EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

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Rethink Priorities has been conducting a range of surveys and experiments aimed at understanding how people respond to different framings of Effective Altruism (EA), Longtermism, and related specific cause areas.

There has been much debate about whether people involved in EA and Longtermism should frame their efforts and outreach in terms of Effective altruism, Longtermism, Existential risk, Existential security, Global priorities research, or by only mentioning specific risks, such as AI safety and Pandemic prevention (examples can be found at the following links: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8). These discussions have taken place almost entirely in the absence of empirical data, even though they concern largely empirical questions.[1]

In this post we report the results of three pilot studies examining responses to different EA-related terms and descriptions. Some initial findings are:

• Longtermism appears to be consistently less popular than other EA-related terms and concepts we examined, whether presented just as a [...]

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Outline:

(01:52) Study 1. Cause area framing

(05:13) Demographics

(07:15) Study 2. EA-related concepts with and without descriptions

(10:58) Demographics

(11:31) Study 3. Preferences for concrete causes or more general ideas/movements

(15:04) Demographics

(15:29) Manifold Market Predictions

(16:43) General discussion

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Rethink Priorities has been conducting a range of surveys and experiments aimed at understanding how people respond to different framings of Effective Altruism (EA), Longtermism, and related specific cause areas.

There has been much debate about whether people involved in EA and Longtermism should frame their efforts and outreach in terms of Effective altruism, Longtermism, Existential risk, Existential security, Global priorities research, or by only mentioning specific risks, such as AI safety and Pandemic prevention (examples can be found at the following links: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8). These discussions have taken place almost entirely in the absence of empirical data, even though they concern largely empirical questions.[1]

In this post we report the results of three pilot studies examining responses to different EA-related terms and descriptions. Some initial findings are:

• Longtermism appears to be consistently less popular than other EA-related terms and concepts we examined, whether presented just as a [...]

---

Outline:

(01:52) Study 1. Cause area framing

(05:40) Demographics

(08:12) Study 2. EA-related concepts with and without descriptions

(12:51) Demographics

(13:31) Study 3. Preferences for concrete causes or more general ideas/movements

(17:35) Demographics

(18:07) Manifold Market Predictions

(19:20) General discussion

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Since I started PauseAI, I’ve encountered a wall of paranoid fear from EAs and rationalists that the slightest amount of wrongthink or willingness to use persuasive speech as an intervention will taint the person's mind for life with self-deception-- that “politics” will kill their mind. I saw people shake in fear to join a protest of an industry they thought would destroy the world if unchecked because they didn’t want to be photographed next to an “unnuanced” sign. They were afraid of sinning by saying something wrong. They were afraid of sinning by even trying to talk persuasively!

The worry about destroying one's objectivity was often phrased to me as “being a scout/not being a soldier”, referring to Julia Galef's book Scout Mindset. I think we have all the info we need to contradict the fear of not being a scout in her metaphor. Scouts are important for [...]

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This summer, I participated in a human challenge trial at the University of Maryland. I spent the days just prior to my 30th birthday sick with shigellosis.

What? Why?

Dysentery is an acute disease in which pathogens attack the intestine. It is most often caused by the bacteria Shigella. It spreads via the fecal-oral route. It requires an astonishingly low number of pathogens to make a person sick – so it spreads quickly, especially in bad hygienic conditions or anywhere water can get tainted with feces.

It kills about 70,000 people a year, 30,000 of whom are children under the age of 5. Almost all of these cases and deaths are among very poor people.

The primary mechanism by which dysentery kills people is dehydration. The person loses fluids to diarrhea and for whatever reason (lack of knowledge, energy, water, etc) cannot regain them sufficiently. [...]

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Outline:

(00:26) What? Why?

(01:29) The deal with human challenge trials

(02:56) Dysentery: it's a modern disease

(04:38) Getting ready

(07:35) Two days until challenge

(10:30) One day before challenge: the age of phage

(11:18) Bacteriophage therapy: sending a cat after mice

(14:24) Do they work?

(16:28) Day 1 of challenge

(17:19) The waiting game

(18:30) Let's learn about Shigella pathogenesis

(23:43) Let's really learn about Shigella pathogenesis

(27:12) Out the other side

(29:33) Aftermath

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The UK just announced plans to create a continuous metagenomic sequencing system for detecting respiratory pathogens. The system is based on point-of-care sequencing of patients showing up with severe respiratory infections, aiming for diagnosis within 6 hours and allowing the NHS to track emerging pathogens of both artificial or natural origin. The NHS plans to roll this out to 10-30 NHS sites, but no concrete timeline has been announced.

Patients suspected of having severe acute respiratory infections will be diagnosed within 6 hours, supporting the establishment of a new diagnostic system

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It will be used in the expansion of NHS England's Respiratory Metagenomics programme, being led by Guy's and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. It uses samples from patients with severe respiratory infections and rapid genetic testing to match those patients with the right treatments within 6 hours.

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Following an initial successful pilot [...]

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Crossposting notes

This funding memo was written by Nuño Sempere and Rai Sur, the cofounders of Sentinel; I (Saul) am crossposting to the Forum with their permission. I've made some minor changes in formatting to match the Forum, but all of the content is the same.

Note that I crossposted the memo on November 5, 2024, so by the time you're reading this, Sentinel's funding situation might've changed. See here for an archived version of their funding memo at the time of my crossposting, and here for an evergreen version.

Summary

Leadership

Nuño Sempere – Cofounder & Head of Foresight

Founder of Samotsvety, a forecasting team about which one of the widest-read rationalist bloggers, Scott Alexander, says:

‘Enter Samotsvety Forecasts. This is a team of some of the best superforecasters in the world. They won the CSET-Foretell forecasting competition by an absolutely obscene margin, “around twice [...]

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Outline:

(00:49) Summary

(00:52) Leadership

(00:58) Strategy

(02:54) Advisors

(03:17) Progress-to-Date

(04:19) Funding Ask

(04:59) Base Scenario

(05:52) Mid Scenario - everything in Base plus:

(06:16) High Scenario - everything in Mid plus:

(06:41) Black Swans, Brittle Institutions, and Situational Awareness

(08:49) Addressing the Problem with Forecasting and Emergency Response

(10:36) Founding Team

(10:42) The Foresight Team

(12:18) Foresight Team as of August 13, 2024

(12:36) The Emergency Response Team

(15:46) Inspirations

(17:29) How do these public health and humanitarian aid examples generalize to Sentinel?

(18:29) Speculative Scenario

(21:37) Emergency Response Team as of August 13, 2024

(21:55) Impact Estimate

(22:31) Progress-to-Date

(24:00) Funding Ask

(24:40) Base Scenario

(25:33) Mid Scenario - everything in Base plus:

(25:57) High Scenario - everything in Mid plus:

(26:22) Future Direction

(26:49) Appendix

(26:53) Inspiration Case Studies

(26:57) World Central Kitchen

(28:37) Lübeck Vaccine

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• Disclaimer: This is a weak take — mostly based on anecdotes and vibes — but I thought it's worth sharing nonetheless, even if only as a means of soliciting better takes.
• Disclaimer #2: I am very appreciative of everyone who is working tirelessly to pursue farmed animal protection via policy, and I want nothing more than to see it succeed! I just suspect it's going to be a longer and more difficult journey than I anticipated a few years ago, and that this is worth having an open and public conversation about.

I fear the policy landscape for farmed animal protection work is looking more and more bleak.

The election results from last night have reinforced this fear, with animal-friendly measures failing across the ballot, a Republican trifecta set to rule for at least two years, RFK Jr. in line to act as appointed czar of HHS/FDA/USDA, etc. [...]

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Outline:

(01:06) Abolitionist ballot measures lost big in 2024.

(03:20) Incrementalist ballot measures — previously some of the movement's biggest wins — may simply be undone.

(04:54) We have opponents on the left and the right.

(06:34) Cultivated meat is under fire. The Trump admin wont make this any better.

(07:34) So what next?

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TL;DR: EAGxVirtual 2024 (15–17 November) is coming up in less than 2 weeks! This free, online conference is an opportunity to learn from and meet with EAs in 75+ different countries. Applications are open until 14 Nov – Apply now!

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In our announcement post, we explained why we are hosting EAGxVirtual on 15–17 November – to connect the global EA community. We’ll do this by providing access to EA content, the ability to meet others through Swapcard 1-on-1s and cause area/affinity group meetups, giving visibility to high-impact opportunities, and other unique programming.

Updates on content and programs

The full schedule will be released soon to registrants. Here's a preview of the programming:

• Speaker sessions: We have a full lineup of speakers, of which some include:
  • James Snowden (Senior Program Officer at Open Philanthropy) on Working with governments to eliminate lead exposure
     
  • Hayley Batterbuck (Philosophy Researcher [...]
  
  

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Outline:

(00:56) Updates on content and programs

(03:40) Join the global EA community

(04:40) What to expect

(04:43) Timing

(05:22) Ways to connect

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