Effective Altruism News
Effective Altruism News
- Since 2023 I've been directing WARP, the Wandering Applied Rationality Program, with the help of ESPR and SPARC staff, which are summer camps I've taught at since 2017. For those that don't know, these ~10 day programs are hard to summarize well, but are generally meant to create an environment that helps participants better understand the world, themselves, and each other by offering a...
- The next generation of AI data center campuses are city-scale.
- Crossposted from Susbstack. Section I : Opening. In 2021, Richard Dawkins tweeted: . The fallout was immediate. The American Humanist Association revoked an award they’d given him 25 years earlier. A significant controversy erupted, splitting roughly into two camps. One camp defended Dawkins. They saw him raising a legitimate question about logical consistency.
- Above the Fold is "Playing it Safe"
- [Thanks Inkhaven for hosting me! This is my fourth and last post and I'm already exhausted from writing. Wordpress.com!]. Last time, I introduced the concept of the “Fat Newt” (fatigue neutral) build, a way of skilling up characters in Battle Brothers that aims to be extremely economical with the fatigue resource, relying entirely on each brother’s base 15 fatigue regeneration per turn.
- Social reality is quite literally another world, in the same sense that the Harry Potter universe is another world. Like the Harry Potter universe, social reality is a world portrayed primarily in text and in speech and in our imaginations. Like the Harry Potter universe, social reality doesn’t diverge completely from physical reality - they contain mostly the same cities, for instance.
- Content warnings: sex, dubcon, drug use.
- Going into slutcon, one of my main known-unknowns was… I’d heard many times that the standard path to hooking up or dating starts with two people bantering for an hour or two at a party, lacing in increasingly-unsubtle hints of interest. And even in my own imagination, I was completely unable to make up a plausible-sounding conversation which would have that effect.
- AI In Group Discourse. I wanted to programmatically analyze the AI in-group ecosystem and discourse using AI as an exploration in sensemaking during my time in the “ AI for Human Reasoning” FLF fellowship.
- Today, I want to introduce an experimental PhD student training philosophy. Let’s start with some reddit memes. Every gaming subreddit has its own distinct meme culture. On r/chess, there's a demon who is summoned by an unsuspecting beginner asking “Why isn’t this checkmate?”. . These posts are gleefully deluged by responses saying “Google En Passant” in some form or other.
- TLDR: Voice AIs aren't that much cheaper in the year 2025: My friend runs a voice agent startup in Canada for walk-in clinics. The AI takes calls and uses tools to book appointments in the EMR (electronic medical record) system. In theory, this helps the clinic hire less front desk staff and the startup makes infinite money. In reality, the margins are brutal and they barely charge above cost.
- TL;DR: We use a suite of testbed settings where models lie—i.e. generate statements they believe to be false—to evaluate honesty and lie detection techniques. The best techniques we studied involved fine-tuning on generic anti-deception data and using prompts that encourage honesty. Read the full Anthropic Alignment Science blog post and the X thread. Introduction:
- In Against Money Maximalism, I argued against money-maximization as a normative stance. Profit is a coherent thing you can try to maximize, but there are also other sorts of value. Profit-maximization isn't the unique rational way to engage with money. One way you could respond to this is economic Darwinism: "Sure, you can optimize other things than money, but over time, the market will come...
- Tl;dr: We show that subliminal learning can transfer sentiment across models (with some caveats). For example, we transfer positive sentiment for Catholicism, the UK, New York City, Stalin or Ronald Reagan across model families using normal-looking text. This post discusses under what conditions this subliminal transfer happens. —.
- Your farmed animal advocacy update for late November 2025
- Reframing Suffering-Focused Ethics By David Veldran Many moral views and social projects present themselves as inherently positive and constructive. They aim to add something to the world, to create, to build. Classical utilitarians seek to increase happiness and bring about a surplus of joy over misery. Communists aspire to realize a classless society. Kantians, perhaps, aim to […].
- Cross-posted from the @High Impact Professionals blog - see the original here. --. In my years of working with people on their financial plans for giving, I’ve met many wonderful individuals who feel morally compelled to take a giving pledge. Intellectually, they are fully aware that they are in a position to help others. But emotionally, they aren’t ready to commit to a pledge.
- The early smallpox vaccines that kept dying out, why Émile Roux drilled into rabbits' skulls, and the lucky career changes that saved millions of lives.
- Sometimes people say, “obviously, everyone would like to be polyamorous themselves and get to have sex with anyone they want, while their partners are all monogamous and only have sex with them.
- A Faunalytics study reveals that a clear majority of the U.S. public finds standard animal agriculture practices for pigs, cows, and chickens to be unacceptable. Explore the details and their implications for animal advocacy. The post Public Acceptability Of Standard U.S. Animal Agriculture Practices appeared first on Faunalytics.
- Opinion: Abra Ganz and Karl Koch argue that whistleblower protections in SB-53 aren’t good enough on the face of it — but how the state chooses to interpret the law could turn that around...
- 5 arguments for doing so!
- Although public awareness of animal welfare is relatively low in Nigeria, this report provides a roadmap for advocates looking to make a difference for the country’s growing number of farmed animals. The post Four Key Ways To Help Farmed Animals In Nigeria appeared first on Faunalytics.
- In the space of a few decades, nearly every city in the Western world banned densification. What happened?
- We have just released our end-of-year 2025 Results, 2026 Plans, and Funding Needs document that demonstrates what a donation to RP can accomplish: from contributing to better allocation of millions of…...
- Recently I've been getting into Gratitude Patrols. People talk about gratitude journals as being one of the few provably impactful psychological interventions [citation needed], but I think there's a benefit to physically embodying it by walking around your space each morning and thanking things. If you.
- Nutrition Investing: Moving from Awareness to Action gloireri Wed, 11/26/2025 - 14:04 . Investing in nutrition isn’t just possible, it’s smart. That’s the key message that sticks with us a few weeks after the GIIN Impact Forum 2025, where we organised a session, “Nutrition Lens Investing: A Framework for Action”.
- 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:
- We studied moral judgments in the U.S. and found extreme disagreement. Learn how 15 moral dimensions predict people’s moral views.
- EA Forum Digest #268 Hello!. Three things to note: The Donation Election is now open! You can go vote on the Forum (if you had an account before October 24th). Read about all the candidates here (if you spot an error in this post, I have to donate $10), and read the rules here.
- Crossposted from my Substack... . I spent the weekend at Lighthaven, attending the Eleos conference. In this post, I share thoughts and updates as I reflect on talks, papers, and discussions, and put out some of my takes since I haven't written about this topic before.
- I’ve been playing a lot of MTG Arena lately, but I refuse to spend any money on it, which means I can’t craft many rare cards. When I look up meta decklists, they always include a lot of rares and mythic rares. I don’t want to spend all my rare wildcards on one deck!. That’s sort of what the Pauper format is for. Pauper decks are only allowed to use common cards, which makes them cheap.
- On Suffering, Sterilization, and Why We Somehow Spent So Much Time Talking About Incest
- Showcasing the new Epoch AI Frontier Data Centers hub.
- 7-Eleven, the biggest convenience store in the US (and the world) has reported its cage-free progress for the first time ever: We’re committed to working with suppliers toward a goal of sourcing 100 percent cage-free eggs for all U.S. and Canada stores by 2025, based on available supply.
- Introduction. For our current project, we've been using the OpenAI fine-tuning API. To run some of our experiments, we needed to understand exactly how the reported metrics (loss and accuracy) are calculated. Unfortunately, the official documentation is sparse, and the most detailed explanation we could find was the following table from Microsoft's Azure documentation:
- TLDR: Just pick up the phone. Agree on permissions for information before you share it (see Step 4). I have worked as a professional journalist covering AI for over a year, and during that time, multiple people working in AI safety have asked me for advice on engaging with journalists. At this point, I've converged on some core lessons, so I figured I should share them more widely.
- I’m not 100% convinced of this, but I’m fairly convinced, more and more so over time. I’m hoping to start a vigorous but civilized debate. I invite you to attack my weak points and/or present counter-evidence. My thesis is that intent-alignment is basically happening, based on evidence from the alignment research in the LLM era. Introduction.
- I’m not 100% convinced of this, but I’m fairly convinced, more and more so over time. I’m hoping to start a vigorous but civilized debate. I invite you to attack my weak points and/or present counter-evidence. My thesis is that intent-alignment is basically happening, based on evidence from the alignment research in the LLM era. Introduction.
- “These models somehow just generalize dramatically worse than people. It's a very fundamental thing.”...
- The post Rob & Luisa chat kids, the fertility crash, and how the ‘50s invented parenting that makes us miserable appeared first on 80,000 Hours.
- Vox’s Future Perfect takes pride in being one of the top destinations in media for consistent, rigorous, ethically clear-eyed coverage of one of the biggest stories of our time — the mass production of billions of animals for food on factory farms. But there’s arguably an even bigger, even more neglected story hidden within that […]...
- On giant torture pits
- Retail strategies to boost plant-based food sales work differently depending on location. The post How Retailers Can Boost Plant-Based Food Sales appeared first on Faunalytics.
- Plus: Why cities in poor countries need wider streets, how to measure competition, and the South Korean baby bust.
- Sometimes people want to hire me to write or edit things for them.
- Overview. The Unjournal is a nonprofit organization (est. 2023) that commissions rigorous public expert evaluations of impactful research. We've built a strong team, completed more than 55 evaluation packages, built a database of impactful research, launched a Pivotal Questions initiative, and are systematically evaluating research from EA-aligned organizations. We argue that. 1.
- The post Community Health at the Centre of Africa’s Health Sovereignty: Insights from the Africa Health Summit appeared first on Living Goods.
- Up to 56 million women and girls across Africa are estimated to be affected by female genital schistosomiasis, a frequently overlooked debilitating manifestation of schistosomiasis. This short film explores what it will take to transform health systems in order to correctly diagnose and treat this stigmatizing disease.
- November is Africa Youth Month, and this year we are shining the spotlight on two scientists working to end malaria in Uganda. Rita Mwima and Hudson Onen are part of the team at the Uganda Virus Research Institute. Rita is a computational biologist using population genetics and mathematical modeling to study malaria vector dynamics. Her […].
- Inspired by this post by Tomás Bjartur, which is an allegory; but I’m not writing an allegory, I’m writing about the rules of Quidditch. The rules of Quidditch have a big problem. The game ends when a seeker catches the snitch, and the snitch is worth 150 points. So most of the players on the field don’t matter; in almost all games, the only thing that matters is who catches the snitch.
- Podcast Wireframe GAIN 🇰🇪 on Socials: . . . . gloireri Tue, 11/25/2025 - 08:11 . Share on...
- [xposted in EA Forum] Today we’re announcing a new cluster headache advocacy and research initiative: ClusterFree Learn more about how you (and anyone) can help. Our mission ClusterFree’s mission is to help cluster headache patients globally access safe, effective pain relief treatments as soon as possible through advocacy and research. Cluster headache (also known as […]...
- AI infrastructure, now in your pocket.
- The most canonical example of a "natural ontology" comes from gasses in stat mech. In the simplest version, we model the gas as a bunch of little billiard balls bouncing around in a box. The dynamics are chaotic. The system is continuous, so the initial conditions are real numbers with arbitrarily many bits of precision - e.g.
- Kind of a mixed bag. The post Things my kids don’t know about sex appeared first on Otherwise.
- Every month we send an email newsletter to our supporters sharing recent updates from our work. We publish selected portions of the newsletter on our blog to make this news more accessible to people who visit our website. For key updates from the latest installment, please see below!. If you’d like to receive the complete newsletter in your inbox each month, you can subscribe here. Read More.
- Disclaimer: I am god-awful at chess. I. Late-beginner chess players, those who are almost on the cusp of being basically respectable, often fall into a particular pattern. They've got the hang of calculating moves ahead; they can make plans along the lines of "Ok, so if I move my rook to give a check, the opponent will have to move her king, and then I can take her bishop."...
- Discover how Cellular Agriculture Australia is building the ecosystem for cellular agriculture and driving systemic change for animals and the future food system. … Read more...
- TL;DR: Models trained with outcome-based RL sometimes have reasoning traces that look very weird. In this paper, I evaluate 14 models and find that many of them often generate pretty illegible CoTs. I show that models seem to find this illegible text useful, with a model’s accuracy dropping heavily when given only the legible parts of its CoT, and that legibility goes down when answering...
- TL;DR: Figure out what needs doing and do it, don't wait on approval from fellowships or jobs. If you.... Have short timelines. Have been struggling to get into a position in AI safety. Are able to self-motivate your efforts. Have a sufficient financial safety net. ... I would recommend changing your personal strategy entirely.
- Here I am on the plane on the way home from Inkhaven. Huge thanks to Ben Pace and the other organizers for inviting me. Lighthaven is a delightful venue and there sure are some brilliant writers taking part in this — both contributing writers and participants.
- TL;DR: Models trained with outcome-based RL sometimes have reasoning traces that look very weird. In this paper, I evaluate 14 models and find that many of them often generate pretty illegible CoTs. I show that models seem to find this illegible text useful, with a model’s accuracy dropping heavily when given only the legible parts of its CoT, and that legibility goes down when answering...
- Summary: A defensive military coalition is a key frame for thinking about our international agreement aimed at forestalling the development of superintelligence. We introduce historical examples of former rivals or enemies forming defensive coalitions in response to an urgent mutual threat, and detail key aspects of our proposal which are analogous.
- 🐓 As Temporary Global Campaigns Coordinator, you will be part of a team responsible for researching, coordinating, and launching hard-hitting global corporate animal welfare campaigns against major multinational companies. These campaigns involve collaboration and coordination with animal protection organizations around the world and directly contribute to The Humane League’s org-wide goal of...
- Crosspost. (I think this is a pretty important post to get the word out about, so I’d really appreciate you restacking it). The EU is taking input into their farm animal welfare policies until December 12.
- The struggle to replace philosophical stereotypes with substance
- How to make progress when policymakers don't care about the climate
- Executive summary
- Replicability refers to observing evidence for a prior research claim in data that is independent of the prior research. It is one component of establishing credibility of research claims by demonstrating that there is a regularity in nature to be understood and explained. Repeating studies to assess and establish replicability can be costly and time-consuming. Partly, that is inevitable.
- Why Chinese parents have sought out Zebra English's AI tutor Jessica
- Even if we solve the AI alignment problem, we still face non-alignment problems, which are all the other existential problems that AI may bring. People have written research agendas on various imposing problems that we are nowhere close to solving, and that we may need to solve before developing ASI.
- How to ensure the future flourishes
- Various groups, in an attempt to be trans-inclusive, have implemented pronoun circles (everyone goes around in a circle and give their pronouns), pronoun badges (everyone has their pronouns on their name badge), and pronouns in email signatures.
- Researchers unpack what the science says about common dog-walking gear and how each option affects comfort, safety, and behavior. The post A Review Of Restraints For Walking Your Dog appeared first on Faunalytics.
- It has been a tumultuous year for global health. In early 2025, the US government cut billions of dollars in foreign aid, affecting millions of people around the world and creating substantial uncertainty that continues to ripple through health and development programs around the world.
- Episode ten of the Works in Progress podcast is surprisingly NIMBY.
- Why we should expect AI capabilities to keep being extremely uneven, and why that matters
- Hi All As a part of Amplify for Animals' AI Training Program, I created this custom GPT last week, and I have been working to improve it to the extent that organizations can actually use this. The tool can help you create grant proposals. Just share the funder's RFP or website and link to your project or detailed document regarding your project.
- Good morning Fast Community,. Our latest blog post on Inside Animal Ag explores the “debate” about grazing’s impacts on U.S. land degradation: “The beef industry and its supporters have kept alive the notion that there is some controversy about whether grazing cattle in America is beneficial for the land.
- Dear FAST,. Some good news from Japan!. Midori Meguro, long time animal advocate and executive director of Lib (one of Japan’s few animal rights organizations) just got elected as a town assembly member in Kiso.
- Sentient Futures Summit (SFS) Bay Area 2026 is a three-day conference taking place February 6-8th, to explore the intersection of AI and sentient non-humans – both biological (i.e. animals) and potentially artificial. Register here for an Early Bird 30% discount before December 2nd!.
- Sentient Futures Summit (SFS) Bay Area 2026 is a three-day conference taking place February 6-8th, to explore the intersection of AI and sentient non-humans – both biological (i.e. animals) and potentially artificial. Register here for an Early Bird 30% discount here before December 2nd!.
- Rootclaim founder Saar Wilf joined Destiny to discuss the recent and strongest evidence yet for COVID-19’s lab origin. Since our debate with Peter Miller, new findings have emerged that strongly support the lab-origin hypothesis. In this interview, Saar walks through the data, explains Rootclaim’s probability-based analysis, and answers Destiny’s questions.
- Is AI balkanization measurable?
- A blog's recs should exceed its asks, or what's a heaven for?
- The Donation Election has begun!. Three important links: The voting portal (voting is open now!). How to vote, and rules for voting. The Donation Election Fund. This post introduces our candidates. We’re splitting by cause area for easy reading, but in the election they are all competing against each other.
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