EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

In the spirit of “Marginal Funding Week” for the 2024 Giving Season on the EA Forum, we’d like to share with you THL UK's need for additional funding, what we would do with it, and how you can have a real impact on reducing the suffering of animals raised for food.

We’re currently seeking funding for our match giving appeal. We’re hoping to raise a total of £80,000 to help us achieve our goals and continue fighting for animals long into the future.

Structure of the post:

1. Our situation
2. How we would use extra funding
3. Our match giving appeal
4. Why give to THL UK
5. Conclusion

Our situation

We’re facing a funding gap of £236k this year and seek long-term funding to continue our work and give us greater financial stability.

We currently receive an annual grant from THL (an independent non-profit registered in the United [...]

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Outline:

(00:54) Our situation

(01:53) How we would use extra funding

(02:58) We’re waiting on a verdict:

(04:22) Our 2024 match giving appeal

(06:04) Why give to THL UK

(08:32) Conclusion

(09:18) The Humane League UK is a UK registered charity working to end the abuse of animals raised for food.

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First published:

November 11th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CmAWaNXxJmmhLnuAi/farmed-animals-are-suffering-here-s-how-thl-uk-would-use

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

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TLDR:

Prioritization is one of Effective Altruism's most fundamental values. In fact, almost all the EA principles outlined on Wikipedia (Impartiality, Cause Prioritization, Cost-Effectiveness, Counterfactual Reasoning) point towards the concept that some ways of doing good are better than others. However, there is another factor we need to balance: plurality. The EA movement is young; it is still learning and evolving. We do not have all the answers (and even if we did have all the facts there would be variation in values). We should expect that new causes, career paths, and ways to do good will emerge. Some of the debates that divide the EA movement might not be resolved in our lifetime, due to deep ethical or epistemic differences. If our long-term goal is to have the most impact, it would therefore likely be wise to keep a somewhat open mind, rather than putting all of our [...]

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First published:

November 11th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Hs9Ei4Ev8xB2NmrbA/cause-plurality-vs-cause-prioritization

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

LLMs are getting much more capable, and progress is rapid. I

use them in my daily work,

and there are many tasks where they're usefully some combination of

faster and more capable than I am. I don't see signs of these

capability increases stopping or slowing down, and if they do continue

I expect the impact on society to start accelerating as they exceed

what an increasing fraction of humans can do. I think we could see

serious changes in the next

2-5

years.

In my professional life, working on pathogen detection I take this

pretty seriously. Advances in AI make it easier for adversaries to

design and create pathogens, and so it's important to get a

comprehensive detection system in place quickly. Similarly, more

powerful AIs are likely to speed up our work in some areas

(computational detection) more than others (partnerships) and increase

the value of [...]

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First published:

November 10th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/4ereNiQatcxxZpHuL/personal-ai-planning

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is more of a personal how-I-think post than an invitation to argue the details.

This post discuss two sources of bloat, mental gymnastics, and panic in AI Safety:

1. p(doom)/timeline creep

2. lesswrong dogma accommodates embedded libertarian assumptions

I think there's been an inflation of the stakes of AI Safety unchecked for a long time. I feel it myself since I switched into AI Safety. When you’re thinking about AI capabilities every day it's easy to become more and more scared and convinced that doom is almost certain, SOON.

My general take on timelines and p(doom) is that the threshold for trying to get AI paused should be pretty low (5% chance of extinction or catastrophe seems more than enough to me) and that, above that, differences in p(doom) have their uses to keep track of but generally aren’t action-relevant. But the subjective sense of doom component [...]

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First published:

November 9th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/LcJ7zoQWv3zDDYFmD/cutting-ai-safety-down-to-size

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is more of a personal how-I-think post than an invitation to argue the details.

This post discuss two sources of bloat, mental gymnastics, and panic in AI Safety:

1. p(doom)/timeline creep

2. lesswrong dogma accommodates embedded libertarian assumptions

I think there's been an inflation of the stakes of AI Safety unchecked for a long time. I feel it myself since I switched into AI Safety. When you’re thinking about AI capabilities every day it's easy to become more and more scared and convinced that doom is almost certain, SOON.

My general take on timelines and p(doom) is that the threshold for trying to get AI paused should be pretty low (5% chance of extinction or catastrophe seems more than enough to me) and that, above that, differences in p(doom) have their uses to keep track of but generally aren’t action-relevant. But the subjective sense of doom component [...]

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First published:

November 9th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/LcJ7zoQWv3zDDYFmD/cutting-ai-safety-down-to-size

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Key Takeaways

• Optimizing your giving's effect on "EA's portfolio” implies you should fund the causes your value system thinks are most underfunded by EA's largest allocators (e.g. Open Phil and SFF).
• These causes aren't necessarily your value system's most preferred causes. ("Preferred" = the ones you'd allocate the plurality of EA's resources to.)
• For the typical EA, this would likely imply donating more to animal welfare, which is currently heavily underfunded under the typical EA's value system.
• Opportunities Open Phil is exiting from, including invertebrates, digital minds, and wild animals, may be especially impactful.

Alice's Investing Dilemma: A Thought Experiment

Alice is a conservative investor who prefers the risk-adjusted return of a portfolio of 70% stocks and 30% bonds. Along with 9 others, Alice has been allocated $1M to split between stocks and bonds however she sees fit. The combined $10M portfolio will be held for 10 years, and its [...]

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Outline:

(00:07) Key Takeaways

(00:53) Alices Investing Dilemma: A Thought Experiment

(01:55) In Charity, We Should Optimize The Portfolio of Everyones Actions

(03:09) Theoretical Implications

(03:31) The Portfolio of Everyones Actions vs EAs Portfolio

(04:10) Practical Recommendations

(05:26) EAs Current Resource Allocations

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First published:

November 9th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/2G8XfzKyd78JqZpjQ/fund-causes-open-phil-underfunds-instead-of-your-most

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Rational Animations' new video is an animation of The King and the Golem, by @Richard_Ngo, with minimal changes to the original text (we removed some dialogue tags). I hope you'll enjoy it!

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First published:

November 8th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/DQsr7vBAxkRXEHHx6/the-king-and-the-golem-the-animation

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

I work for CEA, but this post isn’t intended as a fundraising post for CEA. The main beneficiaries I want to direct readers to are e.g. EA groups and EA communicators who might not have capacity for fundraising. I expect similar arguments apply to e.g. AIS, rationality and animal welfare community-building efforts but I know those spaces less well. There's a version of this post where I pull actual donation numbers and iron out the details of what I’m proposing but this is not that version.

It's difficult for funders to figure out which community-building efforts are successful. The reason your inbox is littered with surveys for every event, retreat and course you take part in is because we want to know if they’re working, and, ultimately, whether we should continue using EA resources to run them. Roughly, things work like this:

• Community builders (CBs) help new community [...]

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Outline:

(03:56) Some caveats

(04:39) What next?

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

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First published:

November 8th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/DyTph8eJXDvnqDhXc/consider-donating-to-whoever-helped-you

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

We are excited to introduce four new charities launched through our August-October 2024 Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program! This round saw our biggest grant to date, totaling an impressive $264K! We extend our heartfelt gratitude to the generous donors from the Seed Network Funding Circle, whose support has played a crucial role in bringing these organizations to life. We also appreciate the mentors in our network and all the talented applicants for their hard work in making these charities a reality.

This article provides a brief introduction to our new organizations. If you want to support some charities with further funding or are interested in volunteer opportunities, you will find more information in the sections below. If launching a high-impact charity interests you, please visit our website and subscribe to our newsletter.

We are excited to introduce our 2024 Fall Cohort:

• ACTRA addresses crime in Latin America by [...]

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Outline:

(02:02) ACTRA

(02:16) Background (why is this a problem worth solving?)

(03:39) Near-term plans

(05:23) How you can support

(05:48) Rahi Impact

(06:08) Background (why is this a problem worth solving?)

(07:36) Near-term plans

(08:17) Targets (estimated cost-effectiveness, one-year goals)

(09:16) How you can support

(10:01) Lead Research for Action (LeRA)

(10:20) Background (why is this a problem worth solving?)

(11:29) Near-term plans

(12:46) Targets (estimated cost-effectiveness, one-year goals)

(13:34) How you can support

(14:39) Oxygen Access Project

(14:54) Background (why is this a problem worth solving?)

(15:17) Near-term plans

(15:50) Targets (estimated cost-effectiveness, one-year goals)

(16:23) How you can support

The original text contained 7 images which were described by AI.

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First published:

November 8th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ajxTCwa6kR6B6GpWi/introducing-four-brand-new-charities-here-s-the-fall-cohort

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

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This post is written in my personal capacity, but is based on insights that I’ve gained through my work as Effective Giving Global Coordinator and Incubator at Giving What We Can since I took on the role in June 2023.

Tl;dr

In my view the average reader of the EA Forum should be giving more to meta-charities like effective giving (EG) organisations. EG organisations play a crucial role in directing funds to highly impactful charities, but many are facing significant funding constraints and/or a lack of diversified funding. Supporting these meta-charities can have a multiplier effect on your donations, potentially leading to extraordinary growth in effective giving. Consider allocating a portion of your donation budget to EG organisations this giving season.

Introduction

When I first heard about EA from a TED talk by Peter Singer in 2017, I was inspired by the idea that we could carefully use evidence [...]

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Outline:

(00:21) Tl;dr

(00:57) Introduction

(02:56) Why EG orgs are funding constrained

(05:28) Why should you donate to EG organisations?

(05:38) The multiplier effect

(07:01) Positive indirect impact

(07:43) Potential for significant growth

(08:35) Addressing future funding constraints

(09:08) The impact of additional funding

(10:28) Why you might not want to donate to EG organisations

(11:29) Where to give?

(11:48) Giving What We Can

(14:49) Effektiv Spenden

(16:42) Founders Pledge

(18:28) Ge Effektivt

(20:09) Giving Multiplier

(21:49) The Life You Can Save

(22:46) Other established EG organisations

(25:22) New EG organisations

(28:55) Call to Action

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First published:

November 8th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/fMcpbGRWBtq3QBEyA/why-you-should-allocate-more-of-your-donation-budget-to-1

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.