Meet at the Davenport Branch of the Toronto Public Library (1246 Shaw St) at 1:50 pm. We shall depart for my place at 2:00 pm sharp, so try not to be late.

If you've been around a few times and know the address, feel free to go directly to my house for 2pm.

Vegan snacks provided.

If you think you are >75% likely to come, please RSVP. If you haven't RSVPed but you would still like to come day-of, please come anyways!

Discussion Topic

Hi! Welcome to Waterline, a new series of rationalist and EA events in Toronto. Events are biweekly, and are designed to focus on a broader and more principles-first set of EA topics compared to Trajectory Labs' excellent AI safety events.

In more recent years, EA has been increasingly focused on longtermism and AI risk, but that wasn't the community I joined way back in the mid-2010s.

In our inaugural meeting, let's dig into some ancient posts from the beginnings of the movement, and talk shop about what changed.

Readings

Please complete these before the meetup and come prepared to discuss them.

• Effective Altruism is a Question (not an ideology) (Helen, 2014)
• We are in triage every second of every day (Holly Elmore, 2016)

Optional:

Please read as many of these as you like.

• I’m Not An Effective Altruist Because I Prefer… (Ozy, 2016)
• what it means to disagree with effective altruism (theunitofcaring, 2015)^[1]
• A Series of Unprincipled Exceptions (Scott Alexander, 2015)
• On Caring (Nate Soares, 2014)
• My disagreements with CEA’s approach to stewarding EA (Harri Besceli, 2026)

Discussion Questions

These should be taken as starting points for guiding discussion, rather than an agenda.

1. When did you discover effective altruism?
2. How involved are you with effective altruism? Do you identify as an effective altruist? Why or why not?
3. How involved are you in effective altruism? Would you like to be more or less involved?
4. Which cause areas do you care about?
5. Are there cause areas that you care about, that are not considered "typical" EA cause areas?
6. Which EA-flavoured writers and thinkers have shaped your own thinking the most?
7. If you've been in the community for a while, what changes have you observed over the years? How do you feel about the changes?
8. What's one thing you'd change about EA?

1. ^{^}

   theunitofcaring has made her tumblr blog private so I'm linking to a mirror on a public blog.