EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

I told someone recently I would respect them if they only worked 40 hours a week, instead of their current 50-60.

What I really meant was stronger than that.

I respect people who do the most impactful work they can — whether they work 70 hours a week because they can, 30 hours so they can be home with their kid, or 15 hours because of illness or burnout.

I admire those who go above and beyond. But I don’t expect that of everyone. Working long hours isn’t required to earn my respect, nor do I think it should be the standard that we hold as a community. I want it to be okay to say "that doesn't work for me".

It feels like donations: I admire people who give away 50%, but I don’t expect it. I still deeply respect someone who gives 10% to the [...]

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First published:

August 26th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/qFsqawmgRjxXkA7eF/you-re-enough

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Tl;dr

I argue that maintaining nonpartisan norms on the EA Forum, in public communications by influential community members, and in funding decisions may be more costly than people realize. Lack of discussion in public means that people don’t take political issues as seriously as they should, research which depends on understanding the political situation doesn’t get done, and the community moves forward with a poor model of probably the most consequential actor in the world for any given cause area - the US government. Importantly, I don’t mean to say most community members shouldn’t maintain studious nonpartisanship! I merely want to argue that we should be aware of the downsides and do what we can to mitigate them.

Why nonpartisan norms in EA are a big deal

Individual politicians (not naming names) are likely the most important single actors affecting the governance of AI. The same goes [...]

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Outline:

(00:11) Tl;dr

(00:55) Why nonpartisan norms in EA are a big deal

(05:28) Why EAs tend not to engage much with politics

(06:41) Many should remain nonpartisan but improvements can be made

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First published:

August 25th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/whKQe3WtXfMHEg3T9/nonpartisanship-is-also-the-mindkiller-albeit-a-useful-one

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

A not entirely inaccurate gloss on the effective altruist approach to politics is that it's absurdly progressive:

Source: 2022 Effective Altruism Survey.

But I think the overwhelmingly left and center-left nature of effective altruism hides a number of ways that effective altruists differ from many (but not all) people on the left.

Liberalism

Effective altruists are liberals in the political philosophy sense. “Liberalism” is a loose term that refers to a wide variety of beliefs, many of which disagree with each other. Common themes in liberal political thought include:

• Economic freedom (markets, private property).
• Political freedom (civil liberties, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, bodily autonomy, privacy).
• Rule of law (equality under the law, clear and consistently applied legal rules).
• Consent of the governed (democracy).

Liberalism is the dominant political ideology in the developed world, so much so that even quite illiberal viewpoints feel the need [...]

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Outline:

(00:44) Liberalism

(03:13) Economics

(08:00) Positive-Sum

(10:35) Technocratic

(14:05) Incrementalist

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First published:

August 22nd, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/iWijgEnYPExRAAJrR/the-effective-altruist-approach-to-politics-effective

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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(This is the rough transcript/summary of a session I am delivering this weekend at EA in the Lakes, and I will be referring people to this post from it.)

As a long-time (non-EA) community events organiser, I have a lot of skills and connections in the provision of budget-friendly community events around and near my town. Some young adult approached me at one of them and said they were an "Effective Altruist" and would I please help them learn to organise events for their young adult philosophy group? They would like to do one weekend a year with the uni students and one weekend a year with people from other cities. Well, I can fairly easy bump my 4 weekend residentials a year at the local scout camp, converted church, or YHA up to 6, particularly if it's for a good cause (they say they do lots of learning [...]

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First published:

August 20th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/zcDCAkcziWeKKZGE7/constructing-scalable-funding-neutral-ea-communities-in-the

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Today I'd encountered a question while filling up CEA's group support fund form for basic group running requirements like Zoom subscription, etc. [For community builders who aren't aware of this- linking about it here]. The question was-

Describe your current plan for your group.

Although I was unsure about this then and ended up writing that I'm willing to discuss it with my OSP mentor. I've now ran a check through my current capacity and have inferred that EA Kolkata is almost ready to launch the first Bengali language EA Introductory Online program.

Around 3.5% of the world's population is Bengali. Some other facts that seems relevant to be stated are:

a) India's national anthem and songs were both written and composed by Bengali patriots.

b) The first Asian to receive a Nobel prize was a Bengali- Rabindranath Tagore.

These facts possibly show that having a Bengali [...]

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First published:

August 20th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Ft8KXLtGJAeBZ9Roy/effective-altruism-kolkata-will-launch-the-first-ever

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This report is the first in a sequence reporting the results of Wave 2 of the Pulse project by Rethink Priorities (RP). Pulse is a large-scale survey of US adults aimed at tracking and understanding public attitudes towards effective giving and multiple impactful cause areas over time. Wave 2 of Pulse was fielded between February and April of 2025 with ~5600 respondents[1]. Results from our first wave of Pulse, fielded from July-August of 2024, can be found here, with the forum sequence version here.

This part of the Wave 2 sequence focuses on awareness of Effective Altruism (EA) and a range of related public figures and organizations, as well as attitudes towards EA.

Findings at a glance

Survey features:

• Wave 2 of Rethink Priorities’ Pulse project surveyed ~5,600 US adults between February–April 2025, following up on Wave 1 (July–August 2024).
• Results were poststratified to be representative of [...]

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Outline:

(00:58) Findings at a glance

(04:25) Awareness of Effective Altruism

(04:29) Population-level estimation

(06:56) Demographic subgroup estimates

(09:45) Attitudes towards Effective Altruism

(09:49) Attitudes among those who have already heard of EA

(11:25) Attitudes among those who have not heard of EA

(16:10) Awareness of EA-related terms, organizations, and people

(16:16) Terms

(18:08) Organizations

(21:11) People

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First published:

August 22nd, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Ypb6s6zwFiEKBiL3G/wave-2-of-pulse-awareness-and-perceptions-of-effective

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Note: We generally keep forum discussions in English, but given the topic of this AMA, feel free to write your questions in either English or Spanish.

Pablo Melchor is the Co-founder and President of Ayuda Efectiva (the effective giving organisation in Spain), and the author of the new book Altruismo racional. He co-founded EA Spain in 2018 after a two-decade career as an entrepreneur during which he started two successful companies and sold one of them.

Pablo has written more about his new book here. The TL;DR is that the book aims to present a compelling case for “classical EA”, i.e., in Pablo's view: “caring deeply about global health and poverty, a rational approach to giving, the importance of cost-effectiveness, and the 🔸10% Pledge.” This is the first book to make this case, which is written expressly for a Spanish-speaking audience.

Pablo will be answering your questions on September [...]

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First published:

August 22nd, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/tbEhidqL8wFXTKxis/ama-pablo-melchor-author-of-altruismo-racional-and-president

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Previously: GiveWell raised less than its 10th percentile forecast in 2023

In 2024[1] GiveWell raised $415 million - $108 million from Open Philanthropy, and $307 million from other donors. (Blog post, full report). In 2023[2] this number was $355 million - $100 million from Open Philanthropy, and $255 million from other donors.

 20232024Percentage differenceTotal raised$355m$415m17%Non-Open Philanthropy amount raised$255m$307m20%

The number of donors (new and returning) remained flat compared to 2023

The full report (p.13)

Money raised from new donors was down 14%, and from returning donors up 29%

The full report (p.14)

This was driven by an increase in $1 million+ sized donations:

Coming from a relatively concentrated base of large donors:

The non-OP amount raised was below the 25th percentile forecast

In their post on 10th April 2023, GiveWell forecast the amount they expected to raise in 2024, albeit with wide confidence intervals, and stated that their 25th percentile [...]

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Outline:

(00:58) The number of donors (new and returning) remained flat compared to 2023

(01:20) Money raised from new donors was down 14%, and from returning donors up 29%

(02:09) The non-OP amount raised was below the 25th percentile forecast

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First published:

August 21st, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ZFaeyyXtLCEoDtGmB/givewell-fundraising-up-17-in-2024-driven-overwhelmingly-by

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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How to prevent infighting, mitigate status races, and keep your people focused. Cross-posted from my Substack.

Organizational culture changes rapidly at scale. When you add new people to an org, they’ll bring in their own priors about how to operate, how to communicate, and what sort of behavior is looked-up to. Despite rapid changes, in this post I explain how you can implement anti-fragile cultural principles—principles that help your team fix their own problems, often arising from growth and scale, and help the org continue to do what made it successful in the first place.

This is based partially on my experience at Wave, which grew to 2000+ people, but also tons of other reading (top recommendations: Peopleware by DeMarco and Lister, Swarmwise by Rick Falkvinge, High Growth Handbook by Elad Gil, The Secret of Our Success by Henrich, Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, as well as Brian [...]

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Outline:

(01:13) Common Problems

(05:00) Write down your culture

(06:25) That said, you don't have to write everything down

(08:37) Anti-fragile values I recommend

(09:02) Mission First

(10:51) Focus

(11:32) Fire Fast

(12:58) Feedback for everything

(13:50) Mutual Trust

(15:48) Work sustainably and avoid burnout

(17:42) Write only what's new & helpful

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First published:

August 21st, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/mLonxtAiuvvkjXiwq/the-anti-fragile-culture

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is a link post.

In the future, we might accidentally create AIs with ambitious goals that are misaligned with ours. But just because we don’t have the same goals doesn’t mean we need to be in conflict. We could also cooperate with each other and pursue mutually beneficial deals.

For previous discussion of this, you can read Making deals with early schemers. I recommend starting there before you read this post.

To facilitate this kind of cooperation, I would like us to be able to credibly negotiate with AIs, and credibly make promises about how we will help them if they help us. But it may be difficult to achieve high credibility in negotiations with AIs. AIs are in a very vulnerable epistemic position, because humans have a lot of control over AI memories and sensory inputs. Even worse: we have already developed a habit of testing their behavior [...]

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Outline:

(04:15) What do we want from an honesty policy?

(06:37) Falsehoods that don't necessarily ruin credibility

(09:21) More complicated: Behavioral science

(12:24) The proposed policies

(12:39) No deception about deals

(19:22) Honesty string

(21:39) Compensation

(25:25) Communicating commitments

(26:54) Miscellaneous Q&A

(30:04) Conclusion

(30:57) Appendix: How does no deception about deals apply to past experiments

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First published:

August 21st, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/A9f6rpKRHn3xXeomC/being-honest-with-ais

Linkpost URL:
https://blog.redwoodresearch.org/p/being-honest-with-ais

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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