EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

TL;DR: You can create outsized value by introducing the right people at the right time in the right way. This post shares general principles and tips I've found useful.
Once you become a super connector, it's also important to be a good steward of the unavoidable whisper networks that develop, and I include tips for that as well.

Context: I unintentionally fell into a super connector role and wanted to share the lessons I figured out along the way. Feel free to check out my personal story[1] and credentials[2] if you are curious to learn more.

Why Super Connectors Matter

Credit: GPT 4o

In communities like EA, where talented people often work in isolation on high-impact problems, a well-placed introduction or signpost can lead to tremendous impact down the road. Super connectors accelerate access to key information and relationships, which reduces wasted effort and helps triage scarce resources. [...]

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Outline:

(00:44) Why Super Connectors Matter

(01:21) General Principles

(01:25) 1. Know Your North Star

(02:03) 2. Understand People Deeply

(02:26) 3. Never Waste Peoples Time

(03:04) 4. Be Ruthlessly Selective

(03:37) 5. Direct Towards Appropriate Engagement Channels

(04:14) Practical Tips

(05:38) A Note on Whisper Networks

(08:47) Getting Started

The original text contained 4 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

June 15th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/JvFrCTKPdHhejAE2q/a-practical-guide-for-aspiring-super-connectors

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Formosa: Fulcrum of the Future?

An invasion of Taiwan is uncomfortably likely and potentially catastrophic. We should research better ways to avoid it.

TLDR: I forecast that an invasion of Taiwan increases all the anthropogenic risks by ~1.5% (percentage points) of a catastrophe killing 10% or more of the population by 2100 (nuclear risk by 0.9%, AI + Biorisk by 0.6%). This would imply it constitutes a sizable share of the total catastrophic risk burden expected over the rest of this century by skilled and knowledgeable forecasters (8% of the total risk of 20% according to domain experts and 17% of the total risk of 9% according to superforecasters).

I think this means that we should research ways to cost-effectively decrease the likelihood that China invades Taiwan. This could mean exploring the prospect of advocating that Taiwan increase its deterrence by investing in cheap but lethal weapons platforms [...]

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Outline:

(00:13) Formosa: Fulcrum of the Future?

(02:04) Part 0: Background

(03:44) Part 1: Invasion -- uncomfortably possible.

(08:33) Part 2: Why an invasion would be bad

(10:27) 2.1 War and nuclear war

(19:20) 2.2. The end of cooperation: AI and Bio-risk

(22:44) 2.3 Appeasement or capitulation and the end of the liberal-led order: Value risk

(26:04) Part 3: How to prevent a war

(29:39) 3.1. Diplomacy: speaking softly

(31:21) 3.2. Deterrence: carrying a big stick

(34:16) Toy model of deterrence

(37:58) Toy cost-effectiveness of deterrence

(41:13) How to cost-effectively increase deterrence

(43:30) Risks of a deterrence strategy

(44:12) 3.3. What can be done?

(44:42) How tractable is it to increase deterrence?

(45:43) A theory of change for philanthropy increasing Taiwan's military deterrence

(45:56) en-US-AvaMultilingualNeural__ Flow chart showing policy influence between think tanks and Taiwan security outcomes.

(48:55) 4. Conclusion and further work

(50:53) With more time

(52:00) Bonus thoughts

(52:09) 1. Reminder: a catastrophe killing 10% or more of humanity is pretty unprecedented

(53:06) 2. Where's the Effective Altruist think tank for preventing global conflict?

(54:11) 3. Does forecasting risks based on scenarios change our view on the likelihood of catastrophe?

The original text contained 16 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

June 15th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/qvzcmzPcR5mDEhqkz/an-invasion-of-taiwan-is-uncomfortably-likely-potentially

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What would you do if a nuclear weapon were used in Ukraine? What about if there were evidence of a disease as transmissible as COVID-19 but more fatal, potentially enabled by AI?

While our community aims to reduce the chances of catastrophe, we may not always succeed. If the risk becomes very high in your location you might consider the possibility of relocating. Most people don’t have the luxury to consider moving, but many EA Forum readers do. For most people relocating, it will be a personal decision to increase the safety of themselves and their loved ones. But in some cases, this could be an altruistic decision, for example if your work is likely to be valuable post-catastrophe by helping to rebuild or mitigate further harm.

We think it's a good idea to think through what you would do ahead of time so that you can [...]

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

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First published:

June 14th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/vC8xedgkJSsdccjty/relocation-triggers

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

At the last EAG Bay Area, I gave a workshop on navigating a difficult job market, which I repeated days ago at EAG London. A few people have asked for my notes and slides, so I’ve decided to share them here.

This is the slide deck I used.

Below is a low-effort loose transcript, minus the interactive bits (you can see these on the slides in the form of reflection and discussion prompts with a timer). In my opinion, some interactive elements were rushed because I stubbornly wanted to pack too much into the session. If you’re going to re-use them, I recommend you allow for more time than I did if you can (and if you can’t, I empathise with the struggle of making difficult trade-offs due to time constraints).

One of the benefits of written communication over spoken communication is that you can be [...]

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Outline:

(01:29) Introduction

(02:49) General Observations

(02:52) Market inefficiencies

(06:07) Some Skills in High Demand and Low Supply

(08:34) Be Careful About Deferring to Others

(11:00) Multiple Bets Are Required to Solve a Problem

(14:35) Be Prepared to Pivot

(16:56) Practical Job Hunting and Career Advice

(17:01) Impact Requires Unpaid Work (Unfortunate but True)

(19:49) Maximize Your Luck Surface Area

(20:41) Say Yes to Things

(21:32) Reframe Job Applications as a Communication Protocol, Not an Evaluation

(24:03) Final Thoughts

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First published:

June 15th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/zWqEfKycEDgMiX6HR/how-to-have-an-impact-when-the-job-market-is-not-cooperating

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This essay presents some of my thoughts on whether advocacy organisations should stay focused on a single issue and avoid commenting outside their focus areas.

When you lead an advocacy organisation, you frequently get questions on your stance on other social issues. Some organisations pick a focus area like “animal advocacy” and never comment on anything outside of that area. Some organisations make statements on multiple issues, like current affairs, global politics, environment and so on.

I don’t attempt to cover all arguments or even the strongest arguments here. This is rather a list of considerations that weren’t obvious to me from the start.

My overall tendencies on this question:

• Both single-issue and multi-issue positioning are legitimate options in some contexts.
• Effectiveness of creating a single issue or multi issue organisation depends on the context, and we should let people experiment to organically see which one performs [...]

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Outline:

(01:44) A general model for issue positioning

(06:00) Some arguments for single issue positioning

(06:05) Expertise is real

(08:39) Limited legitimacy

(09:46) Adopting a single issue policy provides a principled way to stay out of other issues

(10:14) Some arguments for multi issue positioning

(10:19) Being cooperative

(11:15) Smaller movements might have more to gain from a norm of we must fight against all the injustices. Animal advocacy is a small movement.

(12:06) Single-issue platforms might be unviable in low-trust societies.

(14:38) Better to be multi issue by choice than to be multi issue by coercion

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First published:

June 14th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/AeqNocbAiCiKofT5w/thoughts-on-single-issue-vs-multi-issue-positioning

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Hi All,

My girlfriend and I recently hosted our first Vegan Charity Dinner here in Vienna, Austria, and we’d like to share the idea in hopes of inspiring more people to organize similar events.

What are Vegan Charity Dinners?

We host monthly dinners where we cook a vegan meal for everyone attending. Each guest contributes roughly the cost of a restaurant meal (around €20 / $20), and we donate 100% of the money collected to highly effective charities—such as those recommended by Animal Charity Evaluators.

At our first dinner, 14 people attended, and we were able to donate €260 to The Humane League. We keep ingredient costs low and cover them ourselves, so the entire donation goes to the selected charity.

How We Motivate People to Attend

We posted in local vegan Facebook groups, WhatsApp groups, subreddits, etc., inviting people to join our WhatsApp group, where we share dates [...]

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Outline:

(00:26) What are Vegan Charity Dinners?

(01:03) How We Motivate People to Attend

(01:36) Why We Recommend Hosting Dinners Like This as a Form of Activism

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First published:

June 13th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/AHDup6cQzmR8eMbxu/how-we-got-13-people-to-donate-to-effective-vegan-charities

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

[EN] We're excited to announce EAGxSãoPaulo 2025, a three-day conference in Brazil for people committed to using evidence and reason to do good better.

🗓️ The event will take place on August 22-24, 2025, at the historic Casa de Portugal, just a few minutes from the city center and easily accessible by public transport.

While the event will have a strong focus on the Portuguese-speaking and Latin-American community, we’re excited to welcome participants from any background who want to connect, collaborate, and contribute to the growth of Effective Altruism in the region.

The conference will be multilingual. We expect most content to be in Portuguese, with a considerable amount in Spanish and English as well. We are working to provide translation for most talks and activities.

Whether you're deeply involved in EA or just starting to explore its concepts, this will be a space where you can learn, connect [...]

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Outline:

(01:19) Why attend?

(02:34) Who is this for?

(03:38) \[PT\] EAGxSãoPaulo - Inscrições abertas!

(05:01) Por que participar?

(06:31) Para quem é?

(07:52) \[ES\] EAGxSãoPaulo 2025 -- ¡Inscripciones abiertas!

(09:17) ¿Por qué asistir?

(10:52) ¿A quién está dirigido este evento?

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First published:

June 10th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/thbxdRXiubmgkM4nk/eagxsaopaulo-2025-22-24-aug-applications-open

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This is a link post.

See previous discussion here.

I find a lot of professional events fairly soul-crushing and have been thinking about why.

I dislike small talk. Recently I attended Manifest, and noticed that it could easily take 10 minutes of conversation to learn the very basics about a person. There were hundreds of people at the conference, so meeting people felt expensive and haphazard.

My regular time is costly, and conference time should be even more expensive. It seems reasonable to aim for $50 to $300 of value per hour. So if I spend 10 minutes with someone only to find out we don't have much in common, that can easily be $20 to $100 lost (total, between both parties). Add the unpleasantness of slowly losing my voice and being in a crowded atmosphere. I enjoy quiet spaces and my energy reserves quickly deplete in crowded and loud [...]

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Outline:

(02:16) Practical Considerations

(04:51) Addendum 1: Website Profiles

(05:37) Example Potential Designs

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First published:

June 13th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/PBFXXSNZDjunATzaq/information-dense-conference-badges

Linkpost URL:
https://ozziegooen.substack.com/p/information-dense-conference-badges

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This is a transcript of my opening talk at EA Global: London 2025. In my talk, I challenge the misconception that EA is populated by “cold, uncaring, spreadsheet-obsessed robots” and explain how EA principles serve as tools for putting compassion into practice, translating our feelings about the world's problems into effective action.

Key points:

• Most people involved in EA are here because of their feelings, not despite them. Many of us are driven by emotions like anger about neglected global health needs, sadness about animal suffering, or fear about AI risks. What distinguishes us as a community isn't that we don't feel; it's that we don't stop at feeling — we act. Two examples:
  • When USAID cuts threatened critical health programs, GiveWell mobilized $24 million in emergency funding within weeks.
  • People from the EA ecosystem spotted AI risks years ahead of the mainstream and pioneered funding for the field [...]

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First published:

June 13th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/eT823dqNAhdRXBYvb/from-feelings-to-action-spreadsheets-as-an-act-of-compassion

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This is a link post.

Disclaimer: all beliefs here are mine alone, and do not necessarily reflect the beliefs of my employer or any organization I work with.

Summary: This is my best attempt to explain my beliefs about AI existential risk, leaving none of my assumptions unstated or unchallenged. I’m writing this not because I’m confident that I arrived at the right answer, nor because I think I’ve stumbled on an especially clever insight. I’m writing this because laying out my thought process in full detail can be a helpful tool for thinking clearly and having productive dialogues. If you disagree with any of the points I’ve made, then I encourage you to write your own P(doom) explanation in a similar style.

Introduction

I just came back from Manifest, where I had the privilege of participating in a live AI doom debate with Liron Shapira of the AI Doom [...]

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Outline:

(00:56) Introduction

(03:06) The 11 Claims

(03:10) 1. AGI isn't coming soon (15%)

(04:36) 2. Artificial intelligence can't go far beyond human intelligence (1%)

(06:10) 3. AI won't be a physical threat (1%)

(07:43) 4. Intelligence yields moral goodness (30%)

(08:18) 5. We have a safe AI development process (20%)

(10:25) 6. AI capabilities will rise at a manageable pace (N/A)

(10:37) 7. AI won't try to conquer the universe (50%)

(11:33) 7A: By default, AGI will not be truly agentic. (2%)

(12:41) 7B: By default, AGI will be aligned to human interests. (40%)

(13:52) 7C: By default, AGI will be misaligned but non-expansionary. (8%)

(17:00) 8. Superalignment is a tractable problem (20%)

(18:40) 9. Once we solve superalignment, we'll enjoy peace (80%)

(23:29) 10. Unaligned ASI will spare us (1%)

(24:58) 11. AI doomerism is bad epistemology (true, but mostly irrelevant)

(26:27) Multiplying the Numbers Together

(26:58) Other Considerations

(27:21) Humanity Won't Be Doomed is a Good Historical Heuristic

(28:37) Superforecasters Think We'll Probably Be Fine

(31:00) AI Developers and Top Government Officials Seem to Think We'll Be Fine

(34:06) Multiplying the Numbers Together (Again)

(34:33) Conclusion

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

June 12th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/hrMBpqmgxpLZPLeBG/my-p-doom-is-2-76-here-s-why

Linkpost URL:
https://thelimestack.substack.com/p/my-pdoom-is-276-heres-why

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