2021 was the third year that we at Charity Entrepreneurship held our annual Incubation Program. Interest in the program was very high, with over 2000 applications submitted. 27 participants representing 16 countries graduated from the 2-month intensive training program, including teams that will start new organizations, individuals that are being hired by high-impact organizations, regional groups that will conduct research under our mentorship, and a foundation that will focus on providing grants to high-impact interventions.

We are delighted to announce the launch of five new charities and want to thank our funders: EA Funds, Open Philanthropy, and the CE Seed Network (a group of high-impact professionals) for their generous donations, which totaled to $537,000 in grants offered to the charities this year.

The 2021 incubated charities are:

Training For Good - delivering a range of training programs to fill important EA capability gaps and raise the utilization rate of EA talent

High Impact Professionals - enabling working professionals to have the biggest positive impact possible

Shrimp Welfare Project - improving the lives of hundreds of millions of farmed shrimp in Southeast Asia

Healthier Hens - improving the welfare of farmed egg-laying hens via a cost-effective intervention focused on feed fortification

Center for Alcohol Policy Solutions - saving lives and promoting well-being through alcohol taxation

TRAINING FOR GOOD

Co-founders: Cillian Crosson, Jan-Willem van Putten, Steve Thompson

Website: trainingforgood.com

Contact: [email protected]

CE Incubation Grant: $175,000

Description of the intervention:

Training for Good (TFG) will upskill people to tackle the most pressing global problems. TFG will deliver a range of training programs to help solve skill bottlenecks in EA cause areas and raise the rate of talent utilization within the EA movement.

Background of the intervention:

Talent utilization: There are over 6,000 committed EAs, the majority of whom want to pursue impactful careers. Yet many are struggling to find concrete opportunities to implement EA in their lives. TFG aims to raise the rate of talent utilization within the EA movement by creating training programs that enable large numbers of people to enter impactful careers.

Skill bottlenecks: Funding for many EA cause areas has grown faster than the number of people interested in them. This has led to a “funding overhang” and an increase in certain skill bottlenecks. TFG aims to solve these skill bottlenecks in EA cause areas by developing targeted programs that fill current skill gaps and advance the capabilities needed to deploy funds effectively in the future.

Near-term plans:

TFG intends to experiment with different approaches to training before choosing where to narrow their focus. They will pilot the following four training programs within year one:

Salary Negotiation for Earning-to-Givers: In November 2021, TFG is launching a training program to help E2Gers maximize their donation potential. If you are interested in participating, please complete this application form by midnight on 7th November.

Effective Careers in the Civil Service: In January 2022, TFG will launch a training program for aspiring policymakers. If you are a current or aspiring policymaker within Europe (including UK and other non-EU countries), please complete this needs survey to help us identify the most important skill gaps.

EA for Experienced Professionals: Around May 2022, TFG will host a week-long retreat, training corporate executives with 10+ years experience in basic EA concepts and connecting them to the EA movement to fill management skill gaps in key EA organizations.

Grantmaking for Impact: Around July 2022, TFG will run a training program for aspiring EA grantmakers to help solve the grantmaker bottleneck within the EA movement.

TFG will assess whether training can serve as an effective solution to the skill bottlenecks facing EA. Given the potential bene...

2021 was the third year that we at Charity Entrepreneurship held our annual Incubation Program. Interest in the program was very high, with over 2000 applications submitted. 27 participants representing 16 countries graduated from the 2-month intensive training program, including teams that will start new organizations, individuals that are being hired by high-impact organizations, regional groups that will conduct research under our mentorship, and a foundation that will focus on providing grants to high-impact interventions.

We are delighted to announce the launch of five new charities and want to thank our funders: EA Funds, Open Philanthropy, and the CE Seed Network (a group of high-impact professionals) for their generous donations, which totaled to $537,000 in grants offered to the charities this year.

The 2021 incubated charities are:

Training For Good - delivering a range of training programs to fill important EA capability gaps and raise the utilization rate of EA talent

High Impact Professionals - enabling working professionals to have the biggest positive impact possible

Shrimp Welfare Project - improving the lives of hundreds of millions of farmed shrimp in Southeast Asia

Healthier Hens - improving the welfare of farmed egg-laying hens via a cost-effective intervention focused on feed fortification

Center for Alcohol Policy Solutions - saving lives and promoting well-being through alcohol taxation

TRAINING FOR GOOD

Co-founders: Cillian Crosson, Jan-Willem van Putten, Steve Thompson

Website: trainingforgood.com

Contact: [email protected]

CE Incubation Grant: $175,000

Description of the intervention:

Training for Good (TFG) will upskill people to tackle the most pressing global problems. TFG will deliver a range of training programs to help solve skill bottlenecks in EA cause areas and raise the rate of talent utilization within the EA movement.

Background of the intervention:

Talent utilization: There are over 6,000 committed EAs, the majority of whom want to pursue impactful careers. Yet many are struggling to find concrete opportunities to implement EA in their lives. TFG aims to raise the rate of talent utilization within the EA movement by creating training programs that enable large numbers of people to enter impactful careers.

Skill bottlenecks: Funding for many EA cause areas has grown faster than the number of people interested in them. This has led to a “funding overhang” and an increase in certain skill bottlenecks. TFG aims to solve these skill bottlenecks in EA cause areas by developing targeted programs that fill current skill gaps and advance the capabilities needed to deploy funds effectively in the future.

Near-term plans:

TFG intends to experiment with different approaches to training before choosing where to narrow their focus. They will pilot the following four training programs within year one:

Salary Negotiation for Earning-to-Givers: In November 2021, TFG is launching a training program to help E2Gers maximize their donation potential. If you are interested in participating, please complete this application form by midnight on 7th November.

Effective Careers in the Civil Service: In January 2022, TFG will launch a training program for aspiring policymakers. If you are a current or aspiring policymaker within Europe (including UK and other non-EU countries), please complete this needs survey to help us identify the most important skill gaps.

EA for Experienced Professionals: Around May 2022, TFG will host a week-long retreat, training corporate executives with 10+ years experience in basic EA concepts and connecting them to the EA movement to fill management skill gaps in key EA organizations.

Grantmaking for Impact: Around July 2022, TFG will run a training program for aspiring EA grantmakers to help solve the grantmaker bottleneck within the EA movement.

TFG will assess whether training can serve as an effective solution to the skill bottlenecks facing EA. Given the potential bene...

Nobody has ever fought a war over the oxygen in the air because there's plenty of oxygen to go around. We fight over things that are scarce and valuable. Historically, most wars have been fought over land and people. If you win you get to force your subjects to collect raw materials from the land. Sometimes these raw materials are mineral resources. Historically, most slaves have been forced to cultivate food.

It's hard to comprehend how important food staples used to be. In Edo Japan, wealth was measured in koku (石). One koku is (in theory) enough rice to feed one man for one year. The amount of koku a daimyo controlled was basically how many people he owned because a region's food staple production determined its carrying capacity and the human population grew until it hit carrying capacity. In other words, we bred until we were on the edge of starving to death. Most wars have ultimately been fought over land because land determines food production and food production was a matter of life and death.

My grandfather, who grew up in Taiwan before the green revolution, was too poor to afford rice. He ate sweet potatoes instead.

The green revolution of the 1950s and the 1960s increased food production faster than our population growth. On the Chinese version of TikTok there's a video of a guy eating a bowl of white rice with a spoonful of soy sauce. The comments are all of people feeling sorry for him. We have so much food these days that eating nothing but rice makes you surprisingly poor even by Chinese standards.

World War II ended in 1945—right before the green revolution. There has been no direct war between major world powers between then and now. I don't think this is a coincidence. Wars are usually about land and land is usually about food production and food production skyrocketed in the decades after World War II. (Birth control became widely adopted around the same time too.)

We still have small wars. We fight over oil and ideologies. But cars and capitalism aren't as important as food production. Fighting wars over food is stupid when food is cheap. Less fighting over food means less fighting overall. Countries being at peace with each other set the conditions for us to build more complex, interdependent trade networks. I think the idea that we're all human beings, regardless of our race, religion, sex and country of origin gained increasing power because cooperation is a winning strategy when there is enough to go around.

I predict that if per capita food production returns to the levels of 1914 then so will humankind's ethics.

Nobody has ever fought a war over the oxygen in the air because there's plenty of oxygen to go around. We fight over things that are scarce and valuable. Historically, most wars have been fought over land and people. If you win you get to force your subjects to collect raw materials from the land. Sometimes these raw materials are mineral resources. Historically, most slaves have been forced to cultivate food.

It's hard to comprehend how important food staples used to be. In Edo Japan, wealth was measured in koku (石). One koku is (in theory) enough rice to feed one man for one year. The amount of koku a daimyo controlled was basically how many people he owned because a region's food staple production determined its carrying capacity and the human population grew until it hit carrying capacity. In other words, we bred until we were on the edge of starving to death. Most wars have ultimately been fought over land because land determines food production and food production was a matter of life and death.

My grandfather, who grew up in Taiwan before the green revolution, was too poor to afford rice. He ate sweet potatoes instead.

The green revolution of the 1950s and the 1960s increased food production faster than our population growth. On the Chinese version of TikTok there's a video of a guy eating a bowl of white rice with a spoonful of soy sauce. The comments are all of people feeling sorry for him. We have so much food these days that eating nothing but rice makes you surprisingly poor even by Chinese standards.

World War II ended in 1945—right before the green revolution. There has been no direct war between major world powers between then and now. I don't think this is a coincidence. Wars are usually about land and land is usually about food production and food production skyrocketed in the decades after World War II. (Birth control became widely adopted around the same time too.)

We still have small wars. We fight over oil and ideologies. But cars and capitalism aren't as important as food production. Fighting wars over food is stupid when food is cheap. Less fighting over food means less fighting overall. Countries being at peace with each other set the conditions for us to build more complex, interdependent trade networks. I think the idea that we're all human beings, regardless of our race, religion, sex and country of origin gained increasing power because cooperation is a winning strategy when there is enough to go around.

I predict that if per capita food production returns to the levels of 1914 then so will humankind's ethics.

Summary

69% of respondents to the EA survey currently live in the same set of five high-income, western countries (the US, the UK, Germany, Australia, and Canada) that were most common in previous years.

There are 21 countries with 10 or more respondents - 17 of which are in North America, Europe, or Australasia. 92% of our respondents came from these countries.

The percentage of respondents outside the top 5 countries has grown in recent years, from 22% in 2018, to 26% in 2019 and 31% in 2020.

There are fewer EAs from the UK among those who joined EA more recently (in contrast to steady or growing numbers elsewhere).

The largest numbers of the most highly engaged EAs come from the US (39%), followed by Europe (29%) and then the UK (21%) and the rest of the world (14%).

Overall satisfaction with the EA community is lower in the US and UK than in other regions and countries.

Overview

Introduction

In this post, we examine where EAs are located and how the number of EAs in different areas is increasing or decreasing. We also explore differences in EAs across regional, country, and city divides, such as cause preferences, demographics, engagement, and career paths. All country-level analysis includes only countries with 30 or more responses to the survey. We include in the city analysis only the top eight EA hubs, as determined by the number of survey responses. (Note that the survey only asked where respondents currently reside but not their citizenship or country of birth.)

Global Distribution of EAs

As in previous years, the EA community appears to mainly live in North America and Europe. In fact, top five countries EAs report living in have remained unchanged since the 2015 EA Survey. These are the US (39%), the UK (14%), Germany (7%), Australia (5%), and Canada (4%).

The proportion of EAs living outside of the top five has continued to grow, however, now standing at 31%, up from 26% in 2019 and 22% in 2018. In total, there were responses from 61 different countries, 21 of which had at least 10 responses.

EAs in major cities

The most commonly reported cities in which EAs live are the San Francisco Bay Area (6.3%), London (5.6%), and New York City (4.9%). Of the top ten cities with the most EAs, seven are in the US, two in the UK, and one in Australia. Hong Kong and Singapore are the only cities with 10+ responses which are not in North America, Europe, or Australasia.

In the next figure we highlight only those cities with 10 or more responses for easier comparison.

EA growth in different regions

While those EAs who joined the EA movement in the earliest years primarily live in the US and UK (85-91% in the earliest cohorts), later cohorts contain much larger percentages from other parts of the world (among those that reported joining in 2017 or later, 50% or more live from outside of the US and UK).

As a reminder, this data is referencing where the respondent lives and does not necessarily indicate their nationality or the location they were living in when they first heard about EA. These trends could also, in part, be explained by EAs from other parts of the world later moving to the US and UK (future survey questions could address this).

Because this analysis looks at the self-reported cohorts of people in the 2020 EA Survey, changes across cohorts could, in theory, also be explained by differential dropout (i.e. if people from the US or UK were more likely to remain in the movement than those from other regions) even if similar shares of EAs came from each region across time. We return to this below and also plan to analyze this in greater detail in a future post.

In terms of raw numbers, rather than percentages, while the number of EAs joining in the US, mainland Europe, and the rest of the world appear either steady or increasing in more recent cohorts, numbers coming from the UK appear to have declined since peaking in 2018.

In the graph below we plot the percentage of EAs reporting coming from the US/UK, who reported ...

Summary

69% of respondents to the EA survey currently live in the same set of five high-income, western countries (the US, the UK, Germany, Australia, and Canada) that were most common in previous years.

There are 21 countries with 10 or more respondents - 17 of which are in North America, Europe, or Australasia. 92% of our respondents came from these countries.

The percentage of respondents outside the top 5 countries has grown in recent years, from 22% in 2018, to 26% in 2019 and 31% in 2020.

There are fewer EAs from the UK among those who joined EA more recently (in contrast to steady or growing numbers elsewhere).

The largest numbers of the most highly engaged EAs come from the US (39%), followed by Europe (29%) and then the UK (21%) and the rest of the world (14%).

Overall satisfaction with the EA community is lower in the US and UK than in other regions and countries.

Overview

Introduction

In this post, we examine where EAs are located and how the number of EAs in different areas is increasing or decreasing. We also explore differences in EAs across regional, country, and city divides, such as cause preferences, demographics, engagement, and career paths. All country-level analysis includes only countries with 30 or more responses to the survey. We include in the city analysis only the top eight EA hubs, as determined by the number of survey responses. (Note that the survey only asked where respondents currently reside but not their citizenship or country of birth.)

Global Distribution of EAs

As in previous years, the EA community appears to mainly live in North America and Europe. In fact, top five countries EAs report living in have remained unchanged since the 2015 EA Survey. These are the US (39%), the UK (14%), Germany (7%), Australia (5%), and Canada (4%).

The proportion of EAs living outside of the top five has continued to grow, however, now standing at 31%, up from 26% in 2019 and 22% in 2018. In total, there were responses from 61 different countries, 21 of which had at least 10 responses.

EAs in major cities

The most commonly reported cities in which EAs live are the San Francisco Bay Area (6.3%), London (5.6%), and New York City (4.9%). Of the top ten cities with the most EAs, seven are in the US, two in the UK, and one in Australia. Hong Kong and Singapore are the only cities with 10+ responses which are not in North America, Europe, or Australasia.

In the next figure we highlight only those cities with 10 or more responses for easier comparison.

EA growth in different regions

While those EAs who joined the EA movement in the earliest years primarily live in the US and UK (85-91% in the earliest cohorts), later cohorts contain much larger percentages from other parts of the world (among those that reported joining in 2017 or later, 50% or more live from outside of the US and UK).

As a reminder, this data is referencing where the respondent lives and does not necessarily indicate their nationality or the location they were living in when they first heard about EA. These trends could also, in part, be explained by EAs from other parts of the world later moving to the US and UK (future survey questions could address this).

Because this analysis looks at the self-reported cohorts of people in the 2020 EA Survey, changes across cohorts could, in theory, also be explained by differential dropout (i.e. if people from the US or UK were more likely to remain in the movement than those from other regions) even if similar shares of EAs came from each region across time. We return to this below and also plan to analyze this in greater detail in a future post.

In terms of raw numbers, rather than percentages, while the number of EAs joining in the US, mainland Europe, and the rest of the world appear either steady or increasing in more recent cohorts, numbers coming from the UK appear to have declined since peaking in 2018.

In the graph below we plot the percentage of EAs reporting coming from the US/UK, who reported ...

Shore

The Shore is an inhospitable wasteland. Algae is available, but it's not very nitrutious. Coconuts offer an even worse calories-to-digestion ratio.

No coconut eaters got established in the Human Garbage Dump, which means no coconut eaters got established in the River or Shore instead. The only available food is algae. The Shore is basically a small bit of Ocean biome with ⅒ of the algae. The algae-eating winner of our Ocean competition has zero speed so it cannot migrate to the Shore.

To top all of it off, predators migrate in from both sea and land.

Soonbegons migrate from time to time to eat the Detritus. Otherwise, the Shore is mostly a graveyard.

Winners?

Soonbegons (kind of) by Martin Randall.

Grassland

The grassland has lots of grass and even more seeds.

The Grassland took 500 turns to establish an equilibrium.

Generations 1-500

Generations 500-2000

The grassland establishes an equilibrium. The only native species left is the Hopsplitter.

You can't see it but there's a single Venomoth on the bottom of the graph.

Temperate Forest

The temperate forest has lots of leaves and significant seeds.

Generations 1-200

The population crows, crashes, and then grows again.

Generations 200-2000

The system achieves stability stable (except for a random walk among equals).

None of our final species have venom or antivenom.

An honorable mention goes to the N054J's Forest Tribble2 which is identical to the Cutiefly and the Forest Tribble1.

Rainforest

The Rainforest has lots of leaves and grass but few seeds.

Generations 0-1000

It takes 1000 generations to establish an introduction.

Generations 1000-9000

The population oscillates from there. A small number of Snarks and Brown Bears are not visible.

Winners

Shore

The Shore is an inhospitable wasteland. Algae is available, but it's not very nitrutious. Coconuts offer an even worse calories-to-digestion ratio.

No coconut eaters got established in the Human Garbage Dump, which means no coconut eaters got established in the River or Shore instead. The only available food is algae. The Shore is basically a small bit of Ocean biome with ⅒ of the algae. The algae-eating winner of our Ocean competition has zero speed so it cannot migrate to the Shore.

To top all of it off, predators migrate in from both sea and land.

Soonbegons migrate from time to time to eat the Detritus. Otherwise, the Shore is mostly a graveyard.

Winners?

Soonbegons (kind of) by Martin Randall.

Grassland

The grassland has lots of grass and even more seeds.

The Grassland took 500 turns to establish an equilibrium.

Generations 1-500

Generations 500-2000

The grassland establishes an equilibrium. The only native species left is the Hopsplitter.

You can't see it but there's a single Venomoth on the bottom of the graph.

Temperate Forest

The temperate forest has lots of leaves and significant seeds.

Generations 1-200

The population crows, crashes, and then grows again.

Generations 200-2000

The system achieves stability stable (except for a random walk among equals).

None of our final species have venom or antivenom.

An honorable mention goes to the N054J's Forest Tribble2 which is identical to the Cutiefly and the Forest Tribble1.

Rainforest

The Rainforest has lots of leaves and grass but few seeds.

Generations 0-1000

It takes 1000 generations to establish an introduction.

Generations 1000-9000

The population oscillates from there. A small number of Snarks and Brown Bears are not visible.

Winners

Here is an approximate transcript of a conversation I had with a friend, who is an Orthodox Jew.

Transcript

ME: Imagine the US government announced a Manhattan project to reverse aging and end death forever. It's estimated this project will cost 5% of GDP. There's no guarantees it will be successful, or if successful how long it will take, but the majority of domain experts agree that 50 years is a pretty good median estimate.

Suddenly all the people between the ages of 20 and 50, who currently accept their death as inevitable, will do a quick bit of mental arithmetic and realize that 50 years is a bit too close for comfort. There'd be calls to spend 10% of GDP and get it done in 25 years, or even 50% of GDP and get it done in 5 years! I'm not saying that either of those strategies would work, but they highlight how all of a sudden a light bulb will go off in peoples minds, and people would be frantically trying to escape death and aging.

So if we know that once we realize there's a possibility to escape death we will be desperate to clutch at it, and right now there's at least some chance that such a Manhattan project could be feasible, we should push for this Manhattan project right away. Let's not wait till the government announces it and we realize how much we always wanted it!

FRIEND: I'm not sure I would be frantic to support such a project - in fact I'd probably oppose it. I believe it would fail anyway since God wants people to die.

ME: But God doesn't inherently want people to die - (according to Orthodox Judaism) before the fall from Eden people were meant to live forever, and people only die as a punishment for Adam and Eve's sin. And in the time of the Messiah, people will live forever.

FRIEND: Yep, but God hasn't bought the Messiah yet.

ME: Do you believe that the Messiah is meant to be bought by people, or by God?

FRIEND: I've only ever heard that people are meant to bring the Messiah through creating world peace, and building the State of Israel. It's always been clear that it's God that's meant to end death.

ME: Well obviously people have always thought that, since it seemed that ending death would be impossible for humanity to achieve. I assume everyone assumed the in-gathering of exiles would be miraculous before Zionism and the creation of the state of Israel. But now that it finally might be within Humanity's grasp, wouldn't it make most sense, and be most consistent to say that the Messianic times as a whole, including world peace and an end to death and disease, are all meant to be bought about by human effort?

FRIEND: That's actually a really beautiful vision! I really like that idea!

Thoughts

When you try to persuade someone of X, it can sometimes seem like you reach an impasse when it turns out that they have fundamentally different beliefs and values to you.

There's often a temptation to try and convince them that their fundamental beliefs are incorrect, so that you can build on that basis, and reach the conclusion you were trying to.

That almost always fails, and so instead you get angry. "Stupid person! How could they possibly think Y? And it's not just a harmless belief - as a result of Y they don't believe X, and that's going to doom us all!"

Needless to say that's not helpful either.

Far more effective to enter the mindset of the other person, and see if X could still make sense according to them. So long as you treat their views with respect, it's often possible to unite people with very different fundamental beliefs with a common cause.

In this conversation I didn't try to dissuade my friend of their religious philosophy. Instead I showed how the idea of fighting death could slot right into it. And it worked a treat!

Note that I wasn't deceiving them by pretending to agree with their religious philosophy - they are perfectly aware of my differences of opinion. But they appreciated the effort to go with what they believed in rather than fighting it. And it ended up bringing us closer together...

Here is an approximate transcript of a conversation I had with a friend, who is an Orthodox Jew.

Transcript

ME: Imagine the US government announced a Manhattan project to reverse aging and end death forever. It's estimated this project will cost 5% of GDP. There's no guarantees it will be successful, or if successful how long it will take, but the majority of domain experts agree that 50 years is a pretty good median estimate.

Suddenly all the people between the ages of 20 and 50, who currently accept their death as inevitable, will do a quick bit of mental arithmetic and realize that 50 years is a bit too close for comfort. There'd be calls to spend 10% of GDP and get it done in 25 years, or even 50% of GDP and get it done in 5 years! I'm not saying that either of those strategies would work, but they highlight how all of a sudden a light bulb will go off in peoples minds, and people would be frantically trying to escape death and aging.

So if we know that once we realize there's a possibility to escape death we will be desperate to clutch at it, and right now there's at least some chance that such a Manhattan project could be feasible, we should push for this Manhattan project right away. Let's not wait till the government announces it and we realize how much we always wanted it!

FRIEND: I'm not sure I would be frantic to support such a project - in fact I'd probably oppose it. I believe it would fail anyway since God wants people to die.

ME: But God doesn't inherently want people to die - (according to Orthodox Judaism) before the fall from Eden people were meant to live forever, and people only die as a punishment for Adam and Eve's sin. And in the time of the Messiah, people will live forever.

FRIEND: Yep, but God hasn't bought the Messiah yet.

ME: Do you believe that the Messiah is meant to be bought by people, or by God?

FRIEND: I've only ever heard that people are meant to bring the Messiah through creating world peace, and building the State of Israel. It's always been clear that it's God that's meant to end death.

ME: Well obviously people have always thought that, since it seemed that ending death would be impossible for humanity to achieve. I assume everyone assumed the in-gathering of exiles would be miraculous before Zionism and the creation of the state of Israel. But now that it finally might be within Humanity's grasp, wouldn't it make most sense, and be most consistent to say that the Messianic times as a whole, including world peace and an end to death and disease, are all meant to be bought about by human effort?

FRIEND: That's actually a really beautiful vision! I really like that idea!

Thoughts

When you try to persuade someone of X, it can sometimes seem like you reach an impasse when it turns out that they have fundamentally different beliefs and values to you.

There's often a temptation to try and convince them that their fundamental beliefs are incorrect, so that you can build on that basis, and reach the conclusion you were trying to.

That almost always fails, and so instead you get angry. "Stupid person! How could they possibly think Y? And it's not just a harmless belief - as a result of Y they don't believe X, and that's going to doom us all!"

Needless to say that's not helpful either.

Far more effective to enter the mindset of the other person, and see if X could still make sense according to them. So long as you treat their views with respect, it's often possible to unite people with very different fundamental beliefs with a common cause.

In this conversation I didn't try to dissuade my friend of their religious philosophy. Instead I showed how the idea of fighting death could slot right into it. And it worked a treat!

Note that I wasn't deceiving them by pretending to agree with their religious philosophy - they are perfectly aware of my differences of opinion. But they appreciated the effort to go with what they believed in rather than fighting it. And it ended up bringing us closer together...