Welcome to the monthly EA NYC newsletter! If you like what you see and know others who would be interested in subscribing, send them this email and they can sign up here! And don't forget to join the Facebook group and Slack if you haven't already!
In this email...
Our newsletters are long! To make them easier to skim, here's what you'll find below:
Intro from EA NYC
Hi there,
For those new to NY, let it be known: winter is coming! But despite cold weather and holidays approaching, EA NYC has events and plans scheduled through the new year!
We have another jam-packed newsletter this month with loads of events, opportunities, news, and more. We hope our curated highlights give you the info you want in a condensed format!
That said, we got your feedback, and made some changes to make the newsletter even easier to read! You are now reading a somewhat abridged version of the newsletter. But if you think this isn't quite right, you can find our highly abbreviated edition here, and our full length edition here.
As a reminder, we always welcome you to email us any time with your thoughts and/or to set up a call with a member of our team to directly discuss your interests and goals. We're here to help you in your efforts to do good!
We look forward to hearing from you at our events, over email, and/or on a call.
Happy Thanksgiving, and talk to you soon!
~Alex and Rocky
Announcements
Special Announcements
EA movement changes and community health
As many of you likely saw, FTX, a major funder of EA projects, is now insolvent. There are a lot of uncertainties regarding how this might affect the EA movement. We don't currently have any answers that can't be found from public information, but we're here to support the community during this uncertain time. As a reminder, EA NYC Community Health Coordinator Megan Nelson is available as a resource to you for community health concerns. You may contact her anonymously here or reach out directly here.
But as alluded to in an interview with NY Magazine, Rocky reminds us that EA will not change just because of one bad apple.
Fill out the 2022 EA Survey to have your voice heard
Ran by Rethink Priorities, the annual survey reviews large shifts within the EA movement and helps organizations make more informed decisions. Anyone who broadly identifies with effective altruism, or is at all engaged with the EA community is encouraged to participate. Fill out the survey by December 1st; it may take you as little as 10 minutes!
EA Giving Tuesday Update
Update from our previous newsletter: EA Giving Tuesday will be a little different than we anticipated.This year there are two donation matching opportunities:
Meta’s Giving Season match: Details and instructions (Starts Nov 15)
Every.org’s Fall Giving Challenge: Details and instructions, provided by Will Kiely on the EA Forum (Already started)
Once you’ve received confirmation of a match, please let the EA Giving Tuesday team know the details via this impact evaluation form so they can quantify the value of these opportunities for future years.
Networking
Get connected 🤝
Introducing the new EA NYC Community Directory! Filter by cause area interests, related professions, and areas of expertise to find collaborators, peers, and allies! Want to join? Fill out your info here to submit (or update) your information!
Also, follow us on LinkedIn! You can now receive updates and connect more there. We also consolidated our links: you can check out this page for our events, newsletter, Slack, organizer contact, and more!
Virtual Coworking 🧑💻👨💻👩💻
Join us on the virtual EA Gathertown! Likeminded EA's from around the world gather to work effectively, provide accountability, and catch up over breaks. It's a unique place, so feel free to message Alex or EA GT Stewards if you're feeling lost upon arrival 😅
Events and community programming
Happy Holidays! ❄️
As we enter NY's festive season and people reunite with friends and family, EA NYC does have a few upcoming indoor events. Unfortunately, it's also cold/flu/respiratory illness season! We invite you to check out our events page for our latest COVID-19 policy - there's also a cool interactive risk assessment tool!
December Community Lightning Talks: 2022 in Retrospect
Applications are still open for our lightning talks this December! The theme of this event is 2022 itself. As the year comes to a close, we want to hear about anything related to 2022: achievements, thoughts on world events, EA happenings -- whatever is on your mind that relates to the past year, is interesting, and can be explained in five minutes! You can apply to present here and find more information to join below.
Subgroups are growing 💪🦾
The legal subgroup has successful launched and is open to more applicants!
The consulting (link now fixed) and professor subgroups are also gaining interest.
Plus, you can now sign up for our Tech and Artists/Creatives/Communicators subgroups!
Find the whole suite of cause area and professional subgroups on our website.Have subgroup questions or ideas? Contact Alex!
NYC Community Highlights
We want to highlight more community member accomplishments! Keep us posted on anything exciting we can include in future newsletters!
EA NYC'er Sharang Phadke joins CEA's EA Forum Team!
Sharang is a new product manager at CEA focused on the EA Forum. Sharang previously worked as a product/software consultant for StrongMinds and IDInsight.
EA NYC'er Connor McGurk joins CEA's Virtual Programs Team!
Conor is now working full-time as a product manager focusing on EA Virtual Programs. Previously, Conor worked at Meta, where he founded and ran the EA @ Meta group for three years. You can check out his takeaways from that experience in his recent Forum Post, 7 learnings from 3 years running a corporate EA Group
Upcoming Events
To keep up to date on our upcoming events, check out our calendar on Facebook or Meetup, or add us to your Google Calendar!
Weekly Events
Every Monday, 2:00 - 4:00 pm: Virtual Coworking
Join EA NYC’s weekly virtual coworking space! Drop in for a bit or stay for the full block using this Zoom link.
Every Thursday, 1:30 - 2:00 pm: Office Hours
Join EA NYC Director Rocky on Thursdays using this Zoom link. From career advice to understanding EA concepts to anything else on your mind, stop by and chat!
Unique Events
Monthly Reading Group: Moral Uncertainty
Monday, November 28th at 7:30 to 8:30 PM
How should we make decisions in the face of uncertainty?
You can find this month's reading choice for free here, and can find more information at the bottom of this email!
(Zoom Link. See details and RSVP on Facebook and Meetup.com)
EA Giving Tuesday After-party
Tuesday, November 29th from 7:00 to 10:00 PM
Following the success of last year’s celebration, we are planning to join another get-together after the morning EA Giving Tuesday donation drive.
Bring yourselves and your altruistically-curious friends! We'll be happy to talk about our experience taking the pledge and anything more about effective giving.
(Factory 380. See details and RSVP on Facebook and Meetup.com)
Why Animal Advocacy Matters Much More Than You Think w/ Oscar Horta
Sunday, December 4th from 2:00 - 3:30 PM
University of Santiago de Compostela professor and moral philosopher, Oscar Horta will present an accessible overview of the main arguments regarding speciesism, animal exploitation, and wild animal suffering, as well as longtermism from an animal welfare perspective.
(Zoom link. See details and RSVP on Facebook and Meetup)
*Now in-person* EA NYC Community Lightning Talks: 2022 in Retrospect
Tuesday, December 6th from 7:00 to 9:00 PM
As the year comes to a close, we want to hear about anything related to 2022: achievements, thoughts on world events, EA happenings -- whatever is on your mind that relates to the past year, is interesting, and can be explained in five minutes! Apply to present here.
(See details and RSVP on Facebook and Meetup)
EA NYC December Community Dinner
Saturday, December 10th from 7:00 to 9:00 PM
Join EA NYC for some vegan dim sum - all are welcome to join!
As space is limited, please message Alex (email; WhatsApp; Facebook messenger) to request a spot. In the spirit of fairness, spots will be randomly assigned on the week of the event based on responses received before then. Note: for those eating, food usually ranges from $25-$30 each for a feast.
(Registration required for reservation. See details on Facebook and Eventbrite)
High-Impact Philanthropy for Animals and the Planet:
ACE and Giving Green 2022 Recommendations w/ Elisabeth Ormandy and Dan Stein
Tuesday, December 13th from 7:00 to 8:30 PMAnimal Charity Evaluators Director of Research, Dr. Elisabeth Ormandy and Giving Green co-founder/ director, Dr. Dan Stein join for a dual presentation on their organizations' 2022 giving recommendations!
(Zoom Link. See details on Facebook and Meetup)
Monthly Discussion Group: Foundational Concepts in EA
December Topic: Impact Distributions
Thursday, December 15th from 7:00 to 8:00 PM
This December, we will discuss common EA talking points around impact distributions. We will review heavy/fat tails and what they might mean for our donations and careers.For an optional introduction to the topic, please refer to 1 minute or 7 minute articles.(Zoom Link. See details and RSVP on Facebook and Meetup)
End of Year Party
Wednesday, December 21st from 7:00 to 10:00 PM
Join EA NYC for a fun end-of-year mixer over food and drinks. We'll have unstructured mingling, games, and guided discussion prompts.
All food will be vegan.
(Registration required for reservation. See details on Facebook and Meetup)
Virtual Games Night!
Thursday, December 29th from 7:00 to 9:00 PM
This round of online games, we're planning on playing Among Us! Let us know by December 8th if you have any other game suggestions! Note: you may want to have two devices available so you can stay on the Zoom call and log into the virtual games.
(Zoom Link. See details on Facebook and Meetup)
External events
There are also many events in the broader EA community you can join online! Here are a few below:
EA DC: Nuclear Security and Nuclear Risk Reduction as an EA Cause Area
Monday, December 5th at 7:00 PM
The session will focus on why nuclear security is becoming a higher priority – and discuss underlying impact, neglectedness, and tractability issues.
(Register on Eventbrite)
NYU Mind, Ethics, and Policy: Investigating Nonhuman Consciousness with Susan Schneider and Jonathan Birch
Wednesday, December 7th from 12:00 - 1:30 PM
Join for a discussion on measuring nonhuman consciousness for impact assessments and policy decisions!
(Register for Zoom)
EA Virtual Programs (Various Programs)
January - March
Apply by December 11 to join the Precipice Reading Group, the Intro to EA program, or the In-Depth EA Program.
Jobs and Opportunities
EA-Related Jobs in NYC
As always, there are a ton of high-impact job opportunities available at a wide variety of organizations, in a multitude of cause areas, for various experience levels, and for many areas of expertise. In fact, there are too many to list here!
Below you will find some resources for job seekers, and a plug-in to a short curation of roles that seem likely to be high-impact. But career planning is complicated, and there are many factors to consider. For more uniquely-tailored support, talk to a member of the EA NYC team!
Resources
If you’re interested in a new role, we suggest checking out:
The 80,000 Hours job board - recently redesigned! 👀
The EA Opportunities board - including internships! 🙌
Potentially high impact roles:
Check out our Airtable job database here and please note:
Roles with orange accents have application deadlines coming up soon!
Some opportunities may be changing soon - please double check our work before applying!
If you decide to apply to any of the roles in our database or other EA-aligned roles, let us know! We're happy to help how we can.
Tip: You can also see a broader list of 80,000 Hours' job board filtered for New York (or remote) positions directly on our EA NYC Careers Page. Feel free to export the data and filter even more for your unique search!
Other Opportunities around the Community
For broader opportunities, we highly recommend the EA Opportunities Board and Training For Good Board.
We've selected a few opportunities to spotlight below, but note you can also find another version we made in a filterable database here. (Or you can directly export data from those two lists above!)
Here are this month's picks!
Note: some opportunities may be changing soon - please double check our work before applying
Biosecurity
Request a Chat with a Biosecurity Professional
Interested in using your career to mitigate global catastrophic biological risks? Get some personalized advice from someone working in the field.
The 30-minute meeting with an advisor will allow you to get career advice, learn about their experience, and ask questions about topics of common interest.
Pandemic Prevention Litigation Fellow
The Pandemic Prevention Litigation Fellow will work as a part-time or full-time associate with Richman Law & Policy assisting with the development and implementation of a strategic litigation program focused on preventing pandemics and exposing, deterring, and mitigating catastrophic biological risks.
Note: this opportunity is based in Irvington, NY
Nuclear Security
Become an ALLFED Volunteer
Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters (ALLFED) has an established volunteer program, across a range of activities (from research to comms to operations to resilience).
UNODA Internships
UN Office for Disarmament Affairs offers various internships.
AI Safety and Policy
AI Safety Accountability Programme
A Slack group for people who are interested in working in AI safety at some point in the future, but who aren't working on it right now, and would like extra accountability and motivation while they pursue their goals.
AI Safety 1:1 Call
Get advice on how to get started in AI Safety.
Alignment Ecosystem Development volunteer
Alignment Ecosystem Development has a collection of programming, writing, online organizing, living document maintaining, and other volunteering opportunities. More info here.
FLI AI Existential Safety Community
Are you an AI researcher interested in ensuring that AGI, if ever developed, is safe and beneficial? If so, please spend 10 minutes applying to join Future of Life Institute's growing AI Existential Safety Community.
NeurIPS ML Safety Workshop
To make the adoption of ML more beneficial, various aspects of safety engineering and oversight need to be proactively addressed by the research community. This ML Safety workshop will bring together researchers from machine learning communities to focus on research topics in Robustness, Monitoing, Alignment, and Systemic Safety. Apply by December 9.
Machine Learning Engineering Intern
Ought is an applied research lab building Elicit, a GPT-3-based research assistant. As an intern, you will be given ownership over a project - for example:
Improve the performance of question-answering models on open-ended reasoning
Use language models to partially automate the creation of datasets for a contrastive, metric, or generative task
Fine-tune language models on parts of the systematic review process while coming up with novel ways to evaluate and improve their performance
Effective Altruism Community Building
Effective Thesis Content Reviewer
Effective Thesis wants to help aspiring researchers begin careers where they make a greater positive difference to the world. If you want to share your own experiences to help them create great advice for students, have an interest or background in any of the research directions they feature on their site, or just have opinions on what makes for inspiring and well-written content, they would love you to join their pool of content reviewers!
Donor Relations Intern
GiveDirectly is looking for a Donor Relations Intern to join their NYC-based team. In partnership with our donor experience team, the intern will play an integral role supporting the team with donor relations and donation processing tasks.
This role is fully remote but must overlap with an East Africa timezone by at least 4 hours.
EA Consulting Volunteer
The EA Consulting Network is looking for consultants to spread EA ideas among other consultants.
Life You Can Save Volunteer
The Life You Can Save is looking for volunteers to inspire people to fight extreme poverty.
GWWC Volunteer High School Outreach
Networking with high school students and teachers, offering sponsorship to run a Giving What We Can charity election. Please contact Dan Roeder for more information. Giving What We Can is also seeking general volunteer applications.
SoGive Volunteer
SoGive is an independent nonprofit that analyses charities to help donors find the most effective places to give. If you would like to volunteer with SoGive, please email Matt at Matt@sogive.org. Their main volunteer role is as a volunteer charity analyst, for which you would need to commit at least a few hours each week. If you are interested in volunteering in a non-analyst capacity, please do feel free too reach out and they can discuss.
Help curate the EA Behavioral Sciences Newsletter
Help is needed in the following areas to support the Effective Altruism Behavioral Science Newsletter:
Curating and suggesting resources to include in the newsletter
Creating the newsletter
Giving feedback on drafts
Promoting the newsletter to relevant audiences
International Security & Cooperation
Government Career Coaching
Impactful Government Careers is facilitating 1:1 coaching for government careers.
Trivium China Intern
Trivium China is always looking for whip-smart interns to help them handle the nuts and bolts of their research projects. Work out of Beijing, Shanghai, or DC, or participate in a remote internship in their online office space from any location worldwide.
Spring Editorial Intern
Foreign Policy is recruiting a spring editorial intern. The intern will assist with social media, reporting, and research, diving right into the day-to-day editorial work of FP. Candidates should work well with others and be committed to FP’s mission—explaining Washington to the world, and the world to Americans.
Animal Welfare
Volunteer positions (links in description)
Animal Advocacy Africa works to strengthen the capacities of African animal advocacy organizations that are reducing animal suffering by helping them increase funding and effectiveness. They are looking for volunteer roles in communications, research, and fundraising.
Economics Research, US Internship
Mercy For Animals is a leading international nonprofit working to end industrial animal agriculture by constructing a just and sustainable food system. Their paid internship program is a short-term opportunity open to students and entry-level or transitioning applicants.
Global Health & Development
Communications Intern
The Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA) intern will work with staff, students, and faculty across the center to develop multimedia content, disseminate research through social media, monitor press coverage, support website operations, and lead special projects. The ideal candidate will understand the fundamentals of good storytelling and brand identity and possess some experience developing and executing communications products.
Institutional Decision-making
EIP Volunteer
The Effective Institutions Project is seeking volunteers to help improve institutional decision making.
Research Improving Institutional Decision Making
Rapid Effective Action Development Initiative (READI) will offer unpaid research opportunities to collaborate on EA-related research projects over the next year. These opportunities would suit research undergraduates who i) are seeking to gain research skills and credentials and ii) are able to participate in calls on the AEST timezone (team based in Australia; intern role remote).
The Center for Election Science General Volunteer Application
The Centre for Election Science (CES) is seeking motivated candidates from many different skill backgrounds. Whether it's digital design, fundraising, data entry, or otherwise, you can put your passion into action by volunteering to advance our mission for better voting methods!
Extreme Climate Change
Effective Environmentalism Volunteer Organizer
Various positions for Effective Environmentalism, mostly doing tech and organizational work. See this table for currently open positions.
Information security
Cybersecurity Winternship 2022-2023
~ or ~
Vulnerability Research Winternship 2022 - 2023
Trail of Bits offers unique remote, short-term internship opportunities - Winternships. These generally happen over University’s winter break. Interns get paid (~$2500) to work on an exciting project and can still spend time with friends and family.
You must be a student or recently a student
Security Apprenticeship, Blockchain
This is an intensive 3-month program designed to replace the two years of experience typically required of a Trail of Bits engineer; it is not an internship. You will be mentored by one of their senior security engineers, who will share their experience and help you to grow with Trail of Bits. This opportunity is intended for exceptional entry - to mid-level professionals with experience in blockchain programming or auditing.
Miscellaneous Opportunities
Leadership Development
Torch is offering coaching, mentoring and digital learning.
Yonatan Cale is offering coaching on software development.
Community Updates & Global News
Publications
Want to stay up-to-date on all the EA reads? Check out this series by Zoe Williams of Rethink Priorities summarizing posts from the EA Fourm and LessWrong.
Articles & Papers
(Center for the Study of Existential Risk) Catherine Richards and Asaf Teacher published an article in NPJ Science of Food exploring the role that digital twins could play in transforming agricultural production systems.
Legal Priorities Project published two new working papers:
“Value Alignment for Advanced Artificial Judicial Intelligence” by Christoph Winter, Nick Hollman, and David Manheim, forthcoming in the American Philosophical Quarterly.
“Cross-Cultural Perceptions of Rights for Future Generations” by Eric Martínezand Christoph Winter, forthcoming in the Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Jurisprudence.
Brian Kateman on Fast Company: AI could fuel factory farming - or end it
EA Announcements & New Projects
You can sign up to receive monthly updates by subscribing to the EA Organization Updates thread on the EA Forum.
In Case You Missed It
Apart Research has a weekly ML Safety Newsletter (and podcast and YouTube). Check out there latest post for thoughts on potential funding changes, human-AI cooperation, interpretability, and more
New projects
Announcing VIVID - a new organization aspiring to scale effective self-improvement & reflection. They're building an app that helps individuals find the most effective ways to remove internal obstacles.
Org updates and new initiatives
Animal Charity Evaluators has a new Decision-Making Framework in their Tools for Charities.
Faunalytics has also updated their research library with articles on topics including the current state of cellular agriculture research and the outdated reliance on animal data. Faunalytics was also recommended by Giving What We Can in a recent YouTube video.
Probably Good just shared a new path profile on careers in medicine. The profile is primarily geared towards existing doctors and medical students who may not yet be familiar with EA principles.
(Center for the Study of Existential Risk) SJ Beard and Gideon Futerman submitted evidence to the White House Office of Science and Technology’s request for input to a Five-Year Plan for Research on Climate Intervention.
Evergreen Resources
And of course, you can always find more resources on our website.
Getting into EA
Join a Center for Effective Altruism Virtual Program or become a facilitator
Check out the EA Handbook and opportunities for funding
Finding EA Community
Join the EA Gather Town space to connect and co-work with EA's around the world
Find EAs to room with through this spreadsheet and this Slack
Attend EA NYC events or sign up to volunteer
News and updates
Subscribe to the EA Forum Digest
Career planning and 80,000 Hours essentials
The 80000 Hours podcast has two 10 episode compilations to help new (and old) listeners find the most relevant episodes for them:
Effective Altruism: An Introduction, explores the big picture debates within the community and how to set priorities in order to have the greatest impact.
Effective Altruism: Ten Global Problems is designed to help listeners quickly get up to speed on ten pressing problems that the effective altruism community is working to solve.
80000 Hours also has a free 8-week online course on career planning for positive impact.
Community Health
EA NYC’s team is available to you! You can contact Megan Nelson, EA NYC’s Community Health Coordinator, directly over email or anonymously.
The Centre for Effective Altruism’s Community Health Team is also available to you!
Reading Group: 🤔 Moral Uncertainty 🤔
How should we make decisions when we’re uncertain about what we ought, morally, to do?
This month, we are reading William MacAskill, Krister Bykvist, and Toby Ord's work on decision-making in the face of fundamental moral uncertainty. They argue that moral uncertainty is an underexplored terrain and assert that there are distinctive norms by which it is governed, and which depend on the nature of one’s moral beliefs.
You can find the full essay (pdf) for free here.
Make sure to join the #reading-group channel on the EA NYC Slack to discuss throughout the month. Stick around since that's where we decide on the books for future months!
Have a lovely month!
Cheers,
Rocky, Alex, & The EA NYC Team