EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

The "expanding moral circle" -- the idea that moral concern has (or, at least, should) widened over time from family, to community, to nation, to all humanity, and (arguably) outward to all sentient beings -- was developed by W.E.H. Lecky (1869) and popularized by Peter Singer in The Expanding Circle (1981). This concept is has really resonated with me throughout the years and eventually led to me study farm animal welfare as an academic economist.

Naturally, I was looking around for a visualization of it that I liked enough to hang on my office wall and replace the simpler one in my slide deck, but nothing was cutting it.

So I made one.

A few notes on the design: composition, layout, and curation are mine; illustrations were generated with ChatGPT and edited in Canva (~20 hours total). I tried to make the inner rings feel intimate and the outer rings feel expansive, with subjects (people, species) chosen to span all continents. I intentionally included invertebrates and farm animals, with a hen taking center stage at the bottom to highlight the enormous anthropogenic suffering that billions of chickens face every day.

To convey a sense of "mind-opening," all circles [...]

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First published:

May 6th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/3jcCaZjNrgjJD4oFp/i-made-a-graphic-of-the-expanding-moral-circle-free-to-use

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Epistemic certainty: Obviously loads of uncertainty on mirror life risks and the degree to which we'd have to pressurize buildings or filter outdoor air. Moderately high certainty for the best hasty pathways for doing this in North American and a narrow subset of European buildings. Lower certainty as we move towards international buildings. Also loads of experiments and field tests are needed, possibly somewhat urgently.

Let's discuss the threat and the parameters around it. I’m neither a scientist nor a risk analyst so we won’t spend much time here. In the future we might have a world in which mirror life is released into the world. Unmitigated, this threat could potentially extinguish all living beings. This might be via accidental leak or an omnicidal person or group. I’m not going to speak to the technical possibilities or likelihoods, but for our purposes, the outdoor air would be poisonous. To be safely inhaled we’d need highly effective filtration (99.999% fine particulate removal).

To be inhabitable buildings would have to be almost entirely resistant to air infiltration. We would achieve this by highly pressurizing buildings, which means we would blow air into them. The two main sources of building leakage are [...]

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First published:

May 5th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/b3qTtr9Rt3Lk9vdEo/surviving-mirror-life-a-manual-for-resilience-in-buildings

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Hey folks! We’ve recently done an internal impact assessment and thought it would be helpful to share its highlights. (Due to capacity constraints, we opted to share the current post rather than wait for a longer and more polished one, but we’re happy to answer questions.)

For context, our goal at Probably Good is to help people build careers that are good for them and for the world. We focus on getting the right people working on the right solutions to the right global problems, and also support people on other valuable paths to impact, like effective giving and community engagement.

The last ~1.5y have been exciting for us. In late 2024, we got an ambitious grant from CG to scale. Our co-founders (Omer & Sella, who built and led PG from the start) moved to our newly established board and, after an extensive search, selected a new Executive Director (Itamar, our former Head of Growth).

Since then, we’ve helped 85+ people transition to impactful careers, representing 17x growth compared to our previous evaluation period (with a few months still left). We’ve also helped 190+ people change their career plans, and 380+ people take 1,100+ positive career actions (like [...]

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First published:

May 5th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/qdrZYxxcjawvmLBLg/we-grew-10x-last-year-and-are-now-planning-for-the-next-10x

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“How are we to live, in a world in which there is so much unnecessary suffering? Magnus Vinding looks unflinchingly at that question, and gives an answer that is realistic, and yet inspiring. Read this book. It may change your life.”

— Peter Singer, author of Animal Liberation

I have just published a book:

What if the point of self-improvement were not just to feel better or get ahead, but to become more capable of helping in a hurting world?

In Compassionate Purpose, Magnus Vinding bridges self-help and ethics with a framework for personal development in service of a larger goal: reducing extreme suffering. From self-compassion and motivation to habits, relationships, and concrete action, this book is a toolkit for building a life that takes suffering seriously without losing hope or direction.

Start where you are. Build a life that helps.

Free PDF
Free EPUB download
Kindle, paperback, hardcover
Apple Books, Bookshop, Kobo, Vivlio, Thalia

The book completes a three-book series on reducing suffering: Suffering-Focused Ethics explores the moral foundations, Reasoned Politics the political and institutional side, and Compassionate Purpose the personal side.

Why I wrote this book

• Psychological hurdles such as burnout, guilt, and feeling paralyzed by [...]

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Outline:

(01:50) Why I wrote this book

(03:54) Praise for Compassionate Purpose

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First published:

May 5th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/D87rkNkNCtHC3X6Ee/new-book-compassionate-purpose-personal-inspiration-for-a

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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(Crosspost).

If you’re young and online, you’re probably maxxing something.

Maybe you’re looksmaxxing: trying to maximize your hotness (e.g. by hitting yourself in the face with a hammer). Maybe, like Clavicular, you do it just to mog other people—to look better than they do.

But good looks reach diminishing marginal returns. You get a reasonable boost from going to the gym occasionally, but by the time you’re smashing yourself in the face with a hammer nightly, the additional gains might no longer seem worth the grind. One might even suggest that at that point you’re jestermaxxing.

Fortunately, there's another, better kind of maxxing: goodmaxxing. Goodmaxxers maximize how much good they do, using reason and evidence to guide their actions. Why should you goodmaxx? Because goodmaxxing mogs looksmaxxing. As long as you stay in the goodmaxxing grindset, you can mog all the moneymaxxers, statusmaxxers and rizzmaxxers by doing hundreds of times more than they will to make the world a better place.

Ok, but if you’re goodmaxxing, what exactly is the “good” you’re maxxing? Well, that's ultimately up to you to figure out. But, undeniably (proven beyond five sigma), there's one clear sigma morality, and it's utilitarianism:

It's right there [...]

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First published:

May 4th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/rEXSjkB4fvcnSksaa/goodmaxxing

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0. I don't work at AIM.. why care about this?

This taxonomy is written from AIM's perspective, but it may be helpful more broadly:

• If you're starting a new charity, incubating others, or doing charity idea research: The taxonomy gives you a structured way to think about which ideas to pursue, what founder profile fits, and what research and support each idea needs. This is the audience the rest of the post is most directly written for.
• If you're at an established org: You can use the taxonomy two ways: (1) To categorize new programs, interventions or strategic pivots (which can be thought of like new charities) with implications for research, staffing and timelines; (2) To map your existing portfolio of interventions to different parts of the taxonomy, with implications for how to think about and manage each intervention.
• If you're a funder or grantmaker: The taxonomy may help you think and communicate about how different kinds of organizations will have different journeys to impact (different timelines, milestones and risk profiles), and why holding them to the same standards can sometimes be counterproductive.

1. Why a Taxonomy Matters

• Ambitious Impact (AIM)'s incubated charities works across many fields [...]

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Outline:

(00:12) 0. I dont work at AIM.. why care about this?

(01:25) 1. Why a Taxonomy Matters

(04:29) 2. Target Outcome × Mechanism

(04:34) 2.1. The dimensions

(04:38) 2.1.1. Target outcome

(05:51) 2.1.2. Mechanism

(07:18) 2.2. Implications

(07:33) 3. The Execute-Persuade Spectrum

(07:38) 3.1. The spectrum

(09:14) 3.1.1. Detour: Even execution-dominant ideas involve persuasion

(10:57) 3.2. Collaborative vs. adversarial persuasion

(11:57) 3.3. Implications

(16:12) 4. The Explore-Exploit Spectrum

(16:17) 4.1. The spectrum

(17:43) 4.2. Implications

(22:12) 5. Conclusion

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First published:

May 4th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/We4tpvNypH5pyhiaD/aim-s-new-charity-taxonomy

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There is a short window to prevent a US bill that would overturn decades of animal welfare progress. This is arguably the most consequential piece of farm animal legislation in U.S. history.

Summary 

The Farm Bill currently being considered by the U.S. Congress includes the “Save Our Bacon Act”, which would eliminate states' abilities to set standards on how farmed animals are raised and treated¹, and void existing state animal welfare laws. If passed into law, it would undo decades of animal welfare progress, and greatly reduce opportunities for future animal welfare wins.

The Farm Bill has passed the House with the Save Our Bacon Act (SOB) included, and it will soon be considered by the Senate. This is the biggest legislative threat to farmed animal welfare in U.S. history, and preventing the Save Our Bacon Act from passing Congress is the highest impact opportunity to help animals that there has been in years. If you do anything to help animals this year, it should be helping with this.

Call script, email templates, and more here.

What to do

• Easiest, highest priority action (5 min): Call and email both your senators, and ask them to publicly [...]

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Outline:

(00:21) Summary

(01:15) What to do

(04:55) Higher-effort actions

(07:22) Context on the Save Our Bacon (SOB) Act

(07:28) What is the Save Our Bacon (SOB) Act?

(08:23) What would be this laws effect on animal welfare?

(10:08) What is SOBs status in Congress?

(10:57) Strategy

(11:00) What are the goals?

(11:44) Which Senators would be the highest impact to persuade to oppose SOB?

(13:04) How to talk about this with different audiences

(17:00) Footnotes

(17:07) Appendix

(17:10) More details on the goals

(18:32) Which Senators would be the highest impact to persuade to oppose SOB?

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First published:

May 4th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/vsYphZaBcXpmtNizp/if-you-do-one-thing-for-animals-this-year-do-this-1

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is a link post.

I've always thought of myself as even-keeled and equanimous; that my mind is still. In hindsight, I had no idea what I was talking about. Halfway through my second ten-day meditation retreat, I experienced a depth of equanimity that broke my existing frame of reference.

It's hard to convey in words. My reflection afterwards was something like “What the fuck was that?” More poetically: it felt deep and dark, like my entire experience was submerged in a deep sea trench.

Two things about this experience seem worth taking seriously. The first is that equanimity, felt from the inside, doesn't sit neatly on the scale I'd previously used to think about good and bad experiences. The second is stranger: from inside the state, certain questions I'd taken for granted about how to act well in the world stopped quite working.

Equanimity and axiology

The closest thing in the EA-adjacent literature to what I'm describing is probably Lukas Gloor's tranquilism, which notably also is inspired by Buddhist sources. It's a partial axiological theory that roughly says well-being is freedom from cravings. This contrasts with classical hedonism, where experiences fall on an axis from suffering through neutral to [...]

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Outline:

(01:05) Equanimity and axiology

(03:10) Equanimity and consequentialism

(04:44) Equanimity and epistemology

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First published:

May 2nd, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/EsZbFsATZfSSym3Wt/notes-on-equanimity-from-the-inside

Linkpost URL:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MNFEhMHpEsgqxjBa2/notes-on-equanimity-from-the-inside

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I'm publishing a book that I think can fairly be described as a rationalist approach to self-improvement. Whereas many self-help books focus mainly on stories and what worked well for the author, our book takes a very different approach. My co-author, Jeremy Stevenson, and I read over 100 of the most popular self-improvement books of all time and carefully reviewed more than 20 types of therapy in an attempt to answer the question: What are all of the most useful psychological strategies for improving your life? Every time a book or therapy said to do something or provided a method or technique, we extracted it. We then carefully categorized the ~500 techniques.

Our conclusion, which surprised us, was that to a reasonable degree of approximation, we were able to subsume all of these numerous approaches within just 12 high-level psychological strategies. We call these "The 12 Levers," which is also the name of our book. We also investigated the evidence behind each of these levers. The book does include stories, but they are not the focus - we choose one or two stories to tell about the history of each Lever or a person who embodies it to [...]

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Outline:

(01:41) 1. A lot of techniques are recycled or repackaged

(03:20) 2. A lot of self-help techniques dont have as much evidence as youd think

(06:30) 3. Some techniques work better than others, but only on average

(07:59) 4. At a fundamental level, you control surprisingly few things.

(10:32) 5. Hundreds of self-help techniques exist, but they all boil down to just 12 broad psychological strategies for improving your life

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First published:

May 2nd, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/tqERRa9aJkrkot28C/a-new-rationalist-self-improvement-book-the-12-levers

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This was originally posted here. It's written for an audience that's not deep in the weeds of EA giving theory/culture, but a few people suggested I post here as there's much that's additive to or divergent from some common EA practices. Feedback / disagreements welcome! Also my first time posting here. Hi!

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Most people who intend to give large amounts of money away never actually do.

The money sits. In donor-advised funds, in "someday" plans, in good intentions. This is the default pathway - not an edge case - and if you don't design against it, it will happen to you too.

I've watched this from every angle. As CEO of Change.org we processed 5M+ donations. I now run GiveDirectly; 160 thousand people have donated, dozens regularly give 1 million dollars+, and some give 50 million dollars-100 million dollars+ at a time. I've advised two of the biggest philanthropic institutions in the world (Coefficient Giving and GiveWell) on donor engagement and growth, and sat on half a dozen nonprofit boards. I've also been giving away 10-20% of my annual income for 17 years; I grew up low-income, so this started as a very modest amount but has added [...]

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Outline:

(01:59) 1. The default pathway is to delay. Fight this.

(04:51) 2. Pick a few causes and write them down.

(07:33) 3. Build a portfolio across causes and risk/return.

(09:48) 4. Use the index funds of giving.

(11:55) 5. For the love of god, dont over-staff.

(13:58) 6. Make giving a recurring event, not a to-do.

(15:36) A few final hot takes

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First published:

April 30th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/fRLt59FNXxmCaAkYF/how-to-actually-give-money-away

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.