tobyordoxford@tobyordoxford1d ago

Effective altruism is not downstream of FHI or Overcoming Bias, or Extropians. I started thinking about it in Oxford in 2005 and did a lot of the early work on what GWWC would become in 2006. I commented about it on Overcoming Bias around 1 May 2006, which is the first time it connected to Carl Shulman and other US-based rationalists (and would explain his late 2006 post about efficient charity). In fact the discussions which followed from that comment led to rationalists connecting with GiveWell too. There was some mixing between rationalists and proto-EAs in the early years from 2006-2012, but not much. At that point it was very much a Bay Area vs Oxford thing with only a few people travelling between them. I can see why it is hard to work out the chronology as it took a while to launch GWWC (I was also doing my PhD at the time). By the time I met Will in early 2009, I cared deeply about both global poverty and existential risk, though I had decided GWWC should focus on the former (it was changed to be cause-neutral several years later). My awareness of existential risk as a potentially important cause area came from Nick Bostrom, who I first met in late 2003, but none of the central ideas behind EA came from Nick.