EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

This summer, we organized our first animal welfare career event, and the response exceeded our expectations.

We brought together over 80 students and professionals for a half-day in-person event, all united by a single question: How can I make the biggest possible difference for animals through my career?

We designed the day to answer that question practically. At the event, speakers from research, nonprofits, and business shared concrete strategies for creating impact. A hands-on workshop also helped attendees translate these insights into personalized next steps for their own career paths.

The feedback was overwhelmingly positive; attendees described the event as inspiring, motivating, and immediately valuable.

If you're passionate about animal welfare and want to help others turn that passion into a high-impact career, organizing a similar event could be highly valuable.

In this post, we'll share:

1. Why you should consider organizing a similar event in your region
2. What it actually takes to pull it off
3. Key lessons learned from our first edition

With five organizers, we held seven 90-minute meetings spread over several months, plus an estimated 15-20 hours per person for outside work and event logistics.

Despite minimal [...]

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Outline:

(01:24) You should do it too!

(01:27) Low time investment

(01:41) Strong untapped demand

(01:56) Effective outreach framing

(02:16) Planting seeds of effectiveness

(02:38) Personal and professional benefits

(03:09) How We Organized the Event

(03:13) Build the right team

(04:21) Lets get physical!

(04:37) Event logistics

(04:58) Speaker curation

(05:54) Promotion

(06:14) Workshop

(06:32) What we would do differently

(06:46) Structured networking

(06:59) In-person workshop

(07:10) Better pacing

(07:25) World Vegan Career Day

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The word "longtermism" was first used publicly, here on the Effective Altruism Forum, in 2017. In the intervening eight years, a few books on longtermism have been written, many papers have been published, and countless forum posts, blog posts, tweets, and podcasts have discussed the topic.

Why haven’t we seen a promising longtermist intervention yet? For clarity, longtermist interventions should meet the following criteria:

• Promising: the intervention seems like a good idea and has strong evidence and reasoning to support it
• Novel: it's a new idea proposed since the term "longtermism" was coined in 2017 and it was first proposed by someone associated with longtermism in explicit connection to the term "longtermism"
• Actionable: it's something people could realistically do now or soon
• Genuinely longtermist: it's something that we wouldn’t want to do anyway based on neartermist concerns

In my view, the strongest arguments pertaining to the moral value of far future lives are arguments about existential risk. However, the philosopher Nick Bostrom's first paper on existential risk, highlighting the moral value of the far future, was published in 2002, which is 15 years before the term "longtermism" was coined. The philosopher Derek Parfit discussed the moral value of far [...]

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Today we're releasing RoastMyPost, a new experimental application for blog post evaluation using LLMs. Try it Here.

TLDR

• RoastMyPost is a new QURI application that uses LLMs and code to evaluate blog posts and research documents.
• It uses a variety of LLM evaluators. Most are narrow checks: Fact Check, Spell Check, Fallacy Check, Math Check, Link Check, Forecast Check, and others.
• Optimized for EA & Rationalist content with direct import from EA Forum and LessWrong URLs. Other links use standard web fetching.
• Works best for 200 - ~10,000 word documents with factual assertions and simple formatting. It can also do basic reviewing of Squiggle models. Longer documents and documents in LaTeX will experience slowdowns and errors.
• Open source, free for reasonable use[1]. Public examples are here. 
• Experimentation encouraged! We're all figuring out how to best use these tools.
• Overall, we're most interested in using RoastMyPost as an experiment for potential LLM document workflows. The tech is early now, but it's at a good point for experimentation.

How It Works

1. Import a document. Submit markdown text or provide the URL of a publicly accessible post.
2. Select evaluators to run. A few are system-recommended. Others are [...]

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Outline:

(00:27) TLDR

(01:52) How It Works

(02:30) Screenshots

(03:20) Current AI Agents / Workflows

(03:25) Is it Good?

(04:32) What are Automated Writing Evaluations Good For?

(07:19) Privacy & Data Confidentiality

(07:49) Technical Details

(09:12) Building Custom Evaluators

(10:26) Try it Out

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Peter Singer's latest column on Project Syndicate is about cluster headaches.

Sufferers of cluster headaches, also known as "suicide headaches," will do anything to stop what is possibly the most painful condition known to medicine, including using illegal drugs like psilocybin and LSD. Given strong evidence that psychedelics work, why aren't doctors allowed to prescribe them?

He also urges readers to sign our open letters on clusterfree.org. Please sign and ask others to sign.

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https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/psychedelic-drugs-should-be-legal-for-cluster-headache-by-peter-singer-2025-12

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Here is Yascha's original article.

For context, the WHR aggregates 1,000 sampled individuals from almost every country on Earth, who are asked to rate their lives on a scale of 1–10 (known as the Cantril Ladder). It produces a ranking with Nordic countries quite high, and developing countries quite low, with some surprises in between.

Yascha's main critiques seem to be:

Before jumping into these points, I think that Mounk's piece is a little rheotorical and you need to read around that. His audience seemingly responded to trigger words like “elite misinformation”, although Mounk doesn’t delve into why or how that might be the case. The WHR are extremely clear throughout their report about their methodology, and present explanations of it in a long preamble before presenting their annual table; it is simply not their fault if media outlets [...]

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Outline:

(01:28) Life satisfaction vs momentary wellbeing

(02:22) Life satisfaction and depression prevalence

(03:10) Biases in the Cantril Ladder

(04:17) Concluding that self-reported wellbeing cannot replace GDP

(05:16) I actually like self-reported wellbeing

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This post is an experiment in two ways that I explain in comments here and here. But you don't need to read those comments before reading this post.

1. Introduction

In What We Owe the Future I argued that even very severe non-extinction catastrophes are unlikely to permanently derail civilisation. Even if a catastrophe killed 99.9% of people (leaving 8 million survivors), I'd put the chance we eventually re-attain today's technological level at well over 95%.

On the usual longtermist picture, this means such catastrophes are extraordinarily bad for present people but don't rival full existential catastrophes in long-run importance. Either we go extinct (or lock into a permanently terrible trajectory), or we navigate the "time of perils" once and reach existential security.

In this article I'll describe a mechanism by which non-extinction global catastrophes would have existential-level importance. I'll define:

• A catastrophic setback as a catastrophe that causes civilisation to revert to the technological level it had at least 100 years prior.
• Sisyphus risk as the extra existential risk society incurs from the possibility of catastrophic setbacks. (Though, unlike with Sisyphus's plight, we will not suffer such setbacks indefinitely.)

The mechanism is straightforward: if a catastrophic setback occurs [...]

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Outline:

(00:19) 1. Introduction

(02:59) 2. A Simple Model of Sisyphus Risk

(03:03) 2.1. One catastrophic setback

(04:40) 2.2. Ords numbers

(06:36) 3. What Forms Could Post-AGI Catastrophic Setbacks Take?

(06:47) 3.1. Engineered pandemics

(07:48) 3.2. Nuclear war and nuclear winter

(08:31) 3.3. AI-driven catastrophe

(09:01) 3.4. Butlerian backlash and fertility decline

(10:22) 4. Would a Post-Setback Society Retain Alignment Knowledge?

(11:08) 4.1. Digital fragility

(12:44) 4.2. Hardware and software compatibility

(13:43) 4.3. Tacit knowledge

(14:40) 5. Wont AGI make post-AGI catastrophes essentially irrelevant?

(16:02) 6. Implications and Strategic Upshots

(16:07) 6.1. The importance of non-AI risks, especially non-AI non-bio

(17:06) 6.2. When to donate

(18:05) 6.3. A modest argument for more unipolar futures

(19:25) 6.4. The value of knowledge preservation and civilisational kernels

(20:25) 7. Conclusion

(21:38) Appendix: Extensions

(21:43) A.1 Multiple cycles

(29:26) A.2 Higher or lower risk in the rerun

(31:14) A.3 Trajectory change

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Note: This post was crossposted from the Coefficient Giving Farm Animal Welfare Research Newsletter by the Forum team, with the author's permission. The author may not see or respond to comments on this post.

It can feel hard to help factory-farmed animals. We’re up against a trillion-dollar global industry and its army of lobbyists, marketeers, and apologists. This industry wields vast political influence in nearly every nation and sells its products to most people on earth.

Against that, we are a movement of a few thousand full-time advocates operating on a shoestring. Our entire global movement — hundreds of groups combined — brings in less funds in a year than one meat company, JBS, makes in two days.

And we have the bigger task. The meat industry just wants to preserve the status quo: virtually no regulation and ever-growing demand for factory farming. We want to upend it — and place humanity on a more humane path.

Yet, somehow, we’re winning. After decades of installing battery cages, gestation crates, and chick macerators, the industry is now removing them. Once-dominant industries, like fur farming, are collapsing. And advocates are building momentum toward bigger reforms for all farmed animals.

Here are [...]

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By Andrés Gómez Emilsson, ClusterFree Co-Founder & Member of Advisory Board

TL;DR: To motivate action and feel genuine internal alignment around a decision, sometimes we need to see it from many different angles. Even when a single reason should be enough, we need to motivate our entire internal coalition of subagents! Hence, all of these reasons to support ClusterFree in its mission:

Summary of the 12+ Reasons to Support This Cause

1. Watch real people rapidly improve - Video testimonials of torture stopping in minutes
2. Logarithmic scale of impact - Helping someone with this condition is potentially one of the highest-leverage interventions anyone can do as a gift to someone's life
3. Insurance against illegible suffering - Building a world that takes invisible pain seriously, including your own in the future! (crossing fingers you never experience such things!)
4. Proof-of-concept for valence-first cost-effectiveness - This illustrates the corner cases where QALYs/DALYs fail catastrophically
5. Intellectual coalition - Scott Alexander, Peter Singer, Anders Sandberg, Robin Carhart-Harris, etc. have seen the evidence and are convinced this is real
6. Schelling point for suffering reduction - Network effects for future high-impact work, attracting genuine talent to focus on deep suffering reduction is its own value proposition
7. It's a strike [...]

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Outline:

(02:43) Why cluster headache mitigation should become your #1 effective giving priority this Season: impactful, novel, very alive, and with plausible fast results!

(02:55) Introduction: Why Multiple Reasons Actually Matter

(07:16) 1. You Can Actually See People Rapidly Improving

(08:27) 2. On the Logarithmic Scale of Helping Another Human, This Is Unfathomably High

(12:24) 3. Its Insurance Against Your Own Extreme Suffering Being Dismissed

(13:54) 4. Its a Proof-of-Concept for Valence-First Cost-Effectiveness

(15:43) 5. Youll Be in the Company of Intellectual Giants

(17:36) 6. Its Creating a Schelling Point for Serious Suffering-Reduction Work

(18:46) 7. Its a Strike Against Paternalistic Control Over Suffering Relief

(20:12) 8. This Is Actually Tractable

(22:13) 9. Every Month of Delay Means Unnecessary Pits of Suffering

(23:50) 10. ClusterFree Is Accelerating an Already Developing Movement

(26:39) 11. If You Take Karma Seriously, Look at What the Texts Say About Headache Relief

(28:42) 12. You Get the Bodhisattva-Tier Vision

(30:05) So I Can Stop Talking About Cluster Headaches in Qualia Computing

(30:56) What Were Specifically Asking For

(32:56) Cant Donate But Want to Help?

(34:09) Conclusion

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TLDR: Rethink Priorities has released three separate donor guides for farmed insects, farmed shrimp, and wild animal welfare—fields with enormous impact potential but challenging information environments. Our guides clarify the funding landscapes, identify strategic bottlenecks, and highlight promising opportunities. We're also launching a Neglected Animals Giving Network in early 2026 to provide donors with private briefings and personalized guidance. Complete our expression-of-interest form or email [email protected] to learn more.

Over the past few years, we’ve spoken to hundreds of donors, advocates, and researchers who care deeply about improving the lives of the most neglected animals. Many want to support work in areas like farmed insects, farmed shrimp, or wild animal welfare, but aren’t quite sure how because these fields are large and complex. The scale of suffering is vast, evidence bases are limited, and the landscape is evolving quickly. It can be difficult to know what's most promising, or how to move forward confidently.

At Rethink Priorities, under our Neglected Animals Program, we have spent years trying to improve the lives of these animals. Our team has investigated sentience and welfare issues, coordinated strategy across organizations, mapped advocacy and industry landscapes, supported emerging groups, and incubated new interventions. [...]

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Outline:

(02:38) Key observations for navigating these fields

(07:32) The guides

(08:04) Farmed Insect Welfare: Recommendations for funders

(08:42) Shrimp Welfare: Recommendations for funders

(09:09) Wild Animal Welfare: Recommendations for funders

(10:15) Invitation: Join RP's Neglected Animals Giving Network

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TL;DR

Across EA job boards and Forum postings, 70–90% of "marketing-related" roles are comms-focused, while only ~10–20% relate to digital acquisition, funnels, growth, or retention. Several marketers in EA report that our ecosystem is 4–5 years behind standard digital marketing practices—particularly in experimentation, targeting, lifecycle marketing, and channel attribution.

This imbalance has real opportunity costs: many high-leverage programs (training, fellowships, campaigns, fundraising, recruitment) rely on steady inflow and activation of the right participants—yet the systems that reliably deliver this are rarely built.

Comms ≠ growth. EA orgs may be investing heavily in "talking about what we do," but less in "filling and scaling what we do." Given EA's culture of measurement, the lack of measurement-driven marketing is especially surprising.

Context: who's writing this

I'm a digital marketer with 7+ years of experience. I've reached late-stage interviews for several growth-adjacent roles in EA orgs over the past year, and I've spoken with multiple EA marketers about this pattern. I'm likely biased given my background, so I'm genuinely open to being wrong about this—but the pattern feels worth discussing.

*Note: I used some LLMs for copyediting.

1. A pattern I keep noticing in EA job postings

Over the past year, I've [...]

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Outline:

(00:11) TL;DR

(01:12) Context: whos writing this

(01:43) 1. A pattern I keep noticing in EA job postings

(02:45) 2. Why this split matters: comms ≠ growth

(03:32) 3. Why are EA orgs defaulting to comms roles?

(03:42) A. Post-FTX + reputational risk → Narrative control mode

(04:01) B. People in EA came up through writing, research, and community-building

(04:19) C. Lack of internal advocates for digital systems--and lack of frameworks to evaluate them

(05:08) 4. Why this is surprising for a movement obsessed with measurement

(06:09) 5. The opportunity cost

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