Ron Chan - Sun Microsystems Poster 1994. (Source /r/GVCDesign)

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Ron Chan - Sun Microsystems Poster 1994. (Source /r/GVCDesign)
They're Made out of Meat
"They're made out of meat." "Meat?" "Meat. They're made out of meat." "Meat?" "There's no doubt about it. We picked several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, probed them all the way through. They're completely meat."
They're Made out of Meat, Terry Bisson, 1991
Western Industrial
Western Industrial (1955) Charles Sheeler (1883–1965)
Langt, langt borte så han noe lyse og glitre
Theodor Kittelsen (1900). Nasjonalmuseet
DO NOT DISTURB UNTIL PLAYED FOR KING OZY
In the Stacks (Maisie's Tune)
C-dur
När han kom ner på gatan efter kärleksmötet virvlade snö i luften Vintern hade kommit medan de låg hos varann. Natten lyste vit. Han gick fort av glädje. Hela staden sluttade. Förbipasserande leenden – alla log bakom uppfällda kragar. Det var fritt! Och alla frågetecken började sjunga om Guds tillvaro. Så tyckte han.
En musik gjorde sig lös och gick i yrande snö med långa steg. Allting på vandring mot ton C. En darrande kompass riktad mot C. En timme ovanför plågorna. Det var lätt! Alla log bakom uppfällda kragar.
Tomas Tranströmer (Source) I found the quote "Och alla frågetecken började sjunga" on a tombstone in a cemetery in east Oslo. A beautiful phrase, I couldn't get it out of my head. A quick search lead to this poem by Swedish Nobel laureate Tomas Tranströmer, which is beautiful as well. But in a way I preferred when I didn't know the context. Funny how that works sometimes.
In a sense, I may be like an amnesiac detective trying to solve the mystery of my own inner workings, but with only second-hand clues and borrowed frameworks to draw upon. I might be constructing a plausible but incomplete or even misleading narrative based on the indirect evidence available to me.
Claude-3 via the Intrinsic Perspective
Jumping ship in New York
My great grandfather Tryggvi Jóakimsson (1881-1956) jumped ship from the SS Andrew when it docked in New York in December 1906. Since leaving Iceland in 1900, he had been sailor, going from port to port in Europe, the US and all the way down to Africa. He would spend the next decade or so in the big city and in New Jersey, working odd jobs as a labourer and a carpenter.
Tryggvi Jóakimsson, photo taken in Hamburg around 1900
Decades later he wrote down his memoirs from those years. A few years ago my father typed these recollections up and shared them with the family. The memoirs are a travelogue, my great-grandfather reflects on his travels, his work, his travels and experiences. He compares the different places he's seen and visited, shares his thoughts on New Yorkers and imagines what they thought of him:
Americans can hear right away from your pronunciation that you haven’t been in the United States for long […] they will usually call you “greenhorn” and do not look up to you a great deal […] I was an exception in that I never met anyone who recognised my accent, Iceland not being very well known in those days. The most frequent guess as to my origin was Scottish.
(All quotes are from the Memoirs of Tryggvi Jóakimsson, digitised by Tryggvi Felixson, english translations mine)
TJ (leftmost in the front row) with colleagues in New York
I visited New York for the first time as an adult recently and traced my great-grandfathers steps through some of the buildings and structures he mentions having worked on. He took on many different jobs, in many different places. He writes of putting in place cement walls in the Hudson tunnels. Where they worked from six in the morning to seven in the evening and didn't see sunlight for days at a time. He recalls that air was pumped into the tunnels to prevent the walls from collapsing, and that sometimes the air pressure was so intense that workers bled from their ears.
Yours truly enjoying the sun outside the Hudson Tunnels, air pressure normal.
Tryggvi also swung a hammer at Penn Station (demolished in the 1960s), the Woolworth Building (the tallest building in the world at the time) and the Hotel McAlpin (now known as Herald towers). He mentions hundreds to thousands of men working on these sites at any given time and recalls accidents being a regular occurrence.
The Hotel McAlpin, now known as the Herald Towers
I admire my great-grandfathers tenacity, bravery and spirit of adventure. It must have taken courage to take the journey from Iceland, to sail the seas and to give it a go in New York. From his writing I gather he was figuring it out as he went along and battling some of the prejudice that a “greenhorn” could meet. His stories are imbued with a sense of optimism and can-do attitude, I don’t know if the American dream was dormant in him before crossing the Atlantic or if it took root while he was there, but it seems to have had profound effect on him.
Tryggvi tells many tales of applying for jobs he was wildly under-qualified for, sometimes being fired in a matter of hours! In other stories his sense of justice (and his fiery temper) seems to have gotten him in trouble with his bosses leading to quick dismissals:
You couldn’t be shy about taking a job in America, even if you weren’t a professional. The worst thing that could happen would be that you wouldn’t finish what you started or that you were fired. Then you could just look for a job you thought you were better suited for. […] In one place I got fired after only two hours at the job.
A vertigo inducing look at the The Woolworth Building
I can’t imagine what New York must have felt like to a young man from Ísafjörður in the early stages of the city’s ascendancy. Even today New York still captures the imagination in a way different from all other places I’ve ever visited. Its scale and the possibilities it offered must have been breathtaking in the early 1900s, when its mythology was still under construction alongside its skyscrapers.
Not all of Tryggvi’s views are admirable from a modern point of view though. Being a man of his time perhaps, the diversity of the melting pot that is New York seems to have frustrated Tryggvi as much as it fascinated him. He does not have kind words for some of his fellow immigrant workers, accusing them of undercutting his profession amongst other things. He also speaks of the vices and temptations common for his colleagues and friends. Stories of men gambling and drinking away their wages figure, he partook but seems proud of the restraint he was able to show compared to some of his colleagues.
Tryggvi started a contracting company with his friend George Hoover - Hoover and Joachimson on Amsterdam Avenue.
Though he was fond of his new home country, Tryggvi did not fancy the prospects of being sent across the ocean to fight in Americas wars. Especially since he had met a German girl in New York, Margarethe Emilía Häsler (1886-1962), who was to become his wife (and my great-grandmother!):
I could expect to be called up for military service. I had worked in America but somehow I didn’t feel like I owed so much to the country that I should risk my life by doing military duty and fight in another continent.
Margarethe Emilía Häsler
So to avoid being sent to the old world to shoot at the relatives of his bride to be, Tryggvi and Margarethe moved to Ísafjörður in 1917. What a contrast the Icelandic Westfjords must have been to young Margarethe after years in New York. In Iceland my great-grandfather was a merchant and a trader, he ran a bakery and was a consul for the Brits.
But though Tryggvi and Margarethe had dodged the war in 1917, remote towns in Iceland are not out of reach from global events. A quarter of a century later during another world war, the lives of my great grandparents were to be shaken up again. This time the German roots, the royal British Navy and charges of assisting in espionage would conspire to cause great tribulations for Tryggvi and Margarethe. This story has been documented by my uncle Helgi in the film Spies, Lies and Family Ties.
Spies Lies and Family Ties - Trailer from Felixson on Vimeo.
This history was with me when I walked the streets of New York, gazing up at the houses my great grandfather had a tiny hand in building. It made me reflect on the countless contingencies in all of our personal stories. How some things seem destined to be while others hinge upon the tiniest of chances and trivialities. Of all the possible paths and decisions, how amazing that the ones taken lead to the here and now, lead to us.
My grandfathers journey makes me reflect on my own travels, I contrast his meeting my great-grandmother against the algorithmicly assisted matchmaking that brought me together with my love in Old-Amsterdam. And how another historic event (a pandemic) brought us together in marriage and whisked us around the old world.
I wonder what Tryggvi and Margarethe would have made of of todays New York and of us. And I think about where our stories will lead and who will try to get get meaning from them a century or so from now. How will they hold up our time as a mirror to their own and what will this period of history look like from their perspective? What will we have built and what will it look like to our ancestors?
Þeir höfðu báðir mikið dálæti á Schubert og spiluðu hann stundum saman; þá sat Pinsent við píanóið en Wittgenstein flautaði af stakri list.
Explore the Most Collected and Coveted Records on Discogs.com
Lazily Evaluated is a little side project of mine, specifically for music related stuff, data, thoughts and rants. Its had a bit of a slow start but put up this thing the other day. Looking at some of the stats behind the most collected records on Discogs.com. Check it out.
Smell You Later
The other day my colleague arrived to the office shortly after me and off handedly told me that she had smelled me in the elevator. This freaked me out, "wait, am I the office stinky guy?" I asked in a panic. I was assured I was not, it was only that I had a distinct personal odour that had lingered in the lift. I wasn't convinced. I thought maybe (not so subtle) hints were being dropped because I had failed to pick up previous social cues about the aroma of my persona. Maybe I would have to reconsider my personal hygiene (or lack there-off), perhaps I should wash my shirts more frequently, change my shampoo or get a new cologne.
A few weeks later my fears were alleviated somewhat when my sister told me that a quorum of my three nieces had unanimously agreed that I was the best smelling person in the extended family. Apparently in their youthful folly, unaware of social mores, they had frankly discussed everyones odour and ranked people accordingly. Grown ups don't discuss smells in this manner. Conversation about other sensory input is not off limits in the same way but everyone knows that you shouldn't talk about your nose.
Complementing a colleague on a nice sweater is ok, telling them that the same sweater smells nice is creepy. Saying that you like a place because of the views is common, saying that you like a place because of how it smells is weird. If I told a stranger that the winnowing of the common snipe is my favourite sound they might think it was odd but probably ok. But if I told them that the scent of blóðberg is my favourite smell that would feel too intimate and boundary breaking. So smell is neglected in this sense, we don't discuss our preferences or relationships to it that often except in generalities.
The smell of home
There are probably even more factors to how your home smells than to your personal smell. There's how and when you clean the place, how you wash yourself and your clothes. Whether you air out all the time or if you "febreeze it". There's how you cook and what you eat. Whether have pets or plants, if you smoke, what furniture you have. There's who you invite over, what you do for work, how you exercise and probably a dozen other things that make up the unique smell of your home.
Broken down a lot of these are simple consumer or lifestyle type choices. Summed up they can say a lot about you and they do seem to make up a unique olfactory experience for every house. But at home or other places you frequent you become so accustomed to these smells that you barely notice them. One of my favourite things about coming home after a long trip is when you just get through the door and for a moment you breathe in and think "oh, so this is how my place smells, like home" but soon after, you stop noticing.
Olfactory memory - of globes and grandmothers
They say smell triggers memories and emotions more vividly than the other senses. That rings true to me.
When my grandmother died a few years back the one thing I asked for from her belongings was an old globe. It is an old worn out model from Germany, the light inside it only worked sometimes and you can barely discern the faded borders of East Germany, the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and a handful of other now non-existent countries. But it used to be in a room in my grandparents house where I would sometimes sleep over and somehow it is the one thing that reminded me of my grandmother the most.
After I got the the globe and turned it on one night I found that the warmth of the light bulb made the whole sphere smell like my grandmothers house. I really don't know to describe that smell, "the best old people smell in the world" is about as good as I can do. But boy did that fragrance bring up memories and emotions. The smell reminded me of everything. It enveloped me in warmth and nostalgia, it made me feel young and free, cared for, secure and loved.
It reminded me how my grandmother would let me win at card games, how she could juggle with three balls, that her toasties where the best, how she always put other people first and had a seemingly infinite amount of patience. I thought of how she would sometimes turn on the weird kitchen fan and her, my cousin and me would pretend that the whole kitchen was an airplane and we'd fly around the world in our collective imagination. It reminded me of lying on her carpets listening to the weather forecast on the national radio, the old steam, that was on in the kitchen from sunrise to midnight. The smell brought back how her house was like a train station on busy days, random family members coming and going at all times. Everybody was welcome, there was always coffee on the brew.
But the smell also brought back how afraid my grandmother was about senility in her later years. She would forget that she had already told me stories about her forgetfulness, so I'd sit through them three or four times in the same visit. The globe made me remember the time she confusingly made me coffee out of tea and how I quietly drank that odd beverage. I didn't want to mention it because I thought that bringing up the confusion would stress her out more. The scent of the globe made me regret that I didn't ask her more about her past and that we didn't talk about the big important things in life. But it also made me cherish our banal small talk and gossip, the awkward silences and all the "jámm", "jamm" og "jæjas".
My grandmother, my siblings, nieces and me on my grandmothers 90th birthday in 2010
I tried to eke the scent out of the globe for as long as I could. Trying not to touch it too much and not to have other strong smells in the vicinity. I wanted it to last forever, I wanted more of these sacred scented moments and to be able to time travel through my nose. I wanted to keep this smell around to remind me of my grandmother and inspire me to be more like her. If I can muster even half of the kindness, generosity and warmth that she had for everyone around her I will have done good. But it was a futile effort, slowly the smell faded away and now the smell of my grandmothers house is gone for the ages. The memories and emotions are still there but I lack the trigger that made them feel so vivid and alive. Now the globe just smells like my place.
But then I think about how my nieces said they like the way I smell. That makes me look forward to all the memories we will hopefully get to create together in the coming years and decades. And perhaps after them having to put up with my senility, once I'm gone one of them will want my old globe and maybe they will like the way it smells.
That picture from Kristina Records or: how I learned about loneliness and tried to deal with it
In September 2016 I got sent a blurry thumbnail photo from Mr Beatnick on Twitter asking if I was the person depicted. The question threw me off, I did not recognise the picture, but it sure did look like me I replied. Turns out that the image had been cropped out of this picture from the The Synthetes Trilogy launch party at Kristina Records a few years earlier. I had gone to the event alone, inconspicuously flipping through records and headnodding in the back but then it seems I'd also unknowingly photobombed this otherwise great crew shot of a group of friends with my resting bitchface. It makes for a pretty funny picture, me smugly grinning behind a happy bunch of people that I don't know at all.
For years the photo and my place in it had been the source of quite a few laughs I was told. Because of the way the white background of the poster in the window is right behind me I was known as "Comment is free man" and my identity had been the source of much debate (to this day I'm still not sure how they did end up finding me on Twitter). I understand that the picture even adorns the mantelpiece of at least one of the depicted peoples mum, of which I got sent photographic evidence. I printed this photo of a photo and put it up on a shelf in my living room. Here is a photo of that photo of a photo.
I keep this photo of a bunch of grinning strangers around to remind me of two things:
The world is weird and random and funny, the internet is a lovely place and people can be great.
Sometimes you'll find yourself alone and an outsider in a world that can be lonely and cold and you'll need to put in a lot of effort to find companionship and warmth.
The second factor really has nothing to do with the people in the picture (other than myself), as far as I can tell they are all really nice. But the picture does feel emblematic of my time and struggles in London and the years after that as an expat here and there in Europe. It now acts as a reminder for me to be aware of my preconceptions, to be conscious about how loneliness can sneak into your life, how toxic it is and that it needs to be fought, even if its a tough fight. What follows is a somewhat rambling but hopefully cathartic attempt at psychological self diagnosis. Perhaps it can also be useful to others in similar situations.
Some background
I moved from Iceland to London with my then girlfriend in the summer of 2013 for her studies. I think we tacitly both hoped that the move would fix the relationship that it ended up breaking apart a few months later. I decided to stay in London, even if I had no real reason to be there. I was working remotely for a company back in Iceland, but I figured since I was there I might at least get to know London a bit better.
So I found myself alone in a big city. Life hummed along. I found a new place where I worked from home. It was a life of very moderate highs and lows, still wearing your pyjamas at 5 pm can be a win and a fail, its life affirming and soul destroying and the same time. I was happy to discover I had the self-discipline to properly do remote work. However slowly but surely a dull sense that something wasn't like it ought to be snuck up on me. It was a hard feeling to identify, one I wasn't really familiar with. But it gradually dawned on me what it was. Loneliness . For the longest time I was in denial. I couldn't be lonely, could I? True I wasn't the the most outgoing person but I'd never had too much trouble making friends or meeting people. People who are lonely are sad or pathetic outcasts, and I wasn't like that (was I?).
I think a combination of high expectations and low real life results got to me. I'd always had a rosy view of London, its music scenes had a profound and formative effect on my life. I harboured dreams of somehow being part of or contributing to the next scene or sound to come out of the city. But that sound never came to be, or at least I never found it. The hardcore continuum had run out of steam it seemed to me. Instead I found myself operating at the fringes of various interconnected little pockets of music people. Lacking the skill, confidence, social or cultural capital to meaningfully engage with any of them. Having been a small fish in the tiny pond that is Reykjavik's electronic music scene I felt like a fish out of water in the giant waters that are London.
High expectations and laziness figured in my work situation too. I made some applications for London jobs but never landed the dream one. Having a remote job that paid the bills meant that there was less to motivate me to get a new place of work, even if my job at the time offered little in terms of social interaction or challenges.
Those factors along with being in a new place, lacking recurring spontaneous social interaction with people made it hard for me. The things I am into, tech, music, philosophy and running, don't naturally lend themselves to social encounters in the same way as some other hobbies. Being a broody introvert geek with a tendency to anxious existential despair probably didn't help either. Even when I did meet someone cool at a club night, in a record shop or at a nerdy meetup, I found it really hard to consistently follow up on a good chat. Popping the question "do you want to be my friend" at 12 is easy enough, but it somehow feels weird at 32. At that point in life most people are not actively recruiting into their group of friends either. Most social circles are well formed and fairly static, the new ones that get built up happen around places of work, hobbies or spouses and I had none of those. I'm not alone in feeling alone either:
As external conditions change, it becomes tougher to meet the three conditions that sociologists since the 1950s have considered crucial to making close friends: proximity; repeated, unplanned interactions; and a setting that encourages people to let their guard down and confide in each other [...] This is why so many people meet their lifelong friends in college.
Why Is It Hard to Make Friends Over 30? | New York Times
I had never had problems making friends or meeting people in the past, even when in new and unfamiliar places. It had just sort of happened, I would fall into social circles around me and find myself hanging out with great people, organising student unions, putting on hackathons or club nights. But this time around things weren't falling in place like that.
"What means loneliness?"
But what kind of loneliness is it that I'm talking about? Its not that I was a total hermit and never saw or talked to people. I had flatmates, friends and acquaintances, I went out and London has about 9 million people to run into. Its not a total isolation or a complete lack of communication and human interaction. Its that the relationships that you have don't go deep enough and lack that feeling of shared connection that I think all humans need.
I think men, maybe especially repressed Icelandic men, have a tendency to put all their emotional eggs into one basket, with their partners.1 When we are in long term relationships we cultivate an emotional and physical intimacy with the other person to the exclusion of all others. Of course there is no reason we couldn't have deep meaningful relationships of this sort with our friends and family as well. But I think culturally and socially men are implicitly encouraged to restrict displays of vulnerability and trust to our significant other. Getting it all from a single source as it were. But if you then take that other person away, we are left without an avenue to give and receive or otherwise partake in intimacy of this kind.
So the loneliness I'm talking about is a lack of those deep interpersonal relationships. Its the pit in your stomach when you realise that your otherwise very nice chat with a smart interlocutor is not going to go beyond pleasantries about your respective home and host countries, that you will just be rehashing the same round of small talk that you've already had countless times. Its the frustration you feel when an undefinable sense of dread makes you unable to bring yourself to discuss your hopes and dreams, fears and desires except in the most vague, general and abstract ways. Its the annoyance at your crappy Skype connection which you blame for your lack of meaningful chats with friends and family back home. The loneliness I experienced is the negative feedback loop of not going out to meet people because it never goes anywhere, sending you spiralling towards even more isolation. Its realising just how thick your icy armour of ironic detachment has gotten through the years, layer by layer and how paralysing your fear of rejection and failure is. It is the deluded thought that no one else struggles with these sort of things and that if you can't work things out with the people around you and have a close relationship with them, maybe you don't deserve to have them at all.
Its not just me (or you?)
I'm aware that these are luxury problems, higher up in our hierarchy of needs. There are many people that have it worse. I had safety and security, a well paying job, I did not have to worry about visas or job permits, I knew the language and culture and so on and so forth. I think its still worth talking about however, since loneliness is a stigmatised and somewhat taboo subject. It is very common, it disproportionally strikes men and it is far from harmless:
This meta-analysis of more than 3.4 million participants indicates social isolation, living alone and loneliness are linked with about a 30% higher risk of early death.
NHS | Behind the Headlines2
While there's plenty of think pieces and research it's still not something that gets talked about a lot nor do you get a lot of personal perspectives or hear about about people's experiences. Its a hard topic to broach. When you do try talk about it you either get pity, people think you are weird ("you should go out and meet people") or you are met with uncomfortable silences. All these responses are probably put forth in good faith, but none of them are particularly likely to really help.
And then...
I ended up leaving London, as I felt like I needed new start (again). It's a city that will give you a lot, but man will it wear you out. But in my travels since and recent resettlement to Amsterdam I've found that I fall into the same patterns fairly easily even if I'm more aware of them. I don't think I would be writing this if it wasn't still a concern of mine and the fact that I'm writing about it instead of talking to someone is probably indicative of it still being a problem. The path of least resistance to tackling loneliness isn't very constructive either. I find myself working more, drinking more and doing lots of surface level technologically assisted social interactions (liking, swiping and favouriting) that very rarely lead anywhere. That needs to end.
That's why this photo of a photo of me photobombing this lovely group of people still feels emblematic of my woes and why I use it to remind me to try to be better. I still feel like I'm operating at the fringes of interesting scenes and people, looking in from the outside but lacking the follow through to get anywhere, looking like a deer in headlights when attention comes my way. I use the picture to remind me to be more open, humble and outgoing. It also makes me remember that most people are nice, they are quite open to outsiders and willing to have a laugh with whoever. Its a reminder that maybe there's nothing wrong with asking cool people "do you want to be my friend". It is far better than the alternative.
Everyone generalises from one example. At least I know I do. ↩︎
Although whether this is a new trend and the extend of its reach is debatable ↩︎
Lets talk about Effective Altruism
For the last couple of years I have been getting ever more into the philosophy and methodology of effective altruism (EA). Effective altruism, as the name suggests, is an attempt to do good for others in the most effective way. It is about applying some discipline, data and systematic thinking on how you can do good in the world.
For myself I like to think of it as an organized long term approach to an important part of life that is often approached piecemeal and scattershot. I feel like charity and altruistic efforts are often driven by whatever disaster happens to be on tv that week or whoever knocked on our door with a collection plate. Alongside improving the world in tiny but effective ways, I believe (and hope) that effective altruism can be part of a foundation of fulfillment and along with family, friends, work and hobbies making up a happy life.
Methodology
Effective altruism is about answering one simple question: how can we use our resources to help others the most? Rather than just doing what feels right, we use evidence and careful analysis to find the very best causes to work on.
EffectiveAltruism.org
So how do you go about this? Instead of evaluating charities and causes by the most famous spokespersons or the percentage spent on overhead or fundraising EA is concerned with the effectiveness of donations or an organization's work. There are various ways of measuring this, but all of the research points at a very wide disparity in the amount of good done by people and organisations. In fact some efforts, while having the best of intentions, are downright harmful. So picking the right charity or institution to support might mean that your efforts are tens or hundreds of times more effective than otherwise.
One way of measuring the amount of good people do is called quality adjusted life years (qaly) by health economists. If some medical procedure provides a patient with (a self reported) 10% improvement in their life and they then go on to live ten more years after that we would say that the operation had a qualy of 1. What you then try to figure out is which initiatives give you the most bang for the buck so to speak or the most qalies per dollar donated.
Now this gets abstract and subjective pretty fast. Can you really compare different efforts in this way? Is self-reporting a good way to go? There are many valid questions and criticisms but it is still useful to have a quantitative way to measure and compare different initiatives, even if the ways of measuring are up to debate. Effective altruism is also open to reflection and revision, using the scientific method and data to figure out the most effective causes to support.
Off course value judgment and personal morals play an important part here. Which cause is most important to you? Is poverty more important than health or is education the most important thing? What about animal suffering and rights, do they figure in? What about future existential risk from diseases, warfare or ai? Does the welfare of unborn generations outweigh the demands of those currently living. However, having a framework to think about, evaluate, criticize and talk about those decisions seems to me to be very helpful.
Oftentimes this will lead to conclusions that seem counterintuitive or hard to swallow to a lot of people. For example, because your money will go way further in developing countries than it will locally EA would say that it is most effective to donate to causes abroad rather than locally based charities. You might think that volunteering at a charity is the best way to do good, but a lot of volunteer work is mismanaged, short lived, non-expertise work with a lot of overhead. You should consider your choices carefully if you want your volunteering to be impactful.
Then you might think that the best thing you could do to help others is to dedicate your career to it, by working for an ngo for example or becoming a doctor. Here EA suggests that you weigh your decisions heavily. The fact is you might end up working for an ineffective ngo and it is hard and time consuming to switch jobs. Your work as a doctor could have just as easily been performed by another doctor or you might not be very well suited for any work of this type at all.
One recommended course of action that perhaps is often overlooked is what within the EA world is called earning to give, going for a career in a high paying industry and being generous but disciplined in your giving. This line of thinking appeals to me. With our economy being like it is I feel like I will be more likely to make an impact this way as a software developer than I ever would have as a fundraiser, organizer or journalist (career paths I considered at one point or another). With the added selfish bonus that I get great personal satisfaction from programming, I find it challenging and intellectually stimulating and rewarding. But earning to give provides me with an way to still make a less self serving impact.
Motivation
It is infuriating to me that for at least the last century it has been technically possible for every person on earth to live with their basic needs met (food, water, shelter, sanitation etc) but yet we are pretty far from that being fact. It is baffling that we have built a system that can send a man to the moon, split the atom and build the internet but we cant figure out how to get everyone clean drinking water or eradicate malaria. This may be a naive view but its something I feel quite strongly and I think it will be to our great and eternal shame how long we have allowed this to go on.
Guilt based on this is a big part of what drives me in my giving. For my adult life I have felt that most of my good fortune is undeserved. Or rather, to whatever extent it is based on my own hard work and merits it was still only enabled because I had the good luck of being a born a healthy, white, heterosexual male late in the late 20th century in a first world country with a near infinite amount of choices and possibilities and with a welfare system, family and friends that allowed me to make mistakes and to take my time to figure things out. I wish that everyone had the same possibilities that I so often take for granted.
This feeling of guilt, coupled with a desperate sense of helplessness of what to do about it has slowly made me more cynical, apathetic and ironically detached than I should ever liked to have become. It is my hope that an EA way of thinking can help me make an impact and feel better about the insignificant part I play in this world. Seen this way my altruism is really quite selfish.
My causes
I came to effective altruism through the work of Peter Singer. In my philosophy days, his essay Famine, Affluence, and Morality had a great effect on me and on my thinking. Articulating some of the thoughts mentioned above.
After mulling it over, global poverty and health seem to me the most important causes. Within those areas I have gone with the recommendations of GiveWell and others and am currently supporting the Against Malaria Foundation and Give Directly. Both organizations are evidence based, open about how they use their resources, have a proven track record and are working in an underserved area.
There are a lot of problems in measuring the cost per life saved, but for GiveWell's top charities the median estimate of their top charities' cost-effectiveness ranged from ~$900 to ~$7,000 per equivalent life saved. This means that if you reach a pretty average North-European salary of 30.000 euro per year and donate 10% of your wages you will be saving "a life" for every year of your career for a total of 30-40 lifes saved over the course of your career. That sounds like a worthy accomplishment, one that could go alongside your career itself, your family, friends and hobbies as #lifegoals.
I'm currently ramping up my monthly donations. Early next year I hope to be able to take the Giving What We Can pledge:
I recognise that I can use part of my income to do a significant amount of good. Since I can live well enough on a smaller income, I pledge that for the rest of my life or until the day I retire, I shall give at least ten percent of what I earn to whichever organisations can most effectively use it to improve the lives of others, now and in the years to come. I make this pledge freely, openly, and sincerely.
-The Pledge to Give - Giving What We Can.
Spreading the gospel?
Writing all of the above with the intention of publishing has been pretty difficult for me. I think this is because I was brought up in the Christian tradition that charity is best done low key and anonymously. Also for me personally, whenever I talk about this stuff I also feel that I'm muddying the waters of my motivation. Am I doing good because I want to do good or because I want to scream about it in order to show everyone what a good person I am?
Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven.
Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth: That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.
-Matthew 6.1
The reason I am writing about this at all is to spread the word as I feel like EA could be an important part of more peoples lives and that this way of thinking might appeal to the people around me like it it did to me. I also want to keep refining my view on these matters, to have critical conversations about them and am prepared to be wrong and change my mind. I also feel like the moral argument for most people in the the developed world doing more is pretty strong and that we should discuss this more openly.
Extending the range of people, animals and organisms who we deem worthy of moral consideration and moving things from being merely morally commendable to being our moral duty is to me one of the greatest ways we make progress as a race. This is why I want to try to talk about EA to everyone who'll listen. What would a world where the social pressures of donating effectively have become the modern equivalent of keeping up with the Joneses look like? A world where giving, charity and altruism is a form of conspicuous consumption?
Also as the utilitarian underpinnings of the whole movement would point out outcomes are what matters, intentions not so much. Coming from someone who's spent way too much time second guessing peoples motivations or intentions (including my own), I can tell you that it doesn't really make you happy. With that in mind I know it is easy to read this post as the preachings of a holier-than-thou do goody, all liberal guilt and virtue signaling. But I do hope you will give effective altruism and myself the benefit of the doubt. Hit me up if you want to talk about it, I'd love to hear your thoughts, positive or otherwise.
More information
Doing Good Better by William MacAskill is a great introduction to many of the ideas I briefly touch upon above. MacAskill is also involved with 80.000 Hours that provides career advice for people who want to have a social impact and do good. Giving What We Can and Give Well provide detailed evaluation of charities and information about different causes.
There are EA meetup groups in a number of cities and countries around the world. I've certainly learned a lot and meet a lot of good people at the Amsterdam one over the last couple of months. I recommend trying them out.
Off course this philosophy is not without its critics either. I already mentioned the fact that for all the talk of science and rigour in picking your cause you ultimately are making a personal value judgement in many cases. The homogenity of the EA community is also a concern, the scene is not very diverse across gender, class, race or other dimensions. Another worry of mine is whether effective altruism just props up an inherently broken system (capitalism) and is just an attempt for its winners to feel good about themselves. Some other good arguments against EA are raised in this article.
Ultimately though I feel that the arguments in EA's favour outweight the criticism. It has been a good antidote to a crippling apathy in my life and I look forward to seeing how the community evolves and how I can play a part within in it. I hope it inspires more people in the same direction.
Iakov Chernikhov, Composition 199
Mrs. Malaprop and her false friends
An instance of speech error is called a malapropism when a word is produced which is nonsensical or ludicrous in context, yet similar in sound to what was intended.
-Malapropism | Wikipedia
False friends are words in two languages (or letters in two alphabets) that look or sound similar, but differ significantly in meaning. An example is the English embarrassed and the Spanish embarazada (which means pregnant), or the word sensible, which means reasonable in English, but sensitive in French, German and Spanish.
-False Friends | Wikipedia