Betterment and Praxis

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The community for cool things you've done out in the real world, or are doing in the real world!

Covers things like volunteer work, community gardens, political activism, organizing clubs and communities in your public circles, and all the information surrounding how to do that stuff. Also covers self-help and betterment, because to help your community it helps to help yourself!

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

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So like, what do we do? Political burnout. (beehaw.org)

submitted 1 year ago by EthicalAI@beehaw.org to c/betterment@beehaw.org

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I think I’m having a bit of an autistic burnout moment over politics. I’m moving a lot more left over the years but just don’t feel like I can do anything. I have 2 years left on a work contract and it would be killer to lose that job, but also I want to help people in ways where quitting might be the best option. I want to learn about politics and history more, but I also don’t want to stress about it because I don’t feel like it changes things that much. Id like a community that talks about these feelings and I feel like this should be that community for me. Let’s just chat about it.

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[–] beerd@beehaw.org 0 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I might be ignorant on this, but i would assume that EA is most efficient/effective by definition ( Effective altruism is a philosophical and social movement that advocates "using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible, and taking action on that basis" ). Of course how some may implement it is an other question. What flaws are you thinking of?

[–] sydneybrokeit@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

There's a portion of the EA movement that uses their beliefs to justify whatever it takes to make as much money as possible so they can donate more. SBF was in this camp, for example.

It's modern-day secular indulgences for a lot of people -- it doesn't matter how much harm you've really done, so long as you are effectively helping people.

There is also a lot of issue with how they figure out what's most effective.

[–] beerd@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I guess it could be used that way, but moral licensing can occur with any form of good deed. For the average person EA wont mean that they will use slave labor in their oil rigs to make money for feeding children in Africa, just that their limited resources can still make a significant difference. I agree however that its sometimes hard to figure out whats most effective ( although we can make educated estimations ).

[–] sydneybrokeit@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I realize that these are extremes of it, but when the faces of the movement are overwhelmingly awful people, it's a problem.

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