EA Forum Podcast (Curated & popular)

William MacAskill shares personal reflections on FTX in various podcasts, offering insights and updates for different audiences. Topics covered include updates, lessons learned, and responses to questions raised on the EA Forum. MacAskill recommends listening to the podcasts for a more comprehensive understanding.

This is a link post. Anders Sandberg has written a “final report” released simultaneously with the announcement of FHI's closure. The abstract and an excerpt follow. Normally manifestos are written first, and then hopefully stimulate actors to implement their vision. This document is the reverse: an epitaph summarizing what the Future of Humanity Institute was, what we did and why, what we learned, and what we think comes next. It can be seen as an oral history of FHI from some of its members. It will not be unbiased, nor complete, but hopefully a useful historical source. I have received input from other people who worked at FHI, but it is my perspective and others would no doubt place somewhat different emphasis on the various strands of FHI work. What we did well One of the most important insights from the successes of FHI is to have a long-term perspective [...] ---Outline:(01:00) What we did well(03:52) Where we failed(05:10) So, you want to start another FHI?--- First published: April 17th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/uK27pds7J36asqJPt/future-of-humanity-institute-2005-2024-final-report Linkpost URL:https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ml8d3ubi3ippxs4yon63n/FHI-Final-Report.pdf?rlkey=2c94czhgagy27d9don7pvbc26&dl=0 --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Author: Sam Hilton, AIM Director of Research In March 2021 I received an odd letter. It was from a guy I didn't know, David Quarrey, the UK's National Security Advisor. The letter thanked me for providing external expertise to the UK government's Integrated Review, which had been published that morning. It turns out that the Integrated Review has made a public commitment to "review our approach to risk assessment" ... "including how we account for interdependencies, cascading and compound risks". This is something I'd been advocating for over the previous few months by writing a policy paper and engaging with politicians and civil servants. It's hard to know how much my input changed government policy but I couldn’t find much evidence of others advocating for this. I had set myself a 10-year goal to "have played a role in making the UK a leader in long-term resilience to extreme [...] --- First published: April 2nd, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/RmZWjTLNTg4hby7pz/aim-s-new-guide-to-launching-a-high-impact-non-profit-policy --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

In the aftermath of SBF's convinction, there have been a few posts trying to make sense of FTX. Some people are trying to figure out what happened, and some people are interested in trying to find clever defenses. I'm in a much more boring position: I am confident SBF is the fraud the world believes him to be. I hope this post can provide reasoning transparency on why I think this, and perhaps serve as an easy link for others who feel similarly but don't want to get bogged down in a point-by-point. Posted anonymously as some protection against future employers Googling [1]. I have divided this post into a summary of the major crimes and my basis for believing they occurred, an 'FAQ' dealing with some common misapprehensions I've seen on this forum and elsewhere, and an appendix explaining some crypto exchange basics / jargon for those [...] ---Outline:(00:56) Crimes(00:59) Misappropriation of Funds(01:51) Detail(14:47) Lying to lenders(17:21) Lying to FTXs investors(18:28) Lying to Banks(19:02) Detail(21:53) Bribing a Chinese official(23:55) Falsified revenue(25:07) Falsified Insurance Fund(26:20) FAQ(26:23) Didnt SBF only know about the hole in June 2022?(30:16) Didnt customers know their funds might be lent out?(32:37) Werent FTX and Alameda total messes? Intent matters; isnt it possible that this all got lost in the chaos?(35:13) Isnt FTX going to make all Customers whole? So there wasnt ever a hole?(35:47) FTX cashed out customers at bankruptcy prices(36:32) The assets those customers money had bought did well(37:12) Had FTX stayed afloat, things would be very different(38:58) Appendix(39:02) How crypto exchanges work(39:06) Spot Trading(40:54) Margin TradingThe original text contained 7 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: April 11th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/qyN8M6zh6pnh8fmjR/understanding-ftx-s-crimes --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Thanks to Eli Lifland, Molly Hickman, Değer Turan, and Evan Miyazono for reviewing drafts of this post. The opinions expressed here are my own. Summary: Forecasters produce reasons and models that are often more valuable than the final forecasts Most of this value is being lost due to the historical practice & incentives of forecasting, and the difficulty of crowds to “adversarially collaborate”  FutureSearch is a forecasting system with legible reasons and models at its core (examples at the end) The Curious Case of the Missing Reasoning Ben Landau-Taylor of Bismarck Analysis wrote a piece on March 6 called “Probability Is Not A Substitute For Reasoning”, citing a piece where he writes: There has been a great deal of research on what criteria must be met for forecasting aggregations to be useful, and as Karger, Atanasov, and Tetlock argue, predictions of events such as the arrival of AGI [...] ---Outline:(00:40) The Curious Case of the Missing Reasoning(05:06) Those Who Seek Rationales, And Those Who Do Not(07:21) So What Do Elite Forecasters Actually Know?(10:30) The Rationale-Shaped Hole At The Heart Of Forecasting(11:51) Facts: Cite Your Sources(12:07) Reasons: So You Think You Can Persuade With Words(14:25) Models: So You Think You Can Model the World(17:56) There Is No Microeconomics of AGI(19:39) 700 AI questions you say? Aren’t We In the Age of AI Forecasters?(21:33) Towards “Towards Rationality Engines”(23:10) Sample Forecasts With Reasons and Models--- First published: April 2nd, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/qMP7LcCBFBEtuA3kL/the-rationale-shaped-hole-at-the-heart-of-forecasting --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Here in the UK, the government is consulting on mandatory animal welfare labelling (closing 7 May 2024). People may wish to respond if they want to express their support or share thoughts and evidence that could shape the outcomes. I think such labelling has the potential to significantly improve animal welfare, not just through changing individual choices but by encouraging companies to stop selling the lowest welfare tiers entirely, and through raising labelling standards over time. Higher standards will probably also mean higher prices, lower consumption and 'fairer' competition with alternative proteins. What happens in the UK may also influence future reforms in the EU and elsewhere. To summarise the proposals: Mandatory labelling would apply to chicken, eggs and pig products (with the suggestion that beef, lamb and dairy could follow later) At least initially, this would not apply to restaurants etc., but to food from retailers like [...] --- First published: March 29th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/h5Syjytgbg7fL6CJ5/uk-moves-toward-mandatory-animal-welfare-labelling --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Is anyone in the world being paid to do an independent investigation of how EA handled Sam Bankman-Fried, with respect to "did we screw up" and "is there stuff we should do differently going forward"? Last I heard, literally nobody was doing this and at least some EA leaders were mostly just hoping that SBF gets memoryholed — but maybe I'm out of the loop? My understanding is that Effective Ventures completed a narrow investigation into this topic in mid-2023, purely looking at legal risk to EV and not at all trying to do a general postmortem for EA or any group of EAs. Is that correct, and have things changed since then? I saw that Will MacAskill is planning to appear on some podcasts soon to speak about SBF, which seems like great news to mee. If I recall correctly, Will previously said that he was going to [...] --- First published: April 1st, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/PAG3DJtoZeGtz488f/why-hasn-t-ea-done-an-sbf-investigation-and-postmortem --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

A brief and belated update: When I resigned from the board of EV US last year, I was planning on writing about that decision. But I ultimately decided against doing that for a variety of reasons, including that it was very costly to me, and I believed it wouldn’t make a difference. However, I want to make it clear that I resigned last year due to significant disagreements with the board of EV and EA leadership, particularly concerning their actions leading up to and after the FTX crisis. While I certainly support the boards’ decision to pay back the FTX estate, spin out the projects as separate organizations, and essentially disband EV, I continue to be worried that the EA community is not on track to learn the relevant lessons from its relationship with FTX. Two things that I think would help (though I am not planning to work [...] The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration. --- First published: April 3rd, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/dtHZqi4fSQKor6TYY/quick-update-on-leaving-the-board-of-ev --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Following the success of Draft Amnesty Week, the Forum team have decided to take things a bit further. April 2nd 2024 will be Mandatory Amnesty Day (aka MAD). At 09:00 UTC, all draft posts on your Forum account will be posted live on the Forum.All the posts in this section on your profile page deserve to be seen.  If you have used our Google Docs import feature, all posts we detect on your Google account will also be posted.Shrek is now the de facto mascot of Draft Amnesty.  If, for some reason, you have objections, please get in touch with the Forum team here. We look forward to seeing all your draft posts! --- First published: April 1st, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/72cKFaXd2B7Bis2kv/announcing-mandatory-draft-amnesty-day-april-2nd --- 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.

Impactful Animal Advocacy is thrilled to announce that after careful consideration and complex moral calculations, we have decided to rebrand to Shrimpactful Animal Advocacy. Why shrimp, you ask? Well, we've crunched the numbers and determined that improving the welfare of shrimp is one of the highest-impact opportunities in the animal advocacy space.    Source: https://foodimpacts.org/ In light of this strong evidence, Shrimpactful Animal Advocacy will be laser-focusing all of our efforts and resources on ending the suffering of our shrimpy friends. This includes revamping our programs to focus on our new mission. You'll soon be able to sign up for our revised Shrimpactful Animal Advocacy newsletter, attend our upcoming "Shrimp-osium" events, visit our Shrimp Hub resource center, and join our Shrimp Slack community to connect with fellow Shrimpactful Advocates. We call on all other organizations to join us in this: Mercy for Animals [...] The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration. --- First published: April 1st, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ed5Jiuk3sCYTXHfFD/announcement-we-are-rebranding-to-shrimpactful-animal --- 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.