EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

After more than seven years with EA Netherlands — first as a volunteer, then as a board member, and most recently as co-director — Marieke de Visscher is moving on. Marieke was instrumental in building EAN from an all-volunteer group into a staffed nonprofit. She leaves behind a stronger, more professional organisation than the one she found, and I'm grateful for the years we worked together.

We're now hiring her successor.

The role in brief: This is a generalist co-directorship at one of the larger national EA communities globally, based in Amsterdam. You'd have real ownership over programmes, strategy, and operations, working alongside one other co-director with support from volunteers and contractors. We think of it as a product role for a community organisation — our "products" are an intro fellowship, conferences, a coworking space, wide-bridge events for senior professionals, and the infrastructure that ties them together.

We're looking for someone who thinks in terms of product-market-impact fit: designing programmes, testing them, measuring what works, and iterating. You should be comfortable making decisions under uncertainty, running experiments, and changing course when the evidence points that way.

What we've been up to: In 2025, intro fellowship participation grew 140%, and [...]

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First published:

April 1st, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/jCq5EogBGWEM2hzvJ/ea-netherlands-is-hiring-a-co-director

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

TL;DR: We're launching 8,000,000 Hours, a new career guidance organisation for people who want to have an impact but would rather not change what they're doing. Instead of finding the highest-impact career, we help you work longer in your existing one to achieve the same impact at the end of your career.

The core insight

80,000 Hours estimates that you have roughly 80,000 hours in your career and argues you should spend them on the world's most pressing problems. Central to 80,000 Hours' argument is the observation that in a pair of two randomly picked interventions, the better one would be 100 times more cost-effective than the other.

This is usually presented as an argument for choosing more carefully. But we think there's an equally valid conclusion that everyone has been overlooking:

If the best careers are 100x more impactful than average ones, you can match that impact by simply working 100x as many hours in an average career.

80,000 × 100 = 8,000,000.

Work longer, not smarter

Switching to a high-impact career involves significant transition costs. You might need to retrain, relocate, take a pay cut, or make a cringy LinkedIn post.

By contrast, working more hours [...]

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Outline:

(00:30) The core insight

(01:14) Work longer, not smarter

(02:00) The longevity dividend

(03:34) Our career recommendations

(04:37) FAQ

(06:00) Get involved

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First published:

April 1st, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wsoWrtCwtksfauHGi/announcing-8-000-000-hours-career-advice-for-the-rest-of-us

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

It pains me to report that, in the early hours of this morning, Fish Welfare Initiative (arguably the best charity ever) experienced a serious website security breach. Our entire leadership team is currently reviewing some of the most advanced technical literature available to resolve the issue.

In the meantime, we strongly request: DO NOT VISIT OUR WEBSITE (www.fwi.fish).

Please, no one visit our website under any circumstances. This includes (but is not limited to) going to www.fwi.fish, refreshing www.fwi.fish, or attempting to access any page on www.fwi.fish.

We ask that anyone considering visiting our website hold off until tomorrow, when we expect the issue to be fully resolved.

We understand how important our website is to many in this community, and we are treating this with the utmost seriousness.

Thomas David Billington
Co-founder, Fish Welfare Initiative

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First published:

April 1st, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/nGRBMnzAgGa2pa8ah/fish-welfare-initiative-hacked

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Forecasts based on benchmarks and time horizons have failed to produce a consensus timeline for the arrival of AGI. We supplement these with several alternative methods.

1: MATS Applications

AGI - artificial intelligence capable of performing every task - is by definition cognitively capable of putting all humans out of work. However, there are certain edge cases where human employment might persist for other reasons. As the majority of jobs get automated, we expect newly unemployed workers to migrate to these edge case industries.

The clearest case for an industry which cannot be completely automated after AGI is AI safety research. The advent of AGI will likely be followed shortly by superintelligence, and this superintelligence will require alignment work beyond that which produced AGI. Although AGI will be intellectually capable of the technical aspects of this work, we may be uncertain whether it fully understands human values, and we may not trust it to do the work alone. Therefore, as every other industry is automated, AI safety will become one of the few remaining fields that absorbs human labor. Conservatively, we predict that within three years of AGI, 10% of the human population - about 800 million people - [...]

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Outline:

(00:20) 1: MATS Applications

(02:16) 2: Model Release Cadence

(03:39) 3: Google Ngram Mentions Of Apocalypse

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First published:

April 1st, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/5273CTxx878FkfHf8/alternative-ai-forecasting-methods

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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I’m excited to launch Highly Engaged EAs: a matchmaking and nuptialization service to optimize tax relief, green card accumulation and more!

Workstreams

I Do(nate)

By marrying EAs in different tax brackets, Highly Engaged EAs reduces average tax burden through joint filing to enable greater giving. A Californian AI safety researcher with a million dollar salary could give an extra $53k/year by tying the knot with an unpaid grad student!

Til 80,000 Hours do us part

The place premium is so high in the US that >1,000 people have bought a million dollar gold card! While some roles don’t sponsor visas, spouses always can[1]. We match those looking to move countries with nationals of their desired destination.

Bang for your Buck

For full efficiency, Buck Shlegeris and Ajeya Cotra wear multiple hats as the witnesses, officiants and entertainment for weddings we organize.

Rationally named children 

For those who are interested in having kids, we provide naming guidance based on what really matters:

• Brevity. Claude BOTECs that each additional syllable to a person's name adds 68 hours to global pronunciation costs. Given that this will disproportionately be time spent by EAs, one-syllable names are a slam dunk.

• Complementarity: The [...]

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Outline:

(00:20) Workstreams

(00:23) I Do(nate)

(00:56) Til 80,000 Hours do us part

(01:17) Bang for your Buck

(01:29) Rationally named children

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First published:

April 1st, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/TLFiwwZGaqgbQhhr7/announcing-highly-engaged-eas

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

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Hi everybody!

I'm Conor. I run the 80,000 Hours Job Board. Or I used to. As of today — April 1 — we are becoming Job Bards!

You may not know that the number one complaint that people have about job boards is sensory poverty. While movie theatres have dared to experiment with haptics and smell-o-vision, no job board has even dared to become an audiovisual experience. Until now.

We believe Job Bards is the premium job board experience, and all job boards that don't make the leap will fall the way of silent films. While this innovation is sure to frighten many, we hope our FAQ can answer any concerns.

FAQ

• I don't hear anything?
  • We have four ways of ranking jobs - Ranked, New, Top, and Sorting. For some of these, you'll need to select a filter for the sounds to wash over you.
• I don't like the sounds I hear??
  • You can modify the sounds through toggles in the Other filters and Annual salary dropdowns.
• Do you think this will have an impact? Isn't your mission to provide promising roles to tackle the world's most pressing problems?
  • To connect people to jobs [...]

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First published:

April 1st, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/dARbshoqruLjntAGc/80-000-hours-job-board-greater-than-job-bards

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

We're thrilled to announce the founding of RejectDirectly, a new EA-adjacent organization dedicated to closing the global rejection gap.

For too long, the EA rejection pipeline has been plagued by ineffectiveness. Billions of collective DALYs spend on unsuccessful work trials and interviews. The water waste involved in the mass duplication of Google Docs. The community health is in peril.

In comes RejectDirectly. By cutting out the middleman we can deliver high-quality, unconditional rejections straight to applicants — no strings attached, no waiting period. No eight-hour work trials where you pour your Claude extra balance into a strategy memo for an organization that just couldn’t bring themselves to reject your heartfelt cover letter.

How it works: You apply. We reject you. That's it. No interviews, no work trials, no need for culture fit chats.

Like many orgs in the space, we're happy to forward your application to our partner organizations. Unlike other orgs, they will immediately reject you. We call this our Rejection Cascade™ — one application, up to fifteen guaranteed rejections.

Our 2026 roadmap:

We're piloting a browser addon that sends you a push notification rejection before you even finish your cover letter. Early users report feeling "liberated" and [...]

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First published:

April 1st, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/5qZdpKEFcGBrHJxDB/rejectdirectly

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Forethought is proud to announce the launch of Deep Thought[1] — the world's first fully automated macrostrategy researcher, and the world's most powerful AI model.

For some time, we have believed that one of the most important things a macrostrategy research organisation can do is work to automate its own work. The case is simple: if the questions we're investigating matter, then expanding access to high-quality answers matters too — and no bottleneck is more binding than the scarcity of researchers who can generate them. Today marks our first concrete step toward addressing that bottleneck.

Scorecard

As you can see, Deep Thought is the world's frontier AI model, getting a perfect 100/100 Frontier Macrostrategy Evaluation Score, measured by the benchmark, Post-Humanity's Last Exam.

In fact, not only did Deep Thought blow all competitors out the water, it even revealed high performance in a new unfathomable dimension of capability that we are still struggling to comprehend. We’re excited to share that we’re now well past the point of feasible human evaluation or oversight.

Early human feedback was also extremely positive. Beta testers described the system as "sublime,", "mind-expanding," and "weirdly calming." One user commented: "It's like arguing with a mountain."

[...]

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Outline:

(00:45) Scorecard

(01:50) Misuse and safety assessment

(02:34) Future directions

(02:56) Conclusion

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First published:

April 1st, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/5ZFjLBGK2fCxE8Dn7/announcing-deep-thought

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Epistemic status: Very high confidence in the statistical findings. Genuinely confused about the cause. For reasons that will become obvious, I wanted to publish this post on March 31, but unfortunately I could only get it done today.

I've been building a classifier to flag potentially misleading content on the EA Forum as part of a side project on epistemics infrastructure. While validating the model, I noticed something I initially assumed was a bug. This is an interim report on that.


Summary: Every year, on April 1, the rate of posts containing verifiably untrue claims spikes by roughly 2,200% relative to the annual daily average (p < 0.0001, 8 years of Forum data).


1. The effect is enormous

On a typical day, approximately 2 to 4% of Forum posts contain claims that are verifiably false. On April 1, this rises to 57–73%, depending on the year. For context, this is an implausibly large effect by normal social-science standards. I have genuinely never seen anything like it.

2. It repeats every year

This is not a one-off event. The pattern recurs in every year of the dataset.

3. "It's only one day" is misleading

A natural reaction is that [...]

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Outline:

(01:00) 1. The effect is enormous

(01:38) 2. It repeats every year

(01:57) 3. Its only one day is misleading

(02:57) 4. The false posts are high effort

(03:21) Possible explanations

(03:30) Why this matters

(04:48) Proposed interventions

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First published:

April 1st, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/EAokRDmQTjCAWgGdq/an-unexplained-annual-spike-in-false-claims-on-the-ea-forum

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Are there too many cables on your desk? Is this preventing you from doing your most productive work?

Research suggests that the aesthetic quality of a person's work environment has an impact on their mood, productivity, and ability to cope with the crushing reality of knowing that more children will suffer and die from preventable diseases if they don't get enough done.

I've had a high-impact meta side project of helping EAs clear up their desks. After a few iterations aimed at increasing longevity (it turns out that if you remove coffee mugs, the intervention half-life is approximately 1 day), I have settled upon removing electricity cables and charging leads from sight. Using a drill and some duct tape, leads can be rerouted under the desk and only pop up where required, reducing lead exposure and thereby improving desk aesthetics. Once a setup is in place, it tends to stay that way, making each installation a long-term meta piece of EA infrastructure. I call it the Lead Exposure Elimination Project (catchy name!).

Acting on expert advice, I am turning my project into an org. I have resigned from my day job and applied for funding for the Lead Exposure [...]

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First published:

April 1st, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/vRrWwohEuRQhvWMRb/announcing-the-lead-exposure-elimination-project

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.