Original post: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/RZ4cWxEkTsCqGgfut/how-to-run-a-high-energy-reading-group

Narration by Garrett Baker

Editing by Athenae Galea

Why are reading groups and journal clubs bad so often?

I think there are two reasons: boring readings and low-energy discussions. This post is about how to avoid those pitfalls.

I have participated in (and organized) some really bad reading  groups. This is a shame, because I love a good reading group. They cause  me to read more things and read them more carefully. A great group  discussion will give me way more than I’d get just by taking notes on a  reading.

This is what a bad reading group looks like: six people gather around  a table. Two kind of skimmed the reading, and two didn’t read it at  all. No one knows quite what to talk about. Someone ventures a, “so,  what surprised you about the paper?” Another person flips through their  notes, scanning for a possible answer. Most people stay quiet. No one  leaves the table feeling excited about the reading or about being a part  of the group.

This is avoidable, but you need to find interesting and valuable  readings and you need to structure your group to encourage high-energy  discussions.

Original post: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ntLmCbHE2XKhfbzaX/how-much-does-performance-differ-between-people

Narration by Liam Nolan

Audio editing by Garrett Baker

Some people seem to achieve orders of magnitudes more than others in  the same job. For instance, among companies funded by Y Combinator the  top 0.5% account for more than ⅔ of the total market value; and among  successful bestseller authors, the top 1% stay on the New York Times  bestseller list more than 25 times longer than the median author in that  group.

This is a striking and often unappreciated fact, but  raises many questions. How many jobs have these huge differences in  achievements? More importantly, why can achievements differ so  much, and can we identify future top performers in advance? Are some  people much more talented? Have they spent more time practicing key  skills? Did they have more supportive environments, or start with more  resources? Or did the top performers just get lucky?

More  precisely, when recruiting, for instance, we’d want to know the  following: when predicting the future performance of different people in  a given job, what does the distribution of predicted (‘ex-ante’) performance look like?

Original post: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/2BEecjksNZNHQmdyM/don-t-be-bycatch

It's a common story. Someone who's passionate about EA principles,  but has little in the way of resources, tries and fails to do EA things.  They write blog posts, and nothing happens. They apply to jobs, and  nothing happens. They do research, and don't get that grant. Reading  articles no longer feels exciting, but like a chore, or worse: a  reminder of their own inadequacy. Anybody who comes to this place, I  heartily sympathize, and encourage them to disentangle themselves from  this painful situation any way they can.

Why does this happen? Well, EA has two targets.

I  won't claim what weight this community and its institutions give to (1)  vs. (2). But when we set out to catch big fish, we risk turning the  little fish into bycatch. The technical term for this is churn.

Part  of the issue is the planner's fallacy. When we're setting out, we  underestimate how long and costly it will be to achieve an impact, and  overestimate what we'll accomplish. The higher above average you aim  for, the more likely you are to fall short.

And another part is  expectation-setting. If the expectation right from the get-go is that EA  is about quickly achieving big impact, almost everyone will fail, and  think they're just not cut out for it. I wish we had a holiday that was  the opposite of Petrov Day, where we honored somebody who went a little  bit out of their comfort zone to try and be helpful in a small and  simple way. Or whose altruistic endeavor was passionate, costly, yet  ineffective, and who tried it anyway, changed their mind, and valued it  as a learning experience.

Original post: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/TMCWXTayji7gvRK9p/is-democracy-a-fad

This cross-post from my personal blog explains why I think democracy will probably recede within the next several centuries, supposing people are still around.

The key points are that: (1) Up until the past couple centuries,  nearly all states have been dictatorships. (2) There are many examples  of system-wide social trends, including the rise of democracy in Ancient  Greece, that have lasted for a couple centuries and then been reversed.  (3) If certain popular theories about democratization are right, then  widespread automation would negate recent economic changes that have  allowed democracy to flourish.

This prediction might have some implications for what people who  are trying to improve the future should do today (although I'm not sure  what these implications are). It might also have some implications for  how we should imagine the future more broadly. For example, it might  give us stronger reasons to doubt that future generations will take inclusive approaches to any consequential decisions they face.