EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

As promised, here are the top ten suggestions for our next debate week.

This thread will be pinned throughout the week. The statement with the highest karma when I get into work at 9am on Monday the 2nd of February, will be the subject of our debate week in March[1]. Comments (beyond those we are voting on) are disabled to make the voting easier. If you need to comment something, please do so here, or just dm me if you have feedback.

Note that you are voting on the topic, not the precise wording. I’ve kept the wording the same as in this thread, but once we collectively choose a topic, we’ll have an opportunity to make it more precise/ reframe it a little so it works better for a debate.

---

First published:

January 27th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/bhXkHYpYYEAA4t3Gp/choose-our-next-debate-week

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

We are Melanie and Anthony, the two community builders at EA Barcelona. In this post, we share where the group stands today and reflect on key learnings from nearly three years of grant-funded community building. We hope these reflections are useful to other community builders, funders, and CEA, particularly around what it realistically takes to build and sustain EA communities over multiple years, from funding stability and feedback loops to the personal sustainability of professional community builders.

TL;DR

EA Barcelona was funded by the EA Infrastructure Fund between May 2023 and December 2025 (<1.2 FTE). Over this period, it has grown into a thriving local community and informal coordination hub for EA activity in Spain.

Unexpectedly, EAIF decided not to continue funding our project in 2026. We subsequently explored the current funding landscape for EA community building, but found no viable path to stable funding for 2026 that didn’t involve a high level of personal and professional risk. As a result, we’ve decided not to continue with a funded community-builder model for EA Barcelona for now, and will instead focus on transitioning to a volunteer-led structure.

Background: EA Barcelona (2023-2025)

Present-day EA Barcelona began as a casual meetup group [...]

---

Outline:

(00:45) TL;DR

(01:38) Background: EA Barcelona (2023-2025)

(02:20) 2023: Establishing EA Barcelona as a city hub

(03:52) 2024: Deepening engagement and seeding national growth

(07:51) 2025: Transitioning from local hub to national coordination

(13:37) Late 2025: Navigating the Transition

(13:43) Initial Funding Cuts

(14:44) What we did next

(17:00) Clarity starts to emerge

(18:19) Where we are now

(18:57) Our plan for 2026: transition toward a volunteer-led community model

(20:19) Quick disclaimer: Are either of us Spanish?

(21:36) Thank you!

---

First published:

January 30th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/daHMkoQsHSbcK6Kjo/the-reality-of-long-term-ea-community-building-lessons-from

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---

Images from the article:

Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

High Impact Professionals (HIP) is excited to announce that applications are now open for the next round of the Impact Accelerator Program (IAP). The IAP is a 6-week program, supporting experienced professionals transitioning into high-impact careers.

To date, 359 people have completed the program. As a result:

• 76 participants have transitioned into high-impact careers—including founding new charities, starting founding-to-give companies, and joining high-impact organizations such as GiveWell, Charity Entrepreneurship, MATS, Malaria Consortium.
• A further 167 participants are taking concrete steps towards a high-impact career, including skilled volunteering roles with high-impact organisations.
• Many participants have started donating a meaningful percentage of their salary to effective charities—19 have taken the 🔶 10% Pledge and 43 the 🔷 Trial Pledge through the IAP. 

We’re pleased to open up this new program round, which will start the week of March 30. More information is available here.

Applications close on Sunday, February 22.

Apply now

Register for an IAP info and Q&A webinar

We’re hosting two live webinars on Wednesday, 18 February to walk through the program and answer questions. Choose the time that works best for you:

• Wed., 18 Feb., 8-9am UTC → Read more and register here
• Wed., 18 [...]

---

First published:

January 26th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/tEQKMDpLzRC7jMKhh/applications-open-for-impact-accelerator-program-for-ea-2

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

TL;DR

• We are launching a pooled fund for projects at the AIxAnimals intersection.
• We are open to a broad set of ideas, but prioritize those in the following categories:
  • Empowering Animal Advocates
  • Strategic Field-building and Coordination
  • Actionable Research and Strategic Foresight
• Apply here by April 30th.

Introduction

Over the next decade, AI will increasingly shape how we produce food, manage ecosystems, and interact with animals, presenting some of the most significant risks and opportunities the animal advocacy movement has faced. For example, if AI-enabled precision livestock farming (PLF) takes off, it could alter the daily experience of billions or even trillions of animals every year. Animal advocacy efforts could be supercharged or face new bottlenecks. New AI tools could rapidly accelerate alternative protein or animal welfare research, or AI could be used to entrench factory farming, unblock bottlenecks for scaling the farming of fishes or insects, and create new forms of exploitation we can't yet foresee.

Despite these high stakes, there is currently very little work being done at the intersection of AI and animal advocacy. To fill this gap, a group of funders is launching a targeted, experimental funding initiative. Our goal is to equip the animal [...]

---

Outline:

(00:11) TL;DR

(00:35) Introduction

(01:50) Our Approach: A Focused, Experimental Fund

(02:56) Priority Categories

(03:16) I. Empowering Animal Advocates

(04:18) II. Strategic Field-Building and Coordination

(05:31) III. Actionable Research & Strategic Foresight

(07:06) Funding and Logistics

(08:20) Submission Instructions

(08:32) Join the RFP as a contributor

(09:19) Questions?

---

First published:

January 29th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/6zKrXJDcNgSeCNZxB/request-for-proposals-for-ai-x-animals

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Recently, many people have given increasingly short timelines for AGI. What unites many of these statements is the thorough lack of any evidence. Instead, many resort to narrative arguments, ad-hoc predictive models, and mistaken arguments. In this post, I will cover these different types of non-evidence-based arguments.

I have described my views on AI risk previously in this post, which I think is still relevant. I have also laid down a basic argument against AI risk interventions in this comment where I argue that AI risk is neither important, neglected nor tractable.

Narrative arguments

Narrative argument is a way to present an argument in a form of a story, parable, or extended metaphor. These arguments present a chain of events as probable or even inevitable due to their narrative coherence: if the "logical continuation" of the story follows a pattern, that pattern is then postulated to exist in the real world as well. This depends on the "story-logic" matching real-world causal mechanisms.

Narrative arguments can be a powerful way to demonstrate or explain a phenomenon in an understandable way, but they need to be supported by actual evidence. The existence of the narrative is not evidence in itself. Narratives [...]

---

Outline:

(00:46) Narrative arguments

(03:32) Ad-hoc predictive models

(05:50) Evidence mismatch

(07:53) Conclusions

---

First published:

January 28th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/mPWhsL393LhB9ywpo/beware-of-non-evidence-based-argumentation

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

TL;DR: Calibration is essential for observers but dangerous for actors. in decision-dependent environments, "accurate" forecasting creates self-fulfilling prophecies of failure. To maximize expected value, you often need to strategically break your own calibration.

Effective Altruism prioritizes calibration, using metrics like Brier scores to ensure our internal maps match the territory. This "Scout Mindset" is the gold standard for Observers—those predicting events they cannot influence, like elections or weather patterns. However, this framework fails for Actors, such as founders or wartime leaders, whose actions directly alter the probability of the outcome. For an Observer, a prediction is a statistic; for an Actor, it is an intervention.

This distinction creates a trap in high-stakes scenarios. Consider a leader undertaking a project with a base rate of success of 20%. A passive forecaster would accurately predict this low probability and act conservatively. Consequently, allies and investors would sense this low confidence, withhold resources, and the actual probability of success would collapse to zero. By striving for informational accuracy, the leader guarantees failure. To avoid this self-fulfilling prophecy, a Rational Actor must often signal absolute confidence, diverging from the "true" probability not out of delusion, but as a structural necessity to coordinate others.

[...]

---

First published:

January 29th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/r4KR6ckAHSv2DFwts/rational-overconfidence-why-good-judgment-fails-strategy

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is a link post.

Dr. William Foege, a leader of one of humanity's greatest public health victories — the global eradication of smallpox — died Saturday. He was 89.

For his efforts to eradicate smallpox, Foege was the co-winner of the 2020 Future of Life Award along with Viktor Zhdanov.

---

First published:

January 28th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Q4bd6YTGgM3hhFEsB/remembering-william-foege

Linkpost URL:
https://news.emory.edu/features/2026/01/er_william_foege_25-01-2026/index.html

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

I've just started a blog about EA-org-style management, together with Brenton of 80k. You can subscribe on Substack if you like.

Here's the most recent post!

I think often people treat “development” as an add-on that's quite different from their work.

I think it's better to have the development and the work deeply integrated.

The failure mode

This is how I used to approach dev goals:

• Pick a goal that's kinda related to your job, but not very. A common one when I worked at CEA was “learn more about AI safety”.
• Have a fairly ambitious plan for how you’re going to do this, e.g. read a set of blog posts and produce notes.
• One third of the way into the quarter, realize that a lot of other things are genuinely more important than your dev goal, and focus on those instead.
• Feel kind of sheepish at the end of the quarter.

Luckily, I think there's a better way.

Pick dev goals that are part of your job

If you’re setting a development goal for the next quarter, you should pick some skill or task that you’re anyway going to be using a lot in the quarter. [...]

---

Outline:

(00:30) The failure mode

(01:10) Pick dev goals that are part of your job

(02:30) ... then do your job unreasonably well

(04:05) After the dev goal

---

First published:

January 27th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/AF6AjGpeLApiiJvBZ/do-your-job-unreasonably-well

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is a link post.

This is a crosspost for Unfalsifiable stories of doom by Matthew Barnett, Ege Erdil, and Tamay Besiroglu, which was originally published on Mechanize's website on 25 November 2025.

Matthew Barnett, Ege Erdil, Tamay Besiroglu
November 25, 2025

Our critics tell us that our work will destroy the world.

We want to engage with these critics, but there is no standard argument to respond to, no single text that unifies the AI safety community. Nonetheless, while this community lacks a central unifying argument, it does have a central figure: Eliezer Yudkowsky.

Moreover, Yudkowsky, along with his colleague Nate Soares (hereafter Y&S), have recently published a book. This new book comes closer than anything else to a canonical case for AI doom. It is titled “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies”.

Given the title, one would expect the book to be filled with evidence for why, if we build it, everyone will die. But it is not. To prove their case, Y&S rely instead on vague theoretical arguments, illustrated through lengthy parables and analogies. Nearly every chapter either opens with an allegory or is itself a fictional story, with one of the book's three parts consisting entirely [...]

---

First published:

January 27th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Wuypwj58bEfSqH9PS/unfalsifiable-stories-of-doom

Linkpost URL:
https://www.mechanize.work/blog/unfalsifiable-stories-of-doom/

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is a link post.

Publicly pondering about how to spend the next 100 megaseconds before “the discontinuity".

Here are some thoughts about the future, and what people like me should be doing. By people like me, I mean anyone who is:

• Suffering-focused: Not necessarily full neg-utilitarian black-pilled, but someone who prioritizes the elimination of (extreme) suffering as an ethical emergency above other goals.
• Anti-speciesist/anti-substratist: Cares strongly about non-humans, with significant uncertainty about who/what is a moral patient and/or how much.

Thinking about how to steer the future is hard, and I have found these ethical assumptions mostly make things harder. I don't have anything close to complete answers, but these are the main considerations I'm currently tracking:

The event horizon

There is a point at which things stop making sense.

Advanced AI will soon radically transform the world, totally breaking our assumptions about how things work. This shift splits potential impact into two categories[1]:

• Pre-transition: When we can still make sense of things by extrapolating from current trends.
• Post-transition: When the world becomes truly alien, and it becomes increasingly hard to predict ANYTHING from where we are now.

Working to improve either era has its pros and [...]

---

Outline:

(01:02) The event horizon

(03:10) Preparing for transition

(05:07) Short-term wins can build momentum

(06:17) The end of semi-anarchy

(10:05) Avoiding the worst outcomes

(11:54) Taking over San Francisco

(13:54) We cant all work at Anthropic

(16:11) Allying with the AIs

(19:18) Conclusion

(20:14) Appendix: Scenarios without lock-in

(20:25) Scenario #1: The treaty

(21:09) Scenario #2: War

(21:57) Scenario #3: Biological weapon ends humanity

(23:10) Appendix: Fighting for team humanity

---

First published:

January 26th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/rRcYR2jkmAdmHHioo/how-i-m-thinking-about-the-next-3-years

Linkpost URL:
https://lovedoesnotscale.substack.com/p/how-im-thinking-about-the-next-3

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.