is a vast discrepancy between viewers, people who interact and people who comment/post.

1% rule - link with more details.

Hey Guy,

It's great to see your intro, if you're interested there is a group on Facebook for disabled and chronically ill people interested in EA.  There are also some other groups mentioned on this directory here that you may find useful.

Leopold Aschenbrenner has written about this here.

"The same technological progress that creates these risks is also what drives economic growth. Does that mean economic growth is inherently risky? Economic growth has brought about extraordinary prosperity. But for the sake of posterity, must we choose safe stagnation instead? This view is arguably becoming ever-more popular, particularly amongst those concerned about climate change; Greta Thunberg recently denounced “fairy tales of eternal economic growth” at the United Nations.

I argue that the opposite is the case. It is not safe stagnation and risky growth that we must choose between; rather, it is stagnation that is risky and it is growth that leads to safety.

We might indeed be in “time of perils”: we might be advanced enough to have developed the means for our destruction, but not advanced enough to care sufficiently about safety. But stagnation does not solve the problem: we would simply stagnate at this high level of risk. Eventually, a nuclear war or environmental catastrophe would doom humanity regardless.

Faster economic growth could initially increase risk, as feared. But it will also help us get past this time of perils more quickly. When people are poor, they can’t focus on much beyond ensuring their own livelihoods. But as people grow richer, they start caring more about things like the environment and protecting against risks to life. And so, as economic growth makes people richer, they will invest more in safety, protecting against existential catastrophes. As technological innovation and our growing wealth has allowed us to conquer past threats to human life like smallpox, so can faster economic growth, in the long run, increase the overall chances  of humanity’s survival.

This argument is based on a recent paper of mine, in which I use the tools of economic theory—in particular, the standard models economists use to analyze economic growth—to examine the interaction between economic growth and the risks engendered by human activity."

Does this include how it might limit your ability to move for work, which might be the most important factor in salary/impact?

Could you turn that google doc into a post Sam?

I think it would be valuable to share with others how someone has thought about their morals.

I wrote up some thoughts on this after getting this question a few times recently ( taking from some of the previous posts mentioned).

------------------------------------------------------

With volunteering it will depend on the motivation behind wanting to volunteer, which can be one or more of the following.

• Giving back outside of work/donations
• Having impact
• Connecting with a community
• Career capital/building skills
• New experiences/friends/having fun

Once you know what the main driver is, that can determine the best ways to search for a role. If thinking about impact there are some useful heuristics from this 80,000 Hours article.

• Volunteer for cost effective, labour constrained organisations
• Use your skills
• Don’t do replaceable tasks

For career capital it will involve staying up to date with the fields/organisations you're interested in, seeing if volunteering opportunities open up, contacting them to see if there is a way you can help, or spotting a way that you can help them independently.

For connecting with a community it will depend on the community, if you want to connect with your neighbourhood there are organisations like Do It to help match volunteers to opportunities in the UK.

For EA London here is a post by one person on how they decided to find an impactful role in this space. Here are their suggestions

• Consider how you’d like to weight Direct Impact, Self Care, Career Capital, and any other criteria you’d like to focus on.
• Identify your personal fit/comparative advantage by looking at past achievements and asking a friend or colleague.
• Make a list of a wide range of opportunities.
• Seek out opportunities that will do well on specific criteria.
• Ask around about opportunities.
• Consider independent projects that may be high-impact.
• Make a copy of our spreadsheet (in linked post) and use it to narrow down your options.
• Create a short-list of the best opportunities. (These might not be the highest-scoring opportunities on the spreadsheet.)
• Try to get more information about your top options e.g. by talking to someone you’d be working with.
• Make a consistent, long-term commitment. Volunteering can be net negative if it wastes the time of a staff member or another volunteer at a high-impact charity.

If you're interested in supporting an EA group it may be worth considering the following options.

• Is there a task you enjoy doing/have experience in that is currently missing in your group?
  • Social media
  • Intro conversations
  • Event organising
  • Giving talks
  • Web design
  • Interviewing people
• Is there a cause/career area you want to explore more? You could create your own subgroup for others in that community to get together and share ideas

A few other posts on volunteering and EA

• Notes on getting involved with EA projects
• Acts of small kindness
• Volunteering isn't free
• Voluntourism

I've cross posted to the EA & Global Development Facebook group if you were interested in the responses there as well.

There is a group here that it might be worth posting this to - Altruismo Eficaz América Latina

Hi Bianca, thanks for posting here, there are a few resources that you might find useful.

EA Student Career Mentoring - They offer personalised mentorship for students and recent graduates

WANBAM - WANBAM connects and supports a global network of women and non-binary Effective Altruists through mentorship

Directory of cause/career groups - there may be people in the same area that would want to do this

EA London directory - although most people are based in London a few have written down a similar interest in having an accountability buddy

OPP sometimes add grants that were made months ago to their public database, so rather than just highlight the ones added in the last month, I highlight everything added since I last sent out the update.

As an update, I think trying to combine a directory, forum and wiki into a new website didn't work.

I've redirected the links to a directory on the EA London website and think that using Facebook groups as the place for these discussions makes more sense as it is where people already are.

I think the guiding principles from CEA would suggest that this is a bad idea

"Because we believe that trust, cooperation, and accurate information are essential to doing good, we strive to be honest and trustworthy. More broadly, we strive to follow those rules of good conduct that allow communities (and the people within them) to thrive. We also value the reputation of effective altruism, and recognize that our actions reflect on it. "

This is a good analysis but I think it simplifies between short vs long term, when people often aren't 100% one or the other. As well as whether particular cause areas are short vs long term when some existential risk work could be seen as highly valuable even if an individual didn't value lives tomorrow and some interventions that are seen as near term could have a much bigger impact on the future.

Is that because Facebook is GMT, and the UK is GMT+1?

I have a rough draft of questions that I sometimes send to people who are thinking of contacting someone on the EA London directory.

Questions to ask yourself

• What is the purpose of meeting with this person?
• What could you gain?
• What could they gain?
• Is it worth their time? (Potentially let people know why you think it may be useful)

To help them decide to meet you can give your background/skills in their areas of interest

Questions you could ask (choose relevant ones)

• Why did you want to do X?
• What was your background before X?
• What are the biggest bottlenecks in cause X?
• What skills are most useful for this role?
• What projects/volunteering should/could I do?
• What is the process for being selected for interviews?
  How should I prepare for interviews in this area?
• If I were to be a good candidate for role X in one year, what would be the best additions to my CV?
• How do you do well in this job?
• What do you wish you knew before working here?
• Can you think of somewhere else I could have more impact with my current background and skills?
• What do you do day to day?
• What impact do you think you have/could have?
• What might be the most impactful thing you achieved last year/month?
• What might be the most impactful thing you achieve next year/month?
• What's a bottleneck you have with regard to having more impact?
• What would you do if you weren’t working here?
• What do you think is the most neglected project/activity in your field?
• If you had all your living costs paid for, what project would you work on and why?
• What was the last thing you changed your mind about (in relation to your career)?
  What was the most useful thing you’ve learned in the last week/month/year?
• (Meta) How could these questions be improved? Were there any particularly good or bad ones?

In London there is a directory that some people have used to arrange 1-1s, I think there are a few others for different locations, careers and causes. I don't know if it's better to have one master directory/CRM/messaging capability on the EA hub or for each group to have their own way of networking.

Yeah, it's trying to do 2/3 things at once, and using a forum software for a directory isn't optimal.

It looks like DFID have funded a similar intervention today.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-aid-to-tackle-global-spread-of-coronavirus-fake-news

"Dangerous myths about coronavirus which are hampering the global fight against the disease will be challenged thanks to a new initiative backed by UK aid.

The support from the Department for International Development will challenge misinformation in South East Asia and Africa, which is then spreading worldwide, and direct people to the right advice to help stop the spread of the virus.

False claims and conspiracy theories have spread rapidly on social media, touting ‘cures’ like drinking bleach or rubbing mustard and garlic into your skin. These pose a serious risk to health and can speed up the spread of the virus, by stopping people taking simple practical, preventative steps like washing their hands.

DFID’s £500,000 support will go to the Humanitarian-to-Humanitarian (H2H) Network, which has extensive experience addressing the spread of misinformation during epidemics, for example following the 2015 Ebola outbreak.

The work of the H2H Network will complement UK initiatives by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and the NHS to tackle misinformation online.

International Development Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan said:

“Misinformation harms us all. By tackling it at source we will help stop the spread of fake news – and coronavirus – worldwide, including within the UK.”

H2H will work with partners BBC Media Action and Internews to create verified information in various languages to tackle specific mistruths spreading in South East Asia and Africa. Their work will also support journalists in these regions to write more accurately about the virus using information from the World Health Organization.

Support will also go to Translators without Borders, which monitors false information in various languages and translates validated content from WHO and other health agencies, and Evidence Aid which updates a database of research on diseases each day.

The initiative will analyse social media and online content to identify where the misinformation is coming from and how it is spreading – so victims of fake news can be sent the correct information and directed to official health advice."

Would that distinguish between people who knew about all the current resources and still wanted more versus those who hadn't been connected to what is currently available?

I think I agree with the minimum recommended resources you suggest, but I don't see Facebook group membership requirements as the only filter. It's more likely to be based on seeing what people write/projects they do/future attendance at EA events.

Sometimes obstacles can be good but maybe there are people who would be really great organisers if they just knew one other person who was interested or were encouraged to go to EAG.

A tangential issue that might be part of this disagreement is that anyone can decide to become a group leader, create a meetup page and start telling people about their version of EA as there is no official licence/certification. That would require more thought as to whether having official groups is a good idea.

I doubt the people who are plausibly good founders would actually benefit from such groups, and even less from some vague coordination due to facebook groups

I agree that Facebook groups are most likely not the ideal coordination tool, but I haven't found a platform that is as widely used without having bigger flaws.

I also agree that the impact could be negative if there are people who would build communities just because they met via Facebook but I think a lot of that depends on how it is used. One check is ensuring that people who join understand EA and have a connection to that region. Another is having filters and coaching for people do want to organise, which should reduce the chance of a negative outcome whilst making it easier for a positive one.

I think having someone involved in EA create the various focal points means that we are less likely in the future to see groups appear that have no connection to the wider EA network and research but have already become the default organisation in their area.

There is this post - Why not to rush to translate effective altruism into other languages.

And this post I wrote where one conclusion is that maybe there should be less focus on location when thinking about movement building.

I'd agree that it makes sense to get it right first time but maybe that's one reason to have someone involved in EA community building able to filter and help people who are interested in EA in neglected regions.

Switzerland seems to have a bunker and archive system - link.

I think even if it isn't inflammatory, a different title might make the intended audience less defensive and more likely to change their minds as it isn't about their identity, and more about how much weight to give RCTs versus other evaluation methods.

There is Generation Pledge, with the below description.

"Generation Pledge exists to unlock billions of dollars that can be deployed to fund the most effective solutions to the world’s greatest challenges.

We work with a community of heirs who are committed to doing good with the resources they have available. We offer opportunities to learn, connect, collaborate and take action to create large-scale positive impact."

I have quite a few newsletter subscriptions, with some that are tangentially related to EA.

I sometimes search twitter for mentions of effective altruism.

A few things come via LinkedIn connections on the newsfeed.

I think the community is composed of people who either attend multiple EA events each year or contribute to online discussion, and some proportion of people who work at an EA related organisation, so maybe between 500-2000 people.

There are quite a few people who might attend an EAG or read content but don't get involved and wouldn't consider themselves part of the community. I might be biased as part of my work at EA London has included having lots of conversations with people who often have a great understanding of EA but have never been to an event.

The 1-3X and 10/90 percent are loosely held assumptions. I think it may be more accurate to assume there are power law distributions for people who would consider themselves in the community and also for those who are in the wider network. If both groups have a similar distribution, than the network probably has an order of magnitude more people who have 100x-1000x impact. Some examples include junior members of the civil service being quite involved in EA, but there are also senior civil servants and lots of junior civil servants who are interested in EA but don't attend meetups.

I'm not sure that it is a core EA org belief that the difference is down to whether someone is heavily engaged in the community or not. Lots of examples they use of people who have had a much larger impact come from before EA was a movement.

the argument does not hold if those groups are only for people who are very familiar with EA thinking

I think when creating most groups/sub-communities it's important that there is a filter to make sure people have an understanding of EA, otherwise it can become an average group for that cause area rather than a space for people who have an interest in EA and that specific cause, and are looking for EA related conversations.

But the likelihood that I would have changed my cause area because other causes are more important to work on would have been smaller. This could be because it is less likely to come across good arguments for other causes as not that many people around me have an incentive to point me towards those resources.

I think most people who have an interest in EA also hold uncertainty about their moral values, the tractability of various interventions and which causes are most important. It can be easy sometimes to pigeonhole people with particular causes depending on where they work or donate but I don't meet many people who only care about one cause, and the EA survey had similar results.

If people are able to come across well reasoned arguments for interventions within a cause area they care about, I think it's more likely that they'll stick around. As most of the core EA material (newsletters, forum, FB) has reference to multiple causes, it will be hard to avoid these ideas. Especially if they are also in groups for their career/interests/location.

I think the bigger risk is losing people who instantly bounce from EA when it doesn't even attempt to answer their questions rather than the risk of people not getting exposed to other ideas. If EA doesn't have cause groups then there's probably a higher chance of someone just going to another movement that does allow conversation in that area.

This quote from an 80,000 Hours interview with Kelsey Piper phrases it much better.

"Maybe pretty early on, it just became obvious that there wasn’t a lot of value in preaching to people on a topic that they weren’t necessarily there for, and that I had a lot of thoughts on the conversations people were already having. Then I think one thing you can do to share any reasoning system, but it works particularly well for effective altruism is just to apply it consistently, in a principled way, to problems that people care about. Then, they’ll see whether your tools look like useful tools. If they do, then they’ll be interested in learning more about that. I think my ideal effective altruist movement, and obviously this trade off against lots of other things and I don’t know that we can be doing more of it on the margin. My ideal effective altruist movement had insightful nuanced, productive, takes on lots and lots of other things so that people could be like, “Oh, I see how effective altruists have tools for answering questions. “I want the people who have tools for answering questions to teach me about those tools. I want to know what they think the most important questions are. I want to sort of learn about their approach."

the EA community tends to be especially capable

I'm not sure that an EA community member is 'especially capable' compared to a capable person who attends less events or is less engaged with online content. The wider network may have quite a few people who have absorbed 5+ years of online material to do with EA, but rarely interacted, and those people will have used the same advice to choose donations and careers as more engaged members.

I also think the network has higher variance, you may get people who are not doing much altruistically, but there will also be more people in business with 20+ year experience, leading academics in their field and people higher up in government who want to good with their careers.

Side point

Comparisons have been made before about the impact of an EA and, e.g., the average developed country person.

Whilst I'm aware that you move on from this point, I'm not sure it's useful to have as a comparison when the post is about people who are aware of EA and of having impact within their career rather than everyone in a developed country. It may be that it's also hard to parse your text without paragraphs and removing that first point would have helped.

Thanks, updated.

I think similar areas were covered in these two posts as well 80,000 Hours - how to read our advice and Thoughts on 80,000 Hours’ research that might help with job-search frustrations.

There was a Facebook post on top 10 concepts for people to know in EA.

Here are some of the suggestions.

• Cause neutrality
• Scale, Neglectedness and Solvability framework
• Maximising welfare
• Moral patient-hood
• Moral uncertainty
• Moral trade
• Longtermism
• Hits-based giving
• Worldview diversification
• Earning-to-give
• Comparative advantage
• Epistemic principles
• Crucial Considerations

I think some of the points in this 80,000 Hours article apply to EA in general

• We’ve been wrong before, and we’ll be wrong again
• Many of the questions we tackle are a matter of balance, and different people will benefit from considering opposing messages
• Personal fit matters, so focus more on strategies than simple answers
• There are disagreements within the community
• Treat doing good as just one of many important goals in life

Also this one - Misconceptions of 80,000 Hours research (although maybe they wont be misconceptions if it is the first thing they read)

• Roles outside explicitly EA organisations are most people’s best career options.
• Sometimes these roles aren’t as visible to the community, including to 80,000 Hours, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t highly impactful.
• Many especially impactful roles require specific skills. If none of these roles are currently a great fit for you, but one could be if you developed the right skills, it can be worth it to take substantial time to do so.
• You should use 80,000 Hours to figure out what your best career is and how to get there, not what “the” best careers are.

I'd add in different ways of having impact and how they generally compare as people often ask about why EA doesn't do much in one of the following; career, donations, volunteering, influence/voting and personal consumption

Also some articles that I've shared quite regularly with people newer to EA.

Why choose a cause and how to strategically choose a cause

6 tips on choosing an effective charity

Where I am donating this year

Giving Cheerfully

Effective altruism as question

One idea is for them to coordinate the global community of people in marketing/sales who are interested in EA.

Providing a point of entry for other marketers to see where the best places may be for them to work, what skills to build and what networks to join so that they can have more positive impact.

This may include a newsletter every few months highlighting job opportunities and examples of marketing for good, an online group(FB/Slack/etc) for people to swap ideas and potentially get mentorship.

I think that this is a good plan and it would be interesting to hear if there have been any updates in the last 4 months.

I agree with a lot of the other comments but one thing I haven't noticed is how to provide value to the wider network of people in Germany who have an interest in EA but may not want to go to events or become heavily engaged.

I don't have a complete list, but here are quite a few of the organisations that I subscribe to for updates.

Long Term Future

Global Priorities Institute

Existential Risk

Future of Life Institute

Future of Humanity Institute

Centre for the Study of Existential Risk

Global Catastrophic Risk Institute

Artificial Intelligence

Center for Security and Emerging Technology

Oxford Internet Institute

DeepMind

Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence

Google AI

OpenAI

Alan Turing Institute

Animal Welfare

Cellular Agriculture UK

Faunalytics

Animal Charity Evaluators

Good Food Institute

Animal Advocacy Careers

Sentience Institute

The Humane League

Farm Animal Welfare Newsletter from OPP

Animal Ethics

Wild Animal Institute

But Can They Suffer

Global Development

The Life You Can Save

Devex International Development

GiveWell

Centre for Global Development

GiveDirectly

J-PAL

Global Innovation Fund

Wellcome Trust (also improving institutions)

International Initiative for Impact Evaluation

AidGrade

Innovations for Poverty Action

Fortify Health

Copenhagen Consensus Centre

Charity Science Health

Gates Foundation

Schistosomiasis Control Initiative

Overseas Development Institute

Development Media International

Against Malaria Foundation

Malaria Consortium

Evidence Action

Happier Lives Institute

Improving Institutions

Cambridge Centre for Science and Policy

Campbell Collaboration

Centre for Excellence in Development and Learning

Our World in Data

Centre for Open Science

To Be Decided

UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose

Effective Altruism

Effective Altruism Newsletter (by CEA, EA Hub and Rethink Charity)

Future Perfect

Charity Entrepreneurship

80,000 Hours

80k Supporters Updates

Centre for Effective Altruism

Open Philanthropy Project

Rethink Priorities

EA Groups Newsletter

Philanthropy

The Center for Effective Philanthropy

Founders Pledge

Non Profit Chronicles

General Interest

Clearer Thinking

Conceptually

Matt’s Thoughts In Between - Founder of Entrepeneur First

I thought it was so that it tied in with EA Funds, which is something that made me think CEA was paying much more attention to donations, making a unified system that also allowed people to donate from one platform and automatically record donations.

Although I agree that repeated donations not being an option is quite annoying.

I used these images for a slide show a few years ago, the original source being this report by CEA (page 6).

That might be old data though, this is the most up to date version on JPALs website.

I don't think addressing these questions in a handbook that's meant to introduce EA would be that useful as most of them require much more in depth reading than a few paragraphs would allow.

It may make more sense to have an FAQ for these typical questions or to say that lots of areas within EA are still being discussed, and then list the questions.

I think this is a really good comment and probably should be it's own post.

A minor point, I would say that giving to the Against Malaria Foundation may not on it's own be systemic change, but if enough people keep on giving to charities that are evaluated on their impact, it could change individual giving as a system, as charities respond to these new incentives.

A two stage strategy might be best, outreach for the first week, then core community the rest of the semester.

It may be that getting lots of email sign ups can be okay to then pass on 80,000 Hours material, the first few events and 1-1 sign up. I've heard from quite a few people that they first heard of EA at a university fair and kept on getting the 80,000 Hours emails and then got much more involved once they started working 3-5 years later.

After focusing on outreach for the first week, I agree it probably makes sense to focus on the core 5-30 people who are actually interested in EA rather than trying to put on events for the wider student audience that signed up to everything but wont really come to anything.

If there is a situation where someone is really interested but it's hectic, I would put a note by their name to remember to reach out to them individually rather than prioritising the 5 minute conversation.

1. Most of my time will be spent doing similar things to last year, although I've only been working full time for 9 months. I think innovation, at least for me, happens over time rather than as a one off process, with ideas being formed and then being tested to see what people like. One recent example is the community spotlight, which was an idea a few weeks ago and now has become a regular post.

In terms of taking EA to the next level, there isn't a plan to grow or hire more people but rather coordinate and support nascent organisations in London that can start doing other work and grow independently.

2. I will have a look

There is a Facebook group and a small page on the website.

It's not that I don't want people to upskill, it's that I think it's best done by people who have experience in that area, whether that is via a course or workshop.

In terms of getting people to meet in person, I agree that certain talks/workshops/themes can help attract different people, but the best outcomes from that aren't usually what people learn, but the connections they make, and designing a workshop just to drive attendance may not be the most efficient way of getting people to attend.

I agree with everything you said, I guess those three points aren't things that I think about often but might make sense to update the document to better reflect that.