EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

I really enjoyed reading the "why I donate" posts in the past week, so much so that I felt compelled to add my reflections, in case someone finds my reasons as interesting as I found theirs.

1. My money needs to be spent on something, might as well spend it on the most efficient things

The core reason I give is something that I think is under-represented in the other posts: the money I have and earn will need to be spent on something, and it feels extremely inefficient and irrational to spend it on my future self when it can provide >100x as much to others.

To me, it doesn't seem important whether I'm in the global top 10% or bottom 10%, or whether the money I have is due to my efforts or to the place I was born. If it can provide others 100x as much, it just seems inefficient/irrational to allocate it to myself.

Honestly, the post could end here, but there are other secondary reasons/perspectives on why I personally donate that I haven't seen commonly discussed.

2. Spending money is voting on how the global economy allocates its resources

In 2017, I read Wealth [...]

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Outline:

(00:22) 1. My money needs to be spent on something, might as well spend it on the most efficient things

(01:09) 2. Spending money is voting on how the global economy allocates its resources

(04:11) 3. I dont think its as bad as some make it out to be

(07:35) 4. I donate because Im an atheist (/s)

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First published:

December 15th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CSKob9hGmWM7f7yv8/i-give-because-it-s-the-most-rational-way-to-spend-my-money

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Crosspost.

The core philosophical argument for giving is strikingly simple: charitable donations can prevent lots of death and suffering at a comparatively minor cost. For a few thousand dollars, you can save someone's life. By taking the Giving What We Can pledge—which I have taken, and I would encourage you to take—and giving away 10% of your lifetime income, you can save hundreds of lives without sacrificing anything of remotely comparable value. Taking the pledge likely does more good than anything else you will ever do.

If you make what the average American makes and give away 10% of your income, you will still be richer than almost everyone who ever lived, but you will know that because of you fewer children are dead. You will know that mothers do not have to cry over lost children because of you and that additional children will get to live to adulthood. The best charities save lives for just $4,500. Each time you give that much away, you can know that one extra child still breathes, instead of being buried before his parents, in a tiny grave, in a distant cemetery.

If you earn the average income of an American [...]

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First published:

December 14th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/uHhPjrdcQFM3Fvwuc/a-life-that-cannot-be-a-failure

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Climate action looks very different today than it did just a year ago. A new administration in the White House has reshaped the landscape, and climate donors face both setbacks and opportunities.

We at Giving Green have spent the past year mapping out how smart donations can maintain (and accelerate) momentum under these new circumstances, both in the U.S. and globally. Our year-end climate giving guide, published in November, distills this work.

In this post, we will cover:

• Giving Green's research approaches
• 2025-2026 research priorities and findings: prioritized philanthropic strategies and Top Climate Nonprofits
• Regranting fund updates: $26 million to 29 grantees
• Plans for 2026 and beyond
• Other organizational updates: impact and mistakes
• Working together

Giving Green's research approaches

We encourage impact-maximizing donors to focus on systems change

Giving Green's goal is to maximize donors' impact per dollar by identifying fundable climate solutions that decrease warming. Our research has led us to believe that this will come through a focus on systems change: efforts such as policy advocacy, technology innovation, and market-shaping mechanisms that change the rules of the game.

Traditional impact evaluation methods tend to favor short-term outcomes, quantitative data, and linear theories of change [...]

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Outline:

(01:11) Giving Green's research approaches

(01:16) We encourage impact-maximizing donors to focus on systems change

(02:52) Quantitative analysis is one input--not the final word

(03:46) 2025-2026 research priorities and findings

(03:52) Some high-impact climate solutions remain neglected

(05:55) 2025-2026 Top Climate Nonprofits

(06:23) Regranting fund updates: $26 million to 29 grantees

(06:58) Plans for 2026 and beyond

(07:03) Setting research priorities to inform 2026 Top Climate Nonprofits recommendations and Giving Green Fund grants

(08:16) Launching recommendations of Top Biodiversity Nonprofits

(09:37) Offering better products as an independent organization

(10:18) Other organizational updates

(10:23) Impact at a glance: Giving Green is a 20X impact multiplier

(11:23) Mistakes

(11:35) Working together

(11:38) Collaborating with audience-specific fundraising organizations

(12:19) Collaborating with other cause areas

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First published:

December 12th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/iWXKxf4bKhsFit9ia/giving-green-s-2025-top-climate-nonprofits-regranting-fund

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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This is a link post.

It's to build the skills required to solve the problems that you want to solve in the world

[I am a career advisor at 80,000 Hours. This post is adapted from a talk I gave on career capital to some ambitious altruistic students. If you prefer slides, you can access them here. These ideas are informed by my work at 80k but reflects my personal views.]

I’m often asked how to have an impactful fulfilling career. My four word answer is “get good, be known.”

My “fits on a postcard” answer is something like this:

1. Identify a problem with a vast scale of harm that is neglected at current margins and that is tractable to solve. Millions will die of preventable diseases this year, billions of animals will be tortured, severe tail risks like nuclear war and catastrophic pandemics still exist, and we might be on the cusp of a misaligned intelligence explosion. You should find an important problem to work on.
2. Obsessively improve at the rare and valuable skills to solve this problem and do so in a legible way for others to notice. Leverage this career capital to keep the flywheel going— [...]

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Outline:

(00:12) It's to build the skills required to solve the problems that you want to solve in the world

(02:59) First, brief caveats

(04:18) Improve your skills

(07:15) Get good... Okay, how?

(15:17) Caveats: Avoiding Burnout, Overcoming Imposter Syndrome, Assessing Personal Fit, Increasing Luck Surface Area, and Finding High-Growth Opportunities

(20:15) Skill issue (affectionate)

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First published:

December 13th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/27DyPyPihmehqnMqb/your-goal-isn-t-really-to-get-a-job

Linkpost URL:
https://thatvastvariety.substack.com/p/your-goal-isnt-really-to-get-a-job

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Far-UVC is something people have

talked about for years in a "that would be great, if you could buy it"

sort of way. Coming soon, once someone actually makes a good

product. But the future is now, and it costs $500.

Many diseases spread through the air, which is inconvenient for us as

creatures that breathe air. You can go outside, where the air is too

dilute to spread things well, but it's cold out there, and sometimes

wet. You can run an air purifier, but cleaning lots of air without

lots of noise is still the world of DIY projects. Ideally you could just

shine some light, perhaps in the 222-nm

range, which would leave people alone but kill the viruses [1] and

bacteria. Yes, let's do that!

Last year if you asked "if far-UV is so great, why isn't it

everywhere?" one of your answers would be:

There are very few providers, and hardly any of them sell an

off-the-shelf product. You usually can't just buy a lamp to try it

out—you have to call the company, get a consultation, and often have

someone from the company come install the lamp. It's a [...]

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First published:

December 13th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/oiPhmbXDomnzKujg4/you-can-just-buy-far-uvc

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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In 2016,[1] I wrote the following:

Why do I give?

I’ve lived a very fortunate life. I was born into a well-off American family, the son of two parents with college degrees. I attended a famous university. I didn’t deserve any of this; if I’d been born somewhere else, my life would have gone very differently. I give because I’d like to share the results of my luck with the less fortunate.

I also give because I think that human happiness is the best thing in the world (in all its forms: love, excitement, satisfaction…). I already have a good, satisfying life, so I don’t need to buy more happiness. Instead, I can use money to help a lot of other people live happier lives. This strikes me as a fantastic opportunity.

When Giving What We Can asked me to write about my giving, I thought it would be easy — I still believe in everything up there.

But after nine years spent living and working in the EA community, I've had a few more thoughts about the question:

Humans make my life worth living

A few hours ago, I rewatched (for the 10th time) a snippet of one [...]

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Outline:

(00:15) Why do I give?

(01:17) Humans make my life worth living

(03:41) Other people are real

(05:15) Ive seen how the (vegan) sausage is made

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First published:

December 13th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/eF8spFn9XXq78Qmnz/i-donate-because-i-love-humanity

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

I recently wrote 80k's new problem profile on extreme power concentration (with a lot of help from others - see the acknowledgements at the bottom).

It's meant to be a systematic introduction to the risk of AI-enabled power concentration, where AI enables a small group of humans to amass huge amounts of unchecked power over everyone else. It's primarily aimed at people who are new to the topic, but I think it's also one of the only write-ups there is on this overall risk,[1]so might be interesting to others, too.

Briefly, the piece argues that:

• Automation could concentrate the power to get stuff done, by reducing the value of human labour, empowering small groups with big AI workforces, and potentially giving one AI developer a huge capabilities advantage (if there's an intelligence explosion).
• This could lead to unprecedented concentration of political power via some combination of:
  • Humans deliberately seizing power for themselves (as with AI-enabled coups)
  • Some people becoming obscenely wealthy, such that government incentives are distorted in their favour or they simply outgrow the rest of the world
  • The erosion of people's ability to understand what's going on and coordinate in their own interests (either through [...]

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First published:

December 12th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/NmFbFiBPpx45nqxct/new-80k-problem-profile-extreme-power-concentration

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Confidence level: timecapped at around one hour. Mostly based on my own experience, first as a new, curious attendee at EA events, and later as someone trying to be helpful to even newer attendees at these events.

Looking back on my first EA events, a handful of 1:1s and interactions have stood out as being outstandingly useful in guiding my EA path. I've noticed that these were 1:1s where the more experienced attendee was not just answering my questions, but structuring the meeting in order to help me progress.

I remark that these are not always followed, and some fairly experienced attendees treat 1:1s with newer attendees like their other 1:1s. I think that if they applied some of the practices I describe below, they could provide even more value to people who reach out to them.

Some tips I apply:

• (Re-)read the attendee's Swapcard profile for 1 minute, just before the 1:1 starts.
  • Gives you a vague idea of what they already know and what they're less likely to know.
• Try to think of what you were not aware of in the first six months where you were focusing on your area (and extrapolate, from that [...]

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First published:

December 11th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/edRFXcnwnCjyNqy67/you-can-be-very-helpful-to-first-timers-at-ea-events

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This year, I have given money to a range of EA cause areas. Most of it has either been towards global health and development, or EA infrastructure I believe does or could lead to effective fundraising for global health and development.

The following are a list of very selfish personal reasons why I like to do this. I feel the selfless reasons have been adequately covered elsewhere, so I'm intentionally leaving them off.

I get to ignore ineffective charity adverts.

In order to genuinely convince myself that I am helping, I want to see things like well-regarded cost-effectiveness metrics. I do not like heartstring-tugging advertising or vague statements of "should", particularly to do with orphanages. They make me feel a bit ill. So I am glad that donating effectively gives me a very good justification to ignore them.

It is a marker of my politics.

I don't believe that poor people I don't know in rich countries are 100× more worthy of my help [i.e. worthy of help that's 100× less cost-efficient] than poor people in poor countries. This is because I don't believe anyone is 100× more worthy than anyone. Choosing to donate based on the cost-effectiveness of [...]

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Outline:

(00:36) I get to ignore ineffective charity adverts.

(01:02) It is a marker of my politics.

(01:36) Giving expresses abundance.

(02:32) Ive stopped valuing things by how expensive they are.

(03:17) People have stopped (openly) judging me about some of my life choices.

(03:56) I get to hang out with cool people and be in the cool kids club.

(04:16) It helps me genuinely care about helping people.

(04:37) It motivates me at my job.

(05:01) By giving effectively, I can do great things.

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First published:

December 12th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/84PYRzFCeqZGfgv3N/why-i-donate-some-selfish-reasons

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

I’ve been reading the other Why I Donate Week posts with interest. One of the main things that struck me reading them was something like: it seems like giving is a big part of these people's lives – which is beautiful and I love it. But I mostly don’t relate to it in a very similar way myself, so I thought I’d write this for a different perspective!

I took the 10% Pledge in 2017, and have been giving at least 10% since then.[1] Currently I give in a vaguely Further-Pledge-like way, i.e. everything above a threshold that's currently about £34k/year after tax. That currently works out to giving around 40% of my gross/pre-tax income, though that might change in either direction in future.

The main way I relate to giving is honestly that I don’t think I relate to it very much at all. If I ask myself how it feels, the main things that come to mind are like: feels easy, feels obvious, doesn’t feel dramatic.

If I ask myself why I give, or how I feel about giving, the thing that feels most true is:

• With my current level of giving, I feel like I [...]

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First published:

December 11th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/vX2PxtdjbYiyeEqio/why-i-donate-seems-easy-seems-obvious-i-rarely-think-about

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.