EA Forum Podcast (Curated & popular)

In summary, there are two important reasons why I believe it's more important to direct additional resources towards animal welfare over global health: Global health and human welfare are generally improving whilst animal suffering is getting worse at a worrying (and potentially accelerating) rate. For factory farming, the default is it gets worse and worse over the next 50 years. In my view, it's still unclear if we’ll end factory farming and we’re competing with a very powerful incumbent industry to make it happen. I don’t believe the same trajectory is true for global health. Animal welfare is orders of magnitude more neglected on most important metrics: Philanthropic funding, government funding or great people working on the issue. These reasons aren’t necessarily all that is required to think it would be better to spend an additional $100M on animal welfare relative to global health (see the 80,000 Hours [...] --- First published: October 11th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/QbRFwPks5nFLK8i2W/the-default-trajectory-for-animal-welfare-means-vastly-more --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

For many years, I devoted myself to improving human health and wellbeing. But then I shifted to working to prevent suffering for animals. In this post, I will briefly share some considerations that pushed me to make this change. Violence The phrase ‘animal welfare’ can sound pretty calm and gentle. But when we talk about ‘animal welfare’, we are usually talking about preventing direct, brutal, physical *violence* against sentient beings. Animals in the food system are brutalised, beaten, confined, stabbed, castrated, cut, boiled alive, dragged, gassed, asphyxiated, separated from their mothers/children, violated, skinned. Imagine being castrated, with no anaesthetic. Having your throat slit while you are still conscious. Violated, and forcibly inseminated. Being crammed into a tiny, tiny space for days on end, where you can’t stretch your limbs, or turn around. Skinned alive. There is something so…brutal, maximalist, harsh, extreme about the intense physical violence that we [...] --- First published: October 10th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/RZEvk6cBtBg2mpgwS/trigger-warning-violence-animal-vs-human-welfare-sharing --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Intro Suppose you have $100M to give away. You are drawn to the many important opportunities to reduce animal suffering or address pressing issues in global health and development. Your choice about how to allocate the funds could depend on considerations like these: Moral values: How much moral weight do you assign to various non-human species? Are you focused exclusively on hedonic considerations, like reducing suffering? Or do you have other relevant values, such as autonomy? Cost-effectiveness estimates: Species-discounting aside, how many DALYs/$ do the best projects in the area achieve? How fast do returns diminish in these areas? Decision-theoretic values: How do you feel about risk-taking? Are you willing to tolerate a substantial probability that projects will fail? What about non-trivial chances of projects backfiring? Second-order effects: Will giving to one cause set benefit any of your other values? Are there speculative benefits that might flow from [...] ---Outline:(00:09) Intro(02:47) Cross-Cause Cost-Effectiveness Model(02:51) How it works(04:25) What it says(06:53) Portfolio Builder Tool(06:57) How it works(08:12) What it says(10:32) Moral Parliament Tool(10:36) How it works(11:48) What it says(12:02) Parliament composition matters(14:10) Allocation strategy matters(17:27) ConclusionsThe original text contained 5 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: October 7th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/vEwGx9RXnHaMyKhZM/what-do-rp-s-tools-tell-us-about-giving-usd100m-to-aw-or-ghd --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

TLDR: I’ve recently started as a “Research Fellow” at Forethought (focusing on how we should prepare for a potential period of explosive growth and related questions). I left my role on the CEA Online Team, but I still love the Forum (and the Forum/CEA/mod teams) and plan on continuing to be quite active here. I’m also staying on the moderation team as an advisor. ➡️ If you were planning on reaching out to me about something Forum- or Online-related, you should probably reach out to Toby Tremlett or email forum@effectivealtruism.org. What's in this post? I had some trouble writing this announcement; I felt like I should post something, but didn’t know what to include or how to organize the post. In the end, I decided to write down and share assorted reflections on my time at CEA, and not really worry about putting everything into a cohesive frame or [...] ---Outline:(00:44) What's in this post?(02:17) Briefly: more context on the change(03:45) A note on EA and CEA(04:32) Assorted notes from my time at CEA(04:37) Some things about working at CEA that I probably wouldn’t have predicted(04:44) 1. Working with a manager and working in a team have been some of the best ways for me to grow.(05:33) 2. I like CEA's team values and principles a lot more than I expected to. (And I want to import many of them wherever I go.)(08:39) 3. A huge number of people I worked and interacted with are incredibly generous and compassionate, and this makes a big difference.(10:40) Some things about my work at CEA that were difficult for me(10:46) 1. My work was pretty public. This has some benefits, and also some real downsides.(12:31) 2. Many people seem confused about what CEA does, and seemed to assume incorrect things about me because I was a CEA staff member.(14:58) 3. My job involved working on or maintaining many different projects, which made it difficult for me to focus on any single thing or make progress on proactive projects.(16:03) 4. Despite taking little of my time, moderation was quite draining for me.(18:26) Looking back on my work(23:08) Thank you!The original text contained 11 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: October 3rd, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/SPZv8ygwSPtkzo7ta/announcing-my-departure-from-cea-and-sharing-assorted-notes --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

I recently had a conversation with a teammate that made me reflect on a possible cultural issue within the EA community. This teammate had expressed in a few meetings that they wanted to take on various new projects and expand their scope of responsibility. As their manager, I wanted to have Alliance Mentality to support them where possible. However, from my perspective, a slightly more tightly scoped role was probably a bit better for the team: their core responsibilities are vital for the team (and for what it's worth, when I try to do them, I'm much worse at them!). During our recent one-on-one, realized that we both preferred the more tightly scoped role. More importantly, we uncovered that they had internalized a cultural norm from EA that people needed to be constantly changing or expanding their roles to be doing a good job. I wanted to write a [...] ---Outline:(00:58) The Pressure to Change Roles(01:42) The Value of Steady Hands(02:38) Shifting the Narrative--- First published: September 30th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Q3DbyrFjqED9Y5Rz3/appreciating-stable-support-roles-at-ea-orgs --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

TLDR: Sign up here to join a six-month experiment to democratize effective giving. The experiment establishes a community who agree to allocate charitable gifts proportionally to member votes. You’ll help make EA donations more representative of the community's cause prioritization. Sign up and pledge by October 15th to participate in our first round. Equal Hands is a 6-month trial in democratizing charitable giving among EA cause areas. Here's how it works: You pledge to give a certain amount each month. Each month that you pledge, vote on the optimal distribution of the donated money across causes (1 vote per person, no matter how much you give). The total amount of money pledged is split out proportionally to the total of the votes, so that no matter how much you gave, your voice equally influences the final allocation. To actually make the gifts, you will be assigned a particular [...] ---Outline:(02:42) Effective giving overly weighs the views of a few decision makers.(06:13) How will Equal Hands work exactly? An example funding round(08:58) The Details(09:01) The process(10:16) Transparency(10:36) Improvements(10:51) FAQ(10:54) Why would individual people participate?(11:31) What causes can I vote on?(13:15) Why not just establish some kind of fund people can donate to and then vote on the allocation of its grants?(13:42) Why cause areas and not individual charities?(15:33) Why these specific charities to represent these cause areas and not \[my preferred charity\]?(16:00) Why do I have to donate a minimum amount to participate?(16:22) Can I give via another entity to one of the listed charities?(16:52) Why not quadratic funding / some other hip mechanism?(17:11) Will I have to donate to causes I don’t care about?(17:44) What happens if this goes well?(17:54) How is this governed/funded/run?--- First published: September 28th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/eDJfRrMveExXmmEpX/announcing-equal-hands-an-experiment-in-democratizing --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is a link post. This WaPo piece announces the Partnership for a Lead-Free Future (PLF), a collaboration led by Open Philanthropy, USAID, and UNICEF. It was co-authored by Alexander Berger (Open Phil's CEO) and Samantha Power, head of USAID. Ten years ago, when residents of Flint, Mich., were exposed to toxic levels of lead in their drinking water, 1 in 20 children in the city had elevated blood lead levels that placed them at risk for heart disease, strokes, cognitive deficits and developmental delays — health effects that residents still grapple with to this day. It was only after activists rallied, organized and advocated relentlessly that national attention focused on Flint, and officials committed nearly half a billion dollars to clean up Flint's water. Today, there is a lead poisoning crisis raging on a far greater scale — and hardly anyone is talking about it. [...] The partnership will [...] --- First published: September 23rd, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/soeJ4XNnLoyWpiFsK/we-can-protect-millions-of-kids-from-a-global-killer-without --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is a link post. One of Open Philanthropy's goals for this year is to experiment with collaborating with other funders. Today, we’re excited to announce our biggest collaboration to date: the Lead Exposure Action Fund (LEAF). Lead exposure in low- and middle-income countries is a devastating but highly neglected issue. The Global Burden of Disease study estimates 1.5 million deaths per year attributable to lead poisoning. Despite this burden, lead poisoning has only received roughly $15 million per year in philanthropic funding until recently. That is less than 1% of the funding that goes towards diseases like tuberculosis or malaria, which are themselves considered neglected. The goal of LEAF is to accelerate progress toward a world free of lead exposure by making grants to support measurement, mitigation, and mainstreaming awareness of the problem. Our partners have already committed $104 million, and we plan for LEAF to allocate that [...] ---Outline:(01:54) Why we chose to work on lead(04:54) What LEAF hopes to achieve(05:30) The LEAF team(06:01) An experiment for Open Philanthropy(06:49) Grantmaking so farThe original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: September 23rd, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/z5PvTSa54pdxxw72W/announcing-the-lead-exposure-action-fund --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Intro I think the 80,000 Hours Podcast is a great show. Despite the world of podcasts overflowing with content to choose from, it's reliably been a high-quality production that's been a regular part of my listening habits ever since I discovered it. It was also probably one of the first routes I become more aware of the EA community, which I suspect I might not be alone by.[1] So, as the podcast numbers ticked up, the vague idea to write up a post shouting out some of my favourite episodes took root. I didn't get far with it from there, and now the unreasonable effectiveness of the 80k podcast production team has forced my hand! So in the post I'm going to link to my 10 favourite episodes, along with some final thoughts at the end. I hope to share with you some of my favourite episodes, but I [...] ---Outline:(00:07) Intro(01:12) My Top 10(01:16) 10-4(01:19) 10: #144 – Athena Aktipis on why cancer is actually one of the fundamental phenomena in our universe(01:54) 9: #175 – Lucia Coulter on preventing lead poisoning for $1.66 per child(02:26) 8: #139 – Alan Hájek on puzzles and paradoxes in probability and expected value(03:00) 7: #153 – Elie Hassenfeld on two big picture critiques of GiveWells approach, and six lessons from their recent work(03:39) 6: #129 – Dr James Tibenderana on the state of the art in malaria control and elimination(04:15) 5: #185 – Lewis Bollard on the 7 most promising ways to end factory farming, and whether AI is going to be good or bad for animals(05:00) 4: #67 – David Chalmers on the nature and ethics of consciousness(05:40) Top 3(05:43) 3: #43 – Daniel Ellsberg on the creation of nuclear doomsday machines, the institutional insanity that maintains them, and how they could be dismantled(06:22) 2: #145 – Christopher Brown on why slavery abolition wasnt inevitable(07:07) 1: #100 – Having a successful career with depression, anxiety and imposter syndrome(07:51) Final Thoughts(07:54) Honourable Mentions(08:10) #52 – Glen Weyl on radical institutional reforms that make capitalism and democracy work better, and how to get them(08:52) #116 – Luisa Rodriguez on why global catastrophes seem unlikely to kill us all(09:29) #190 – Eric Schwitzgebel on whether the US is conscious(09:59) But JWS, where are the AI episodes?(12:03) EpilogueThe original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: September 9th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/C8HWX3XsoB3krSkbm/my-top-10-picks-from-200-episodes-of-the-80k-podcast --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is a link post. It's a rare privilege to lead an organisation that embodies the very ideals that shaped your life. I’ve been fortunate to have been given that opportunity for the last four years. My journey with Giving What We Can began long before I became its CEO. Like many members, I started as a curious onlooker, lurking for many years after first googling something along the lines of “what's the best charity?” and slowly being drawn to the idea of effective giving. I vividly remember the day I first hovered over the ‘donate’ button on the Against Malaria Foundation's website after getting my first raise. My heart was racing, wondering if a decent chunk of my small paycheck would truly make a difference… only to go back and read a report on malaria “just one more time.” Finally, I found the courage to act. I started giving [...] --- First published: September 10th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/RkWWpYCnBgYHtisem/stepping-down-from-gwwc-so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.