EA Forum Podcast (Curated & popular)

Rethink Priorities has been conducting a range of surveys and experiments aimed at understanding how people respond to different framings of Effective Altruism (EA), Longtermism, and related specific cause areas. There has been much debate about whether people involved in EA and Longtermism should frame their efforts and outreach in terms of Effective altruism, Longtermism, Existential risk, Existential security, Global priorities research, or by only mentioning specific risks, such as AI safety and Pandemic prevention (examples can be found at the following links: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8). These discussions have taken place almost entirely in the absence of empirical data, even though they concern largely empirical questions.[1] In this post we report the results of three pilot studies examining responses to different EA-related terms and descriptions. Some initial findings are: Longtermism appears to be consistently less popular than other EA-related terms and concepts we examined, whether presented just as a [...] ---Outline:(01:52) Study 1. Cause area framing(05:13) Demographics(07:15) Study 2. EA-related concepts with and without descriptions(10:58) Demographics(11:31) Study 3. Preferences for concrete causes or more general ideas/movements(15:04) Demographics(15:29) Manifold Market Predictions(16:43) General discussionThe original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: November 7th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/qagZoGrxbD7YQRYNr/testing-framings-of-ea-and-longtermism --- 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.

Overview  With Marginal Funding Week, we want to share key updates on the EA Animal Welfare Fund (AWF). We'll cover what we've accomplished so far in 2024, our impact this year, recent changes, and where we're headed next - including current constraints to our impact. We think this info will be helpful for anyone considering year-end donations. Since its founding in 2017, AWF has distributed $23.3M across 347 grants. This year, we’ve distributed $3.7M across 51 grants. We made grants across multiple intervention categories and aimed to impact a variety of species. Our most frequently funded strategic area was welfare campaigns, policy advocacy and research. The most frequently targeted species were egg-laying hens followed by multiple farmed animals, wild animals, and shrimps. While the impact of many of our 2024 grants is still unclear, our previous grants have made significant progress, reflecting our ability to identify opportunities with [...] ---Outline:(00:08) Overview(02:12) 1. Background(03:43) 2. A year in review(03:47) Key Numbers and Reach(04:14) Grant Distribution(05:27) By intervention type(06:25) By species(09:04) Highlighted Grants(13:36) 3. Organizational updates(18:47) 4. Future plans(21:58) 5. Room for more funding--- First published: November 11th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/pZhqWRiq9ubaMSnqx/ea-animal-welfare-fund-2024-review-changes-and-plans --- 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 work for CEA, but this post isn’t intended as a fundraising post for CEA. The main beneficiaries I want to direct readers to are e.g. EA groups and EA communicators who might not have capacity for fundraising. I expect similar arguments apply to e.g. AIS, rationality and animal welfare community-building efforts but I know those spaces less well. There's a version of this post where I pull actual donation numbers and iron out the details of what I’m proposing but this is not that version. It's difficult for funders to figure out which community-building efforts are successful. The reason your inbox is littered with surveys for every event, retreat and course you take part in is because we want to know if they’re working, and, ultimately, whether we should continue using EA resources to run them. Roughly, things work like this: Community builders (CBs) help new community [...] ---Outline:(03:56) Some caveats(04:39) What next?The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: November 8th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/DyTph8eJXDvnqDhXc/consider-donating-to-whoever-helped-you --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Key Takeaways Optimizing your giving's effect on "EA's portfolio” implies you should fund the causes your value system thinks are most underfunded by EA's largest allocators (e.g. Open Phil and SFF). These causes aren't necessarily your value system's most preferred causes. ("Preferred" = the ones you'd allocate the plurality of EA's resources to.) For the typical EA, this would likely imply donating more to animal welfare, which is currently heavily underfunded under the typical EA's value system. Opportunities Open Phil is exiting from, including invertebrates, digital minds, and wild animals, may be especially impactful. Alice's Investing Dilemma: A Thought Experiment Alice is a conservative investor who prefers the risk-adjusted return of a portfolio of 70% stocks and 30% bonds. Along with 9 others, Alice has been allocated $1M to split between stocks and bonds however she sees fit. The combined $10M portfolio will be held for 10 years, and its [...] ---Outline:(00:07) Key Takeaways(00:53) Alices Investing Dilemma: A Thought Experiment(01:55) In Charity, We Should Optimize The Portfolio of Everyones Actions(03:09) Theoretical Implications(03:31) The Portfolio of Everyones Actions vs EAs Portfolio(04:10) Practical Recommendations(05:26) EAs Current Resource Allocations--- First published: November 9th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/2G8XfzKyd78JqZpjQ/fund-causes-open-phil-underfunds-instead-of-your-most --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

TLDR: The shortest version of this argument is very simple: your expectations for an organization should be higher where their budget and staff size are higher. In other words, we should have different expectations for a 20-person organization with a $1.5 million budget than a 2-person $150,000 budget organization. While this seems pretty clear in the abstract, I find that people tend not to update nearly enough on this when they should. For example, I often see people comparing the total research output of two organizations, yet when I ask about it, they will not know the yearly budget or staff size of either. This is a big problem. As a movement, we want to support efficient and effective organizations, not just organizations that are the biggest, most salient or currently the highest funded. Budgets and staff When considering how impressive an organization's output is, one [...] ---Outline:(00:59) Budgets and staff(02:47) Comparative size(04:46) Why this matters--- First published: November 6th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/5wXGLbqQ3cchjogB5/expectations-scale-with-scale-we-should-be-more-scope --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Warning: This post discusses statistics about extreme pain that may be distressing. While cluster headaches are a neglected, high-impact issue, understanding their true burden requires appreciating the intensity of suffering involved. The pain often reaches levels far beyond typical human experience, making subjective accounts a valuable datapoint until we have robust methods for quantifying pain intensity. For further context, links to firsthand accounts are provided in the footnote[1]. You no longer have a headache, or pain located at a particular site: you are literally plunged into the pain, like in a swimming pool. There is only one thing that remains of you: your agitated lucidity and the pain that invades everything, takes everything. There is nothing but pain. At that point, you would give everything, including your head, your own life, to make it stop. - Yves, cluster headache patient from France (from Rossi et al., 2018) Key [...] ---Outline:(01:11) Key takeaways(03:57) 1. Introduction(04:00) 1.1. Clinical Features and Pain Comparisons(07:22) 1.2. Treatment and Prevention(10:02) 1.3. The Heavy-Tailed Valence Hypothesis and Existing Metrics(14:49) 1.4. Goal(16:14) 2. Methods(17:43) 2.1 Prevalence(19:17) 2.2 Frequency(22:21) 2.3 Duration(23:53) 2.4 Intensity(25:58) 2.5 Burden Metrics(29:01) 3. Results(29:10) 3.1. Global Burden of Cluster Headache Pain(32:05) 3.2. Reweighting of Extreme Pain(39:41) 3.3. Ceiling Effects(43:34) 4. Recommendations and Conclusions(48:31) AcknowledgementsThe original text contained 26 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: November 1st, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/geh2g2nKb7Kkp26ze/quantifying-the-global-burden-of-extreme-pain-from-cluster --- 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.

The failure rate is not 0 The base rate of failure for startups is not 0: Of the 6000 companies Y Combinator has funded, only ~16 are public. This is the wrong reference class for FTX at a $32b valuation, but even amongst extremely valuable companies, failures are not uncommon: WeWork had a peak valuation of $47b Theranos had a peak valuation of $10b Lucid Motors had a peak valuation of $90b Virgin Galactic had a peak valuation of $14b Jull had a peak valuation of $38b Bolt had a peak valuation of $11b Magic Leap had a peak valuation of $13b That is only a handful of cases, but the reference class for startups worth over $10b is also pretty small. Maybe 45 private companies and another ~100 that have gone public. I'm playing pretty fast and loose here because the exact number isn't important, the odds [...] ---Outline:(00:04) The failure rate is not 0(03:54) Why does risk matter?(06:45) Looking back from today--- First published: October 31st, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/f5YfiCrunAHFeDpSQ/what-i-wish-i-had-said-about-ftx --- 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.

Summary The written word dominates EA discourse but visuals have a unique power in communicating ideas that seems quite underleveraged in this community. As a designer and communicator in the space, I wanted to share some of the presentations and visualizations I’ve created over the years in hopes that they might be helpful to others. My goal isn't to present these visuals as "ready-to-use" resources—for various reasons they're not ready (see disclaimers)—but rather as references that hopefully inspire others to create and invest in visual forms of communication. Effective Giving 101 (2023) In 2023, when I was director of design at Giving What We Can, we were invited to give a talk at Microsoft about effective giving. We normally don’t dive so deep into the research that undergirds our recommendations but—given the highly-educated, highly-analytical audience at Microsoft—I thought it could be compelling to actually get into the weeds and [...] ---Outline:(00:16) Summary(00:50) Effective Giving 101 (2023)(01:53) Full deck: Doing Good Better (Microsoft 2023)(02:00) GiveWell's 2020 analysis of AMF(02:58) Slides: GiveWell's 2020 analysis of AMF(03:15) Global income illustration(04:53) Slides: The Global Income Distribution(05:09) Prioritization in GCR (2024)(05:56) Parfit's 99% extinction hypothetical(06:56) Slides: Parfit's 99% v 100%(07:13) Mapping the GCR landscape(08:54) Slides: Visualizing: The GCR Landscape(09:13) Bonus: Effective Giving Strategy Frameworks(10:20) Vision to Vectors(10:23) Slides: Vision to Vectors(10:39) The Pledger Journey(10:42) Slides: The Pledger Journey--- First published: October 31st, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/GuFxEPcn7rzz4pDhw/visualizing-ea-ideas --- 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 became the CEO of EV US in January 2023. I worked alongside the EV US and UK teams, former EV UK CEO Howie Lempel, and current EV UK CEO Rob Gledhill to recover and reform Effective Ventures and improve the robustness of the EA ecosystem in the aftermath of FTX's collapse. Amidst these efforts, I and others learned or fortified lessons that I think aren’t unique to EV and could be valuable to the wider EA community. Being able to look at hard problems, discuss them with candor, and update based on what we learn are values that I admire, and I see them as a positive and necessary mechanism for doing good. I want to act on those values here. Goals of this post Provide an update to create communal knowledge: Clarify what reforms have taken place at EV in recent years and the reasoning behind [...] ---Outline:(00:50) Goals of this post(01:48) Some high-level notes on FTX-related reflection(06:04) Scope of this post(11:53) Summary of reforms and actions taken at EV(14:54) Background on EV(18:42) Reforms and other actions taken(18:46) Hiring CEOs (and other non-board personnel) for EV US and EV UK(24:00) Changes to EV US and EV UK board(30:04) FTX-related investigations(38:43) Instituting financial reforms(41:23) Improving donor due diligence(45:36) Adopting a restrictive communications policy(57:19) Streamlining whistleblowing policies(59:44) Updating anti-harassment and misconduct policies(01:03:04) Improving the COI policy(01:06:22) Clarifying the level of separation between the EV US and EV UK entities(01:10:44) Initiating EV shut down(01:15:11) Some of the lessons EA can learn from the EV experience(01:15:31) Brief summary of these lessons(01:16:10) The lessons(01:16:14) Organizational governance and compliance can have serious implications(01:17:08) It's important to carefully think through and explicitly communicate your organizational risk strategy, and pay attention to it as your organization develops. This is particularly true for a fiscal sponsor(01:19:10) EA organizations often underrate experience relative to “intelligence” and “value alignment”(01:22:09) Vetting external counsel is important(01:23:02) Crisis prep is underrated relative to crisis response(01:24:43) Invest in capacity building early(01:26:34) Communicate early (and have the resources to do so)(01:27:31) Acknowledgments(01:29:12) Appendix: other content about and reflections on FTX on the EA Forum(01:29:47) Information(01:31:24) Reflections(01:33:18) Investigation-related(01:33:55) StatementsThe original text contained 12 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: October 28th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/AuSah98NtR5qv8zQA/reflections-and-lessons-from-effective-ventures-1 --- 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.

We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to improve the lives of chickens raised for food in the UK.  Tomorrow, The Humane League UK (THL UK) will be heading to the High Court to challenge the legality of fast-growing breeds of chicken- Frankenchickens. At stake are the lives of one billion animals. Our small team will be demonstrating outside the courts tomorrow morning. Inside, our legal team, Advocates for Animals, will be arguing that farming Frankenchickens breaches the Welfare of Farmed Animals (England) Regulations 2007. We are up against huge opposition with The Government, the British Poultry Council, and the National Farmers’ Union representing the interests of the £3 billion poultry industry. This really is a David versus Goliath case. If you are interested in the legal intricacies of the hearing itself, you can watch a livestream of proceedings here on both Wednesday and Thursday. You can also [...] ---Outline:(00:05) We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to improve the lives of chickens raised for food in the UK.(01:17) Frankenchickens(01:59) THL UKs three-year legal battle(03:09) The fight continues(04:14) Our chances of success(05:44) Support The Humane League UK(06:01) The Humane League UK(06:56) Our vision is that by 2050, weve stopped the worst and most widespread abuse of animals raised for food, and they’re treated with far greater compassion.--- First published: October 22nd, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/qCMC4cnWCi7yjcnCZ/tomorrow-we-fight-for-the-future-of-one-billion-chickens --- 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.