EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

As part of Draft Amnesty week. I would do more in-depth research if this creates valuable discussion that warrants further investigation!

I went to EAG in the Bay Area and wore an N95 mask. There were not many of us wearing masks, despite it being near the peak of one of the worst flu seasons in the US in two decades. And we're all used to wearing masks already from COVID. Sure, you're tired of wearing masks, but think of the cost-benefit.

Why did I wear a mask?

I don't want to get sick. I have gotten sick after 4/7 EAGs I have gone to. I am fairly certain from whom I got it in two cases. It sucks! I'm tired of getting sick

The costs of wearing a mask: the cost of the mask + the inconvenience + the lost social benefits from facial expressions.

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

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First published:

March 2nd, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/7qqfoD5LxzSybrM5h/why-you-should-wear-a-mask-at-eags

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is a Draft Amnesty Week draft. It may not be polished, up to my usual standards, fully thought through, or fully fact-checked. 

Commenting and feedback guidelines:

This draft lacks the polish of a full post, but the content is almost there. The kind of constructive feedback you would normally put on a Forum post is very welcome.

Draft Amnesty Context: In the last year or two, I have noticed several ways in which the proxies that we use to communicate in effective animal advocacy can lose important nuance, leading to misunderstandings. I have even noticed a couple of times where these misunderstandings have found their way into important evaluative work, but not yet in a crucial/decision-relevant way. I intended to turn these observations into a stringent line of thought with a broader point, using real-world examples as citations and hard data to back up how they can be misleading. Now [...]

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Outline:

(01:23) Nuances in Scale:

(08:20) Nuance in Contribution

(12:13) So what now?

The original text contained 7 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

March 2nd, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/DgpRaCdvupy6cMbdk/nuance-in-proxies

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Claude 3.7's coding ability forced me to reanalyze whether where will be a SWE job for me after college. This has forced me to re-explore AI safety and its arguments, and I have been re-radicalized towards the safety movement.

What I can’t understand, though, is how contradictory so much of Effective Altruism (EA) feels. It hurts my head, and I want to explore my thoughts in this post.

EA seems far too friendly toward AGI labs and feels completely uncalibrated to the actual existential risk (from an EA perspective) and the probability of catastrophe from AGI (p(doom)). Why aren’t we publicly shaming AI researchers every day? Are we too unwilling to be negative in our pursuit of reducing the chance of doom? Why are we friendly with Anthropic? Anthropic actively accelerates the frontier, currently holds the best coding model, and explicitly aims to build AGI—yet somehow, EAs rally behind [...]

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First published:

March 2nd, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/t5rr7usjNGsqTCCLz/opinionated-take-on-ea-and-ai-safety

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

I started drafting this about two years ago and gave a lightning talk on the idea at a community builders retreat. I tabled it, but I'm sharing it as a short post during Draft Amnesty Week.

Sometimes, I intentionally go to events where I know no one, just for the experience of being in a room full of strangers.

I spend so much time in self-made bubbles: bubbles of like-minded people, bubbles of colleagues, bubbles of family, bubbles of long-established friendship. I meet new people all the time. But I meet them because they have chosen to bravely enter my bubble. And that can make it very hard to remember what it's like to enter a room where you know no one.

I'm not shy and I don't experience social anxiety, but that becomes irrelevant when I don't know what awaits me on the other side of a door.

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First published:

March 2nd, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/e3dCBnzku56ma2bMt/room-full-of-strangers

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Written by Thomas Billington and Karthik Pulugurtha

TL;DR

• Most farmed animals live in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), but traditional Western animal advocacy tactics often fail there due to fragmented supply chains, informal markets, and weak enforcement.
• Creating meaningful change for these animals requires exploring both building infrastructure for change and trying alternative pressure points like farmer cooperatives and local institutions.
• Movements like sustainability, ecosystem protection, and antimicrobial resistance claim to have successfully transformed agricultural practices in LMICs. Learning from these successes could accelerate progress for farmed animals.

Interested in getting involved?

We are planning a 2025 research project into sustainable agriculture projects in LMICs and how their strategies might apply to farmed animal advocacy.

We are seeking collaborators for both the research phase and a potential follow-up charity. Please fill out our expression of interest form.

Introduction

The farmed animal protection movement is a global [...]

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Outline:

(01:14) Introduction

(02:47) Why Existing Models May Not Work

(05:52) Alternative Leverage Points

(07:27) Lessons From Other Movements

(09:59) Conclusions

(11:05) Call for Help - We're Looking for Collaborators

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First published:

February 28th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/HsfYbH9A2JTLs95sK/how-will-we-help-the-billions-of-farmed-animals-in-low-and

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

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I feel silly writing this up, but it's draft amnesty week. Caveat: I’ve been a visitor to several EA offices but haven’t worked regularly in any of them, and maybe I'm overly nostalgic about reheated felafel.

Some EA offices have catered lunch or lunch cooked on the premises every day. This is nice, but not every workplace can afford it.

5+ years ago when everything in EA was lower-budget, the main way EA offices did lunch was to provide sandwich / wrap ingredients. Ops staff would order the groceries, and would put out the spread about 15 minutes before lunchtime and microwave some of the foods. There was a designated time to show up, often 1 pm.

This method works pretty well for a crowd because you don’t all have to wait for the microwave. It was pretty flexible for different tastes and diets. People who wanted [...]

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First published:

February 28th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/EyXWx8stxSzgAMzJX/the-lost-art-of-the-cheap-office-lunch

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is a Draft Amnesty Week draft. It may not be polished, up to my usual standards, fully thought through, or fully fact-checked. 

Commenting and feedback guidelines:

This is a draft amnesty post because I half wrote it a while ago before becoming uncertain whether I was ‘making up a guy to get mad at’ (see footnote 1). I’d be interested in feedback on whether I’ve identified a real mistake, or if I’ve seen a few sloppily worded comments and over-indexed on them.

Cause neutrality is one of the guiding principles in my understanding of effective altruism. It's something like a regulative ideal - a goal that no individual or community can ever hit, but one that helps you do better the more you aim for it.

Cause neutrality is the idea that you should go into cause prioritisation with a neutral attitude towards every possible cause and only update [...]

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

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First published:

February 28th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/kD93KWsJisyCqQHwt/cause-neutrality-doesn-t-mean-all-ea-causes-matter-equally

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Today, I want to reflect on the cost of holding an AVA Summit in Los Angeles. While it's true that there are now alternatives in other regions of the world, such as LATAM and Asia, the United States remains the epicenter where the largest number of funders and major organizations gather.

However, is it really necessary to organize an event of this scale in such an expensive location? The Marriott Hotel in Los Angeles, situated in one of the most expensive cities in the world, not only represents a huge investment in terms of accommodation and logistics, but it also creates an economic barrier for many nonprofit foundations and NGOs that have the potential to make a difference but lack the resources to attend.

Let's break it down: the entry ticket costs $400 per person, accommodation is similarly priced, and flights can easily exceed $500, especially for [...]

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First published:

February 27th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/WpymoMe5scs7pRnjn/the-reality-of-holding-an-ava-summit-in-los-angeles-is-it

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Summary

In this post we report results about the demographics of the EA community from the latest EA Survey.

Most results remain similar to previous years, with a majority of respondents identifying as men and having a White racial/ethnic identity. A large percentage of participants have attended top universities. And, politically, respondents remain largely left-leaning, though we note an increase in center-left respondents compared to previous years. Also, the average age of the community continues to increase, which may be related to seeing fewer students and more respondents currently being employed.

In addition to these demographics, we also report on the respondent's career strategies. A larger percentage of respondents reported relying on earning to give compared to the previous survey. This year's post also includes new results on respondents' main approach to doing good, as well as their diet, which was last asked about in 2019.

The [...]

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Outline:

(00:06) Summary

(08:22) Introduction

(10:49) Basic Demographics

(10:53) Gender

(13:02) Racial/ethnic identity

(14:24) Age

(16:33) Careers and Education

(16:56) Employment/student status

(17:59) University

(20:19) Career strategy

(23:28) Approach to doing good

(26:30) Beliefs

(26:33) Politics

(27:52) Diet

(30:28) Appendix

(30:31) Appendix 1: Gender distribution table

(30:51) Appendix 2: Racial/ethnic identity distribution table

(31:14) Appendix 3: Age distribution table

The original text contained 8 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

February 28th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/z4Wxd2dnTqDmFZrej/ea-survey-2024-demographics

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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.

This is a link post.

New content since our last update includes:

(1) A new study guide on Peter Singer's ‘All Animals are Equal’ (the first chapter from Animal Liberation Now), which covers:

• Singer's argument against speciesism (based on his analysis of what makes unjust discrimination in general wrong).
• Detailed discussion of factory farming as the most egregious example of mass mistreatment of animals.
• Why “equal consideration” does not entail “identical treatment”, and how Singer's view can make sense of its being much more morally bad to kill a person than a mouse (in most cases).
• Possible objections to Singer's strong anti-speciesism, based on (i) the treatment/enhancement distinction and (ii) the possibility of a prerogative to give some (human) beings more moral consideration than is objectively warranted. (Of course, even if one rejects Singer's strong anti-speciesism, that doesn’t suffice to justify factory farming.)
• Practical implications, including whether we should [...]

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Outline:

(01:48) New Guest Essays

(03:48) Conclusion

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

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First published:

February 27th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/yQDGRKsu4hqvDikGf/utilitarianism-net-updates-again

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.