A friend, who is not an EA, said, "hey, you should check out this Harry Potter fanfic." I read it and I liked it. Later I found out the author was giving a talk at Oxford which is near me, so I took the train to come listen to it. At the beginning of the talk he asked "how many of you have heard of effective altruism?" and none of us had, so he explained it.
I always say that EA came to me by eating my area of concern (AI safety), so I don't really have an origin story other than I just organically ended up as part of EA. But I got into AI safety via Extropians, which I'm pretty sure I found via Slashdot.
Jun 1, 2023·edited Jun 1, 2023Liked by EA Lifestyles
In 2017 a friend of mine told me how their housemate "quietly does lots of really cool things". They'd been living with each other for over a year and she only just found out he was the president of this uni society called 'effective altruism'. I thought the name sounded weird, so I slipped into his DMs to find out when the first event of the term would be.
I didn't look into it at all — just went along to the intro event. He presented a few slides and played the Peter Singer TED talk and I was sold (I asked if I could join the committee by the end of the event). It was all a bit overdetermined though — I was already drinking Huel and reading Superintelligence at that point...
A high school English teacher briefly introduced "utilitarianism" in the context of teaching debate. I thought: "Yeah, that's at least more true/important than most people consider it."
EA didn't exist yet, but that moment back in high school feels more relevant than any other.
A friend, who is not an EA, said, "hey, you should check out this Harry Potter fanfic." I read it and I liked it. Later I found out the author was giving a talk at Oxford which is near me, so I took the train to come listen to it. At the beginning of the talk he asked "how many of you have heard of effective altruism?" and none of us had, so he explained it.
By the way, it was recorded, so you can hear the exact explanation where I was introduced to the concept on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7c1WSwqwMOE&ab_channel=FutureofHumanityInstitute
I always say that EA came to me by eating my area of concern (AI safety), so I don't really have an origin story other than I just organically ended up as part of EA. But I got into AI safety via Extropians, which I'm pretty sure I found via Slashdot.
In 2017 a friend of mine told me how their housemate "quietly does lots of really cool things". They'd been living with each other for over a year and she only just found out he was the president of this uni society called 'effective altruism'. I thought the name sounded weird, so I slipped into his DMs to find out when the first event of the term would be.
I didn't look into it at all — just went along to the intro event. He presented a few slides and played the Peter Singer TED talk and I was sold (I asked if I could join the committee by the end of the event). It was all a bit overdetermined though — I was already drinking Huel and reading Superintelligence at that point...
A high school English teacher briefly introduced "utilitarianism" in the context of teaching debate. I thought: "Yeah, that's at least more true/important than most people consider it."
EA didn't exist yet, but that moment back in high school feels more relevant than any other.