yboris
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I've been primarily focused on improving my programming skills this month. Two small EA-related contributions are helping Intentional Insights (InIn) with creating designs for bumper stickers promoting charitable giving, and creating a website for Theron Pummer, a lecturer in philosophy at St Andrews University who promotes effective giving TheronPummer.com.
Thank you for being so transparent: writing up your thoughts, plans, costs, execution, and results. I suspect this article will help others think through and plan similar events.
At Rutgers University, our local Giving What We Can chapter has run the Giving Games several times during the annual Rutgers Day (sorry we never wrote about it). Our situation is slightly different: as a University club we get the table for free, and have dozens of people stop by (larger audience). Unfortunately, the crowd isn't as well-targeted as in your case; but as a plus-side, i's very local, and the table is run by members of the club which I think is generally rewarding for them (at least it was for me).
I hope more university clubs take advantage of this inviting and potentially very educational way of tabling!
Thank you Gleb for encouraging of sharing; I find it inspiring to read what others have done. It particularly helps as I'm no longer interacting with other effective altruists in person.
I don't have much to report other than my continued adherence to my 10% Giving What We Can pledge and my first step (of starting learning) last week towards becoming a programmer (to earn better income in the future and thus give more to cost-effective charities).
Haven't done much, but here are a few highlights:
I gave a talk at Rutgers to an Introduction to Ethics course (50 students) about effective giving (sharing various moral arguments including ones from Peter Singer, Thomas Pogge, and Toby Ord).
Gave 10% of my income to AMF and towards the Giving What We Can operations fundraiser.
Continuously promoted EA stuff on Facebook through various pages (several GWWC & EA chapters) and personal posts.
Not sure if this is the proper place to post. This is one of the best philosophy papers I've read in my life:
"The Possibility of an Ongoing Moral Catastrophe" by Evan G. Williams.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10677-015-9567-7
Abstract: "This article gives two arguments for believing that our society is unknowingly guilty of serious, large-scale wrongdoing. First is an inductive argument: most other societies, in history and in the world today, have been unknowingly guilty of serious wrongdoing, so ours probably is too. Second is a disjunctive argument: there are a large number of distinct ways in which our practices could turn out to be horribly wrong, so even if no particular hypothesized moral mistake strikes us as very likely, the disjunction of all such mistakes should receive significant credence. The article then discusses what our society should do in light of the likelihood that we are doing something seriously wrong: we should regard intellectual progress, of the sort that will allow us to find and correct our moral mistakes as soon as possible, as an urgent moral priority rather than as a mere luxury; and we should also consider it important to save resources and cultivate flexibility, so that when the time comes to change our policies we will be able to do so quickly and smoothly."
There was an "Effective Altruism Brochure" thread on Facebook's Effective Altruists group. Might be a good starting template to use for a handout: see here
I found the reference! It might originally have come from another excellent book: Change of Heart by Nick Cooney, in the early part of the book where he talks about self identity (no page reference because I'm looking at an eBook version). This is entirely unimportant, but in this book the words are:
"Are you willing to cut your hair and put on a suit for the environment?" :)
An interactive chart comparing incomes between and within countries:
https://income-inequality.info