Conscious Meaning

We share every moment with trillions of other conscious beings. Some are much like us, and others experience the world very differently. Creatures without a language to structure their thoughts, some who see broader spectrums of light or others who might experience the world in comparative slow motion. Each conscious moment immediately slips into the past largely unobserved and forgotten. They fall through time like snow to become frozen in the past. Always to have happened just as they did.

Each conscious moment is transient and one small part of a vast whole, so one could see any individual as meaningless and insignificant. But every conscious moment is imbued with meaning. Happiness that need not justify itself and pains that consume any desire but to escape them.

As individuals, we are not responsible for the state of the world. You did not choose to create disease, poverty and mental illness. You can’t control nature, and you can’t control the society around you.

Many schools of philosophy disagree exactly on what our moral obligations are to others. Given this disagreement, we could default to radical scepticism that all attempts to decide what the right way to [...]

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Outline:

(00:11) Conscious Meaning

(02:06) Ovarian lottery

(03:49) The Good we can do

(05:18) Creating Balance

(06:13) Voluntary Simplicity

(08:12) Setting Salary based on the Worlds average income

(10:12) Appendix: Let he who is without sin cast the first stone

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First published:

December 11th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wd7XsSwqWCzd2uzhq/the-further-pledge-voluntary-simplicity

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

The Giving What We Can research team is excited to share the results of our 2025 round of evaluations of charity evaluators and grantmakers!

In this round, we completed two evaluations that will inform our donation recommendations for the 2025 giving season. As with our previous rounds, there are substantial limitations to these evaluations, but we nevertheless think that they are a significant improvement to a landscape in which there were previously no independent evaluations of evaluators’ work.

In this post, we share the key takeaways from our two 2025 evaluations and link to the full reports. In our conclusion, we explain our plans for future evaluations.

Please also see our website for more context on why and how we evaluate evaluators.

We look forward to your questions and comments! (Note: we will respond when we return from leave on the 8th of December)

Key takeaways from each of our 2025 evaluations

The two evaluators included in our 2025 round of evaluating evaluators were:

• GiveWell (full report)
• Happier Lives Institute (full report)

GiveWell

Based on our evaluation, we have decided to continue including GiveWell's Top Charities, Top Charities Fund and All Grants Fund in GWWC's [...]

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Outline:

(01:08) Key takeaways from each of our 2025 evaluations

(01:25) GiveWell

(03:18) Happier Lives Institute (HLI)

(06:29) Conclusion and future plans

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First published:

December 1st, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/sAiHYuuGGT7qvne5P/gwwc-s-2025-evaluations-of-evaluators

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

And Effective Altruism has put my faith community to shame

The Beginning

When I became a Christian age 15 my life began to transform, but sadly my first external play was proclaiming no sex before marriage and saying F#$% a bit less (I’ve since resumed).

Two years later at premed, Tuesday was my only night with no tutorial so I joined a church group, which was weirdly labelled “Social Justice”. I had zero clue what this was aboutt, maybe preventing bullying at school?. Our leader Jo opened with a question I’ll never forget.

“I’m fundraising for World Vision and I told my chain-smoking friend I’ll buy him a pack of cigs if he joins the fundraising effort. Do you guys think that's OK?”

As we discussed the conundrum for the next hour my heart jumped a little. Perhaps my time, skills and money could be useful for something more than just a comfortable life in the ‘burbs…

Why do I Give?

“When you give….” Jesus

Christian motivations for giving vary wildly. Some mostly give to keep their church club solvent, others to save face, but most have deeper motivations. Here are mine.

[...]

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Outline:

(01:06) Why do I Give?

(01:24) Gratitude and Joy

(02:24) Utilitarian

(03:14) More to come?

(03:49) Christians aren't great at Giving

(04:04) Father of Earning to Give?

(05:07) We're not much better

(06:08) Effective Altruist Giving Impresses me

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First published:

December 10th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/QrQ9jwFSNoEdd373f/i-donate-because-i-am-christian

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

I keep thinking about what kind of identity would be useful for building a powerful animal advocacy movement. Here are 3 features of veganism that I often think about which make me doubt its usefulness.

Too maximalist

The official definition of veganism by the inventors of the term is the following:

“Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose”

This basically amounts to "avoid doing bad things as far as possible." The threshold sits right below what is impossible. I think that is way too ambitious. Doing the best possible thing at every circumstance shouldn’t be the criterion for inclusion to a social movement. We don't expect human rights activists to avoid all forms of exploitation and cruelty as far as possible to qualify as human rights activists.

Some activists respond "No, veganism is the bare minimum. The 'as far as possible and practicable' part means it's not about being perfect.". But when I ask for examples of gratuitously harmful actions that veganism doesn't forbid, at most I hear about instances of accidental uses [...]

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Outline:

(00:22) Too maximalist

(03:37) No space for believers to sin

(04:29) Too behaviour-focused

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First published:

November 26th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/BX8hPeye2QRcyftRk/3-doubts-about-veganism

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

People working in the AI industry are making stupid amounts of money, and word on the street is that Anthropic is going to have some sort of liquidity event soon (for example possibly IPOing sometime next year). A lot of people working in AI are familiar with EA, and are intending to direct donations our way (if they haven't started already). People are starting to discuss what this might mean for their own personal donations and for the ecosystem, and this is encouraging to see.

It also has me thinking about 2022. Immediately before the FTX collapse, we were just starting to reckon, as a community, with the pretty significant vibe shift in EA that came from having a lot more money to throw around.

CitizenTen, in "The Vultures Are Circling" (April 2022), puts it this way:

The message is out. There's easy money to be had. And the vultures are coming. On many internet circles, there's been a worrying tone. “You should apply for [insert EA grant], all I had to do was pretend to care about x, and I got $$!” Or, “I’m not even an EA, but I can pretend, as getting a 10k grant is [...]

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First published:

December 10th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/vpPee6NgMbPcdsam3/the-funding-conversation-we-left-unfinished

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Summary: Anthropic has many employees with an EA-ish outlook, who may

soon have a lot of money. If you also have that kind of outlook, money

donated sooner will likely be much higher impact.

It's December, and I'm trying to figure out how much to donate. This is usually a

straightforward question: give 50%. But this

year I'm considering dipping into savings.

There are many EAs and EA-informed employees at Anthropic, which has

been very successful and is reportedly

considering an

IPO. The Manifold

market estimates a median IPO date of June 2027:

At a floated $300B valuation and many EAs among their early employees,

the amount of additional funding could be in the billions. Efforts

I'd most want to support may become less constrained by money than

capacity: as I've experienced in running the NAO, scaling programs takes time.

This means donations now seem more valuable; ones that help

organizations get into a position to productively apply further

funding especially so.

In retrospect I wish I'd been able to support 80,000 Hours more substantially

before Open Philanthropy Coefficient

Giving began funding them; this time, with more ability to see

what's likely [...]

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First published:

December 3rd, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/rRBaP7YbXfZibSn3C/front-load-giving-because-of-anthropic-donors

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Ronny Chieng strikes again, this time featuring Peter Wildeford and the risks from AI on the Daily Show:

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First published:

December 5th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/epuSKFdGD82cxZAGd/peter-wildeford-talks-about-risks-from-ai-on-the-daily-show

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

I’ve spoken with hundreds of entomologists at conferences the world over. While there's clearly some self-selection (not everyone wants to talk to a philosopher), my experience is consistent: most think it's reasonable to care about the welfare of insects. Entomologists don’t regard it as the last stop on the crazy train; they don’t worry they’re getting mugged; they don’t think the idea is just utilitarianism run amok. Instead, they see some concern for welfare as stemming from a common-sense commitment to being humane in our dealings with animals.

Let's be clear: they embrace “some concern,” not “bugs have rights.” Entomologists generally believe it's important to do invasive studies on insects, to manage their populations, to kill them to document their diversity. But given the choice between an aversive and a non-aversive way of euthanizing insects, most prefer the latter. Given the choice between killing fewer insects and more, most prefer fewer. They don’t want to end good lives unnecessarily; they don’t want to cause gratuitous suffering.

It wasn’t always this way. But the science of sentience is evolving; attitudes are evolving too. These people work with insects every day; they constantly face choices about how to catch insects, how [...]

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First published:

November 23rd, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/4FncrGhQKcuFthxiR/caring-about-bugs-isn-t-weird

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

We, the AIM Board and outgoing CEO Joey Savoie, are delighted to announce that Samantha Kagel has been selected as AIM's new CEO, effective December 1, 2025.

Over the last few months, we have been engaged in a highly important activity: finding AIM's next CEO. This was not an easy position to fill, as we sought someone who could lead the organization to high growth and impact while retaining the core elements that have made AIM unique.

We were committed to conducting a thorough search and put out a public call for candidates, considering over 100 applicants from both public applications and referrals. We evaluated external candidates, internal team members, and past charity graduates, and ultimately identified Samantha as the candidate whom we believe will best execute the next stages of AIM's development.

About Samantha

Samantha has served on AIM's executive team as Chief Programs Officer for the past 1.5 years, leading the strategy and delivery of our Charity Entrepreneurship function. In this role, she has demonstrated exceptional capability across multiple dimensions: building collaborative teams, driving strategic execution, and maintaining unwavering focus on impact.

Before joining the executive team, Samantha successfully filled nearly every role across our organization [...]

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Outline:

(01:00) About Samantha

(02:13) A note from our incoming CEO, Samantha Kagel

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First published:

December 1st, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/r8GSGnay6scK7Jmb5/announcing-the-new-aim-ceo

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

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Cross-posted from Good Structures.

For impact-minded donors, it's natural to focus on doing the most cost-effective thing. Suppose you’re genuinely neutral on what you do, as long as it maximizes the good. If you’re donating money, you want to look for the most cost-effective opportunity (on the margin) and donate to it.

But many organizations and individuals who care about cost-effectiveness try to influence the giving of others. This includes:

• Research organizations that try to influence the allocation or use of charitable funds.
• Donor advisors who work with donors to find promising opportunities.
• People arguing to community members on venues like the EA Forum.
• Charity recommenders like GiveWell and Animal Charity Evaluators.

These are endeavors where you’re specifically trying to influence the giving of others. And when you influence the giving of others, you don’t get full credit for their decisions! You should only get credit for how much better the thing you convinced them to do is compared to what they would otherwise do.

This is something that many people in EA and related communities take for granted and find obvious in the abstract. But I think the implications of this aren’t always fully digested by the [...]

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Outline:

(03:34) Impact is largely a function of what the donor would have done otherwise.

(04:36) Is improving the use of effective or ineffective charitable dollars easier?

(06:14) How do people respond to these lower impact interventions?

(08:14) What are the implications of paying a lot more attention to funding counterfactuals?

(10:21) Objections to this argument.

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First published:

November 12th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/YrMFHJm7mbswJd7Me/the-overall-cost-effectiveness-of-an-intervention-often

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.