As I navigated the Effective Altruism webpage, the first thing that I noticed was that the “Map of Effective Altruism Concepts” section. As I read through it, doctrine such as “Consumption Decisions” and “Funding Projects” caught my eye. This site seems like an outline of how they think that people should live their lives. I saw a lot of text about suggestions for charities to donate to, and the site seems very complex in the sense that there are so many facets of information that they have listed. The site also promoted the idea that animals are sentient, which is an idea that I find… Interesting.
I also had a chance to skim through “Is Art a Waste of Time?” again, and I picked out a few new ideas that I hadn’t spotted before. The first asked a pointed question directed at artists. “Would you rather contribute to the culture of rich societies, than work to reduce the suffering of the poor, or of future generations?” Southan seems to ask this question to pull artists back to reality, and have them realize that their artwork isn’t helping the world’s diseases, hunger, or other prevalent issues.
The second selection that I noticed a few more ideas from was the part where Southan states “EA’s want to reduce suffering and increase lifespan and happiness.” Father down the page, Southan again belittles artists by saying that the importance of their work will never compare to say, deforming 1,000 children.
-JMR
Max,
Your take on the EA website is very interesting. I’m curious if it influenced the way you thought about Southan’s essay. Thank you for including your annotations. Continue to push yourself to write in those margins. It’s a tried and true process and can lead to real discovery and retention.
You also did not include a hyperlink to a website that you used to “gloss the text.” Did you happen to look up any new terms?
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