EA Forum Podcast (Curated & popular‪)‬ EA Forum Team

Disclaimer: While I criticize several EA critics in this article, I am myself on the EA-skeptical side of things (especially on AI risk).
Introduction.
I am a proud critic of effective altruism, and in particular a critic of AI existential risk, but I have to admit that a lot of the critcism of EA is hostile, or lazy, and is extremely unlikely to convince a believer.
Take this recent Leif Weinar time article as an example. I liked a few of the object level critiques, but many of the points were twisted, and the overall point was hopelessly muddled (are they trying to say that voluntourism is the solution here?). As people have noted, the piece was needlessly hostile to EA (and incredibly hostile to Will Macaskill in particular). And he's far from the only prominent hater. Emille Torres views EA as a threat to humanity. Timnit Gebru sees [...]
---
Outline:
(02:21) No door to door atheists
(04:51) What went wrong here?
(08:40) Motivation gaps in AI x-risk
(10:59) EA gap analysis
(15:12) Counter-motivations
(25:49) You can’t rely on ingroup criticism
(29:10) How to respond to motivation gaps
---

First published:

April 22nd, 2024


Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CfBNdStftKGc863o6/motivation-gaps-why-so-much-ea-criticism-is-hostile-and-lazy


Linkpost URL:https://titotal.substack.com/p/motivation-gaps-why-so-much-ea-criticism

---
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

In this post, I hope to inspire other Effective Altruists to focus more on donation and commiserate with those who have been disappointed in their ability to get an altruistic job. First, I argue that the impact of having a job that helps others is complicated. In this section, I discuss annual donation statistics of people in the Effective Altruism community donate, which I find quite low. In the rest of the post, I describe my recent job search, my experience substituting at public schools, and my expenses. Having a job that helps others might be overemphasized
Doing a job that helps others seems like a good thing to do. Weirdly, it's not as simple as that. While some job vacancies last for years, other fields are very competitive and have many qualified applicants for most position listings. In the latter case, if you take the [...] ---
Outline:
(00:42) Having a job that helps others might be overemphasized
(02:07) Donations are an amazing opportunity, and I think they are underemphasized
(03:42) I used to really want an animal welfare-related job. Then I wanted to donate more. Now I am a substitute at a public school
(06:13) I live frugally and donate
(08:06) I have been disappointed in my ability to find a job that would allow me to donate more
(09:52) Its okay
(10:24) Additional reading
---

First published:

April 16th, 2024


Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/G9ocwYA2LpLqC4vmq/how-good-it-is-to-donate-and-how-hard-it-is-to-get-a-job

---
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Attend his talk if he's giving one By Jacob Trefethen
Scientific conferences are great even if you’re an outsider to the field. That's common advice for students, and there are useful guides written on how to get the most out of conferences you're new to. But I suspect people at all career stages could benefit from hearing the advice again – people with adjacent research experience in industry or academia, or who have started organisations before, or who have an inkling something exciting lurks around the corner.
In other words, I wish people reminded me to go to conferences as an outsider more often. I seem to re-learn their value with wonder every one I attend. So here is a post for you, future Jacob.
Often scientific fields host annual conferences that have been running for a decade, or many decades. People grumble about the schedule and the snacks. Jetlag [...]
---
Outline:
(02:15) To the best of my understanding, I only have one life to live
(05:21) But Im an outsider to the field!
(07:04) List of 41 conferences
---

First published:

April 15th, 2024


Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/n8APGKhs8Dut9vXGJ/conferences-are-great-for-scientific-entrepreneurs


Linkpost URL:https://blog.jacobtrefethen.com/conferences/

---
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

The two podcasts where I discuss FTX are now out:
Making Sense with Sam Harris Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg The Sam Harris podcast is more aimed at a general audience; the Spencer Greenberg podcast is more aimed at people already familiar with EA. (I’ve also done another podcast with Chris Anderson from TED that will come out next month, but FTX is a fairly small part of that conversation.)
In this post, I’ll gather together some things I talk about across these podcasts — this includes updates and lessons, and responses to some questions that have been raised on the Forum recently. I’d recommend listening to the podcasts first, but these comments can be read on their own, too. I cover a variety of different topics, so I’ll cover each topic in separate comments underneath this post.
---

First published:

April 18th, 2024


Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/A2vBJGEbKDpuKveHk/personal-reflections-on-ftx

---
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Anders Sandberg has written a “final report” released simultaneously with the announcement of FHI's closure. The abstract and an excerpt follow.
Normally manifestos are written first, and then hopefully stimulate actors to implement their vision. This document is the reverse: an epitaph summarizing what the Future of Humanity Institute was, what we did and why, what we learned, and what we think comes next. It can be seen as an oral history of FHI from some of its members. It will not be unbiased, nor complete, but hopefully a useful historical source. I have received input from other people who worked at FHI, but it is my perspective and others would no doubt place somewhat different emphasis on the various strands of FHI work.
What we did well
One of the most important insights from the successes of FHI is to have a long-term perspective on one's research. While [...]
---
Outline:
(00:57) What we did well
(03:48) Where we failed
(05:06) So, you want to start another FHI?
---

First published:

April 17th, 2024


Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/uK27pds7J36asqJPt/future-of-humanity-institute-2005-2024-final-report


Linkpost URL:https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ml8d3ubi3ippxs4yon63n/FHI-Final-Report.pdf?rlkey=2c94czhgagy27d9don7pvbc26&dl=0

---
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Author: Sam Hilton, AIM Director of Research
In March 2021 I received an odd letter. It was from a guy I didn't know, David Quarrey, the UK's National Security Advisor. The letter thanked me for providing external expertise to the UK government's Integrated Review, which had been published that morning. It turns out that the Integrated Review has made a public commitment to "review our approach to risk assessment" ... "including how we account for interdependencies, cascading and compound risks". This is something I'd been advocating for over the previous few months by writing a policy paper and engaging with politicians and civil servants. It's hard to know how much my input changed government policy but I couldn’t find much evidence of others advocating for this. I had set myself a 10-year goal to "have played a role in making the UK a leader in long-term resilience to extreme [...]
---

First published:

April 2nd, 2024


Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/RmZWjTLNTg4hby7pz/aim-s-new-guide-to-launching-a-high-impact-non-profit-policy

---
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.