“I’m an EA who benefitted from rationality” by Julia_Wise🔸
Description
This is my personal take, not an organizational one. Originally written May 2025, revived for Draft Amnesty Week.
When I discovered the beginnings of EA, it felt like coming home. I had finally found a group of people who cared as much as I did about saving lives.
When I discovered rationality not long after, it felt new. The intensity of LessWrong was both offputting and fascinating to me, and I read a lot of the site in the summer of 2011. I had studied sociology and was used to thinking in terms of ethics and emotions, but not in terms of statistics or economics. LessWrongers were picky and disagreeable, but I learned reasoning skills from them.
Before EA even had a name, LessWrong was one of the best places to talk about ideas now associated with EA. My first post in 2011 was about what would [...]
---
First published:
October 13th, 2025
---
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
United States
