Thanks, I understand better the context and where you're coming from. The stylé is easier for me to read and I appreciate that.

I won't have much more time for this conversation, but just two points:

This is precisely why I don't like EA both abandoning global poverty as a cause area

Is this actually true? To me global poverty was still number one in terms of donations, Give well is doing great, and most of the charity entrepreneurship charities are on this topic.

Can you imagine a worse corruption, a worse twisting of this than to allow talk about why Black people are more genetically suited to slavery than white people, or how Europe did Africa a favour by colonizing it, or how Western countries should embrace white nationalism?

Oh, yes, that would be awful. But I'd expect that virtually everybody in the EA forum would be against that.

And so far, in the examples you've given, you don't show that even a sizeable minority of people would agree with these claims. For instance, for Manifold, you pointed to the fact that some EAs work with a forecasting organisation from the rationalist community who did a conference that invited many speakers to speak on forecasting and some of these speakers previously wrote some racist stuff on a topic unrelated to the conference (and even then that lead to quite a debate).

My understanding might be inaccurate, of course, but that's such a long chain that I would consider this as quite far from a prevalent issue which currently has large negative consequences.

Thanks for the answer; it explains things better for me.  

I'll just point out that another element that bugged me about the post was the lack of balance. It felt that things were made with an attitude that tries to judge everything in a negative light, which doesn't make it trustworthy in my opinion.

Two examples: 

The key context for that comment is that an extremely racist email by the philosopher Nick Bostrom was published that used the N word and said Black people are stupid

The email was indeed racist, but Nick Bostrom said this in an email that was 26 years old, for which he apologised since (the apology itself may be discussed, but this is still important context missing). 

The commenter responded harshly against CEA’s statement and argued a point of view that, in context, reads as the view that Black people have less moral value than white people.

The comment literally states the opposite, and I did provide quotes. It really feels like you are trying to interpret things uncharitably.

So far, I feel like the examples provided are mostly debatable. I'd expect more convincing stuff before concluding there is a deep systemic issue to fix. 

The CEA's former head of communications' quote is more relevant evidence, I must admit, though I don't know how widespread or accurate their perception is (it doesn't really match what I've seen).

I'd also appreciate some balance by highlighting all the positive elements EA brings to the table, such as literally saving the lives of thousands of Black people in Africa.

I think the issue is that, from my standpoint, there is a combination of harsh language, many broad claims about EA and LessWrong, which are both very negative and vague, and a lack of specific evidence in the text. 

I expect few people here to be swayed by this kind of communication, since you may simply be overreacting and having an extremely low threshold to use terms like "racism". It's the discourse I tend to see on Twitter.

As an example of what I'd call an overreaction, when you say that someone did something "unbelievably foolish and unbelievably morally wrong," I am thinking of very bad stuff, like doing fraud with charity money.

I am not thinking about a comment where someone said that "I value people approximately equally in impact estimates" (instead of "absolutely equally"). The lack of evidence means I can't base myself on the commenter's specific intentions. 

A possible explanation for why this post is heavily downvoted:

• It makes serious, inflammatory, accusative, broad claims in a way that does not promote civil discussion
• It rarely cites specific examples and facts that would serve to justify these claims
  • You linked to an article by Reflective Altruism, but I think it would have been beneficial to put links to specific examples directly in your text.
• Two of the specific examples you use do not seem to be presented accurately:

About the post about genetically editing Africans to overcome poverty: "That post can receive a significant amount of approval and defense from people in EA. [...] Effective altruism as a movement probably deserves to fail for that, if it can't correct it"

You're talking about that post. However, you're failing to mention that it currently has negative karma and twice as much disagreement as agreement. If anything, it is representative of something that EA (as a whole) does not support. 

"When the CEA published a brief statement that affirmed the equality of Black people in response to the publication of a racist email by the philosopher Nick Bostrom, the most upvoted comment was from a prominent rationalist that started, 'I feel really quite bad about this post,' and argued at length that universal human equality is not a tenet of effective altruism. This is unbelievably foolish and unbelievably morally wrong."

Your claim implies that the commenter said that because of racist reasons. However, they say in that very comment that "I value people approximately equally in impact estimates because it looks like the relative moral patienthood of different people, and the basic cognitive makeup of people, does not seem to differ much between different populations, not because I have a foundational philosophical commitment to impartiality." And much of their disagreement centred on the form of the statement.

Why did you not specify that in your post?

Hi and welcome! 

I personally disagree with the proposal because karma allows readers to quickly see what others have found valuable, and hover to the highest value sections immediately. Reading everything to make your own opinion would be super long.

A quick suggestion to improve the post, btw: I think you can cut the section on bugs in your introduction so it's quicker to read and also explain the rationale behind your proposal (why you think the karma system exists in the first place, what issues your solutions would fix and the problems you anticipate, etc).

Oh, and congrats on taking the 10% pledge!

Great post! This is good advice. Donating while building skills and volunteering still allows to have tons of impact.

The graph represents well the career path I followed:

• Not being skilled enough to land an EA job
• Taking the 10% pledge while at my current job
• Volunteering on EA projects for 3-4 years and getting more skilled
• Getting into contact with charities while volunteering and getting an offer to work for several months
• Later launching a charity

I think that's a good approach by default!

Thanks for the list, this is an important topic.

I'd just like to point out that life in the wild might be net negative and contain more suffering than happiness (due to a majority of beings dying closely after birth from hunger and predation). We need more research but that sounds more likely than not - as your point 9 suggests.

In that case, item number 1 on your list might be a better scenario than what is currently happening, and I am not sure we should spend time fighting against it.

But the rest is risky, yes.

Excellent questions!
Personally, I am not really sure what to do on this topic until we have a very good understanding of wild animal welfare (and how what we do isn't swamped by concerns about population dynamics).

I try to do some things. Not walking on them when I spot them. Mercy kill insects that seem like they are in pain. Letting flies get outside when a window traps them. I personally kill spiders (trying to be as quick as possible) since they kill other insects very slowly and painfully. 

Feeling guilty but uncertain since we don't have good data isn't super useful. I think supporting organisations that work on welfare, such as the Arthropodia Foundation, or research, such as the Wild Animal Initiative, is likely to have a significantly higher impact. 

Very well written, thanks for sharing the experience and perspective!

Great post, I agree, these formats tend to do poorly for me, thanks for writing this down.

One especially poor element in both activities is the absence of slides. I'm a visual learner, and I space out pretty quickly without a visual element (it even happened at a panel I was moderating!)

I find that slides are super useful to force the speakers to have a structure and think about how they are going to present their content. The 'panel but everybody has a talk at the beginning' is rather good.

One important element I've read, however, is that people remember much better the information if they interact with the content. Our brain remembers best not when we get the information in, but when it goes out (for instance when we explain it and we have to reformulate). 

So having a section where people have a quizz, or small 1-1 or group discussions, or a question to answer, gives people the opportunity to absorb and interact with the content.