EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

This is some very old work I never published in the EA forum; publishing it now because I want to add it to my Estimating value series, mark the end of an era & reference it elsewhere. I don't think I could produce this work today since I've lost the youthful innocence to think it'd be worth the effort given the idosyncrasies of funding institutions. Thanks to SoGive for commissioning this piece a few years ago; you can see the original here.

1. Review of estimation strategies

The following are strategies we might consider using to determine a reasonable cost-effectiveness threshold for philanthropy to reduce existential risk.

1.1. Summary table

1.2. Discussion of strategies

1.2.1. Ideal yet impracticable

Randomized trials are the gold standard in medicine and global health and development. However, they do have the problem of double-counting or triple-counting impact. Shapley values address that limitation.

However, randomized trials are impossible1 for the case of existential risk2; we can't boot up different possible worlds [...]

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Outline:

(00:36) 1. Review of estimation strategies

(00:49) 1.1. Summary table

(01:06) 1.2. Discussion of strategies

(01:11) 1.2.1. Ideal yet impracticable

(03:10) 1.2.2. Methods at the sweet spot of feasibility, informativeness, ambitiousness

(06:19) 1.2.3. More common status quo methods

(07:51) 2. Review of past thresholds

(07:56) 2.1. List of past thresholds

(10:23) 2.2. Meaning of these thresholds

(13:24) 3. A few tentative thresholds

(13:42) 3.1. From first principles

(17:46) 3.2. Thresholds based on better specific interventions

(18:35) 3.2.1. Why not the LTFF

(20:28) 3.2.2. Comparison against robust AI safety technical research

(25:07) 3.2.3. Other interesting targets for comparison

(25:37) 3.3. Summary table and links to the models

(25:43) 3.3.1. Summary of meanings

(26:01) 3.3.2. Summary of values

(26:36) 3.4. A note on replicability of estimates

(28:16) Footnotes

The original text contained 11 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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AI Use Note: Main body text entirely human written. Claude (Opus 4.8) helped develop models of animal life histories in the appendix.

Cross-posted from Good Structures.

• Animal advocates sometimes make claims like “there are X of this animal, and Y>X of this animal, so Y might be a better target to focus on.”
  • For example, you could imagine someone making a claim like “there are 20 quadrillion ants, so they are a higher priority to work on than Pacific salmon (wild population size: ~500M), even accounting for moral weight and welfare range.”
  • Some arguments for working on farmed over companion, or wild over farmed animals, take this shape – where population size serves as a rough heuristic for prioritization.
• These claims frequently rely on abundance estimates produced by conservation- and evolution-focused scientists, who primarily focus on estimating the“stable adult population,” since reproductively active individuals are what's relevant to evolution and species continuity.
• We show that:
  • Using stable adult populations systematically underestimates the number of animals who will live over a specific period. Using stable adult populations systematically underestimates morally relevant experiences of some small and heavily r-selected animals.
• Given this, we argue that:
  • [...]

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Outline:

(00:27) Executive Summary

(03:09) Introduction

(07:22) What do abundance estimates actually count?

(09:11) Callaghan et al. 2021 -- Global Bird Abundance

(12:52) Comparing five example groups of animals

(16:44) Implications for impact estimates

(19:11) Takeaways

(21:48) Appendix A: Methodology for animal throughput estimates

(22:37) Common framework

(23:43) Wild pacific salmon

(24:15) Passeriform birds

(24:41) Grasshoppers

(25:08) Ants

(25:37) Aphids (asexual summer phase)

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“How long have you been v*g*n?”

This is one of the most common icebreakers at animal protection events. It's a baseline assumption, and it mostly holds true: if you’re out advocating for animals not to be tortured or abused, realistically these days you are v**n, or close. And it makes for good conversation. It seems fairly safe to assume when you meet strangers.

But this assumption is hurting the movement in a way which we don’t always notice: someone new comes into the space, has a few conversations, realizes they’re surrounded by v**ns, and they have one of two experiences:

a) if they are v**n, they feel like they’ve found their people; or
b) otherwise they immediately feel out of place—maybe they’re stressing: “uh-oh, I’m realizing everyone else here is v**n, I probably need to be very cautious about what I reveal about myself, do I need to hide?”[1] This makes it hard to interact normally and they’re probably on track to silently not returning.

Compare this to a slightly different world where the word never comes up—where you just get what you expected, namely participation in an animal-protection movement which you opted into.

A dogmatic culture

The V-word [...]

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Outline:

(01:25) A dogmatic culture

(02:18) Diet restrictions have costs, sometimes very high

(03:43) Minimizing and gaslighting

(05:45) There are lots of pro-animal people who eat meat

(08:38) Language can change culture

(09:56) Really? Stop saying the V-word entirely?

(11:23) What to do instead

The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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Thanks to the work of advocates and donors inside and outside of this movement, the Farm Bill draft released by Senate Agriculture Chair John Boozman did not include the dangerous Save Our Bacon Act. This was a huge win towards protecting millions of animals from extreme confinement and other cruel farming practices in the US.

The next step is calling or emailing your Senators, telling them to reject any attempt to slip the amendment into the bill, and oppose any Farm Bill that includes it.

You don't need to be an expert on the topic. Senators put a lot of weight on emails and especially phone calls.

How to call your Senators here (via The Humane League)

How to email your Senators here (via Compassion in World Farming)

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CLR is excited about safe Pareto improvements (SPIs) as a way to mitigate downsides from conflict between AIs. SPIs are a class of interventions on how agents negotiate that makes them all better off, no matter how they would have negotiated without the SPI.

Among many candidate interventions against AI conflict, SPIs stand out to us as unusually robust — see the introduction of our agenda on the topic. And in discussions with people who’ve thought a lot about conflict risks, we’ve found there's broad support for work on SPIs. For those sympathetic to CLR's general priorities and with relevant skills (see below), we think helping SPIs go well is one of the most impactful career paths.

But work on this area is currently very neglected (~2.5 FTE), and there isn’t yet an on-ramp for people to get up to speed.

To address these gaps, we’re running an SPI Fundamentals Program: an online course for people looking to learn about risks of AI conflict, how SPIs might address them, and open problems in this field. We plan to hire for SPI research roles, and we’re keen for you to apply to the program whether you want [...]

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Outline:

(02:11) Content

(04:21) Target audience

(06:03) Contact

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I ran another "EA in the Lakes" event. This basically entailed renting a community hostel (Pardshaw Quaker Centre) in the Lake District, UK, for 3 nights Friday-Monday. I posted some adverts up to attract some EAs looking for a holiday and did not evaluate applications. Here's my report on how it went.

We followed the same format as last time of keeping morning and evenings open for attendee-contributed sessions (one EA and one non-EA topic in each timeslot), while spending afternoons out walking by / swimming in a lake, Loweswater or Ennerdale. We had a couple of repeat attendees but mostly new people - although several of the new people were there by a personal referral of a previous attendee, which is a function both of where I posted the adverts and also a good sign that the last one had been at the very least enjoyable.

Reflections on Depth-First Networking

Overall I think the event went really well. One of the longer-term EA attendees came up with "depth-first networking" to describe the event format I am trying to cultivate. I basically agree with this trio:

• [...]

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Outline:

(01:11) Reflections on Depth-First Networking

(02:59) Attendee feedback

(04:45) Somewhat spiritual Kes thoughts on event organising:

(07:19) Cost:

(08:36) Other thoughts that may be of practical use to someone running something similar but that don't fit in this narrative:

(13:18) Conclusion

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Yuval Harari recently participated in a call to discuss philanthropy for those working in AI.

He produced this handout [edit: document updated by Harari] with some general principles for philanthropy and his three top charities for people working in AI.

They are:

- Karya (ethical data cooperative in India)

- LawZero (developing advanced non-agenic AI)

- AI Futures Project (forecasting AI's future)

I will share this post with his office, so I would guess that he'll see any detailed comments that anyone chooses to share.

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Yuval Harari recently participated in a call to discuss philanthropy for those working in AI.

He produced this handout with some general principles for philanthropy and his three top charities for people working in AI.

They are:

- Karya (ethical data cooperative in India)

- LawZero (developing advanced non-agenic AI)

- AI Futures Project (forecasting AI's future)

I will share this post with his office, so I would guess that he'll see any detailed comments that anyone chooses to share.

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TL;DR

• As of Q1 2026, 80% of major restaurant chain locations in the Philippines, including the country's three largest restaurant groups, have committed to sourcing only cage-free eggs, representing 47 brands and over 11,200 outlets nationwide. Note that prior to 2022, no Philippine-based company had a public CF egg policy commitment.
• 84% of major hotel group locations are also committed, up from just 20% in 2020—at which point every single committed hotel was an international chain.
• This shift happened in 4 years, driven almost entirely by targeted corporate engagement by Lever Foundation's locally-based Philippines team. 
• The country's largest egg producer has gone from 1% to around 10% of egg production being cage-free

"Nearly 80% of Philippine Restaurant Chain Locations Commit to Sourcing Cage-Free Eggs by 2035"—I don't know about you, but I was incredibly surprised when I heard this from my teammates. The Philippines is not a country where you'd typically expect this. It's a low-income country with price-sensitive consumers, limited regulatory pressure on animal welfare, and an egg industry that until recently had little commercial incentive to go cage-free (CF). Yet here we are.

The committed brands include the country's largest and most beloved fast food and cafe chains like Shakey's [...]

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Outline:

(00:15) TL;DR

(02:10) The Numbers

(04:20) The Market Side

(05:40) The Supply Side

(06:49) The Work Behind the Number

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Hello! I'm Justin Portela. I got hired by GWWC to make YouTube videos after AI in Context did such a kickass job.

My channel is using that same cinematic, high-production value beauty to talk about everything in the EA universe that isn't AI.

My first video is out now. It's about an obscure and unknown World Health Organization Meeting in 1955 that helped shape the conditions that have left up to 40 million people dead of malaria in sub-saharan Africa.

I think it's pretty dope. I hope you do too.

What you can do

Watch it, subscribe to it, share it, do anything to help us reach more people. I made this channel to appeal to people who have never heard of EA. I want to be people's first introduction to the principles of EA and effective giving, so the more people that this reaches the better.

Feedback?

If you have thoughts, let me know! Either comment here or email me at [email protected]

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