EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

(Or: Why I don't see how the probability of extinction could be less than 25% on the current trajectory)

Cross-posted from my website.

AI developers are trying to build superintelligent AI. If they succeed, there's a high risk that the AI will kill everyone. The AI companies know this; they believe they can figure out how to align the AI so that it doesn't kill us.

Maybe we solve the alignment problem before superintelligent AI kills everyone. But if we do, it will happen because we got lucky, not because we as a civilization treated the problem with the gravity it deserves—unless we start taking the alignment problem dramatically more seriously than we currently do.

Think about what it looks like when a hard problem gets solved. Think about the Apollo program: engineers working out minute details; running simulations after simulations; planning for remote possibilities.

Think about what it looks like when a hard problem doesn't get solved. Consider the world's response to COVID.

When I look at civilization's response to the AI alignment problem, I do not see something resembling Apollo. When I visualize what it looks like for civilization to buckle [...]

The original text contained 6 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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 Getting it right (Part 4: Criticism)

Group discussion is not always efficient. When ­people have their ideas closely aligned to start with, it leads to polarization. When ­people start with conflicting ideas and no common goal, it tends to exacerbate differences. Group discussion is typically beneficial when participants have differ­ent ideas and a common goal

Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber, The enigma of reason

1. Introduction

This is Part 4 of my series Getting it right. This series highlights ways in which effective altruists think and act admirably.

Part 1 discussed altruism. Many effective altruists donate large parts of their income to charity, and some go further by risking their health in challenge trials or even donating organs to total strangers.

Part 2 discussed global health. Effective altruists were instrumental in the push towards more rigorous and evidence-based methods in global health, and have committed well over a billion dollars to global health causes.

Part 3 discussed ambition. Effective altruists dream big, and they are often successful in bringing about large-scale change.

Today's post discusses criticism. It is hard for movements to engage with their critics. While no one is perfect, effective altruists often do [...]

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Outline:

(00:12) Getting it right (Part 4: Criticism)

(00:46) 1. Introduction

(01:46) 2. Why engage with critics?

(04:20) 3. Engagement with critics

(05:29) 4. Encouraging production of criticism

(06:36) 5. Self-criticism

(07:36) 6. Taking stock

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Linkpost URL:
https://reflectivealtruism.com/2026/03/20/getting-it-right-part-4-criticism/

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New study from Animetrics: Muslim Consumers’ Perspectives on Animal Welfare in Halal Production and Dietary Choices in Türkiye

Muslims make up nearly two billion people worldwide, and their daily food choices are often guided by halal principles, a set of dietary guidelines that determine what is permissible under Islamic law. For many, halal goes beyond rules about what can or cannot be eaten; it is part of a broader moral framework that also shapes beliefs about how animals should be treated in food production.

As the global Muslim population grows, the halal food sector has become one of the fastest-growing parts of the global food economy. Despite this rapid growth, we still know surprisingly little about how Muslim consumers connect halal with animal welfare, or how faith influences their dietary choices.

To gain clearer insight into these questions, we surveyed 788 Muslim adults in Türkiye, asking whether they see animal welfare as a requirement of halal, who they believe is responsible for ensuring animal welfare standards in halal food production, and whether avoiding animal-based products is compatible with Islam.

Understanding these perspectives is crucial as it can help organizations develop more effective and culturally grounded ways to improve [...]

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Outline:

(00:14) New study from Animetrics: Muslim Consumers Perspectives on Animal Welfare in Halal Production and Dietary Choices in Türkiye

(01:34) 🔍 Key highlights

(03:07) 📌 Main recommendations to advocacy organizations

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Donors need to know how best to fund peace: Introducing CEGA's Peace Per Dollar Initiative

Stockholm, Sweden, The mystery of Banksy. Max Folle

Authors

Josh Martin Eeman Abbasi Sean Luna McAdams

Wars are getting both more frequent and more destructive. Our technology for preventing or even mitigating political violence has improved to help us meet this challenge. But are we really able to “stop a war” before it starts? If so, how much would it cost? And would it be worth it?

Recent decades have seen a welcome emphasis on “what works” in development. Yet economists like Nobel Prize-winning Esther Duflo have argued that modern development economics should be “more concerned about ‘how’ to do things than about ‘what’ to do.” Responding to this call and to recent cuts in development assistance, the sector has renewed its emphasis on cost-effectiveness as a north star for value. Peacebuilding – our principal technology for addressing political violence – is playing catch up, recognizing that its sustainability depends on delivering verifiable social return.

What would it take to have a functioning market for evidence in peacebuilding?

Only 1.3% of the US Agency for International Development 2021 budget [...]

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Outline:

(00:11) Donors need to know how best to fund peace: Introducing CEGAs Peace Per Dollar Initiative

(01:31) What would it take to have a functioning market for evidence in peacebuilding?

(05:12) Donors need to know how much peace they can buy with their dollars: Introducing Peace Per Dollar

(06:51) CEGAs Approach

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Linkpost URL:
https://cega.berkeley.edu/article/how-much-peace-can-a-dollar-buy/

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No-one knows when AI will begin having transformative impacts upon the world. People aren’t sure and shouldn’t be sure: there just isn’t enough evidence to pin it down.

But we don’t need to wait for certainty. I want to explore what happens if we take our uncertainty seriously — if we act with epistemic humility. What does wise planning look like in a world of deeply uncertain AI timelines?

I’ll conclude that taking the uncertainty seriously has real implications for how one can contribute to making this AI transition go well. And it has even more implications for how we act together — for our portfolio of work aimed towards this end.

AI Timelines

By AI timelines, I refer to how long it will be before AI has truly transformative effects on the world. People often think about this using terms such as artificial general intelligence (AGI), human level AI, transformative AI, or superintelligence. Each term is used differently by different people, making it challenging to compare their stated timelines. Indeed even an individual's own definition of their favoured term will be somewhat vague, such that even after their threshold has been crossed, they might have [...]

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Outline:

(00:58) AI Timelines

(04:38) Short vs Long Timelines

(07:05) Broad Timelines

(17:55) Implications

(19:46) Hedging

(20:58) A Different World

(24:00) Longterm Actions

(28:33) Conclusions

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This post reflects one campaign run in close collaboration between a digital marketing agency and an EA-adjacent org. Results exceeded expectations, but may not generalize. We aim to share lessons, not promote a particular approach or provider.

Epistemic status: Practitioner sharing one campaign's results. Reasonably confident in the numbers; less certain about generalizability to other orgs or cause areas. I run the agency that ran this campaign, so take the framing with appropriate skepticism.

What We Did and What Happened

In late 2024, Consultants for Impact, an EA-adjacent org that helps management consultants transition into high-impact careers, partnered with our agency, Effct.org, to run a digital marketing campaign on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. The goal was straightforward: reach working consultants who might want to do more good with their careers, but don't know where to start.

Our goals were initially reach more consultants, build their newsletter, and see if paid media could move the needle for the org. What we got was much more than we planned for.

By the end of 2025 we had generated:

• 11,000+ newsletter subscribers (a 5,500% year-over-year increase)
• 44 million impressions across platforms (13x CFI's initial goal)
• 5,200+ LinkedIn followers (220% YoY [...]

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Outline:

(00:47) What We Did and What Happened

(02:13) This post shares what we learned, for EA-aligned orgs thinking about whether marketing is worth trying.

(02:21) How We Did It

(02:24) 1. Set clear goals

(03:19) 2. Meet your audience where they are

(04:15) 3. Find a content model that works, then use it

(05:25) 4. Treat it like a test

(06:23) 5. Work with a partner who gets your mission

(07:07) When This Might (and Might Not) Generalize

(07:55) A Personal Note: How I Got into EA and Marketing

(08:50) Why This Matters

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TL;DR: A recently completed RCT found that a brief, structured procrastination coaching programme produced large reductions in severity and high remission rates. The EA Infrastructure Fund has funded 200 free places on the same programme for EAs. If you want one, take the screening test here.

Chronic procrastination affects roughly 20% of adults, costing them both income (tens of thousands per year) and wellbeing (94% report lower happiness), and doubling their odds of unemployment.

Yet it receives almost no clinical attention, research funding, or institutional support relative to its prevalence. No charities are dedicated to it. Health services don't cover treatment. The handful of researchers who study it note that it is among the most neglected problems in applied psychology relative to its scale of harm.

EAs appear disproportionately affected. In a survey where EAs ranked ~50 mental health challenges they personally experience, procrastination ranked third.

Intervention:

Three hours (4 x 45-minute) of specialised one-to-one coaching delivered over four weeks.

Sample:

117 participants across 25 countries enrolled. 114 included in the analysis (3 withdrew after enrolment). Roughly a third were recruited via the EA Forum, making this one of the more generalisable studies for this community.

[...]

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Outline:

(00:35) Background

(01:34) The RCT

(01:38) Intervention:

(01:49) Sample:

(02:10) Results (post-intervention → one-month follow-up):

(03:09) Replication:

(03:22) Caveats and Conflicts of Interest

(04:06) The 200 Free Places

(04:26) The process is two steps:

(04:42) Take the screening assessment →

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This is a compression of an extract from our grant renewal application to CEA's Community Building Grants programme

TL;DR

2025 was a solid year for EA Netherlands. Our national introductory course completions grew 140% (36 → 87), EAGx attendance grew 36% (380 → 517) and set an all-time EAGx record for GWWC pledges (57 pledges, ~$2.9M lifetime giving, $436,000 when counterfactually adjusted), and we commissioned the first independent qualitative impact evaluation in the national EA organisation space. We also learned some things that didn't work. In 2026, we're shifting focus toward strengthening our in-person offering — building the room before we fill it.

Who we are

EA Netherlands is the national EA community-building organisation for the Netherlands. We're a two-person team (Marieke and James), supported by contractors, interns, and volunteers. We support ~750 actively involved community members, ~16 local groups, and a co-working space in Amsterdam.

Survey data suggests the Netherlands is the fourth-largest national EA community globally (5.8% of EA Survey respondents), and Amsterdam is the largest hub city outside the UK/US. The community is notably older and more gender-balanced than the global average — largely working professionals, with a median age of 32.

Our theory of change [...]

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Outline:

(00:21) TL;DR

(01:11) Who we are

(03:43) Our 2025 strategy

(05:13) What happened in 2025

(05:17) Introductory programme

(08:51) Wide bridge events

(11:14) Independent impact evaluation (QuIP study)

(13:00) EAGxAmsterdam 2025

(14:26) Ongoing: co-working space and organiser support

(16:26) Other highlights

(18:37) How did we do against our strategy?

(20:34) Some stories from the community

(24:41) Budget

(25:59) Plans for 2026

(26:03) The strategy: build the room before we fill it

(29:00) Key priorities

(30:18) Support our work

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We are excited to announce a new Request for Proposals (RFP) for effective career organizations, defined as initiatives devoted to providing mentorship, advice, and opportunities to help people pursue highly impactful careers. Through this RFP, we aim to identify and support additional efforts in the effective careers space and streamline the application process for potential grantees.

Motivation

The Effective Giving & Careers program supports a variety of effective career organizations across multiple countries and demographics. Examples of current grantees include High Impact Professionals, Impactful Policy Careers, and Probably Good.

Effective careers currently comprises around ~20% of our portfolio. We are excited about increasing this percentage and have been positively surprised by the growth potential of the effective careers ecosystem. We believe that there are more organizations, projects, and individuals doing work that would fit our portfolio. Through this RFP, we hope to:

1. Invite and encourage new and existing effective career organizations to apply for funding
2. Pitch potential organizations and programs we would be excited to see in the space
3. Simplify and standardize the application process for both applicants and our internal review team
4. Better understand the current funding needs and gaps within [...]

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Outline:

(00:38) Motivation

(01:45) Eligibility

(02:12) Additional Considerations:

(02:37) Potential ideas wed be excited about:

(04:22) Funding amount and grant structure

(04:52) Selection criteria and evaluation process

(05:30) Application logistics

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Linkpost URL:
https://coefficientgiving.org/funds/effective-giving-and-careers/request-for-proposals-effective-careers/

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(Subtitle: “And ethics, and epistemology, and…”. Cross-posted from my Substack.)

We want to make decisions for good reasons. But I worry some common approaches to decision theory stray from this purpose. They start with a bottom-line verdict, “I should choose this action”, then use this verdict to justify claims about how to make decisions. While I feel sympathetic to this move at times, I ultimately think it's backwards. And embedding such a move within a more nuanced methodology, like reflective equilibrium, doesn’t make it less backwards.

To see what I mean, take this exaggerated example.

Imagine you ask your friend what they did over the weekend, and they say they went to a casino to play a dice game. You raise an eyebrow. Aren’t they really smart? You ask why they went to a casino.

“It just seemed super intuitive that I should play this game,” they say.

“Oh, huh.” Again, your friend is really smart, so you charitably ask, “So you’ve played it a lot before and know it's profitable?”

“Nah, it was a new game.”

You blink. “Um. I guess this is your trollish way of saying: It seemed super intuitive that you should put equal probability [...]

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Outline:

(04:02) Background: Intuitions as predictors vs. intuitions as normative expressions

(05:35) Background: Winning isnt enough

(06:23) Against verdict-level curve-fitting (and reflective equilibrium)

(11:25) Example: Pascals mugging

(14:30) Example: Smoking Lesion and Twin Prisoners Dilemma

(17:08) Example: Cluelessness

(19:54) So what should we do?

(22:57) Objections and responses

(23:01) Dont our reasons also require further justification, by your standard? And then those reasons, and so on?

(25:29) What if our verdict-level intuitions are tracking good reasons that we cant articulate?

(29:23) Concluding thoughts on further implications

(31:54) Acknowledgments

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