EA Forum Podcast (Curated & popular)

Michael Nielsen has a beautiful new essay on moral imagination: the ability humans have to 'develop and transmit new notions of good action, indeed, even new kinds of good'.

As examples, he gives:

• Hammurabi's creation of a code of laws (in 1754 BCE) and his justification of his rule not in terms of divine or hereditary right, but by the delivery of justice to his citizens.
• St Gregory of Nyssa's argument (in 379 CE) that the entire institution of slavery was morally wrong.
• Joyce Roush's (1998 CE) idea that she should altruistically donate a kidney to help save the life of an unknown stranger. 

Nielsen acknowledges that any particular act of moral imagination often builds on earlier precursors, but that this shouldn't lessen our appreciation for these major steps forward.

One could think of moral imagination as a key part of making moral progress. Moral progress (moving towards better systems of morality) involves the creation of new approaches to morality, and the critiquing of what has been suggested. Through the iteration of creation and critique, we slowly make progress. Some of this process happens within moral philosophy (especially the critique), but much of it happens in the wider [...]

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

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First published:

August 23rd, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Zaf7FLBBmeAcXgW3Y/moral-imagination-and-effective-altruism

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Disclaimer: This blog post focuses on a new piece of research from Rethink Priorities. I was not involved with the funding or execution of this research, and therefore write this piece merely as a consumer. However, I am the Executive Director of Giving Green and a board member of Rethink Priorities, and acknowledge that these affiliations may bias my interpretation of the work.

More EA Near/Medium-Termist Money Should be Flowing to Climate Change Mitigation2 votes so far. Voting closes in 6 days. Place your vote or view results.DisagreeAgree

TL;DR

• New research from Rethink Priorities seeks to compare cost-effectiveness of high-impact giving in climate change mitigation versus global health and development. 
• Key research contribution is re-calculating the social cost of carbon using an EA-aligned value framework, which allows direct comparison of climate giving opportunities to Coefficient Giving's (CG) funding bar
• Conclusion is that donating to high-impact climate funds (such as Giving Green or the Founder's Pledge Climate Fund) is competitive with Coefficient Giving's Global Health and Wellbeing Fund, especially given the recent drop in CG's funding bar
• Many conversations with AI lab employees lead me to believe that climate is not a priority cause area for this group. [...]

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First published:

August 18th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/KhCCkLMRkj38vCAzj/new-research-climate-mitigation-is-overlooked-by-ea

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The world of private philanthropy may be in for a period of large growth. News of Coefficient Giving increasing their funding for GiveWell to one billion in the near-term, and the general growth of the effective giving community as reported by Giving What We Can, make it difficult for even hardcore sceptics (and I probably count myself among this curmudgeonly crowd) to stick to the view that we are in business as usual.

There are many reasons to believe that this expected growth will happen, and I’d be remiss to not mention Nan Ransohoff's great piece on the matter. This article was a catalyst. Where before board members and execs who were particularly clued into the Bay area may have expected to see this change in the size of the giving market, Nan's piece gave this a name and salience. The third wave of philanthropy materialized slowly, and then all at once.

This possibility of increased funding has now taken the shape of a near certainty in some circles. Besides the perfunctory “it may not happen” at the end of a long pitch, it is not uncommon to sit in conversations that assume the existence of this funding, and [...]

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Outline:

(01:34) No such money

(03:11) Smaller amounts

(04:23) Absorption

(06:24) What next?

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First published:

July 29th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xNnafgb8BAkysaHsh/what-if-the-third-wave-is-a-puddle

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

TL;DR

NOVAH (No Violence At Home) was incubated by Charity Entrepreneurship (now Ambitious Impact) in 2024 to test a promising idea: preventing intimate partner violence through edutainment, in our case a serialised radio drama. Over the past two years we have produced and aired two seasons in Rwanda.

We are currently evaluating our second season through a randomized controlled trial with 2,400 couples in Rwanda in partnership with Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA). Preliminary results are expected in October 2026. The end-line analysis is run by IPA and our academic partners, not by NOVAH.

Edutainment to prevent intimate partner violence is promising, but it is still young as a field. We do not want to spend donor money scaling it unless the evidence shows it works at least as well as the strongest existing approaches. The RCT is what will tell us that. Therefore, before seeing those results, we want to make our decision rule public:

We will scale our programming only if the RCT finds a statistically significant relative reduction of at least 5% in physical or sexual intimate partner violence prevalence. How quickly we proceed will depend on the size and certainty of the effect.

Our current [...]

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Outline:

(00:14) TL;DR

(02:04) Background on NOVAH's cause area and intervention

(04:03) How we are evaluating our impact

(05:54) Our pre-commitment

(07:10) What happens under each result?

(07:14) Effect below 5%, or not statistically significant: pause and explore

(07:47) Effect of 5%-20%: continue as planned

(08:15) Effect above 20%: accelerate

(08:33) Why did you choose a 5% reduction?

(09:37) Is everything driven by this RCT?

(10:55) Why make this public?

(11:29) How you can hold us to this

(12:00) Should more non-profits do this?

(12:37) Final words

(13:09) Learn more and get in touch

(13:41) Appendix

(13:47) Why do you use IPV-year instead of DALYs in your cost-effectiveness?

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First published:

August 11th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Lz42uekYDBmBweq9f/what-would-make-us-scale-or-stop-novah-s-pre-commitment

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

BLUF:

• To determine whether AI is ‘improving exponentially’, ‘hitting the wall’, or any other claim which involves a quantity or magnitude (e.g. ‘This model was a big leap/small increment’). We need a good y-axis: an interval scale of AI capability which means +1 unit always represents the same degree of ‘how much better’, in the same way +1 degree Celsius is always the same amount of ‘how much hotter’.
• Yet there is no good y-axis for AI capability. All our measures are of something related-to but clearly not identical-with it, thus ‘true’ AI capability can be a funhouse-mirror reflection of whatever was measured. Specifically:
  • Benchmark score: One small step in benchmark score can be a giant leap in capability, or the opposite, or whatever else. (My 6/10 vs. your 4/10 ≠ I’m 50% better at maths than you).
  • Elo et al: Can give a real y-axis in terms of winning chances, but doesn’t translate outside of beating others. (Going from 50% to 73% to 88% chance to get a higher score than you on a maths test ≠ gaining 0 → 1 → 2 units of maths ability over you)
  • Epoch Capabilities Index: Analogous to IQ, so [...]

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Outline:

(03:05) Introduction

(04:26) Both a poor reflection and a dark glass

(07:51) Human benchmarking also has a y-axis problem

(12:27) A metrological elegy

(12:49) The base case: benchmarks (cf. exams)

(13:30) Elo et al.

(16:25) (And maybe not quite 'game ability ≡ winning games', after all?)

(18:28) ECI (cf. IQ)

(20:56) Intervals Rarely True

(25:01) Measure endogeneity

(31:12) Forking IRT

(34:45) (Dimensions of being, and beating, a bat)

(39:40) Prediction (cf. chronometry)

(41:58) Time horizons

(44:34) Human "capability" is also exponential in time horizon

(47:38) Intuitive/interpretative prelude

(52:56) Time horizons and ECI share an axis kink

(57:13) Perhaps money, as a measure, stinks the least

(01:01:07) Finale: AI as normal epistemics

(01:06:48) Acknowledgements

The original text contained 33 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

August 4th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CQvdadxjCpd7i7kjA/general-capability-and-capabilities-generally-have-no-good-y

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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“Your balls are baked aren’t they, mate”.

He would not have been born

Thanks Lyndon, that describes the situation. Like almost 1 in 10 modern men, my sperm weren’t up to the task - at least not the old fashioned way. So IVF it was - the miracle that now feels almost commonplace.

We landed on the moon and Woodstock changed music forever. But in 1969 a quieter event transformed the world. The first human embryo was fertilised “In vitro”, outside the body. Yet 10 years passed before one was inserted into a womb, and then born. 48 years ago, Louise Joy Brown was the first woman born through IVF. This year about a million babies will be born through IVF.

IVF stands at the frontier of rich-privilege, a norm for the middle class in rich countries. In my home country New Zealand, the government even pays for it! Yet every week I meet women here in Northern Uganda who can’t have kids, and could never afford IVF. Even the human “right” to have a kid can depend on where you are born.

If I was born 25 years ago, or in Uganda, my boy would never have [...]

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Outline:

(00:13) He would not have been born

(01:35) Our Risky Choice

(03:47) He didn't die once - a routine miracle

(05:33) He didn't die twice - Neonatal care

(08:54) I am Grateful

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

July 28th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/KMNk8zXLxHQXgN7rK/never-born-then-maybe-died-twice

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TL;DR

• We’re hosting an essay competition to elicit responses to Anthony DiGiovanni's sequence, ‘The challenge of unawareness for impartial altruist action guidance’—submit your entries by August 14th.
• There will be cash prizes for the best essays and the best comments: 7 thousand dollars in total.
  • Additionally, we're offering an outlier prize of up to 50 thousand dollars for a truly exceptional entry: an original solution to cluelessness, or a critique decisive enough to move the debate.
• We’re also offering a referral prize of $250 if a winner says you’re responsible for telling them about the competition.

Motivation

When I announced April's Better Futures Highlight Week,[1] I confidently wrote: “To make the future go better, we can either work to avoid near-term catastrophes like human extinction or improve the futures where we survive.”

But what if I was wrong? What if both options are bankrupt, and we have no justified answer as to whether any particular work would make the future better? In his Challenge of Unawareness sequence, Anthony DiGiovanni argues that we are in just this position.

Specifically, he argues that our evidence about the future is so poor that our assessments of impact (explicit expected-value estimates [...]

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Outline:

(00:12) TL;DR

(00:54) Motivation

(02:12) How the competition works

(02:55) What your entry should look like

(03:49) Option 1: Challenge a premise

(05:19) Option 2: Challenge the inference

(05:33) Option 3: Offer a constructive response

(05:54) Prizes

(05:58) Essay competition

(07:43) Comment competition

(08:09) How will the essays and comments be judged?

(08:40) What comes after the competition?

(09:00) Judges

(09:13) Essay competition

(09:33) Comment competition

(09:50) Disclaimer

(10:44) FAQs

(10:48) Can I use AI?

(11:21) Can I co-author a piece?

(11:31) Can I submit a piece I've already published elsewhere?

(12:03) Will I get feedback on my entry?

(12:31) Does style matter?

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First published:

June 19th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/2aooibAEDSdreCqrJ/announcing-cluelessness-critiques-competition

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Summary

Back in November 2023 I posted here to launch Spiro and raise our first 198 thousand dollars. Two and a half years later this is an update and a fundraiser for the next step.

The short version: we've now reached over-5,900 people with TB preventive medicine, including over 3,000 children under five years old. Our early results have held up well and GiveWell made us a grant last year. Now there's an urgent opportunity in front of us: US funding for community TB contact tracing across half of Sindh province in Pakistan ends this month. The provincial government has invited us to expand our work - taking on those 15 districts and expanding to cover all 30 districts of Sindh, up from the 7 we serve today. To do that we're aiming to raise 512 thousand dollars by the end of July, the most urgent slice of a ~1.8 million dollars gap for 2026–2027. By our own modelling, our work is in the ballpark of something that would meet GiveWell's bar - around $5,000 per life saved. But if we want to avoid a gap in coverage on the ground after the US pulls out, we’ll need to [...]

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Outline:

(00:13) Summary

(01:55) What Spiro does

(03:35) Progress since our launch

(05:14) The next opportunity: all of Sindh

(06:22) We're fundraising for an urgent $512k now

(08:01) Risk and uncertainties

(09:37) How to give

(10:07) The future for Spiro

(10:27) Appendix: More on what we've done since Spiro's launch

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First published:

July 15th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/hBoGLwKwMmizeRyZx/spiro-an-update-2-5-years-on-and-a-fundraising-ask-for

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This post is co-authored with Ben Garfinkel. It is cross-posted from the CEA blog. A PDF version can be found here.

Summary: Some strategic decisions available to the effective altruism movement may be difficult to reverse. One example is making the movement’s brand explicitly political. Another is growing large. Under high uncertainty, there is often reason to avoid or delay such hard-to-reverse decisions.

Table of contents

Introduction

What is reversibility?

How to choose

Fundamental considerations

Secondary considerations

Where do all the social movements go?

Introduction

The importance of option value is widely appreciated within the effective altruism movement. In an uncertain world, keeping multiple paths open can be very valuable.

One aspect of option value is reversibility. When we consider a change from the status quo to a new state of affairs, we risk losing option value if the decision is difficult to reverse. If we have a white cloth, we can dye it black at any time. However, once we have dyed it black, it would take much more work to make it white again.

The effective altruism movement faces many similar strategic situations, where it is easier to leave the status quo than to get back. For instance:(1)

The effective altruism movement is currently not strongly associated with any political party, or with any of the mainstream political ideologies. In that sense, the effective altruism brand is relatively apolitical. This could easily change, e.g., if the movement allied itself with a certain political party. However, once that step has been taken, it might be hard to go back to an apolitical brand.

The effective altruism movement is currently quite small. The movement may try to grow big, but if it does, it will arguably be hard to reverse that decision. Shrinking the movement in a way which does not cause serious damage is presumably very difficult.

The effective altruism movement has invested in acquiring a reputation for integrity, rigour, friendliness, and other kinds of prosocial behaviour. It may, however, decide that such a reputation is too costly to uphold, and that some level of dishonesty, lack of rigour, or unfriendliness is acceptable. Since it is easier to destroy a good reputation than to build one, it is plausibly hard to reverse such a decision.(2)

What is reversibility?

To understand the notion of reversibility, let us first look at the notion of option value. It can be defined as follows.

Option value: The option value associated with a possible choice is the expected value of having this choice available.

To use a standard example from the literature, it can be in your self-interest to support a tax for the maintenance of Sequoia National Park even if you are not sure that you will ever visit. The fact that you might some day choose to visit the park, and can expect the visit to be worthwhile if you do, gives this possible choice option value.(3)

The concept of option value is frequently applied within the effective altruism movement. For example, [...]

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First published:

March 17th, 2017

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/eyDDjYrG3i3PRGxtc/hard-to-reverse-decisions-destroy-option-value

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

AI Use Note: Main body text entirely human written. Claude (Opus 4.8) helped develop models of animal life histories in the appendix.

Cross-posted from Good Structures.

Executive Summary

• Animal advocates sometimes make claims like “there are X of this animal, and Y>X of this animal, so Y might be a better target to focus on.”
  • For example, you could imagine someone making a claim like “there are 20 quadrillion ants, so they are a higher priority to work on than Pacific salmon (wild population size: ~500M), even accounting for moral weight and welfare range.”
  • Some arguments for working on farmed over companion, or wild over farmed animals, take this shape – where population size serves as a rough heuristic for prioritization.
• These claims frequently rely on abundance estimates produced by conservation- and evolution-focused scientists, who primarily focus on estimating the“stable adult population,” since reproductively active individuals are what's relevant to evolution and species continuity.
• We show that:
  • Using stable adult populations systematically underestimates the number of animals who will live over a specific period. Using stable adult populations systematically underestimates morally relevant experiences of some small and heavily r-selected animals.
• Given this, we argue that:
  • [...]

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Outline:

(00:27) Executive Summary

(03:09) Introduction

(07:22) What do abundance estimates actually count?

(09:11) Callaghan et al. 2021 -- Global Bird Abundance

(12:52) Comparing five example groups of animals

(16:44) Implications for impact estimates

(19:11) Takeaways

(21:48) Appendix A: Methodology for animal throughput estimates

(22:37) Common framework

(23:43) Wild pacific salmon

(24:15) Passeriform birds

(24:41) Grasshoppers

(25:08) Ants

(25:37) Aphids (asexual summer phase)

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First published:

July 12th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/YRfcKzTfW34FunjYy/counting-animals-stable-population-size-is-not-equivalent-to

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.