I sometimes worry that focus on effectiveness creates perverse incentives in strategic settings, leading us to become less effective. Here are a few observations illustrating this concern.

Effectiveness-focused advocacy creates perverse incentives for adversaries

When we conduct cage-free campaigns, the target companies frequently ask us why they are being targeted instead of some other company. While trying to answer that, one immediately realises the following tension. If we say that "because targeting you is the most effective thing we can do", we incentivise them to not budge. Because they will know that willingness to compromise invites more aggression.

When dealing with an effectiveness-focused movement, our adversaries are further incentivised to prevent concrete results. While other movements will have to be destroyed through pressure, an effectiveness-focused movement will easily go away if you just prove to them that they can be more effective elsewhere.

For that reason, in our [...]

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Outline:

(00:21) Effectiveness-focused advocacy creates perverse incentives for adversaries

(01:20) Sometimes you have to fight back even when it's not the most effective thing to do

(02:05) Religious rules survive because they are stubborn

(02:39) We might need more commitment devices

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First published:

April 8th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/tvcEa9LhsX264NZbf/maybe-we-aren-t-stubborn-enough

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is a Forum Team crosspost from Substack.
Matt would like to add: "Epistemic status = incomplete speculation; posted here at the Forum team's request"

When you ask prominent Effective Altruists about Effective Altruism, you often get responses like these:

For context, Will MacAskill and Holden Karnofsky are arguably, literally the number one and two most prominent Effective Altruists on the planet. Other evidence of their ~spouses’ personal involvement abounds, especially Amanda's. Now, perhaps they’ve had changes of heart in recent months or years – and they’re certainly entitled to have those – but being evasive and implicitly disclaiming mere knowledge of EA is comically misleading and non-transparent. Calling these statements lies seems within bounds for most.[1]

This kind of evasiveness around one's EA associations has been common since the collapse of FTX in 2022, (which, for yet more context, was a major EA funder that year and [...]

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Outline:

(03:32) Why can't EAs talk about EA like normal humans (or even normal executives)?

(05:54) Coming of age during the Great Awokening

(07:15) Bad Comms Advice

(08:22) Not understanding how words work (coupled with motivated reasoning)

(11:05) Trauma

The original text contained 5 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

April 8th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/6NCYo7RFYfkEjLAtn/ea-adjacency-as-ftx-trauma

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Last week, I participated in Animal Advocacy Careers’ Impactful Policy Careers programme. Below I’m sharing some reflections on what was a really interesting week in Brussels!

Please note I spent just one week there, so take it all with a grain of (CAP-subsidized) salt. Posts like this and this one are probably much more informative (and assume less context). I mainly wrote this to reflect on my time in Brussels (and I capped it at 2 hours, so it's not a super polished draft). I’ll focus mostly on EU careers generally, less on (EU) animal welfare-related careers.

Before I jump in, just a quick note about how I think AAC did something really cool here: they identified a relatively underexplored area where it's relatively easy for animal advocates to find impactful roles, and then designed a programme to help these people better understand that area, meet stakeholders, and learn [...]

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Outline:

(01:26) On EU careers generally

(02:59) On EU careers - EA specific

(05:55) Some miscellaneous notes

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First published:

March 30th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/e95HCwqNp7RiF94ad/what-i-learned-from-a-week-in-the-eu-policy-bubble

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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It is standard form in EA to state one's welcomingness of feedback, both in a personal and professional capacity. Individuals and organisations alike often have many means by which you can deliver feedback, whether through anonymous forms or direct communication, and forum posts will often begin or end with:

"I'm open to feedback..."
"I'm looking for feedback of the following nature..."
"I'm very full because I ate feedback for breakfast, but there's always room for more..."
And so on.

I'm now wondering: what happens if you write, "I am not open to feedback". Literally, is that even allowed? I've never seen it done. I'm concerned to see such heterogeneous thinking on the topic and I find it alarming that a community which espouses openness would be so closed off to non-openness.

How is it that not a single person in this intellectual, professional, personal community, or [...]

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First published:

April 1st, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/8xkGFooEmJNCsFQpv/what-if-i-m-not-open-to-feedback

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Hi, I’m Tandena Wagner. As part of my research for EcoResillience Initiative (an EA organization searching for the best ways to preserve biodiversity into the long-term future), I’ve investigated several common claims that various resource limitations could be disastrous for civilization – ie, that we’re approaching “peak oil”, or imminently running out of phosphorus, soil nitrogen, chromium, etc. For the most part, I’ve found these claims to be overblown, often thanks to systematic exaggeration caused by the poor epistemic environment of activist environmentalism. In general, Paul-Erlich-style resource limitations do not seem pressing compared to other risks to civilization.

However, there's one key resource that I’ve become increasingly concerned about: human civilization might be running out of low-hanging fruit.

This kid can’t reach the fruit because he's just a baby.  But soon, this kid's problem could be the WHOLE WORLD's problem.

Low-hanging fruit is essential for continued human thriving

You might [...]

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Outline:

(01:13) Low-hanging fruit is essential for continued human thriving

(03:35) What would it mean if humanity exhausted the low-hanging fruit?

(04:32) New ways of making fruit hang lower are getting harder to find

(05:52) Shorter trees -- lower fruit

(08:50) Low-hanging fruit has broad benefits

(10:28) The Fruit is Too Damn High

(13:07) A fruitful direction for future research

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First published:

April 1st, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/5RNHhZ2KSesrGmSto/new-cause-area-low-hanging-fruit

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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For immediate release: April 1, 2025

OXFORD, UK — The Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA) announced today that it will no longer identify as an "Effective Altruism" organization.

"After careful consideration, we've determined that the most effective way to have a positive impact is to deny any association with Effective Altruism," said a CEA spokesperson. "Our mission remains unchanged: to use reason and evidence to do the most good. Which coincidentally was the definition of EA."

The announcement mirrors a pattern of other organizations that have grown with EA support and frameworks and eventually distanced themselves from EA.

CEA's statement clarified that it will continue to use the same methodologies, maintain the same team, and pursue identical goals. "We've found that not being associated with the movement we have spent years building gives us more flexibility to do exactly what we were already doing, just with better PR," [...]

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First published:

April 1st, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/pyXEB5uBsuzhgj8Zz/centre-for-effective-altruism-is-no-longer-effective

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Introduction

Misaligned AI systems, which have a tendency to use their capabilities in ways that conflict with the intentions of both developers and users, could cause significant societal harm. Identifying them is seen as increasingly important to inform development and deployment decisions and design mitigation measures. There are concerns, however, that this will prove challenging. For example, misaligned AIs may only reveal harmful behaviors in rare circumstances, or perceive detection attempts as threatening and deploy countermeasures – including deception and sandbagging – to evade them.

For these reasons, developing a range of efforts to detect misaligned behavior, including power-seeking, deception, and sandbagging, among other capabilities, have been proposed. One important indicator, though, has been hiding in plain sight for years. In this post, we identify an underappreciated method that may be both necessary and sufficient to identify misaligned AIs: whether or not they've turned red, i.e. gone rouge.

In [...]

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Outline:

(01:43) Historical Evidence for Rouge AI

(02:59) Recent Empirical Work

(05:18) Potential Countermeasure

(05:22) The EYES Eval

(06:27) EYES Eval Demonstration

(07:40) Future Research Directions

(08:42) Conclusion

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First published:

April 1st, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/uKKoj9iqj2cWKsjrt/mitigating-risks-from-rouge-ai

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Hi everybody!

I'm Conor. I run the 80,000 Hours Job Board. Or I used to. As of today — April 1 — we are becoming Job Birds!

We've been talking to users for the last few years about making this change, and people have overwhelmingly been in favour (remember, there are six or more birds for every human on Earth). Whether it's the daily emails asking me to finally switch, or the flocks of people accosting me at conferences to urge a migration to Job Birds, the demand is overwhelming! Luckily, the wait is over!

I've included an FAQ below of the most common questions we receive.

FAQ

• Do these birds have jobs?
  • In a sense, no. In another, preferred sense, definitely! They have roles in ecological niches.
• What's a good bird to get started with?
  • The peregrine falcon.
• What's the theory of change?
  • Birds are [...]

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First published:

April 1st, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Lee6hyYo7F5BNQJEj/80-000-hours-job-birds

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Epistemic status: highly certain, or something

The Spending What We Must 💸11% pledge 

In short: Members pledge to spend at least 11% of their income on effectively increasing their own productivity.

This pledge is likely higher-impact for most people than the Giving What We Can 🔸10% Pledge, and we also think the name accurately reflects the non-supererogatory moral beliefs of many in the EA community.

Example

Charlie is a software engineer for the Centre for Effective Future Research. Since Charlie has taken the SWWM 💸11% pledge, rather than splurge on a vacation, they decide to buy an expensive noise-canceling headset before their next EAG, allowing them to get slightly more sleep and have 104 one-on-one meetings instead of just 101. In one of the extra three meetings, they chat with Diana, who is starting an AI-for-worrying-about-AI company, and decide to become a cofounder. The company becomes wildly successful, and [...]

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Outline:

(00:15) The Spending What We Must 💸11% pledge

(00:39) Example

(01:26) The 💸💸💸 Badge

(01:55) FAQ

(01:58) Is the pledge legally binding?

(02:08) What do you mean by effectively increasing productivity?

(02:33) Im an AI system. Can I take the 💸11% pledge?

(03:23) Why is the 💸11% pledge 3x more effective than the 🔸10% pledge?

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First published:

April 1st, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/qCDad9dWE5hDkYevK/introducing-the-spending-what-we-must-pledge

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Epistemic status: highly certain, or something

The Spending What We Must 💸11% pledge 

In short: Members pledge to spend at least 11% of their income on effectively increasing their own productivity.

This pledge is likely higher-impact for most people than the Giving What We Can 🔸10% Pledge, and we also think the name accurately reflects the non-supererogatory moral beliefs of many in the EA community.

Example

Charlie is a software engineer for the Centre for Effective Future Research. Since Charlie has taken the SWWM 💸11% pledge, rather than splurge on a vacation, they decide to buy an expensive noise-canceling headset before their next EAG, allowing them to get slightly more sleep and have 104 one-on-one meetings instead of just 101. In one of the extra three meetings, they chat with Diana, who is starting an AI-for-worrying-about-AI company and decides to become a cofounder. The company becomes wildly successful, and [...]

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Outline:

(00:14) The Spending What We Must 💸11% pledge

(00:39) Example

(01:25) The 💸💸💸 Badge

(01:54) FAQ

(01:57) Is the pledge legally binding?

(02:08) What do you mean by effectively increasing productivity?

(02:38) Im an AI system. Can I take the 💸11% pledge?

(03:29) Why is the 💸11% pledge 3x more effective than the 🔸10% pledge?

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First published:

April 1st, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/qCDad9dWE5hDkYevK/introducing-the-spending-what-we-must-pledge

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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