EA Talks

In this session, Alex will give a brief overview of effective approaches to improving animal welfare, with a focus on alternative proteins. He will outline how plant-based and cultivated meat can also help combat climate change, why policy change is crucial, and what early-career individuals can do to contribute to this field.Effective Altruism is a social movement dedicated to finding ways to do the most good possible, whether through charitable donations, career choices, or volunteer projects. EA Global conferences are gatherings for EAs to meet. You can also listen to this talk along with its accompanying video on YouTube.

Effective Altruism is a social movement dedicated to finding ways to do the most good possible, whether through charitable donations, career choices, or volunteer projects. EA Global conferences are gatherings for EAs to meet. You can also listen to this talk along with its accompanying video on YouTube.

COVID-19 has demonstrated the disruptive potential of pandemics. But global catastrophic biological risks – the ways in which biological agents could cause civilisational catastrophes or extinction – are even more concerning than history's most disastrous pandemics. So, what can we do to prevent them? In this talk, Anemone and Jasper will explore promising technological interventions against catastrophic biological risks and outline possible contributing ways.Effective Altruism is a social movement dedicated to finding ways to do the most good possible, whether through charitable donations, career choices, or volunteer projects. EA Global conferences are gatherings for EAs to meet. You can also listen to this talk along with its accompanying video on YouTube.

This is Victoria's high-level view of the AI alignment research landscape and the ingredients needed for aligning advanced AI. She divides alignment research into work on alignment components, focusing on different elements of an aligned system, and alignment enablers, which are research directions that make it easier to get the alignment components right.Effective Altruism is a social movement dedicated to finding ways to do the most good possible, whether through charitable donations, career choices, or volunteer projects. EA Global conferences are gatherings for EAs to meet. You can also listen to this talk along with its accompanying video on YouTube.

Local priorities research is about figuring out what things we should prioritise working on in a local context (typically at non-EA-hubs) to best maximise impact based on our context. The panelists discuss why you might want to try this research, and how to get started doing it.Panelists: Brian Tan, Vaidehi Agarwalla, and Yi-Yang ChuaEffective Altruism is a social movement dedicated to finding ways to do the most good possible, whether through charitable donations, career choices, or volunteer projects. EA Global conferences are gatherings for EAs to meet. You can also listen to this talk along with its accompanying video on YouTube.

In this talk, Shakeel discusses some of the principles behind good, engaging writing that people will want to read. He draws on his experience as a journalist and editor, pointing out common pitfalls and quick tips for improving your writing.Effective Altruism is a social movement dedicated to finding ways to do the most good possible, whether through charitable donations, career choices, or volunteer projects. EA Global conferences are gatherings for EAs to meet. You can also listen to this talk along with its accompanying video on YouTube.

The Effective Thesis project aims to assist students in their thesis topic choice. Choosing a final thesis topic is an important step that can influence the rest of a researcher’s career, yet there doesn’t seem to be much assistance provided through standard channels. Vorathep provides a brief overview of how Effective Thesis can help you towards an impactful research career.Effective Altruism is a social movement dedicated to finding ways to do the most good possible, whether through charitable donations, career choices, or volunteer projects. EA Global conferences are gatherings for EAs to meet. You can also listen to this talk along with its accompanying video on YouTube.

Most people agree that happiness matters, even if they value other things too. Thanks to the growing field of subjective wellbeing research, it is now possible to work out the best ways to make people happier in a scientifically rigorous way. But such work has only just begun - it is new both to effective altruism and to policymaking more generally. Barry shows how our intuitions about what will make us happy are often wrong and that decades of economic growth have done little to improve average wellbeing. He then describes the pioneering research the Happier Lives Institute has done to compare the cost-effectiveness of different interventions in terms of subjective wellbeing. This has led to the surprising finding that treating depression in low-income countries is 9x more cost-effective than providing direct cash transfers.Effective Altruism is a social movement dedicated to finding ways to do the most good possible, whether through charitable donations, career choices, or volunteer projects. EA Global conferences are gatherings for EAs to meet. You can also listen to this talk along with its accompanying video on YouTube.

Varun provides an overview of what’s going on globally in the alternative protein industry and compares this with where the EA community is, drawing out lessons for how field-building in alternative protein could usefully inform the growth of EA.Effective Altruism is a social movement dedicated to finding ways to do the most good possible, whether through charitable donations, career choices, or volunteer projects. EA Global conferences are gatherings for EAs to meet. You can also listen to this talk along with its accompanying video on YouTube.

What sort of post goes on the EA Forum? How can posts be improved? Is there anything to do on the Forum except writing posts? This workshop includes a brainstorming session to identify key qualities of writing on the Forum, some time for attendees to share and refine their own ideas, and a Q&A.Effective Altruism is a social movement dedicated to finding ways to do the most good possible, whether through charitable donations, career choices, or volunteer projects. EA Global conferences are gatherings for EAs to meet. You can also listen to this talk along with its accompanying video on YouTube.