Ajeya Cotra

but actually are not that interested in the projects or necessarily even the effort of helping people.

So people kind of sample the aspects that they like.

But I mean, for many of the people who, staff who work in organizations that have other people who would say, I'm really into effective altruism, it's much more pragmatic, I would say.

So you wrote in your notes that, at least from your personal point of view, EA wasn't enough like a religion or it wasn't as much like a religion as you might personally have liked.

Explain that.

Yeah.

It sounds like you think, while it might have been more appealing to you, it's not actually necessarily better for things to go in that direction.

I mean, I guess for me personally, I kind of like the more professional community limited aspect of it because you kind of just want to be able to go home and not have to think about this stuff.

Yeah.

all the time or haven't necessarily.

Yeah.

I got, I got,

I mean, I guess people have a range of views, but I guess it's clear why many people have not embraced that or have been keen for the more, let's have a more strong division between this sort of thing, which can be very stressful.

you wonder there's probably an age thing here a little bit as well I guess I feel like when I was younger I noticed that you know the older people were less interested in this in this aspect of it and I guess like now I'm in the kind of older class and I'm like well I have my family to like provide nourishment and it's like that's like absorbing a lot of time and energy that I kind of don't have for attending church or whatever else it might be do you I mean that's kind of interesting is like do you feel like you had some sort of spiritual hole that was filled specifically by having a child or was it were you always just like not that interested in this

Yeah, I mean, I think of myself as a deeply unspiritual person.

So I think like that wasn't really a niche that I needed to scratch.

I guess earlier on, I was maybe more interested in the social scene to like, you know, make good friends and meet people.

I guess like having made more friends who I think of as like-minded and, you know, having a lot of common interests with, that's kind of not as interesting either anymore.

Yeah.

I've already got my friends and now I'm just going to ride it out.