“I’m an EA who benefitted from rationality” by Julia_Wise🔸

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 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Cd6pct5CADkDjwhoz/i-m-an-ea-who-benefitted-from-rationality --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.