EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

(This argument reduces my hope that we will have AIs that are both aligned with humans in some sense and also highly philosophically competent, which aside from achieving a durable AI pause, has been my main hope for how the future turns out well. As this is a recent realization[1], I'm still pretty uncertain how much I should update based on it, or what its full implications are.)

Being a good alignment researcher seems to require a correct understanding of the nature of values. However metaethics is currently an unsolved problem, with all proposed solutions having flawed or inconclusive arguments, and lots of disagreement among philosophers and alignment researchers, therefore the current meta-correct metaethical position seems to be one of confusion and/or uncertainty. In other words, a good alignment researcher (whether human or AI) today should be confused and/or uncertain about the nature of values.

However, metaethical confusion/uncertainty seems incompatible with being 100% aligned with human values or intent, because many plausible metaethical positions are incompatible with such alignment, and having positive credence in them means that one can't be sure that alignment with human values or intent is right. (Note that I'm assuming an AI design or implementation [...]

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First published:

December 27th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/gRNshM4HBEqpQ5nmS/a-conflict-between-ai-alignment-and-philosophical-competence

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This report highlights the key takeaways from EAGxAustralasia 2025

It is primarily written by Tom Hutton (Conference Team Lead), with direct input from Bridget Loughhead (Conference Coordinator), and incorporates ideas and notes from the rest of the organising team.

Opinions expressed are generally those of Bridget and Tom, though we’re not aware of any opinions the wider conference team disagrees with.

“We” generally refers to Tom and Bridget for matters of opinion, and the wider team for matters of delivery.

Bridget and Tom were also lead organisers for, and wrote a more in depth report about, EAGxAustralasia 2024. This has much more detail about our operations, processes, and decision making. We stand by most of it.

We’ve tried to note currency throughout. If currency isn’t specifically noted it should be assumed to be AUD.

You can read this as a google doc here. The content is the same, the tables are formatted slightly differently.

This report is written in a governing thoughts structure; the contents serve as a high level summary:

• This report highlights the key takeaways from EAGxAustralasia 2025
  • This report is written in a governing thoughts structure; the contents serve as a high level summary
• [...]

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Outline:

(00:15) This report highlights the key takeaways from EAGxAustralasia 2025

(01:12) You can read this as a google doc here . The content is the same, the tables are formatted slightly differently.

(01:21) This report is written in a governing thoughts structure; the contents serve as a high level summary:

(06:12) Most metrics we track improved

(06:35) Operationally the conference was similar to 2024, with some key differences

(06:42) Our new goal review process was light-weight and useful, and we're looking to refine it

(08:04) We grew our team from 4 people to 6, and found having a generalist who could add capacity in different areas to be very useful

(08:35) By wrap up we'll have spent around 1580 hours organising the conference, with Tom working ~540hrs, and the rest of the team between 140 and 250 each

(09:06) Our ways of working doc details how we operated as a remote, asynchronous team - and it's a useful high-level resource

(09:35) Opening applications and launching Swapcard both took longer than we expected

(10:10) We were significantly under budget, with our major expenses being venue + catering + AV, organiser time, and attendee travel support

(11:06) We spent less on Speaker Travel, and more on event expenses than in previous years

(11:27) On request, we allowed children between 10 and 18 to attend the conference. This went ok, but could have been managed better over the weekend

(11:47) We invested time and money on marketing, it was hard to know what was impactful

(11:53) We struggled to find balance between marketing widely and avoiding an influx of applications below our admissions bar

(12:19) We could invest more in finding consistent messaging and interesting content that communicates what EAGx is

(13:00) We did targeted outreach on Linkedin, resulting in 7 counterfactual attendees

(13:24) Attendance was lower than previous years, but not as low as we feared

(13:30) Despite more marketing and applications opening earlier we saw (approved) applications coming in later in 2025 than 2024

(13:41) The attendance rate from people who have been accepted has declined since 2023

(14:04) Attendees were older and more gender/pronoun diverse than in 2024

(14:25) Since 2023 there's been a decrease in attendees from NSW and ACT

(14:52) We identified multiple scam applications attempting to gain upfront travel support

(15:09) We had a couple of issues with the application/admissions process, these were short-lived but caused attendee confusion and may have lost us some attendees

(15:54) Our programme achieved our goals!

(15:59) We ran a more streamlined programme, and we think this was the right call

(17:25) Feedback indicated that we had a wide range of good content

(19:11) Our content lead for the last two years (Will) has outlined his thoughts on EAGx content. We think this will likely be useful reading for other content leads

(19:26) We successfully replaced the Friday Night Keynote with an Organisation Fair

(20:46) We invested in inventory for future years

(21:17) Our badge printer (purchased in 2024) allowed us to print badges ourselves, including last-minute requests on site

(21:45) Buying our own Chromebooks for displaying slides worked really well

(22:29) We are overall (very) happy with our branding and merchandising

(22:45) A contracted designer accelerated us by giving us a logo, colour palette, and great-looking templates for our content

(23:30) We provided t-shirts, high-quality stickers, bookmarks, and books as merchandise

(24:19) We aimed to Provide fantastic attendee experience with a culture that welcomes everyone and we think we did this well

(24:27) We used a conference style venue, and were very happy with it

(24:55) Our menu was nut-free and vegan

(25:08) Our catering was rated significantly higher than previous years, and we had no major issues with dietaries

(25:53) We directly followed up with attendees who shared dietary restrictions or accessibility requirements, and suggest other organisers do this too

(27:10) We ran a light-touch buddy programme and one third of our registrants signed up

(28:35) Feedback on the buddy programme was overall positive, though with a significant number of buddies not meeting up

(29:07) A single day of professional photography was very valuable

(29:27) We have more specific learnings! If you're organising a similar event and are keen to hear these please get in touch

(29:47) We think these resources of ours might be useful templates/inspiration for others running similar events

(30:46) We have some open questions and uncertainties and think input from others with high-context may be useful

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First published:

December 27th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/r9xCeds6TzTm3SHnp/eagxaustralasia-2025-retrospective-it-went-well-and-we

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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This is a link post.

Epistemics (Part 10: The nontrivial probability gambit)

Even just a 1% chance of extremely high stakes is sufficient to establish high stakes in expectation. So we should not feel assured of low stakes even if a highly credible model—warranting 99% credence—entails low stakes. It hardly matters at all how many credible models entail low stakes. What matters is whether any credible model entails extremely high stakes. If one does—while warranting just 1% credence—then we have established high stakes in expectation, no matter what the remaining 99% of credibility-weighted models imply (unless one inverts the high stakes in a way that cancels out the other high-stakes possibility).

Richard Yetter-Chappell, “Rule high stakes in, not out“

Listen to this post

1. Introduction

This is Part 10 in my series on epistemics: practices that shape knowledge, belief and opinion within a community. In this series, I focus on areas where community epistemics could be productively improved.

Part 1 introduced the series and briefly discussed the role of funding, publication practices, expertise and deference within the effective altruist ecosystem.

Part 2 discussed the role of examples within discourse by effective altruists, focusing on the cases of Aum Shinrikyo and [...]

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Outline:

(00:27) Epistemics (Part 10: The nontrivial probability gambit)

(01:24) 1. Introduction

(02:45) 2. The nontrivial probability gambit

(07:58) 3. The naming game

(10:43) 4. Very low probabilities are ubiquitous

(13:50) 5. Shedding zeroes

(16:10) 6. Beyond expected value: Fanaticism and stakes-sensitivity

(20:16) 7. Evidence

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First published:

December 26th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/B4NG3jRJzeo3nX4bM/epistemics-part-10-the-nontrivial-probability-gambit-or

Linkpost URL:
https://reflectivealtruism.com/2025/12/26/epistemics-part-10-the-nontrivial-probability-gambit/

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TL;DR

Launching the India Animal Welfare Funding Circle: a group of donors looking to support high-impact animal welfare work in India. The Jan 2026 RFP is now open, with grants up to INR 75 lakhs or 50% of annual operating expenses, and scope across farmed animals, community and working animals, and animals used in labs. We're inviting Indian nonprofits to apply, interested funders to join us, and everyone to share this with people who could be interested!

👉 Apply here: [link]

Why another funding circle? Why India? Why animal welfare?

• Funding circles reduce coordination failures like duplicated diligence, fragmented giving, and missed opportunities, especially in areas like policy, research, and movement-building, where impact is harder to evaluate but potentially very large.
• India-specific animal welfare work often requires local context and is sometimes a poor fit for global funders, despite strong potential. An India-focused circle helps channel local capital more effectively and frees up global funding for other cause areas/regions.
• Animal welfare remains highly neglected relative to scale. In India, small, well-targeted grants can influence systems affecting very large numbers of animals, particularly through policy, corporate change, and capacity-building.

A note on priorities and evidence

The funding circle is [...]

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Outline:

(00:48) Why another funding circle? Why India? Why animal welfare?

(01:43) A note on priorities and evidence

(02:38) Request for Proposals

(02:42) About this funding opportunity

(03:22) What this RFP is for

(03:59) Who should apply

(04:34) Grant size and timelines

(05:07) Scope: geography and animal groups

(05:46) Help us spread the word!

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First published:

December 26th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Y9rxJDyrznLEZTjuK/launching-the-india-animal-welfare-funding-circle

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

TL;DR

Launching the India Animal Welfare Funding Circle: a group of donors looking to support high-impact animal welfare work in India. The Jan 2026 RFP is now open, with grants up to INR 75 lakhs or 50% of annual operating expenses, and scope across farmed animals, community and working animals, and animals used in labs. We're inviting Indian nonprofits to apply, interested funders to join us, and everyone to share this with people who could be interested!

👉 Apply here: [link]

Why another funding circle? Why India? Why animal welfare?

• Funding circles reduce coordination failures like duplicated diligence, fragmented giving, and missed opportunities, especially in areas like policy, research, and movement-building, where impact is harder to evaluate but potentially very large.
• India-specific animal welfare work often requires local context and is sometimes a poor fit for global funders, despite strong potential. An India-focused circle helps channel local capital more effectively and frees up global funding for other cause areas/regions.
• Animal welfare remains highly neglected relative to scale. In India, small, well-targeted grants can influence systems affecting very large numbers of animals, particularly through policy, corporate change, and capacity-building.

A note on priorities and evidence

The funding circle is [...]

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Outline:

(00:48) Why another funding circle? Why India? Why animal welfare?

(01:43) A note on priorities and evidence

(02:38) Request for Proposals

(02:42) About this funding opportunity

(03:22) What this RFP is for

(03:59) Who should apply

(04:34) Grant size and timelines

(05:07) Scope: geography and animal groups

(05:46) Help us spread the word!

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First published:

December 26th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Y9rxJDyrznLEZTjuK/launching-the-india-animal-welfare-funding-circle

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Crosspost from Substack

This December, I returned to Australia to spend Christmas with my wife's family. It's my third Australian Christmas, and I'm still shocked by the differences to the German festivities not too far from the Alps where I grew up. It's a hot summer day in the Southern Hemisphere, people wearing goofy Christmas outfits, and the centerpiece of the feast isn't a duck but…shrimps or rather as Aussies call them, prawns.

Australian shops stock up on shrimps before Christmas

I found that already strange in the previous years. But this year was quite different. This year I feel strangely melancholic. When I look at the shrimp on the platter I don't see odd food anymore but rather individuals.

Piled on a platter, their black eyes still visible, their segmented armored bodies intact. It's also a contrast to how we usually consume meat. The animal processed. The individual disappearing. Not so in the case of these shrimps. But that's only part of the explanation for my change in attitude

The plausible cause? I'm currently writing a book on the minds of these small and unassuming crustaceans. Yet, even after months of research on their lives, their surprising mental [...]

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First published:

December 25th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/EG9eFecpWuBmtEQ9S/shrimp-on-the-barbie-australian-christmas-edition

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Each year the Terminally Online EA Fundraiser asks a bold question: What if your Twitter feed could reduce suffering? Whether you’re a forum poster, a memelord, a nematode welfare champion, or all of the above, we want you to celebrate impactful giving and have fun while doing so! It's wonderful that donation celebration week on the EA forum overlaps with this annual silly fundraiser.

Just like the last two years, we wanted to use the holiday season to lean into one of the things the EA community does best: shitposting raising money for organizations effectively addressing the world's most pressing problems. Given the massive scale of cruelty on factory farms and the tractable, neglected interventions to mitigate it, we've decided again to focus on animal welfare. Funds from this year's fundraiser will go to the EA Funds Animal Welfare Fund, which GWWC has recommended as a top-rated evaluator since 2023.

We believe that effective giving should be fun, communal, and widely celebrated. We’ve been unabashedly posting our dank EA memes and fundraiser incentives, like our interview with Will MacAskill in a shrimp costume or our musical rendition of Lewis Bollard's TED Talk. In a world with so many [...]

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First published:

December 24th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/GT2bWFL6Xz2ggrFWv/happy-holidays-from-the-2025-terminally-online-ea-fundraiser

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Note: I used LLMs to draft different parts of this. I've checked almost everything, but there might be some mistakes remaining.

Apologies for posting this on Christmas Eve. I wanted to get this out the door before the end of the year. Questions welcome, and if it's easy to pull metrics to answer them, I will.

Summary

80,000 Hours launched a video program in 2025 focused on longform, cinematic, personality-driven content about AI risks. Our first two longform releases were:

• We're Not Ready for Superintelligence (the "AI 2027" video): 8.9M views, ~1.4M watch hours
• If you remember one AI disaster, make it this one (the "MechaHitler" video): 2.7M views, ~419K watch hours

Both videos significantly outperformed our expectations (we'd anticipated 15-50K views for the first). The cost per engagement hour ($0.11 and $0.39 respectively, including staff time) compares favorably to other 80,000 Hours programs.

This post covers: what we spent, what we got, why we think it worked, and what we'd do differently.

The numbersCostsCategoryAI 2027MechaHitlerDirect costs~$50K~$64KStaff hours~450 hrs~450 hrs (Note, I’m assuming it's about the same as for AI 2027, I didn't re-ask people how much time they spent.)Total cost (making some assumptions about we should incorporate staff [...]

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Outline:

(00:34) Summary

(01:33) The numbers

(01:36) Costs

(02:16) Timing

(02:40) Results

(03:46) How valuable is a video watch hour?

(04:24) Qualitative Feedback

(04:28) AI 2027

(05:51) MechaHitler

(06:12) YouTube commenters like:

(06:52) What the comments don't like:

(07:17) Qualitative Analysis

(07:21) Why we think AI 2027 did well

(09:56) Why MechaHitler did less well (but still well)

(10:50) Lessons Learned

(10:54) Overall what we think matters

(11:25) Our guess at what's less important (though we're certainly unsure, maybe if we nailed these, we'd get more success)

(12:24) How our production works

(12:43) The timeline

(13:32) Ideation

(14:06) Scripting

(14:57) Shooting

(15:31) Reshoots / Voiceover

(15:45) Editing

(16:06) Launch

(17:00) What we're still figuring out

(17:36) Closing thoughts

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First published:

December 24th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/RCRaBYSqBaMzHzTjF/untitled-retrospective-and-learnings-from-ai-in-context-s

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This post is an update on EA Salt Lake City's evaluation of Wells4Wellness, an organization that drills and maintains wells in Niger.

Big thank you to Willie Herath, director of operations at Wells4Wellness, for taking the time to answer our questions over the last couple months!

TLDR: We’ve found that drilling wells in Niger easily clears GiveWell and Coefficient Giving's “Bar” and we think donors interested in global health should consider donating.

Part 1: Revising our estimates

In our original post, we estimated that Wells4Wellness is ~5-10x more cost effective than chlorination, the current golden child of water sanitation and hygiene interventions.

We got some good feedback from a few readers, talked to the director of operations at Wells4Wellness, and updated our estimates:

• We found a few more studies (see here, here, and here) around the reduction in diarrhea mortality due to wells. We think anywhere in the 12-18% range is reasonable, and we’ll use 16% for our calculations.
• Based on details from Wells4Wellness, we updated the construction cost per well from $10,000 to $7,000, with maintenance costs remaining at $200/year. We also had a typo in our original cost estimates, which is corrected below.
• We continue to have high [...]

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Outline:

(00:43) Part 1: Revising our estimates

(03:39) Part 2: Scaling & the awkward fit of smaller charities in the EA ecosystem

(06:58) Part 3: Process & Experience

(12:14) Conclusion

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First published:

December 23rd, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/WjLj6Chs2iz9qTvwX/revisiting-well-well-well-do-wells-clear-the-bar

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This holiday giving season, we’re continuing our tradition of sharing a list of giving opportunities suggested by Coefficient Giving program staff.

Notes on these suggestions:

• They fall within the areas covered by Coefficient's funds.
• They should be seen as reasonably strong options in the relevant area. The person who made a suggestion isn’t necessarily arguing that their suggestion is the best option available across all areas, or even within its own area.
• Many of them were chosen because they are particularly good fits for individual donors. This shouldn’t be read as a list of our strongest grantees overall (though of course there may be overlap).
• The explanations we share are very brief and informal; we don’t expect readers to be persuaded unless they put a lot of weight on the judgment of the person making the suggestion.
• Finally, these suggestions come from individual program staff or teams, and do not necessarily represent Coefficient's institutional view.

Global health and wellbeing

GiveWell's recommendations

Recommended by Alexander Berger

What is it? GiveWell recommends cost-effective, evidence-backed giving opportunities, primarily in global health.

Why I suggest it: GiveWell does unusually rigorous work to assess charitable opportunities and makes its recommendations and reasoning open [...]

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Outline:

(01:17) Global health and wellbeing

(02:44) Science and global health R&D

(04:50) Farm animal welfare

(05:49) Global aid policy

(06:38) Abundance and growth

(07:48) Navigating transformative AI

(09:41) Effective giving and careers

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First published:

December 22nd, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/RAgweZe2DanrWmYJT/suggestions-for-individual-donors-from-coefficient-giving

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.