EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

I know the movement may feel enticed to forgo optics, but ironically it seems like now would be the better time to care about them. For example, the forthcoming "The Altruists" at Netflix on FTX and now Luca Guadagnino's "Artificial" just wrapped (which is very specifically focused on the 5-day board firing of Sam Altman and will obviously cover the EA/AI safety movements).

Knowing how antagonistic OpenAI is being toward any kind of policy work limiting AI companies development, and the only groups working against those efforts are EA and AIS.... having widespread negative representation in entertainment may hinder all future work of these movements.

Luca's hot right now - he just came off the success of Zendaya's Challengers and Oscar contender Queer, the movie's got a stocked cast, and he's angling it as a comedy which is the best way to reach people on subjects that [...]

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First published:

October 16th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/pMhLK5erFdDTsswwW/ea-needs-organic-optics-not-no-optics-hollywood-is-coming

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Many thanks to @Felix_Werdermann 🔸 @Engin Arıkan and @Ana Barreiro for your feedback and comments on this, and for the encouragement from many people to finally write this up into an EA forum post.

For years, much of the career advice in the Effective Altruism community has implicitly (or explicitly) suggested that impact = working at an EA nonprofit. That narrative made sense when the community and its talent pool were smaller. But as EA grows, it's worth reassessing whether we’re overconcentrating on nonprofit careers, a trend that may be limiting our community's impact and leaving higher-leverage opportunities on the table.

Why Now?

As the EA movement has grown, it has attracted far more talent than the nonprofit sector can realistically absorb. This creates an urgent need to develop alternative pathways for talented, mission-aligned people. Under the current status quo, many end up feeling frustrated after going through multiple [...]

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Outline:

(00:51) Why Now?

(02:06) Important Caveats

(03:20) The argument for roles outside of non-profits

(03:25) Institutions Dwarf Nonprofit Capacity

(05:19) Salaries Are Covered Outside the Movement

(06:12) Counterfactual Impact Is Often Greater

(06:57) A Healthier Distribution of Talent

(07:54) Why This Might Be Wrong Advice

(08:24) The Challenges of External Roles

(10:13) Why These Risks Still Seem Worth Taking

(10:57) Why Steering Everyone Toward Nonprofits Might Hurt the EA Community

(11:03) Nonprofit Roles Are Saturated

(11:27) Nonprofits Have Low Absorbency

(12:24) Too Many Advising Channels, One Bottlenecked Funnel

(12:49) Nonprofits are not a good fit for everyone, and they may be a much better fit for roles in other sectors.

(13:31) Important Final Caveats

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First published:

October 16th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/FAmCmCavZ5vTzbRcM/why-many-eas-may-have-more-impact-outside-of-nonprofits-in

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is a link post.

TL;DR:
Self-reliance matters, but asking for help can often turn good work into great work. It saves time, builds trust, and strengthens the movement. In this short post, I recommend a few ways you can ask for help in your work and community.

At a recent leadership gathering, we were discussing how many of us have too many tasks on our plates. Someone said something that stuck with me:
“Ask your team for help. They want to help you and the org succeed.”

It hit home. In leadership and entrepreneurship, we often mistake competence for independence.

When I was asked for my top tip for new charity founders, I said a similar thing:
“Learn to ask for help. Don’t reinvent the wheel.”

Self-reliance gets us far. It's what drives many of us to push through exhaustion and figure things out alone. I still [...]

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First published:

October 14th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/HCLwmqt3oLDpwEbdB/maybe-ask-for-help-more

Linkpost URL:
https://notingthemargin.substack.com/p/maybe-ask-for-help-more

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

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As of today, Farmed Animal Funders is now Senterra Funders.

Senterra Funders is a donor community of 49 individual and institutional funders, each giving $250,000+ annually to end factory farming and build sustainable food systems. We offer expert philanthropic advising, collaborative giving opportunities, and a vibrant community, while also working to increase the pool of funding for the movement to end factory farming.

Why a new name?

As we’ve implemented our strategy to reach new funders, we consistently encountered the same problem: the name Farmed Animal Funders held us back from reaching new audiences - especially those who are closely aligned with our mission, but don’t necessarily see themselves as “animal funders”.

Senterra Funders combines “sentience” and “terra” (earth), reflecting our vision of a world free of the suffering factory farming causes sentient beings and our shared planet. Our tagline – Building a future beyond factory farming – underscores [...]

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First published:

October 15th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/7qZ9tRiBztSqF9oNH/introducing-senterra-funders-the-new-name-for-farmed-animal

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

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"If we recognise that it is a part of human nature to be prepared to sacrifice for others principally through emotive relationships and a lived experience of solidarity and empathy, we are left facing the awkward reality that, as a facet of cosmic complexity, utilitarianism, so well equipped to recognise the need to develop our relationship with future generations, may not be well equipped to do anything about it."

A common frustration for those visiting Rome is the impossibility of seeing everything. Even those committed to score-of-thousand stepped and stomach-stretching days merely scratch at the interwoven cultural strands densely packed over millennia into a hard surface. This is one reason why I am grateful for having studied there, eight years being time enough to reach a working familiarity with the city's seemingly endless sources of spiritual, aesthetic, and earthly refreshment. My last weeks in the eternal city, then, were [...]

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First published:

October 15th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ea2cvo2H3Sc6rKJmz/longtermism-an-impracticable-attempt-to-reason-our-way-into

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

idenBasic facts:

• Forethought is hiring; apply for a research role by 1 November.
• The two open positions are for (i) “Senior Research Fellows” — people who can lead their own research directions, and (ii) “Research Fellows” — people who aren’t ready to lead an agenda yet, but who could work with others and develop their worldviews and research taste. Forethought is also open to hiring “visiting fellows” who would join for a 3-12-month stint.
• And you can refer people to get a bounty of up to £10,000.

In the rest of this post, I sketch out more of my personal take on this area, how Forethought fits in, and why you might or might not want to do this kind of work at Forethought.

Others at Forethought might disagree with various parts of what I say (and might fight me or add other info in the comments). Max reviewed a first [...]

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Outline:

(01:21) A background worldview

(03:39) Why do this kind of work at Forethought? (Why not?)

(11:07) Who do I think would/wouldn't be a good fit for this?

(12:48) More basic info

(13:31) A final note

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First published:

October 14th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/znFgboZ62NM7Cnsx9/a-personal-take-on-why-you-should-work-at-forethought-maybe

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

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

This is a Draft Amnesty Week draft. It may not be polished, up to my usual standards, fully thought through, or fully fact-checked. 

Commenting and feedback guidelines:

This draft lacks the polish of a full post (I wrote this in ~30 minutes), but the content is almost there. The kind of constructive feedback you would normally put on a Forum post is very welcome. And this is a Forum post that I wouldn't have posted without the nudge of Draft Amnesty Week. Fire away! (But be nice, as usual)

Lately I’ve been thinking about what I call the “EA–Asian–woman trifecta.” It's the combination that makes me want to use every hour effectively, and that also leaves me feeling guilty when I can’t.

Upon a quick search on the Forum, I don’t seem to find others who have written about experiences similar to mine[1], so I thought I'd share my thoughts and [...]

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Outline:

(00:33) What this feels like

(00:59) The trifecta

(01:53) Where Im at

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First published:

October 14th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/FzJhJfoupRT3wnRJq/navigating-the-ea-asian-woman-trifecta

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Like many people, I have quite a lot of stuff that I've written that exists only in googledoc form. In writing a comment response to Wei Dai, I wanted to point to a concept that I realised I hadn't published. So I thought I should practice what I preach, and put the idea out as a post. But warning — the level of polish is likely a lot lower than other things I might write.

Lock-in escape velocity

One dynamic that makes long-term path-dependence more likely to occur in the near future is lock-in escape velocity: that short periods of entrenchment can turn into longer periods of entrenchment.

Suppose that a one-world government is formed, and the leaders of that government are able to entrench their power for a comparatively short period of time, so they very probably stay in power for 10 years. But, in that time, they [...]

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Outline:

(00:32) Lock-in escape velocity

(02:11) Bootstrapping to viatopia

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First published:

October 13th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/sExa4mvRwZCQiZJNZ/bootstrapping-to-viatopia

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

TLDR 

EA is a community where time tracking is already very common and yet most people I talk to don't because

1. It's too much work (when using toggl, clockify, ...)
2. It's not accurate enough (when using RescueTime, rize, ...)

I built https://donethat.ai that solves both of these with AI as part of AIM's Founding to Give program. It's live on Product Hunt today, please support it.

You should probably track your time

I'd argue that for most people, your time is your most valuable resource.[1] Even though your day has 24 hours, eight of those are already used up for sleep, another eight probably for social life, gym, food prep and eating, life admin, commute, leaving max eight hours to have impact.

Oliver Burkeman argues in his recent book Meditations for Mortals that eight is still too high - most high impact work gets done in four hours [...]

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Outline:

(00:11) TLDR

(00:40) You should probably track your time

(02:21) It just got easier

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First published:

October 14th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wt8gKaH9usKy3LQmK/you-should-probably-track-your-time-and-it-just-got-easier

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is not so much a draft post as it is a draft project. I did most of this work many months ago and just never got around to wrapping it up and sharing it. I ended up (temporarily) removing a lot of pages that were half-finished so that I could hit send. Expect more content soon!

This is a Draft Amnesty Week draft. It may not be polished, up to my usual standards, fully thought through, or fully fact-checked. This is a Forum post that I wouldn't have posted without the nudge of Draft Amnesty Week. Fire away! (But be nice, as usual)

TLDR

📢 Check out the new website and the new online community space. Share it with all your engineer friends!

It's all new, open-source, and volunteer-run. So bear with us and help us grow!

Hang on - what happened?

High Impact Engineers was an organisation focused on increasing the [...]

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Outline:

(00:30) TLDR

(00:48) Hang on - what happened?

(01:22) Thats sad!

(02:01) So whats there now?

(02:40) It looks a little empty!

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First published:

October 13th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Ce5JK97KnR2dYWJy5/high-impact-engineers-is-back

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.