What holiday songs, stories, etc. do you associate with effective altruism?

By Eevee🔹 @ 2021-12-09T18:15 (+6)

These can be for any holidays, not just the winter ones (Christmas, Hanukkah, etc.).


Denkenberger @ 2021-12-10T07:00 (+8)

The Secular Solstice is celebrated by many EAs. You can find such favorites as the X Days of X-risk.

Oliver Sourbut @ 2021-12-18T09:44 (+5)

It's not EA but I have a soft spot for Good King Wenceslas (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_King_Wenceslas)

It's a Christmas hymn about a rich prince who was busy striding around and giving to the poor, and it ends by saying all good Christians 'wealth or rank possessing' should do the same. It's a cracking tune and it means that at least once per year, most Anglican churchgoers will get reminded of those words.

The story is medieval but the particular text comes out of the Victorian charity movement which, at its best, was vaguely proto EA and proto progress studies in many ways.

evelynciara @ 2021-12-11T06:18 (+4)

"Christmas at Ground Zero," released in 1986 by Weird Al Yankovic, is a silly holiday song about a nuclear apocalypse. The phrase "ground zero" in this song just means the epicenter of a nuclear explosion and doesn't have to do with 9/11, which happened in 2001.

mcwhinns @ 2021-12-11T16:00 (+3)

Thank you for that flashback to my childhood ←(>▽<)ノ I was obsessed with WA through middle school and completely forgot about this gem.

evelynciara @ 2021-12-09T18:26 (+4)

I'll start: "(My) Grown-Up Christmas List"

So here's my lifelong wish
My grown up Christmas list
Not for myself but for a world in need

No more lives torn apart
That wars would never start
And time would heal all hearts
And everyone would have a friend
And right would always win
And love would never end, no
This is my grown up Christmas list

kirstenangeles @ 2021-12-16T07:07 (+6)

Same here! I did a cover of this song last year, and it was inspired by EA. https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/Ra2m84i7cC7w4UUHA

evelynciara @ 2021-12-17T05:52 (+3)

Nice! I see that you're not on EA Creatives and Communicators yet - you should join!

kirstenangeles @ 2021-12-18T14:37 (+1)

Cool, thanks for the share! :D

BenSchifman @ 2021-12-16T15:27 (+2)

This isn't really what you're going for but I find this Christmas song that was generated using AI to be quite funny.  

BenSchifman @ 2021-12-16T15:48 (+1)

Also this video details the process he used to make the song with DeepMind's Jukebox.