Introductions and questions thread: April - June 2024

Hi everyone, I'm Ale from Naples, Italy and I'm exited to be here and so grateful that EA exists. 

After surviving a heart attack during  my last year of high school and being gifted the possibility to live a hopefully long life thanks to an innovative heart surgery technique performed by an equipe of doctors and biomedical engineers, I gave up my  plans of studying either political science or medicine (the latter due to the mandatory preselettive test that took place in the time I was in hospital) thinking that biomedical engineering was my one true call to better people's lives. 

After one year studying in engineering, and after coming across EA articles, I soon realized how the most obviously-helpful careers are  not the ones who actually have the strongest impact on human wellness and safety. 

I'm now trying to find a way to acquire as much skills and knowledge as possible within the very limited resources of my own territory and to understand how can I realistically build the most impactful career for myself and form connection and collaborations with others interested in human needs.

I still have to choose if I want to continue studying in biomedical engineering even if it's still an emergent and quite lacking field in my own territory  and try to figure out innovative ways  to  contribute to exponentially improve people's health within the knowledge I'll be given and currently  job outlook , or if I want to combine my lifelong passion for political science and philosophy and my newfound love and skills for coding to pursue an education in informatics to aim to better study and comprehend AI and all the possible impacts it can have on humanity (which is still limited by the lack of resources in my city and the fear of ending up with a time consuming job that wont even pay the bills, but seem a little bit more possible given the attention my university is giving to AI)

I can't wait to figure it all out and I'm hopeful the knowledge shared in sites like EA will help

Hello, I'm Leonora Camner, a founder of a new climate change adaptation organization called ClimateSafe Villages (CSV). Given the deeply concerning warnings from experts that we are not on track to avoid catastrophic levels of global warming, CSV aims to help communities build local resilience to the severe climate impacts we are likely to face in the coming decades. These communities are resilient not just to climate change, but other catastrophic risks as well. 

Our work focuses on:

• Researching and modeling innovative, resilient building methods and materials
• Developing community-scale systems for water capture, storage and preservation
• Building regenerative food systems that are adaptable to extreme conditions
• Convening advisors across climate science, engineering, agriculture and other key areas
• Producing actionable guides to help people everywhere build climate resilience

By enabling communities to withstand extreme disasters, deadly heat, water scarcity, food shortages and other devastating climate impacts, I believe we can meaningfully reduce the overall level of risk humanity faces.

I'm very interested to connect with others working on climate and existential risks to explore potential collaborations and knowledge sharing. Please reach out or connect me with others!

Until the end of last year, I was the Executive Director of the YIMBY ("Yes in My Backyard") nonprofit Abundant Housing LA, which I grew from a volunteer effort to a staff of 10. I'm always happy to chat with others about this experience and share any relevant lessons learned. If helpful, I can write a post about this experience and my recommendations. I'm also an advocate for sortition (democracy by lottery) and would love to connect with others interested in this area. 

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to getting to know this community! You can learn more about CSV at ClimateSafeVillages.org.

Hi everyone I'm Caleb Zege from Nigeria and I am incredibly excited to be here, looking forward to exciting times and memorable moments on this platform.

Hi, I’m an AI alignment technical researcher who mostly works independently, and I’m in the market for a new productivity coach / accountability buddy, to chat with periodically (I’ve been doing one ≈20-minute meeting every 2 weeks) about work habits, and set goals, and so on. I’m open to either paying fair market rate, or to a reciprocal arrangement where we trade advice and promises etc. I slightly prefer someone not directly involved in AI alignment—since I don’t want us to get nerd-sniped into object-level discussions—but whatever, that’s not a hard requirement. You can reply here, or DM or email me. :) update: I’m all set now

Hello everyone, my name is Manik. I joined the forum a month ago and am very excited to be here.

I am a business and technology consultant in the UK, collaborating with clients on business problems across multiple industries and domains. I have 3 years of software development experience after Engineering Bachelor's and 6 years of business and technology consulting experience after MBA. I am exploring ways to utilize my skill set to transition into a career which can create a bigger impact. 

Over the last few years, I developed ideas about how I want to design my life and arrived at something very similar to longtermism. This led me to do some research and I was absolutely delighted to know that there is a term for this and that a wider community is working with a similar mindset. The idea of “prioritization” and “effective” altruism resonated with me; I have always believed in an intellectual response to emotional motivations/challenges in life (personal, professional, or global). 

I have been exploring articles on this forum and on 80,000 hours, pursuing a course on AI safety fundamentals, reading Nick Bostrom’s work, listening to EA podcasts and looking for projects/jobs where I can contribute. I am at present interested in AI Safety, but keeping my mind open to exploring other areas if I find I can create a bigger impact. 

Hi, I'm Sebastian. I'm a mathematics graduate that spent the last two years in entrepreneurship. About nine months ago, I started to actively engage with EA through the Biosecurity Fundamentals course by BlueDot Impact (although I've known about EA for a long time).

My current focus is biosecurity. I am particularly interested in biotech aspects such as DNA synthesis screening, wastewater surveillance and vaccine development. Since my expertise is mostly in data analysis, computation and software development (as opposed to bioinformatics or virology) I'm struggling somewhat with getting my foot in the biotech/biosecurity door.
Concretely, I'm currently working on a project for the AI Safety Fundamentals course for which I look into risks posed by AI-powered biological design tools and de novo / in silico protein design.

If you want to learn more about my past work and interests, check out my website (link in my profile). Looking forward to participating more actively here on the forums and generally in the EA community :)

Greetings, I'm Anand Jeevanandham, co-founder of Educate-Liberate Foundation(ELF) a non-profit focused on achieving personal freedom and social peace through Education. 

He who opens a school door, closes a prison said Victor Hugo. This makes logical sense, if a school can create such characters in students, who can acquire skills, apply them in the real world to solve problems of the society and uphold righteousness can make this world peaceful and prosperous. 

Our current work:

• Workshop for students on Self esteem and Logical reasoning.
• Training program for teachers on Transactional analysis and Axiology.
• Quality Audits using a 12-dimensional evaluation method to scientifically determine the effectiveness of any school.

In the pipeline:

• Development of a Hybrid-AI Teacher Evaluation System (TES) that can interactively assess the teacher's skills, expertise, style, and methods
• Research on alternative Pedagogy to enhance learning outcomes.

This foundation was made possible with the contributions and support of Sundararajan Krishnaswamy, who served as the Chief Education Officer for a group of 26 schools in India.

Talk to us contact.educate.liberate@gmail.com

Workshop on Circadian rhythm, St.Francis De Sales School, India (2019) : https://youtu.be/0fH_pvW0VTA

Hi everyone, I'm Sarah Ennett (aka Ariel) from the Isle of Man.

I would describe myself as mid way through a very squiggly career.  Most of it in Telecommunications, but in very different business areas including launching an ISP as part of a tiny team on a tiny Island (so ended up doing pretty much every role (webmaster, tech support, installations, sales, product development and so much more)).  I then moved to be Product Manager for fixed and mobile data propositions launching everything from ADSL broadband through to mobile packet data (GPRS) which then evolved into 3G (we were one of the first in the world for 3G it was exciting to be a part of!).  I then became head of retail operations, running initially a small popup style mobile phone store to coincide with the launch of BlackBerry where we wanted to offer a very bespoke and skilled and customer service heavy experience, which we were successful in! I then moved to launch and run a B2B service selling Internet of Things solutions to systems integrators - our service doubled revenue year on year for the time I was responsible for it.  I then jumped to a Government role nearly 4 years ago and am currently still assessing whether  can affect more change from within Govt as a civil servant, or perhaps as a politician, or if I'd be better to put more of my energy into launching my own business.

Staring down the barrel of turning 50 in a year and a half, and on the back of a very upsetting near burnout work situation, I have been on a much more targeted and energetic quest of self discovery.

My key side project and vehicle for learning, is my fascination with the Japanese concept of IKIGAI, and I started writing a substack and doing some related research and reading last September.

I am motivated to find a better career for myself both to do more good in the world, but also to have more control over my own physical and emotional health.

I discovered 80000hours.org only recently and am just working through the book and related articles, hence finding this resource.

I love the concept of effective altruism, and will definitely be spending more intentional time on the 80000hours site and this forum, to learn as much as I can and forge a new path!

Look forward to learning, sharing and connecting!

Sarah xxx

So, I have three very distinct ideas for projects that I'm thinking of applying for funding from the Long Term Future Fund for. I was wondering if anyone knows whether it makes more sense to submit them together in one application, or as three separate individual applications?