Julia_Wise🔸

Community liaison @ Centre for Effective Altruism
12570 karmaJoined Boston, MA, USAjuliawise.net

Bio

Participation
1

I'm one of the contact people for the effective altruism community. I work at CEA as a community liaison, trying to support the EA community in addressing problems and being a healthy and welcoming community.

Please feel free to contact me at julia.wise@centreforeffectivealtruism.org.

Besides effective altruism, I'm interested in folk dance and trying to keep up with my three children.

Sequences
1

2023 project on reforms in EA

Comments
470

Topic contributions
5

(Writing personally, not organizationally)
I'm happy people are trying experiments like this!

Thinking about other ways that people incorporate each other's judgement about where to donate: often it involves knowing the specific people. 

I think some people who knew each other through early EA / GWWC did this — some had a comparative advantage in finance so went into earning to give, and others had a comparative advantage in research or founding organizations so went into nonprofits. But they made heavy use of each other's advice, because they knew each other's strengths.

It's also common to do this within a couple / family. My husband spent 10 years earning to give while I worked in social work and nonprofits, so he's earned the large majority of what we've donated. Early on, the two of us made separate decisions about where to donate our own earnings (though very informed by talking with each other). Later we moved to making a shared decision on where we'd donate our shared pot of money. This isn't necessarily the best system — people are biased toward trusting their family even in domains where the person isn't very competent, and you can see examples like the Buffett family where family members seem to make kind of random decisions.

I feel good about people pooling judgement when they know the strengths and weaknesses of the specific other people involved. I feel much less excited about pooling judgement with people whose judgement I know nothing about.

In 2020 when I asked you about lead policy work, you weren't optimistic that people without strong networks and expertise could make much progress on policy advocacy. Has your view changed?

I found this a clear explanation of the costs and benefits - thanks for writing it up!
A similar issue: lack of iodization in Europe, the region where children have the highest rates of low iodine. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789241593960

I've added a link to the section of the CEA mistakes page that outlines these.

>emails to those accepted to the EAGxAustralia 2023 conference but who did attend
Was this meant to say "did not attend"?

Just a note that as an American then-Quaker, I went to a "Right Sharing of World Resources" event in 2006. This post is correct that there wasn't an emphasis on effectiveness, but on frugality and solidarity with the global poor. 
My understanding is that there wasn't any direct connection between these Quaker efforts and the early effective giving projects that became part of EA.

Hi Emrik,
I wanted to flag the outside view is that stopping all communication with other people seems like a very bad idea. If I understand right from your link, Maria is a spirit-animal rather than another person in the usual sense of the word. 

My best guess is that isolation will not improve your ability to help others, but will create a complete echo chamber that won't be good for your wellbeing or your ability to help others.

(I think there can be some variations on this that make sense. Like I have a family member who can only write science fiction when he's been away from people for several days, so for a long time he structured his life to be pretty isolated in order to write books. But he was still in touch with friends and family at intervals.)

It sounds like you're in a difficult place, and I really hope you're able to find other people you trust to help you work out how you want to approach things. 
[Edited a bit since I think my tone was off, thanks quila for identifying some of that]

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