EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

Until recently

I

thought Julia and I were digging a bit into savings to

donate more. With the tighter funding climate for effective altruism

we

thought

it was worth spending down a bit, especially considering that our

expenses should decrease significantly in 1.5y when our youngest

starts kindergarten.

I was surprised, then, when I ran the

numbers and realized that despite donating 50% of a reduced

income, we were $9k (0.5%) [1] richer than when I left

Google two years earlier.

This is a good problem to have! After thinking it over for the last

month, however, I've decided to start earning

less: I've asked for a voluntary salary reduction of $15k/y

(10%). [2] This is something I've been thinking about off and on since

I started working at a non-profit: it's much more efficient

to reduce your salary than it is to make a donation. [...]

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First published:

January 15th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/3TLTrJS2DZJ5mcrkc/voluntary-salary-reduction

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

The views expressed here are my own, not those of people who provided feedback.

Summary

• I estimate the cost-effectiveness of paying farmers to use more humane pesticides to decrease the suffering of wild insects is 236 DALY/$, or:
  • 23.7 times the cost-effectiveness of GiveWell's top charities.
  • 141 times the cost-effectiveness of broiler welfare campaigns.
  • 51.4 times the cost-effectiveness of cage-free campaigns.
  • 36.9 % of the past cost-effectiveness of the Shrimp Welfare Project (SWP).
• I guess research on and advocacy for more humane pesticides are way more cost-effective than paying farmers to use them more. For example, I estimate cage-free campaigns improve 408 times as many chicken-years per $ as buying organic instead of barn eggs. So I guess research on and advocacy for more humane pesticides is more cost-effective than SWP has been.
• I can easily see my estimated cost-effectiveness going up or down by a few orders of magnitude. I guess uncertainty [...]

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Outline:

(00:14) Summary

(02:16) Calculations

(06:30) Discussion

(09:15) Acknowledgements

The original text contained 6 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

January 14th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/mgsiDB2Kkm3mDSWWP/cost-effectiveness-of-paying-farmers-to-use-more-humane

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Alt Title: A Case for Supporting the Yes On IP28 Campaign

It is safe to say, that from the middle of January, 1877, until the following October, the most prominent theme of public discussion was this question of suffrage for women. Miners discussed it around their camp-fires, and “freighters” on their long slow journeys over the mountain trails argued pro and con, whether they should “let” women have the ballot.

History of Woman Suffrage, Volume 3

Introduction

Denigrated as “bawling, ranting women, bristling for their rights,” the all-male electorate voted two-to-one rejecting the 1877 ballot measure that would have extended suffrage to the women of Colorado. This was the fourth women's suffrage ballot initiative to be defeated at the polls, after previous campaigns in Michigan (1874), Nebraska (1871), and Kansas (1867) received similarly unfavorable results—securing only 23%, 22%, and 31% of the vote, respectively. Nevertheless, they persisted. Between [...]

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Outline:

(00:38) Introduction

(05:54) Commence the Conversation

(14:50) Build a Bloc

(20:56) Advocate with Authenticity

(26:49) Conclusion

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First published:

January 10th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/sNQ7HdcjYEfvM5WXA/how-can-we-get-the-world-to-talk-about-animals-inviolable-1

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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This post is my personal perspective. I’m sure that my colleagues on the Forum Team and at CEA disagree with parts of this. However, since I am the Interim EA Forum Project Lead, I recognize that my opinions and beliefs carry extra weight. I’m very happy to receive feedback and push back from others, since I believe that my decisions matter a fair amount. You’re welcome to reply to this post, DM me, find me at EAG Bay Area, contact our team, or leave our team anonymous feedback here.

When I took the role of Interim EA Forum Project Lead in late August 2024, I spent some time investigating where the Forum was at and thinking about what (if anything) our team should prioritize working on. Over the course of 2024 (and indeed, since early 2023), Forum usage metrics have steadily gone down[1]. My subjective opinion was that the [...]

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Outline:

(01:21) The Forum Team as community builders

(05:41) What does the best version of the Forum community  look like?

(07:23) We're not there yet

(09:50) What is the Forum Team doing?

(12:01) What are we not doing?

(13:00) How you can help

(14:31) Appendix: The value of the Forum

The original text contained 27 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

January 13th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wpDGEXjAtHJa2eCFA/what-are-we-doing-about-the-ea-forum-jan-2025

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Poker pro, art collector, photographer, investor, AI researcher, chronic website creator, endless traveller, and omnipresent volunteer in nascent things. An independent and an invariant.

I briefly worked with him on an accountability partner service. We had funding but he never invoiced me. Every time I called him he was somewhere else on Earth. Senegal, Israel, Nepal, Egypt. He spent 13 straight months travelling in 2017-8.

He wasn't much of a writer - you won't find him on here - but he had started. What suddenly turned out to be his final projects were Poker Camp, Hold'LLM, and Bet Mitzvah, an unwritten book on probability and instrumental reason.

Here are some pieces about him from people who knew him much better than me. I expect there to be more.

• https://andrew.gr/stories/chisness/
• https://x.com/chisness
• https://blog.rossry.net/chisness/
• https://redeniusfuneralhomes.com/obituary/max-chiswick/
• https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/news-views-gossip/remembering-life-max-chiswick-aka-chisness-legacy-far-beyond-poker-tables-1844405/
• https://oldjewishmen.substack.com/p/bhif-old-jewish-men-loses-a-friend 

His last commit was on the 22nd December. He died of malaria on [...]

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First published:

January 13th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/r9fJ26ca5cneY3hA8/max-chiswick-1985-2025

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Cross-posted from Otherwise. Most EAs won't find these arguments new.

Last month, Emma Goldberg wrote a NYT piece contrasting effective altruism with approaches that refuse to quantify meaningful experiences. The piece indicates that effective altruism is creepily numbers-focused. Goldberg asks “what if charity shouldn’t be optimized?”

The egalitarian answer

Dylan Matthews gives a try at answering a question in the piece: “How can anyone put a numerical value on a holy space” like Notre Dame cathedral? For the $760 million spent restoring the cathedral, he estimates you could prevent 47,500 deaths from malaria.

“47,500 people is about five times the population of the town I grew up in. . . . It's useful to imagine walking down Main Street, stopping at each table at the diner Lou's, shaking hands with as many people as you can, and telling them, ‘I think you need to die to make a cathedral [...]

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Outline:

(00:29) The egalitarian answer

(01:16) Who prefers magnificence?

(03:10) Inequality has its benefits

(04:34) Is there enough for everybody to have access to the finer things?

(05:37) The balance of good and bad

(06:33) Both sides have ugly aspects

(07:04) These aren't the only choices

(08:58) Related:

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

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First published:

January 13th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/TiFeCBxKj79bohoDY/the-ugly-sides-of-two-approaches-to-charity

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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This is a plan for how ASI could be relatively safely developed.

Abstract: A plan that puts all frontier model companies on a unified schedule of model training, evaluation and approval, with regulatory compliance promoted through market access. This aims to combine (most of) the economic benefits of unrestricted competition but with more safety, (most of) the time-to-think benefits of AI pauses but with better compliance incentives, and (most of) the central oversight of a Manhattan project but with more freedom and pluralism.

Background

It is based on the following worldview, though not all are cruxes:

1. Rushing to ASI by default leads to deceptive and misaligned ASI, with catastrophic consequences for humanity.
2. A lot of alignment work will be empirical and requires access to (near) cutting edge models to work with.
3. A lot of progress is driven by increased compute and it is possible to measure compute in [...]

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Outline:

(00:39) Background

(02:23) The Plan

(04:51) Advantages

(07:12) Potential problems

(08:06) Do the frontier training runs have to be simultaneous?

(08:51) Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

(10:13) How does this work internationally?

(12:19) To be determined

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First published:

January 12th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/aKvcNc2DbgAvXHtcw/rolling-thresholds-for-agi-scaling-regulation

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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This is a link post.

Sarah Guo, founder of venture capital firm Conviction, is not worried about the existential risk posed by AI. Why not? As she points out in a roundtable of technologists and AI experts at last month's Dealbook Summit, these apocalyptic fears have existed before. “This is quite typical when you look at technology historically”, she explains. “Everything from trains to electricity was considered the end of the world at some point”.

The idea that the current concern around AI is nothing more than another instantiation of the irrational panic that accompanies the eve of every technological revolution is widespread. Anyone reading this is likely familiar with the case for existential risk from AI, which rests on conceptual arguments that are being increasingly validated by empirical evidence, and is a source of concern among some of the world's most highly-cited experts[1]. As I write this, I haven’t [...]

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Outline:

(02:36) Part I: Everything from trains to electricity

(16:48) Part II: False (AI)larms

The original text contained 13 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

January 8th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/eas9hGhARncJ4a4iu/are-ai-safetyists-crying-wolf

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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TL;DR: In 2024 CEA's Events Team supported three pilot “EA Summits” and we are excited to continue with more low-cost, introductory events in 2025 and beyond. Apply below to run one!

Pilot Results

In 2024, we tested a new event format in three locations:

• Brazil & Nigeria: Strong attendance and engagement led us to begin planning full EAGx conferences in these countries for 2025
• South Africa[1]: Less interest than expected, but still provided valuable insights about the community and the viability of larger events

All three events were run for a much lower cost-per-attendee than EAG and EAGx events, with reduced CEA support time, and were very positively received by attendees. We are excited to continue running events at this scale, using them to explore and inspire EA engagement in different regions and iterate on the introductory event model.

Why add a new event series to EAG and EAGx?

After [...]

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Outline:

(00:22) Pilot Results

(01:11) Why add a new event series to EAG and EAGx?

(02:58) EA Summit theory of change

(07:25) Where should we support EA Summit organizers in 2025?

(09:22) Apply to organize an event

(10:56) \*Appendix: Naming the new event series

The original text contained 6 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

January 11th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/i6jgjGmF9u3TkgDeu/announcing-a-new-cea-supported-local-event-series

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Epistemic status: I’m pretty sure some version of this could provide value, but I’m not part of one of the teams in charge of supporting university/city groups. This means that I have less insight into this work, and they might have already considered something like what I’m suggesting but decided to prioritise other projects, such as EOSP.

TLDR.: 

Organisers have a lot of ops work to do, part of which could be outsourced to a central team, empowering community builders to shift their focus to other activities such as upskilling and running more ambitious projects locally.

The case for scalable course coordination

City and university groups need all the help they can get. They have a lot of projects going on, such as courses, career advice, socials, introductory talks, retreats, reading groups, and more. I don’t think many organisers realise this, but something I wish I could tell [...]

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Outline:

(00:26) TLDR.:

(00:42) The case for scalable course coordination

(03:53) Some understandable objections:

(07:13) Conclusion and call to action

The original text contained 10 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

January 7th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/DMz8NmKyHZCFddoAj/your-group-needs-all-the-help-it-can-get-fbb-1

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.