Here’s a week-by-week breakdown of what you'll discuss:
Intro to EA Fellowship
The Fellowship program was built to equip students with the knowledge to do good in the world more effectively and the tools to think critically about their career ambitions. By the end of the fellowship, participants have access to in-depth coaching, career advice/connections, and mentored research and project groups.
Each program lasts 7 weeks, and is built around weekly 1-hour discussions with 3-5 other Fellows in which you’ll talk freely about these ideas. The total time commitment is 2 hours per week for 7 weeks.
Week 1: The Effectiveness Mindset
Over the course of Week 1 and 2, we aim to introduce you to the core principles of Effective Altruism. This week we’ll investigate what opportunities to do good we have available to us, come to terms with the tradeoffs we face in our altruistic efforts, and explore tools that can help us find unusually high impact opportunities. You'll also get to know each other and your facilitator!
Week 2: Differences in Impact
In Week 2 we continue to explore the core principles of Effective Altruism. We focus on giving you tools to quantify and evaluate how much good an intervention can achieve; introduce expected value reasoning; and investigate differences in expected cost-effectiveness between interventions.
Week 3: Expanding Our Compassion
During Week 3 we explore who our moral consideration should expand to, with a particular focus on farmed animals as a case example. We also use the term “Cause X” to ask what opportunities we could be missing.
Week 4: Longtermism
This week we’ll explore a different approach to finding high-impact interventions - ‘longtermism’ - which attempts to find interventions that beneficially influence the long-run course of humanity.
Week 5: Existential Risk
This week we’ll cover the definition of an existential risk; examine why existential risks might be a moral priority; and explore why existential risks are so neglected by society.
Week 6: Emerging Technologies
During this week, we’ll explore a few technological trends which might have relevance for existential risk. This week, understandably, can’t cover all the major considerations for what the future will be like, but we aim to cover two key emerging technologies that might be less well known - transformative artificial intelligence and advances in biotechnology.
Week 7: What Might We be Missing?
This week, we’ll read and discuss critiques of effective altruism, and criticisms of how some people try to implement EA. We are dedicating a week to this because, to whatever extent we are wrong, it would be good to know. Honestly reckoning with strong counter arguments (from both within and outside of the EA community) can help us avoid confirmation bias and groupthink, and get us a little closer to identifying the most effective ways to do good.
Week 8: Effective Altruism in your Life
This week, instead of a normal fellowship meeting, you’ll be meeting individually with the EA-UW team to discuss plans for the future, potential careers, and general methods to put into practice what you have learned over the fellowship.
Who Should Apply?
The seminar is open to all members of the UW-Madison community. For others, please apply through EA Virtual Programs.
We recommend applying to this program if you:
Want to make a large positive impact through your career, giving, or volunteering
Can commit 1 hour a week to readings and exercises, in addition to the weekly 1-hour discussions
Can attend at least 6 out of the 7 weekly discussion sessions
We are committed to building a diverse group of members. We strongly encourage interested students to apply regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, ability, etc. We also encourage undergraduate, graduate, and professional students, as well as individuals from all intellectual backgrounds and majors to apply.