Benevolent_Rain
Bio
Participation4
I have received funding from the LTFF and the SFF and am also doing work for an EA-adjacent organization.
My EA journey started in 2007 as I considered switching from a Wall Street career to instead help tackle climate change by making wind energy cheaper – unfortunately, the University of Pennsylvania did not have an EA chapter back then! A few years later, I started having doubts whether helping to build one wind farm at a time was the best use of my time. After reading a few books on philosophy and psychology, I decided that moral circle expansion was neglected but important and donated a few thousand sterling pounds of my modest income to a somewhat evidence-based organisation. Serendipitously, my boss stumbled upon EA in a thread on Stack Exchange around 2014 and sent me a link. After reading up on EA, I then pursued E2G with my modest income, donating ~USD35k to AMF. I have done some limited volunteering for building the EA community here in Stockholm, Sweden. Additionally, I set up and was an admin of the ~1k member EA system change Facebook group (apologies for not having time to make more of it!). Lastly, (and I am leaving out a lot of smaller stuff like giving career guidance, etc.) I have coordinated with other people interested in doing EA community building in UWC high schools and have even run a couple of EA events at these schools.
How others can help me
Lately, and in consultation with 80k hours and some “EA veterans”, I have concluded that I should consider instead working directly on EA priority causes. Thus, I am determined to keep seeking opportunities for entrepreneurship within EA, especially considering if I could contribute to launching new projects. Therefore, if you have a project where you think I could contribute, please do not hesitate to reach out (even if I am engaged in a current project - my time might be better used getting another project up and running and handing over the reins of my current project to a successor)!
How I can help others
I can share my experience working at the intersection of people and technology in deploying infrastructure/a new technology/wind energy globally. I can also share my experience in coming from "industry" and doing EA entrepreneurship/direct work. Or anything else you think I can help with.
I am also concerned about the "Diversity and Inclusion" aspects of EA and would be keen to contribute to make EA a place where even more people from all walks of life feel safe and at home. Please DM me if you think there is any way I can help. Currently, I expect to have ~5 hrs/month to contribute to this (a number that will grow as my kids become older and more independent).
Posts 15
Comments401
Topic contributions1
Yesssss!!!! I am trying it right away. I also think for many here, timing is important to set limits. Like cap your work week at 50 or at most 60 hours (or less if you have caretaking responsibilities). That way you don't let guilt push you into unhealthy territory. That's how I use timers. Also great for parents that are both ambitious to make sure one does not get a career advantage by feeling more nervous or something.
I agree. Reading your comment made me think that it might be interesting — even if just as a small experiment — to map out which historical figures we feel struck the ~right balance between ambition and caution.
I don’t know if it would reveal much, but perhaps reading about a few such people could help me (and maybe others) better calibrate our own mix of drive and risk averseness. I find it easier to internalize these balances through real people and stories than through abstract arguments. And perhaps that kind of reflection could, in perhaps only a small way, help prevent future crises of judgment like FTX.
Perhaps mentioned elsewhere here, but if we look for precedent for people doing an enormous amount of good (I can only think of Stanislav Petrov and people making big steps in curing disease), these actually did not act recklessly I think. It seems more like they persistently applied themselves to a problem, not super forcing an outcome and aligning a lot with others (like those eradicating smallpox). So if one wants a hero mindset, it might be good to emulate actual heroes we both think did a lot of good and that also reduced the risk of their actions.
I am really sorry to hear that it got this bad. I must admit I did not actually consider the diversity of our community's experiences when crafting this poll, and instead wrote just quickly, knee-jerk from a white, het-cis, male perspective but you point out that the situation might be much worse for people affected more directly by the aspects you point out and might also extend to reproductive rights and more. I really hope you will soon find a place where you are safe and I feel a bit inadequate for not having capacity to do more than write these words.
A proposal for an "Anonymity Mediator" ("AM") in EA. This would be a person that mostly would strip identity from information. For example, if person A has information about an EA (person B) enabling dangerous work at a big AI lab, the AM would be someone person A could connect with, giving extremely minimal information in a highly secure way (ideally in-person with no devices). The AM would then be able to alert people that perhaps should know, with minimal chance of person A's identity being revealed. I would love to see a post for a proposal for such a person and if it seems helpful (community issues, information security, etc.) maybe a way to make progress on funding and finding such a person.
A combined guide for EA talent to move to stable democracies and a call to action for EA hubs in such countries to explore facilitating such moves. I know there are people working on making critical parts of the EA ecosystem less US-centric. It might be that I am missing other work in this direction but I think this is a good time for EA hubs in e.g. Switzerland and the Nordics to see if they can help make EA more resilient when it might be needed in possibly rough times ahead. Perhaps also preparing for sudden influxes of people, or facilitate more rapid support in case things start to change quickly.
(Let me know if this is spamming) Non-US EA hubs might be interested in especially US talent considering moving out of the US - small, imperfect poll here: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/mEXfYXDFEhsEPy5yN/poll-have-your-views-on-moving-abroad-changed-in-the-last-12
Just to add my personal experience, if you might be planning direct work, especially entrepreneurship and/or might want to have children - a personal runway has served me well. Not sure if this is stretching the "giving 10%" too far, but you could mentally consider it donated and in case you don't need it later, you can donate it then. I think at least 12 months of runway at your anticipated future expenses might be the right level (so not a student expense, but if you might want children, accounting for all related expenses). Another situation that could make donations more challenging is if you move cities/countries for your job and thus might incur extra expenses from travelling to see loved ones. Especially with things getting weird geopolitically and with AI, I think now might be a good time to consider "donating to flexibility". That said, I think more strict donation pledges are highly commendable but for me it has meant I operated with lower runway than might have been ideal.