I have started a Discord server for near-term effective altruists. (If you haven’t used Discord before, it’s a pretty standard chat server. Most of its functions are fairly self-explanatory.)
Most of my effective altruist friends focus on the far future. While far-future effective altruists are great, being around them all the time can get pretty alienating. I don’t often argue the merits of bednets versus cash transfers, which means I get intellectually sloppy knowing I won’t be challenged. I’m slow to learn about new developments relevant to near-term effective altruism, such as discoveries in development economics. Many of the conversations I participate in work from assumptions I don’t share, such as the assumption that we have a double-digit chance of going extinct within the next twenty years.
I suspect that many other near-term effective altruists may be in the same boat, and if so I encourage them to come participate. Even if not, I hope this server can be a fun and interesting place to learn more about effective altruism and connect to other effective altruists.
“Near-term” is hard to define. I intend it to be inclusive of all effective altruists whose work and priority cause areas do not focus on the far future, whether they work on global poverty, animal welfare, mental health, politics, meta-charity, or another cause area. I ask that far-future effective altruists and people whose priority cause area is AI risk or s-risks do not participate. This runs on the honor system; I’m not going to be the Near Term EA police. There are lots of people who are edge cases and I ask them to use their best judgment.
The server is intended to be welcoming to new effective altruists, people who aren’t certain whether they want to be effective altruists or not, and people who are not currently in a place where it makes sense for them to donate, volunteer, or change careers. If you’re wondering whether you’re “not EA enough” to participate, you probably are welcome!
No worries! Thanks for that, and yes, I agree pretty much with everything you say here. As for the discussion on far-future funding, it did start in the comments on my post, but it led nowhere near practical changes, in terms of transparency of proposed criteria used for the assessment of funded projects. I'll try to write a separate, more general post on that.
My only point was that due to the high presence of "far-future bias" on this forum (I might be wrong, but much of downvoting-without-commenting seems to be at least a tendency towards biased outlooks) it's nice to have some chats on more near-future related topics and strategies for promoting those goals. I see a chat channel more as a complementary venue to this forum than as an alternative.
It's extremely hard to identify bias without proper measurement/quantification, because you need to separate it from actual differences in the strength of people's arguments, as well as legitimate expression of a majority point of view, and your own bias. In any case, you are not going to get downvoted for talking about how to reduce poverty. I'm not sure what you're really worried about. At some point you have to accept that no discussion space is perfect, that attempts to replace good ones usually turn out to be worse, and that your time is better spent ... (read more)