My list of goals, nice habits to have and general goodness tends to grow in length instead of shrinking for various reasons but I can make progress anyhow in implementing it. Also I know that having way too many goals at once is harmful, so here’s the obvious caveat: This is a general list and brainstorming so far, with no real plan for realiable implementation, so take the goals, the length of the list and the commentary with the proverbial grain of salt. (Legend: “I vow” is certain, “I will” actually means “maybe”)
Charity: There has been a delay in forming my contract for my student’s job and thus also a delay in payment, which made me think about money a lot more than usual. Since for various reasons my cashflow will improve I hereby vow to donate 1% of my income below the taxation threshold and 10% of any income beyond that to a mix of GiveWell, CFAR, MIRI and Wikipedia of my choosing.
Health and charity: The weird case where self-interest and the public interest coincide applies for three things I have in mind
I will donate blood at least once in 2005. Of course I’ll donate 10% of the remuneration I get.
I will get all my vaccinations up-to-date and take any additional as recommended by my physician. Maybe the payment from above will subsidise a shot not covered by insurance. One prick for another.
I will take a course and certification in first aid. It might just be one of my dearest people I can help or just the occasional stranger.
Education: No university and no school can offer comprehensive education, it has to come from many sources.
I tried audiobooks via Audible for the first time less than a month ago and I was amazed. At 10€ per audiobook it is quite a bargain and ideal for any non-fiction book with low information density like biographies. So I will listen through at least one audiobook per month, totaling twelve (12) books consumed in 2015.
Though this will happen at university, it still gets to the same heading. I will start learning Spanish and get at least to A1 level as I am currently pre-occupied learning Russian and developing a general love for languages.
Speaking of learning languages, as this is very fact-heavy and I start seeing the benefits of SRS, I will use Anki every single day instead of clusters of ten interspersed with pauses of a couple of days.
Travel: This might just as well put this under the education heading, but it deserves its own spot. I will travel to at least one country I have not yet set foot in, alone. Since I live in Germany, the bar is relatively low, but this is one goal that tends to fuel itself.
Interviewing: I will send out applications for part-time jobs, internships and stipends. Since I can control the material I send but not the answers I receive, the goal is set to the former. For far too long I have ignored the usual advice of getting at least one of each in internships, stipends, part-time-jobs and maybe a year/half-year abroad so I am looking for ways to fix that. The most obvious is to send out applications like crazy. This obviously ties into the points education and travel.
Some ideas I had before but I am unsure of in the face of total workload are to subscribe to a higher quality publication like the Economist and read at least one article every week or to read at least one book per month in addition to the audiobooks from above.
Great list! Hope you don’t mind a couple of questions.
I hereby vow to donate 1% of my income below the taxation threshold and 10% of any income beyond that to a mix of GiveWell, CFAR, MIRI and Wikipedia of my choosing.
Any particular reason to donate to Wikipedia? I ask because I just read this interesting article about Wikimedia donations that was posted on the FB EA thread a few days ago.
Great list! Hope you don’t mind a couple of questions.
Thanks! There would be little point in posting to a discussion board if I wasn’t expecting discussion.
Any particular reason to donate to Wikipedia? I ask because I just read this interesting article about Wikimedia donations that was posted on the FB EA thread a few days ago.
Until a few minutes ago I thought that people would on average not donate enough to Wikipedia enough. Actually, my thought was more like “Wikipedia was so useful in the past and I expect it to be useful in the future too, so I could donate a small amount to make up for my use.” But I am revising that thought as we speak. The larger point anyhow was to signal that I am not completely sold on effective altruism and might also donate to the Red Cross or so.
Also, how many applications per month?
I have until the end of this year to decide. A modest goal would be one per week, but it would be way more effective if I make the rate dependent on time and domain. So let’s say—and let me say that this won’t be the final number—one per week for stuff in industry that is not seasonal and an adjusted number for seasonal stuff.
I am not going to start a lengthy discussion on this subject as this is not the place for it, so please do not read the lack of any further answers as anything else than the statemet above. That being said …
I am not completely sold on the premise that all human lives are equal which puts the whole idea of a cheaper saved life in question. I am not donating out of a moral imperative but personal preference so my donations exhibit decreasing marginal utility making diversification a necessity. And finally I have generally massive skepticism towards anything and anyone that claims to solve a huge, long standing problem like poverty just like the EA movement tends to do.
This is the rough sketch of my reservations. I will not discuss it further here but I am willing to discuss it in a more appropriate place, like a seperate thread or the open thread.
Thanks! No need for a lengthy debate, I’m just very curious about how people decide where to donate, especially when the process leads to explicitly non-EA decisions. Your reasons are in fact pretty close to what I would have guessed, so I suppose similar intuitions are quite common and might explain part of why an idea as obvious as effective altruism took so long to develop.
But yeah, a subthread about this in the OT sounds like a good idea (unless I can find lots of old discussions on the subject).
Hooray! Счастливого Нового года вам, и пусть у вас все получится. If you ever feel like you don’t get enough exercise in Russian, just drop a line to me or any other Russian speaker here.maybe the are Spaniards around, too-who knows?..
The format seems to have changed since I last visited the site, so not sure. You might want to apply for coaching and indicate the information that you are looking for and have been unable to find—they might be able to filter out which info is relevant to your situation. Your comment might also be useful feedback to them, as it is often difficult to find out why people dislike a website.
My list of goals, nice habits to have and general goodness tends to grow in length instead of shrinking for various reasons but I can make progress anyhow in implementing it. Also I know that having way too many goals at once is harmful, so here’s the obvious caveat: This is a general list and brainstorming so far, with no real plan for realiable implementation, so take the goals, the length of the list and the commentary with the proverbial grain of salt. (Legend: “I vow” is certain, “I will” actually means “maybe”)
Charity: There has been a delay in forming my contract for my student’s job and thus also a delay in payment, which made me think about money a lot more than usual. Since for various reasons my cashflow will improve I hereby vow to donate 1% of my income below the taxation threshold and 10% of any income beyond that to a mix of GiveWell, CFAR, MIRI and Wikipedia of my choosing.
Health and charity: The weird case where self-interest and the public interest coincide applies for three things I have in mind
I will donate blood at least once in 2005. Of course I’ll donate 10% of the remuneration I get.
I will get all my vaccinations up-to-date and take any additional as recommended by my physician. Maybe the payment from above will subsidise a shot not covered by insurance. One prick for another.
I will take a course and certification in first aid. It might just be one of my dearest people I can help or just the occasional stranger.
Education: No university and no school can offer comprehensive education, it has to come from many sources.
I tried audiobooks via Audible for the first time less than a month ago and I was amazed. At 10€ per audiobook it is quite a bargain and ideal for any non-fiction book with low information density like biographies. So I will listen through at least one audiobook per month, totaling twelve (12) books consumed in 2015.
Though this will happen at university, it still gets to the same heading. I will start learning Spanish and get at least to A1 level as I am currently pre-occupied learning Russian and developing a general love for languages.
Speaking of learning languages, as this is very fact-heavy and I start seeing the benefits of SRS, I will use Anki every single day instead of clusters of ten interspersed with pauses of a couple of days.
Travel: This might just as well put this under the education heading, but it deserves its own spot. I will travel to at least one country I have not yet set foot in, alone. Since I live in Germany, the bar is relatively low, but this is one goal that tends to fuel itself.
Interviewing: I will send out applications for part-time jobs, internships and stipends. Since I can control the material I send but not the answers I receive, the goal is set to the former. For far too long I have ignored the usual advice of getting at least one of each in internships, stipends, part-time-jobs and maybe a year/half-year abroad so I am looking for ways to fix that. The most obvious is to send out applications like crazy. This obviously ties into the points education and travel.
Some ideas I had before but I am unsure of in the face of total workload are to subscribe to a higher quality publication like the Economist and read at least one article every week or to read at least one book per month in addition to the audiobooks from above.
Great list! Hope you don’t mind a couple of questions.
Any particular reason to donate to Wikipedia? I ask because I just read this interesting article about Wikimedia donations that was posted on the FB EA thread a few days ago.
Also, how many applications per month?
Thanks! There would be little point in posting to a discussion board if I wasn’t expecting discussion.
Until a few minutes ago I thought that people would on average not donate enough to Wikipedia enough. Actually, my thought was more like “Wikipedia was so useful in the past and I expect it to be useful in the future too, so I could donate a small amount to make up for my use.” But I am revising that thought as we speak. The larger point anyhow was to signal that I am not completely sold on effective altruism and might also donate to the Red Cross or so.
I have until the end of this year to decide. A modest goal would be one per week, but it would be way more effective if I make the rate dependent on time and domain. So let’s say—and let me say that this won’t be the final number—one per week for stuff in industry that is not seasonal and an adjusted number for seasonal stuff.
Interesting, why is this? Do you mean effective altruism as a concept, or the EA movement as it currently is?
I am not going to start a lengthy discussion on this subject as this is not the place for it, so please do not read the lack of any further answers as anything else than the statemet above. That being said …
I am not completely sold on the premise that all human lives are equal which puts the whole idea of a cheaper saved life in question. I am not donating out of a moral imperative but personal preference so my donations exhibit decreasing marginal utility making diversification a necessity. And finally I have generally massive skepticism towards anything and anyone that claims to solve a huge, long standing problem like poverty just like the EA movement tends to do.
This is the rough sketch of my reservations. I will not discuss it further here but I am willing to discuss it in a more appropriate place, like a seperate thread or the open thread.
Thanks! No need for a lengthy debate, I’m just very curious about how people decide where to donate, especially when the process leads to explicitly non-EA decisions. Your reasons are in fact pretty close to what I would have guessed, so I suppose similar intuitions are quite common and might explain part of why an idea as obvious as effective altruism took so long to develop.
But yeah, a subthread about this in the OT sounds like a good idea (unless I can find lots of old discussions on the subject).
Hooray! Счастливого Нового года вам, и пусть у вас все получится. If you ever feel like you don’t get enough exercise in Russian, just drop a line to me or any other Russian speaker here.maybe the are Spaniards around, too-who knows?..
Thank you very much! I will take you up on that offer.
It might be worth reading through some of the stuff by 80,000 Hours re jobs, internships, etc. Apologies for spam if you already know of them. :)
Am I unusually dense or is the site unusually inaccessible with regards to relevant advice re internships and generally?
The format seems to have changed since I last visited the site, so not sure. You might want to apply for coaching and indicate the information that you are looking for and have been unable to find—they might be able to filter out which info is relevant to your situation. Your comment might also be useful feedback to them, as it is often difficult to find out why people dislike a website.