EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

Yesterday in the North Carolina Court of Appeals in Raleigh, three amicus briefs were offered in support of Legal Impact for Chickens’ lawsuit against KFC-supplier Case Farms for cruelty toward newborn chicks.

These amicus briefs were submitted by farming groups, nonprofits, and veterinarians–including the Northeast Organic Dairy Producers Alliance and Asheville-based Dr. Laura Cochrane, DVM–and written by attorneys including former North Carolina Appellate Judge Lucy Inman.

“Defendants’ alleged conduct is not only unethical, but completely contrary to the professional standards of modern poultry farming,” say Food Animal Concerns Trust, Northeast Organic Dairy Producers Alliance, and The Cornucopia Institute in their brief, written by former North Carolina Appellate Judge Lucy Inman.

Beautiful Together Animal Sanctuary's brief states, “Legal Impact for Chicken's complaint alleges shocking atrocities that, if committed against a dog or cat, would merit universal condemnation.”

“North Carolina takes animal cruelty seriously,” [...]

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Economic growth is a unique field, because it is relevant to both the global development side of EA and the AI side of EA. Global development policy can be informed by models that offer helpful diagnostics into the drivers of growth, while growth models can also inform us about how AI progress will affect society. My friend asked me to create a growth theory reading list for an average EA who is interested in applying growth theory to EA concerns. This is my list. (It's shorter and more balanced between AI/GHD than this list) I hope it helps anyone who wants to dig into growth questions themselves.

These papers require a fair amount of mathematical maturity. If you don't feel confident about your math, I encourage you to start with Jones 2016 to get a really strong grounding in the facts of growth, with some explanations in words [...]

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Outline:

(01:00) Basics of growth

(01:15) Jones 2016

(02:20) Jones 2005

(03:32) Growth theory for AI progress

(03:58) Aghion, Jones and Jones 2019

(04:56) Jones and Liu 2024

(07:45) Klette and Kortum 2003

(09:58) Growth theory for global development

(10:25) Banerjee and Duflo 2005 + Hsieh and Klenow 2009

(13:09) Herrendorf, Rogerson and Valentinyi 2014

(13:57) Jones 2011

(16:22) Reading advice

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I’m Harri, a Fund Manager at EAIF. This post includes some brief updates on EAIF, an overview of what I'm working on there, and some reflections.

Tl;dr

Main updates on EAIF:

• Alejandro Ortega, Jamie Harris and I have joined the team
• We’re happy with our principles-first focus, and aren’t currently planning on further clarifying this at the moment

Things that I’m working on:

• My main focus is ensuring we’re meeting deadlines for responding to applicants
• We’re conducting a retrospective evaluation of our past grants
• I’m thinking about how we can get better at evaluating applications

• I’m aiming to get a better understanding of what it is for EA to thrive

Alejandro Ortega, Jamie Harris and I have joined the team

In February 2024, the people working at EAIF were Caleb Parikh and Tom Barnes. Since then Alejandro Ortega, Jamie Harris and I have [...]

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Right now becoming a member of Giv Effektivt, the Danish sister organization of Give Well and GWWC, can be a really good deed! We need 300 members before the new year to be able to offer tax deductions of around 450.000DKK ($66.000) for donations in 2024-2025. All EU citizens can become members.

A membership costs 50DKK ($7). One of our fantastic donors will give a 100DKK donation for each new member we acquire until we reach our goal of 300 members.

Please feel free to share the message with friends or EAs in your network

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Posting something about a current issue that I think many people here would be interested in.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has until September 30 to decide the fate of SB 1047 - one of the most hotly debated AI bills in the world. The Center for AI Safety Action Fund, where I work, is a co-sponsor of the bill. We need your help to encourage the Governor to sign it! You can help by writing a quick custom letter and sending it to his office (see instructions below).

About SB 1047 and why it is important

SB 1047 is an AI bill in the state of California. SB 1047 would require the developers of the largest AI models, costing over $100 million to train, to test the models for the potential to cause or enable severe harm, such as cyberattacks on critical infrastructure or the creation of biological weapons [...]

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Outline:

(00:35) About SB 1047 and why it is important

(03:22) How you can help

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This week, the CEA events team will be running the 2024 edition of the Meta Coordination Forum (MCF) in California. We’re bringing together ~40 people leading EA community-building organizations and projects to foster a shared understanding of some of the biggest challenges facing our community and align on strategies for addressing these problems. This is a short post to provide the wider community with a sense of the event's goals and who will be attending.

Goals and themes

The Meta Coordination Forum aims to:

• Build a shared understanding among attendees of some of the biggest challenges facing the EA community.
• Provide space for attendees to discuss, get feedback on, and develop strategies for addressing these challenges. 
• Foster more collaboration among people leading EA meta-organizations and projects.

While we’re encouraging attendees to prioritize one-on-one meetings and private conversations, our structured sessions will focus on two key themes:

• Brand [...]

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Outline:

(00:36) Goals and themes

(01:58) Attendees

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This interview is a cross-post from Probably Good's new Career Journeys series.

“No one will ever complain that you write too well… I look back at stuff I wrote 20 years ago and cringe now. But if I didn’t write it, I would still be bad. You’re not learning unless you’re doing it.”

How does someone break into the field of development economics? And what does working in the field actually look like? Ranil Dissanayake is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development. His career journey spans several countries and unique experiences – including over 15 years working in international development policy-making. Along the way, he's realized the importance of writing often, sharing ideas often, and talking with people of all sorts of backgrounds. We recently chatted about his path to his current role, day-to-day work, and advice for people starting out [...]

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Outline:

(01:07) What did you want to do when you were younger? And how did your ambitions change over time?

(03:44) What happened after the master's degree?

(05:43) Where did you go from there and how did it lead you to your current role?

(09:08) What does a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development actually do?

(10:12) What does your day-to-day look like?

(12:30) What part of your work do you feel most fulfilled by?

(14:23) Outside of your direct job experience, what experiences or skills do you think were especially helpful in getting to where you are today?

(16:53) Do you have any other advice you’d give to someone just starting out in development economics or wanting to get into it?

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Reconsidering the Celebration of Project Cancellations: Have We Updated Too Far?

Epistemic status: Low certainty. These are tentative thoughts, and I’m open to alternative perspectives.

Posting from an alt account.

The Effective Altruism community has made significant strides in recognizing the importance of quitting projects that don’t deliver short-term results, which helps counteract the sunk cost fallacy and promotes the efficient use of resources. This mindset, in many cases, is a positive development. However, I wonder if we’ve over-updated in this direction. Recent posts about project cancellations, like the one regarding the Center for Effective Aid Policy (CEAP), have received considerable attention—CEAP's closure post garnered 538 karma, for instance. While I don’t have a strong opinion on whether it was prudent to shutter CEAP, I am concerned that its closure, and the community's reaction to it, vibes in a direction where initial setbacks are seen as definitive reasons to [...]

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It's a rare privilege to lead an organisation that embodies the very ideals that shaped your life. I’ve been fortunate to have been given that opportunity for the last four years.

My journey with Giving What We Can began long before I became its CEO. Like many members, I started as a curious onlooker, lurking for many years after first googling something along the lines of “what's the best charity?” and slowly being drawn to the idea of effective giving. I vividly remember the day I first hovered over the ‘donate’ button on the Against Malaria Foundation's website after getting my first raise. My heart was racing, wondering if a decent chunk of my small paycheck would truly make a difference… only to go back and read a report on malaria “just one more time.”

Finally, I found the courage to act. I started giving [...]

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Intro

I think the 80,000 Hours Podcast is a great show. Despite the world of podcasts overflowing with content to choose from, it's reliably been a high-quality production that's been a regular part of my listening habits ever since I discovered it. It was also probably one of the first routes I become more aware of the EA community, which I suspect I might not be alone by.[1]

So, as the podcast numbers ticked up, the vague idea to write up a post shouting out some of my favourite episodes took root. I didn't get far with it from there, and now the unreasonable effectiveness of the 80k podcast production team has forced my hand! So in the post I'm going to link to my 10 favourite episodes, along with some final thoughts at the end.

I hope to share with you some of my favourite episodes, but I [...]

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Outline:

(00:07) Intro

(01:12) My Top 10

(01:16) 10-4

(01:19) 10: #144 – Athena Aktipis on why cancer is actually one of the fundamental phenomena in our universe

(01:54) 9: #175 – Lucia Coulter on preventing lead poisoning for $1.66 per child

(02:26) 8: #139 – Alan Hájek on puzzles and paradoxes in probability and expected value

(03:00) 7: #153 – Elie Hassenfeld on two big picture critiques of GiveWells approach, and six lessons from their recent work

(03:39) 6: #129 – Dr James Tibenderana on the state of the art in malaria control and elimination

(04:15) 5: #185 – Lewis Bollard on the 7 most promising ways to end factory farming, and whether AI is going to be good or bad for animals

(05:00) 4: #67 – David Chalmers on the nature and ethics of consciousness

(05:40) Top 3

(05:43) 3: #43 – Daniel Ellsberg on the creation of nuclear doomsday machines, the institutional insanity that maintains them, and how they could be dismantled

(06:22) 2: #145 – Christopher Brown on why slavery abolition wasnt inevitable

(07:07) 1: #100 – Having a successful career with depression, anxiety and imposter syndrome

(07:51) Final Thoughts

(07:54) Honourable Mentions

(08:10) #52 – Glen Weyl on radical institutional reforms that make capitalism and democracy work better, and how to get them

(08:52) #116 – Luisa Rodriguez on why global catastrophes seem unlikely to kill us all

(09:29) #190 – Eric Schwitzgebel on whether the US is conscious

(09:59) But JWS, where are the AI episodes?

(12:03) Epilogue

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

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