Discussion article for the meetup : Effective Altruism Dinner Party

WHEN: 22 February 2013 02:13:22PM (-0500)

WHERE: Winterfell House, 316 W 138th street, New York NY, 10030

This Friday at Winterfell House, NY will be an Effective Altruism dinner party. Effective Altruism is the principle of accomplishing the most good on a global (or universal) scale, given limited time and resources. It can be worth thinking about whether you're the sort of person deeply motivated to dedicate their life to improving the world, or someone who's just trying to do more good on the margins without stressing out too much about it, or anyone in between. One issue Effective Altruists tend to face is that accomplishing the most good tends to engage the hard, mathematical sides of our brains, and less the warm, empathetic side. Of course, in the rationality community, people tend to enjoy thinking about complex, strategic problems in rigorous ways. But it's still nice to periodically get to feel that warm glow. We know we probably want to purchase our Utilons and Fuzzies separately, but it's useful to appreicate a direct connection between the warm motivation and the hard thinking that goes into accomplishing it. The evening will be an informal potluck dinner, where people can share past success stories and lessons learned, and talk about projects to collaborate on. Newcomers who are interested in the idea and trying to figure out how to go about having an impact can get familiar with some of the ideas behind the Effective Altruism community. I'll be talking about some potential projects for the oncoming year, in particular, an EA Camp being run by CFAR later in the summer. Bring some food to share. Winterfell has a nice kitchen if you'd like to do some cooking there. People can arrive and do cooking starting around 7:30, with dinner being served at 8:30. - WHEN + WHERE: Winterfell House Friday, February 22nd 7:30 PM - 10:00 PM

Discussion article for the meetup : Effective Altruism Dinner Party

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3 comments, sorted by Click to highlight new comments since: Today at 3:42 PM

I am glad this is happening!

Thanks for your help getting it off the ground!

I just realized I had accidentally set the date for this to the 24th (whereas I had written "the 22nd" in the description). It was, in fact, on the 22nd, and went well. Apologies if anyone was planning on coming on the 24th!

There WILL be a self-improvement/rationality meetup at the same place on the same day (a few hours earlier, at 3), if that's any kind of consolation prize.