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Has there been a past success story where a drug was developed to mimic the effects of a gene and successfully improved a complicated phenomena (in this case, sleep)?
I'm unfamiliar with drug development, but my limited knowledge of genetics and sleep suggests this would be complicated. A past success story would sway my mind a little bit.
The candidate pool was much stronger than expected
This one can be sent to every applicant and still provides very useful information. It tells me that my expectations of the hiring bar might have been correct in the past. However, the market has changed and I should adjust my expectations.
For this one, concreteness is essential. One hiring manager phrased it like, "We had to reject many exceptional candidates that would have been instant hires a few years ago. Everyone did well on our take-home test that we thought impossible to complete within the 3 hours."
Literally any feedback about final stage interviews.
I worry a ton about my final-stage interview performance. Partly this is a me-issue but I think there are structural reasons why final-stage interviews are so nerve-wracking.
- They're the most important to do well in. I can be a marginal candidate in every stage before that. The 20th best resume can still get a HR phone screen. The 10th best HR phone screen can still get a work trial. The 5th best work trial can still get a final interview. But only the top 1-3 candidates in a final interview can realistically expect an offer.
- They're the type of interview I have the least experience with. By definition, final stage interviews are at the end of the funnel so I'm going to have a lot less of them.
- They're oftentimes my first chance to interact with my potential coworkers and managers. And unless I already have contacts in that organization, I won't know the professional norms or idiosyncratic expectations. This criteria is usually implicit and hard to figure out on my own.
One piece of feedback I really liked went like, "Your interview was very good and I have no doubt you could learn the skills very quickly. We just had someone else who had already done the work."
This post resonated a lot with me. I was actually thinking of the term 'disillusionment' to describe my own life a few days before reading this.
One cautionary tale I'd offer to readers is don't automatically assume your disillusionment is because of EA and consider the possibility that your disillusionment is a personal problem. Helen suggested leaning into feelings of doubt or assuming the movement is making mistakes. That is good if EA is the main cause, but potentially harmful if the person gets disillusioned in general.
I'm a case study for this. For the past decade, I've been attracted to demanding circles. First it was social justice groups and their infinitely long list of injustices. Then it was EA and its ongoing moral catastrophes. More recently, it's been academic econ debates and their ever growing standards for what counts as truth.
In each instance, I found ways to become disillusioned and to blame my disillusionment on an external cause. Sometimes it was virtue signaling. Sometimes it was elitism. Sometimes it was the people. Sometimes it was whether truth was knowable. Sometimes it was another thing entirely. All my reasons felt incredibly compelling at the time, and perhaps they all had significant degrees of truth.
But at the end of day, the common denominator in my disillusionment was me. I felt all the problems in these circles very intensely, but didn't have much appreciation for the benefits. The problems loomed 10x larger in my head than the benefits did. Instead of appreciating all the important things I got to think about, talk about, or work on, I thought about the demands and all the stress it brought. In my case, leaning into the disillusionment would only perpetuate the negative pattern of thinking I have in my head.
Granted, my case is an extreme one. I have a decade of experiences to look back on and numerous groups I felt affinities with. And I've had intense experiences with imposter syndrome and performance anxiety. I can confidently attribute most of these feelings to myself, reverse some of the advice Helen offered,[1] and lean away from disillusionment.
But I suspect I'm not the only one with this problem. EA seems to selects for easily disillusioned personality traits (as evidenced by our love of criticism). And I also suspect that these feelings are common for young idealistic people to go through while navigating what it means to improve the world. Not everyone should be leaning into that.
- ^
I'm practicing "maintain and/or build ties outside EA". It requires intentional effort on my part since making + maintaining adult friends is always hard. However, it has helped me realize my disillusionment still exists outside EA. I'm partly reversing "anticipate and lean into feelings of doubt..." since I like the anticipating part, but not the leaning part. I'm reversing "assume EA is making mistakes and help find them" since I need to see more of the positive and less of the negative. I don't have any thoughts on "defer cautiously, not wholesale" since this comes naturally to me.
Appreciate the post! A similar topic came up in a recent DC global health & development discussion
Could another argument for skipping the cash arm be having more resources for other RCTs?
Ideally, we'd study the cash arm and the asset transfer program simultaneously at multiple time periods. But each extra treatment arm and time period costs extra. I imagine one could use the savings for other RCTs instead.
Quick clarifying questions about your abstract if you have time. I'm confused about the term "weakly constrained"
Does "weakly constrained" mean (a) the leader is weak because elite supporters make the leader weak, (b) the elite supporters are weak and can't limit the leader much, (c) a jargon-loaded academic definition that I shouldn't worry too much about because it's too hard to explain, or (d) something else?
Also, does personalist always mean anything about constrained-ness in theory? (Like I get in reality, it may correlate a certain way, but I'm wondering about the definition)
This post offered concrete suggestions for increasing representation of women at EA events and in the movement as a whole. Before reading this, I thought of diversity-type issues as largely intractable, and that I had limited influence over them, even at the local level.
Immediately after reading this, I stopped doing pub socials (which was the main low-effort event I ran at the time). Over time, I pivoted towards more ideas-rich and discussion-based events.
Really enjoyed the post. Would like clarification on something
However, I note that when some developmental economists venture out to do something new in climate change, these problems immediately rear up. This to me is moderate evidence for motivated reasoning and selection bias also being rampant in that cause area.
I'm not fully following this point and would like to hear more about it. Is this suggesting that development economists over-estimate the impacts of climate change or something else? And do you have any examples (any will do, they don't have to be good) of what you've noted?
To me, modern-day development economics seems incredibly cognizant of how technocracy and grand theories could go wrong. It's therefore more rigorous (at least compared to other areas and other domains of economics). I'm curious if that rigor disappears when it comes to climate change.
How would you categorize the schedule flexibility at think tanks? Do you believe it varies by the three categories you've mentioned or by seniority levels? My well-being and productivity are much higher with a later start time
I can think of one factor that encourages a rigid schedule. Government work starts at 8am or 9am, sometimes by mandate. Think tanks will have their workday earlier to maximize overlap with bureaucrat schedules
But I can also think of another factor that encourages a flexible schedule. "Ideas industry" work have deliverables that may not be time-sensitive. This means less hard deadlines, less need for "putting out fires", and less need for everyone to be on the exact same schedule
Hi Sonia, this was a path I previously considered. Hopefully someone else with actual experience will chime in. In the meantime, here's some armchair thoughts in no particular order.
If you haven't already, check out Chris Blattman's blog: https://chrisblattman.com/ He's a professor at UChicago who posted a lot on academia, policy, and economics. Highly recommend the articles linked on the sidebar.
If you're targeting a PhD, your school's ranking probably trumps everything else. And rankings tend to be consistent across sub-disciplines. There are some outliers -- I believe there's a University of California school that's high up in agricultural economics -- but generally speaking, the top 10 are always going to be Ivy Leagues.
You could try to aim for a specific advisor (Esther Duflo at MIT, or Dani Rodrik at Harvard), but I'm not sure how much control you have over that.
For networking purposes, you might find studying in DC/NYC/Boston helpful. Most US IDev jobs are in these three places (Boston is much smaller in presence, but it's also growing b/c of J-PAL). The faculty in these locations may have more IDev connections. Plus you can pop into a think tank event on occasion
I'd only use this as a tiebreaker though. A top 20 school in the middle of nowhere is probably better for your career than a rank 50-80 school in DC. (Assuming you're pursuing a PhD, and a research-oriented path)
Could the Individual Approach be considered a complement to the Funnel Model?
The Individual Approach explains "Entry/ Transition" as a major life change. To me, that sounds a lot like moving deeper into the funnel
Long-term retention sounds like staying at your current stage. And drop-off sounds like moving back a stage, or leaving the funnel entirely
I highly recommend Lightning Talks. Participants are allowed to present on any topic they want for 5 minutes. They've worked wonders for Effective Altruism DC.
The main consideration is how to do questions: You can do these immediately after each talk. Or you can finish all talks, then do a giant free form discussion. Or you can finish all talks, ask who's interested in each speaker, and then split them up into breakout rooms. Or you can let people have ongoing conversations in the chat room. Or you can tell people to message the speaker individually.
The most orderly way is to do a short live Q&A after each talk. Then tell people to message the speaker directly for additional questions. This prevents the chatroom from spilling over into the next topic.
Other consideration would be getting enough people to do it in the first place. I suspect this event is great for sustaining momentum, but terrible for creating it.
As for topics, I suspect most groups should start by allowing any topic. The more restrictions you add, the less participation you'll get. Lightning Talks are primarily about lowering the barrier to presentation, and I have yet to hear of someone having too many lightning talks.
I tried logging in. Got a "This item might not exist or is no longer available" message.
Please do email a copy! My address is geoffrey.yip@fastmail.com
(Speaking as a Software Engineer with 3 years professional experience, and a casual EA organizer in Washington DC for 1.5 years)
It's worth thinking about how technical a community-building role is. My impression of tech evangelist roles is that companies want your engineering skills to be top-notch, but are less strict about your community organizing skills. In that case, EA organizing would make sense as a side project but not as much sense as a full-time job.
The other caveat that comes to mind is whether EA offers opportunities for large-scale organizing. I can't think of that many EA groups with >50 regulars. But I can easily think of few tech meetups, local political chapters, and social groups with >100 regulars and enough engagement to have active Slack channels + multiple ongoing projects. Edit: I no longer endorse this. EA DC got its first paid part-time organizer a few months ago (Q2 2021 if memory serves me right) and we definitely have >50 regulars now. I also suspect we still have considerable room to grow
Thanks! I'm adding all the articles from Movement Strategy into my reading list
Would also be interested in accessing a draft. I started looking into this topic on my own, but it looks like you've down a lot of research on it already!