EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

Confidence Level: I’ve been an organizer at UChicago for over a year now with my co-organizer, Avik. I also started the UChicago Rationality Group, co-organized a 50-person Midwest EA Retreat, and have spoken to many EA organizers from other universities. A lot of this post is based on vibes and conversations with other organizers, so while it's grounded in experience, some parts are more speculative than others. I’ll try to flag the more speculative points when I can (the * indicates points that I’m less certain about).

I think it's really important to make sure that EA principles persist in the future. To give one framing for why I believe this: if you think EA is likely to significantly reduce the chances of existential risks, you should think that losing EA is itself a factor significantly contributing to existential risks.

Therefore, I also think one of the [...]

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Outline:

(01:12) Impact Through Force Multiplication

(04:19) Individual Benefits

(04:23) Personal Impact

(06:27) Professional

(07:34) Social

(08:10) Counters

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First published:

July 29th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/3aPCKsHdJqwKo2Dmt/why-you-should-become-a-university-group-organizer

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

About this Funding Opportunity

We are a group of donors looking to support cost-effective and high-impact farmed animal welfare and protection nonprofits, particularly during a critical growth phase where targeted funding can have a significant impact. Twice a year, we grant a total of ±$500k divided among the most promising applicants, with a typical grant size of $50k.

Grants will initially be one-off support, though renewals may be possible in some cases at the discretion of individual donors. We aim to keep the application process relatively short and fast, reflecting the smaller and sometimes time-sensitive grants.

See the results from our first two rounds here. More info about SAFC and how you can join at the bottom of this post.

➡️ Apply here by August 25th.

Eligibility Criteria:

1. The intervention is focused on reducing the suffering of farmed or wild animals or on reducing the number of [...]

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Outline:

(00:15) About this Funding Opportunity

(01:07) Eligibility Criteria:

(02:06) Areas we funded in our last rounds

(02:48) Areas we are open to funding

(03:10) Areas we are not considering this round

(03:29) Application & Timeline

(04:01) Selection Criteria - What makes a competitive application?

(05:36) Future Rounds

(05:47) About the Strategic Animal Funding Circle

(06:43) Join us and support impactful animal welfare charities!

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First published:

July 28th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/AhPwptBxNeZxaCjfK/request-for-proposals-strategic-animal-funding-circle-fall

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

People often tell me that they wish they had more insight into what I actually do in my role on the Community Health team. I’ve finally gotten around to writing something thanks to @Dion🔸 , who has been asking me for quite a while to write about what I do, and emphasising that this is something people would be interested in reading. I also sit opposite @Toby Tremlett🔹 who's running career conversations week – thanks for the encouragement to write this, Toby.
People often seem to write these when they’re hiring. To clarify, we don’t currently have an open hiring round, but you can express interest on CEA's form here.

What am I aiming to do with my job, and why?

I’m a Community Liaison on the Community Health team at CEA. The Community Health team aims to strengthen the effective altruism community's ability to fulfil its potential [...]

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Outline:

(00:47) What am I aiming to do with my job, and why?

(02:44) So what do I do?

(03:19) What I've worked on in the last ~7ish days

(06:43) What's brilliant about my job?

(09:40) What's difficult?

(12:09) Some closing thoughts

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First published:

July 28th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/qx3LiK8qpMt8cgmbp/writing-about-my-job-community-liaison

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

I donate money each month. The money is gone. The end.
While this is essentially what the 10% Pledge boils down to, it's been a surprisingly intense and exciting journey psychologically. As I just had my first anniversary, it seemed appropriate to think back and re-evaluate. I always love reading about the experiences of other pledgers, so I thought I might as well share some of my thoughts.

The Pledge's Influence

It's hard to admit, but: I am not a generous person, especially not with my time. You would never see me volunteering at a soup kitchen. I don't offer help or proactively engage with people on the street that seem to be struggling. Altruism never had much relevance in my life, nor is it ever a topic in my interactions with people. A chain of independent events led me to donate some amount of my income several years [...]

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Outline:

(00:37) The Pledges Influence

(02:00) Spoilt for Choice - Where to Donate?

(03:49) Never Doing Enough

(05:26) The Ivory Tower

(06:13) Being Vocal

(06:56) Conclusion

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First published:

July 27th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/yPkjMCp4uxXkDQxva/my-first-pledge-anniversary-thoughts-of-an-average-joe

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

TLDR: A story from Childhood, to Medicine, to Effective Altrusim, to managing our Non-Profit OneDay Health

I don’t think I can add much to the incredible career advice from this week, so, I thought it might be interesting to tell the story of how my "career"[1], I ended up shaped by Effective Altruism, even when I only read “the book” at age 30. Maybe some of you will resonate with some of it.

Not AI - my actual roof

I sometimes wake up as the morning peeks into our hut and stare at the most beautiful roof we will call our own - and pinch myself. Like Denkenberger said “As you reflect on your blessings, consider your job among them. And perhaps let that gratitude inspire….”

Middle class ‘Bliss’

My youth was middle-class suburbia at its mostly best. Incredible parents who gave me more opportunities [...]

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Outline:

(01:52) Waking up

(02:52) EA from the inside out

(05:12) OneDay Health - from Tiny to Bigger

(06:47) Career/Vocation thoughts/ideas

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First published:

July 28th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/erqX92pgFoPdtXLgu/providence-or-fate-i-sometimes-pinch-mysel

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

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And other ways to make event content more valuable.

I organise and attend a lot of conferences, so the below is correct and need not be caveated based on my experience, but I could be missing some angles here.

When you imagine a session at an event going wrong, you’re probably thinking of the hapless, unlucky speaker. Maybe their slides broke, they forgot their lines, or they tripped on a cable and took the whole stage backdrop down.

This happens sometimes, but event organizers usually remember to invest the effort required to prevent this from happening (e.g., checking that the slides work, not leaving cables lying on the stage).

But there's another big way that sessions go wrong that is sorely neglected: wasting everyone's time, often without people noticing.

Let's give talks a break. They often suck, but event organizers are mostly doing the right things to make them [...]

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Outline:

(01:11) Panels

(03:40) The group brainstorm

(04:27) Your session attendees do not have the answers.

(05:26) Ideas are easy. Bandwidth is low.

(06:28) The ideas are not worth the time cost.

(07:50) Choosing more valuable content: fidelity per person-minute

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First published:

July 28th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/LaMDxRqEo8sZnoBXf/please-no-more-group-brainstorming

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is Part 1 of a multi-part series, shared as part of Career Conversations Week. The views expressed here are my own and don't reflect those of my employer.

TL;DR:

Building an EA-aligned career starting from an LMIC comes with specific challenges that shaped how I think about career planning, especially around constraints:

• Everyone has their own "passport"—some structural limitation that affects their career more than their abilities. Reframing these from unfair barriers to data about my specific career path has helped me a lot.
• When pursuing an ideal career path, it's easy to fixate on what should be possible rather than what actually is. But those idealized paths often require circumstances you don't have—whether personal (e.g., visa status, financial safety net) or external (e.g., your dream org hiring, or a stable funding landscape). It might be helpful to view the paths that work within your actual constraints [...]

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Outline:

(00:21) TL;DR:

(01:27) Introduction

(02:25) My EA journey so far

(03:18) Sometimes my passport mattered more than my competencies, and thats okay

(04:43) Everyone has their own passport

(06:19) Realistic opportunities often outweigh idealistic ones

(08:04) Importance of a fail-safe

(08:37) Playing the long game

(09:44) Adversity quotient seems underrated

(10:13) Building resilience through adversity

(11:22) Pivot into recruiting

(12:11) Building AQ over time

(14:02) Why AQ matters in EA-aligned work

(15:01) Closing thoughts

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First published:

July 28th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/3Hh839MaiWCPzyB3M/building-an-ea-aligned-career-from-an-lmic

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Warning: Discussions of extreme pain and suffering.

In the US, one QALY is valued at around $100,000–$150,000 [1]. In the UK, a WELLBY is valued at £13,000 [2]. Such thresholds help governments and philanthropists decide whether interventions are cost-effective and worth implementing.

However, these metrics (plus the DALY) are largely insensitive to instances of extreme suffering (at least in their current form), so if we want to perform cost-effectiveness analyses of interventions aimed at reducing extreme suffering, we need either to supplement these metrics or introduce new ones.

This post explores some considerations relevant to deciding how much we should value averting instances of extreme suffering. In particular, we’re interested in strategies to estimate the dollar value of averting a “Day Lived in Extreme Suffering” (DLES), defined as a day spent in “the most urgent suffering at the level of approximately 9/10 and above.” [3] However, I won’t attempt [...]

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Outline:

(02:31) Reasoning about a Day Lived in Extreme Suffering

(06:23) Extreme psychological suffering

(09:44) Improving existing metrics vs developing new metrics

(12:07) Challenges in quantifying extreme suffering

(20:34) Potential approaches

(20:48) Governmental approaches

(21:23) 1. Willingness-to-pay methods

(24:22) 2. Precedent methods

(25:51) 3. Opportunity cost methods

(26:55) 4. GDP-based methods

(27:33) Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA)

(30:23) Philanthropic approaches

(31:51) Discussion

(34:19) Conclusion

(35:15) References

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First published:

July 26th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/z4Hb8tZsuRCXmy3mM/how-much-should-we-value-averting-a-day-lived-in-extreme

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Today I'm launching SB53.info, a resource to help the public understand California's Senate Bill 53. The site shows the text of SB 53 enriched with annotations to explain its political and scientific context.

What does SB 53 do?

In a nutshell, SB 53 says seven things. These are the four I consider most important:

• Every large AI developer must write, publish, and follow a safety policy (§ 22757.12.a).
• Every year starting in 2030, a large AI developer must get an independent auditor to verify that (1) they are following their own safety policy, and (2) the safety policy is clear enough that it's possible to determine whether the developer is following it (§ 22757.14).
• Every frontier model released by a large AI developer must have a published model card (§ 22757.12.c).
• A large AI developer is civilly liable if they break any of these rules (§ 22757.16).

And [...]

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Outline:

(00:25) What does SB 53 do?

(08:30) What do I think of SB 53?

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First published:

July 25th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/hKB27TZmFPGPJqgvJ/introducing-sb53-info

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Summary:

Discovering EA recently has made me reconsider how I think about my career and impact. Instead of switching sectors entirely, I'm exploring how to bring EA principles into the work I'm already doing.

I stumbled onto EA about two months ago through a friend who kept mentioning "cost-effectiveness" in conversations about development work. Initially, I was skeptical, another framework claiming to solve everything? But the more I read, the more I realized I'd been wrestling with many of these questions without having the language for them.

What clicked for me

The biggest shift has been moving from "What sector should I work in?" to "How can I maximize impact wherever I am?" I've been working as a communication specialist for a religious organization for a while now, and my first instinct was to completely pivot toward a more obviously EA-aligned organization.

But when I started applying EA thinking [...]

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First published:

July 25th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/2wwt6PiuFNdxEcvix/two-months-into-ea-why-i-m-rethinking-my-approach-to-impact

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.