EA Forum Podcast (Curated & popular)

This is a link post. This represents work from several people at the NAO. Thanks especially to Dan Rice for implementing the duplicate junction detection, and to @Will Bradshaw and @mike_mclaren for editorial feedback. Summary If someone were to intentionally cause a stealth pandemic today, one of the ways they might do it is by modifying an existing virus. Over the past few months we’ve been working on building a computational pipeline that could flag evidence of this kind of genetic engineering, and we now have an initial pipeline working end to end. When given 35B read pairs of wastewater sequencing data it raises 14 alerts for manual review, 13 of which are quickly dismissible false positives and one is a known genetically engineered sequence derived from HIV. While it's hard to get a good estimate before actually going and doing it, our best guess is that if this system [...] ---Outline:(00:22) Summary(01:15) System Design(02:36) Evaluation(02:50) Simulation(05:28) Real World Evaluation(08:29) System Sensitivity(11:34) Future Work--- First published: June 27th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/da6iKGxco8hjwH4nv/detecting-genetically-engineered-viruses-with-metagenomic --- 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.

Philosopher Jeff Sebo discusses his new book 'The Moral Circle' which challenges human exceptionalism and calls for expanding moral consideration to all significant beings. The podcast explores ethical dilemmas and case studies to prompt a reevaluation of our responsibilities towards diverse beings.

Recently, I've noticed a growing tendency within EA to dissociate from Rationality. Good Ventures have stopped funding efforts connected with the rationality community and rationality, and there are increasing calls for EAs to distance themselves. This trend concerns me, and I believe it's good to make a distinction when considering this split. We need to differentiate between 'capital R' Rationality and 'small r' rationality. By 'capital R' Rationality, I mean the actual Rationalist community, centered around Berkeley: A package deal that includes ideas about self-correcting lenses and systematized winning, but also extensive jargon, cultural norms like polyamory, a high-decoupling culture, and familiarity with specific memes (ranging from 'Death with Dignity' to 'came in fluffer'). On the other hand, 'small r' rationality is a more general concept. It encompasses the idea of using reason and evidence to form conclusions, scout mindset, and empiricism. It also includes a quest [...] The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: June 25th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/2pYGbvYsKfDC2WnxL/distancing-ea-from-rationality-is-foolish --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

(You can read this post as a Google Doc. You might find this easier to share with animal-sympathetic non-EAs. Also: I work at Rethink Priorities, but I'm writing in a personal capacity.) A few weeks ago, I shared some suggested responses for a Defra consultation on welfare labelling. I was really pleased to hear that many EAs and animal rights advocates wrote in to support the proposal. I’m now sharing a similar opportunity: ~ten minutes of your time to speak up for ~4.5 million caged chickens. If you want to help, you have less than 48 hours to get this done! What's the public consultation? The Scottish government is running a public consultation on their proposal to ban cages for layer hens. Agriculture is a devolved power so Holyrood have responsibility for Scottish animal welfare.Let's be clear: cage-free chickens have dramatically better lives than caged chickens. Liberating caged [...] ---Outline:(00:46) What's the public consultation?(03:42) How you can help(04:39) Will your response influence decision-makers?The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: June 24th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/mooBq4A3Hd8ttTyAY/ten-minutes-to-speak-up-for-4-5-million-caged-chickens --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Summary. Who We Are: Kaya Guides runs a self-help course on WhatsApp to reduce depression at scale in low and middle-income countries. We help young adults with moderate to severe depression. Kaya currently operates in India. We are the world's first nonprofit implementer of Step-by-Step, the World Health Organization's digital guided self-help program, which was proven effective in two RCTs. Pilot: We ran a pilot with 103 participants in India to assess the feasibility of implementing our program on WhatsApp with our target demographic and to generate early indicators of its effectiveness. Results: 72% of program completers experienced depression reduction of 50% or greater. 36% were depression-free. 92% moved down at least a classification in severity (i.e. they shifted from severe to moderately severe, moderately severe to moderate, etc). The average reduction in score was 10 points on the 27-point PHQ-9 depression questionnaire. Context: To offer a few [...] ---Outline:(04:44) Part 1. About the Kaya Guides Program(04:49) What is Kaya Guides and what do we do?(05:13) How the program works(05:35) Evidence base(06:11) Why guided self-help is effective(06:50) Why this work matters(07:52) Program design(08:46) Target participant profile(09:14) Impact measurement(10:00) Part 2. Pilot Impact and Cost-Effectiveness(10:18) Impacts on depression(11:01) Comparison(12:10) Effect Size Estimate(14:35) Takeaway(15:02) Cost-Effectiveness(15:29) Pilot Cost-Effectiveness(17:15) 2025 Projected Cost-Effectiveness(19:15) Program Impacts According to Participants(22:50) Part 3. Recruitment(22:55) Quick Stats(24:20) Participant Profile(25:38) Part 4. Retention(27:45) Part 5. Participant Feedback(31:19) What's Next(32:05) Support Us--- First published: June 16th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/6NaRJpSn2zfRSnGYN/kaya-guides-pilot-results --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is a link post. Author: Adam Salisbury, Senior Research Associate In a nutshell We’ve had a longstanding concern that some of our top charity programs, including insecticide-treated nets, seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC), and vitamin A supplementation (VAS), may have less impact than we've estimated due to “repetitive saving.” These programs provide health interventions to the same children under 5 years old annually or every 3 years. Our cost-effectiveness models currently assume that different lives are saved each year from these interventions. We think it's possible the programs are actually saving the same, high-risk children over and over. In a worst-case scenario, this could mean the programs are saving 80% fewer cumulative lives than we thought. Based on a shallow review of empirical evidence and talking to experts, our best guess is that we're only overstating the total lives saved by these programs by around 10%, because: Under-5 deaths [...] ---Outline:(00:12) In a nutshell(02:46) What's the issue?(06:44) What did we find?(11:53) How could we be wrong?(14:31) What's the issue?(17:35) Why we don’t think this is a big concern(18:22) Driver 1: Skewness of mortality risk(20:42) Driver 2: Persistence of the at-risk population(25:12) Modeling these drivers(34:08) Sensitivity checks(35:35) Outside the model checks(37:34) How could we be wrong?(40:28) Are we returning children to normal life expectancy?(42:34) Driver 1: Skewness of mortality risk across the life cycle(43:43) Driver 2: Persistence of the at-risk population(48:13) Moral difficulties raised by the life expectancy question--- First published: June 18th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/jNAFTJWpKK89pisaQ/are-our-top-charities-saving-the-same-lives-each-year --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Manifest 2024 is a festival that we organized last weekend in Berkeley. By most accounts, it was a great success. On our feedback form, the average response to “would you recommend to a friend” was a 9.0/10. Reviewers said nice things like “one of the best weekends of my life” and “dinners and meetings and conversations with people building local cultures so achingly beautiful they feel almost like dreams” and “I’ve always found tribalism mysterious, but perhaps that was just because I hadn’t yet found my tribe.” Arnold Brooks running a session on Aristotle's Metaphysics. More photos of Manifest here. However, a recent post on The Guardian and review on the EA Forum highlight an uncomfortable fact: we invited a handful of controversial speakers to Manifest, whom these authors call out as “racist”. Why did we invite these folks? First: our sessions and guests were mostly not controversial — [...] ---Outline:(01:01) First: our sessions and guests were mostly not controversial — despite what you may have heard(03:03) Okay, but there sure seemed to be a lot of controversial ones…(06:03) Bringing people together with prediction markets(07:31) Anyways, controversy bad(08:57) Aside: Is Manifest an Effective Altruism event?--- First published: June 18th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/34pz6ni3muwPnenLS/why-so-many-racists-at-manifest --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

The Arthropoda Foundation Tens of trillions of insects are used or killed by humans across dozens of industries. Despite being the most numerous animal species reared by animal industries, we know next to nothing about what's good or bad for these animals. And right now, funding for this work is scarce. Traditional science funders won’t pay for it; and within EA, the focus is on advocacy, not research. So, welfare science needs your help. We’re launching the Arthropoda Foundation, a fund to ensure that insect welfare science gets the essential resources it needs to provide decision-relevant answers to pressing questions. Every dollar we raise will be granted to research projects that can’t be funded any other way. We’re in a critical moment for this work. Over the last year, field-building efforts have accelerated, setting up academic labs that can tackle key studies. However, funding for these studies is [...] ---Outline:(00:10) The Arthropoda Foundation(01:17) Why do we need a fund?(02:55) Team--- First published: June 14th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/2NsS7gjccJAKMf4co/help-fund-insect-welfare-science --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This post is for EAs at the start of their careers who are considering which organisations to apply to, and their next steps in general. Conclusion up front: It can be really hard to get that first job out of university. If you don’t get your top picks, your less exciting backup options can still be great for having a highly impactful career. If those first few years of work experience aren’t your best pick, they will still be useful as a place where you can ‘learn how to job’, save some money, and then pivot or grow from there. The main reasons are: The EA job market can be grim. Securing a job at an EA organisation out of university is highly competitive, often resulting in failing to get a job, or chaotic job experiences due to the nascent nature of many EA orgs. An alternative [...] ---Outline:(01:58) What's the problem? Three failure modes of trying to get an EA job(06:15) Maybe let the non-EA world train you(08:50) Let's get specific. Some of my story(11:45) Caveats(12:58) Wrapping up--- First published: June 14th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ZvXBSs9Nz3dKBKcAo/maybe-let-the-non-ea-world-train-you --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Crossposted from AI Lab Watch. Subscribe on Substack.Introduction. Anthropic has an unconventional governance mechanism: an independent "Long-Term Benefit Trust" elects some of its board. Anthropic sometimes emphasizes that the Trust is an experiment, but mostly points to it to argue that Anthropic will be able to promote safety and benefit-sharing over profit.[1] But the Trust's details have not been published and some information Anthropic has shared is concerning. In particular, Anthropic's stockholders can apparently overrule, modify, or abrogate the Trust, and the details are unclear. Anthropic has not publicly demonstrated that the Trust would be able to actually do anything that stockholders don't like. The facts There are three sources of public information on the Trust: The Long-Term Benefit Trust (Anthropic 2023) Anthropic Long-Term Benefit Trust (Morley et al. 2023) The $1 billion gamble to ensure AI doesn't destroy humanity (Vox: Matthews 2023) They say there's [...] ---Outline:(00:53) The facts(02:51) ConclusionThe original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: May 27th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/JARcd9wKraDeuaFu5/maybe-anthropic-s-long-term-benefit-trust-is-powerless --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.