Astral Codex Ten

EA

32 min read

EA

Article

EA is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 27 times across 27 issues between January 29, 2021 and April 06, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as “thinking of the EA movement as trying to perfectly quantify”; “EA started with a sort of merger and cross-pollination between people trying to save lives by eg curing malaria, and transhumanist/singularitarian groups working on protecting the long-term future”; “EA organizations on how they can attract more donations”. It most often appears alongside ACX, Scott, Twitter.

Metadata

  • Category: Organizations
  • Mention count: 27
  • Issue count: 27
  • First seen: January 29, 2021
  • Last seen: April 06, 2026

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Contra Weyl On Technocracy
January 29, 2021 · Original source
Worse, the extremely elitist, segregated, and condescending approach to philanthropy encouraged by the community has created widespread public backlash that has closely tracked a broader populist reaction to technologically-driven globalist elites and that increasingly seems to be one of the largest risk factors for precisely the sorts of catastrophes effective altruists increasingly see as the largest threats to their long-term viewpoint on universal welfare. In short, it increasingly seems like, after almost a decade of existence, a primary conclusion of the movement’s analysis may be that the movement itself is a significant part of the problem it is identifying. Earlier, more open dialog with a broader range of approaches and social classes might have illuminated this more quickly and avoided the associated waste of talent and resources, two things the movement greatly prizes.
Inline links: widespread public backlash
I want to briefly respond to Weyl's critique of rationality and effective altruism:
The effective altruism movement, which largely grew directly out of the rationalist movement, seeks to maximize the efficacy with which charitable donations are directed using standard rationalist methods. It is a tight-knit community that strongly privileges rationalist approaches over all other forms of knowledge-making (such as from the humanities, continental philosophy, or humanistic social sciences) and tends to dismiss input not formulated in rationalist terms. The community also has a strong and explicitly stated view that its activities uniquely contribute to the achievement of “the good”: of their top five recommendations of most productive careers by a leading community organization, two suggest being a researcher or support staff within the movement, and two others recommend working on the AI alignment problem (see the next point). Until recently, much of the analysis and funding emerging from the community has pointed towards a focus on extremely unlikely but potentially catastrophic risks, such as alien, asteroid or biological catastrophes.
ACX Grants ++: The First Half
February 03, 2022 · Original source
#14: Survey On Embryo Selection I would like to design and conduct a survey akin to the moral machine project, but for embryo selection rather than self-driving cars. The idea is to glean the informed preferences of parents over the kinds of traits they want their children to have. This is already a challenge, and the survey would need to be carefully worded to avoid framing effects, and other psychological biases. But the bigger challenge, and my interest in the project, is that parents' preferences will largely depend on the preferences over traits that other parents have. As I wrote about in my book Creating Future People, there is a range of traits in which what is individually rational is partly a function of what other parents are expected to choose, and in which what is individually rational could diverge from what is socially optimal. Survey answers could, in principle, be fed into an AI to help refine the preferences parents exhibit over which embryos to implant. This information would be enormously valuable in for parents and fertility clinics. To the extent that the traits of future people influence the welfare of the entire world, embryo selection done well – guided by accurate information rather than guesswork – could be one of the most important forms of “effective altruism” the world has ever seen. [Email jonathan.anomaly@protonmail.com]
#20: Test Charity Pitch Strategies We will conduct an intervention competition to test which strategies are most effective in convincing people to donate to an effective cause. We (Bastian Jaeger, Josh Lewis, and Noah Costelo) are part of a recently formed team that advises EA organizations on how they can attract more donations. There is little high-quality research on this topic and it is unclear which marketing approaches work best or should be trialed in the field. We will conduct a large-scale experiment to fill this gap. First, we will challenge academics and members of the EA community to submit an intervention that is most effective in generating donations for an effective charity. Next, we will distribute a survey among the participating teams and the EA community in which people are asked to predict the effectiveness of each intervention that was submitted. Finally, we will select the most promising interventions and test their effectiveness in a high-powered, pre-registered, and incentivized experiment. The study will generate actionable insights for various EA organizations looking to optimize their marketing strategy and attract more donations. The survey data will also allow us to test how accurate people are in forecasting the effectiveness of different strategies, by comparing forecasted with actual effectiveness. All data will be made openly available. See https://osf.io/adbwv/ for a more detailed description and you can contact me via b.jaeger@vu.nl.
Spring Meetups In Seventy Cities
April 10, 2022 · Original source
PORTLAND, OR Contact: Sam Celarek (support@pearcommunity.com) Date: April 24 Time: 4:00 PM Coordinates: https://plus.codes/84QVG9G7+XWG Location: 1548 NE 15th Ave, Portland, OR 97232 with a Large "PEAR" sign outside of the Building Notes: Call me (Sam) at 513-432-3310 if you can't find it. Please RSVP on Meetup or LessWrong so we can guesstimate food better. Group info: Portland Effective Altruism and Rationality is very active. We have book clubs, bi-weekly ai safety meet-ups, bi-weekly topical meet-ups, bi-weekly socials, and have an active Discord.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/84QVG9G7+XWG, Meetup, LessWrong, Portland Effective Altruism and Rationality, Discord
Your Book Review: Public Choice Theory And The Illusion Of Grand Strategy
June 24, 2022 · Original source
A Russian sixth-grader could explain why celebrating the glories of Kievan Rus does not subvert Putin’s claims about the history of the Russian nation so much as reinforce them. Just like Hong Kong’s protests, Ukraine has won the meme war with utterly lopsided propaganda and unanimous international support on the Internet. As Yoshimi writes: Floating ghostlike above it is our war, the myth of the ‘Ghost of Kyiv’, ace MIG-29 pilot who has apparently shot down six Russian planes, or the legend of the Ukrainian soldiers defending an island outpost who replied “Russian warship go fuck yourselves” to a surrender offer and may or may not have died heroically, or two Russian II-76 transport aircraft that maybe were shot down near Kiev, or videos of air strikes or dead bodies which variously are Russian or Ukrainian until they turn out to be from Gaza six years ago, or the viral video of an old Ukrainian woman telling off a Russian soldier by offering him sunflower seeds so when he dies, sunflowers (Ukraine’s national flowers) will sprout from the soil. We’re raising funds for the Ukrainian army on crowdfunding apps and giving advice to the civilians being handed assault weapons about how to disable tanks, sharing weird homophobic pictures of Putin as a gay icon and spamming Russian government posts. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has made the decision to stay and fight rather than flee like most would-be leaders who go all in for American foreign policy, and now is being deified by us as “badass”, “a true leader”, etc. etc., alongside his people, whose resistance to authoritarianism we are told is unparalleled in the modern world. After all, so it goes, who could be next? And like in Hong Kong, despite winning the culture war in hyperreality, the actual war in reality is won by the side with overwhelming military might, not morality. The real war is where Ukrainians are experiencing the genuine life-shattering effects of military conflict. It matters because this is the first time Western response is driven by Twitter outcry, and it will not be the last. A New EA Cause? Besides Hanania’s recommendations in the last section (which he admits are more or less impossible in an excellent interview with Caplan), a worthy EA priority might be to somehow turn the public tide on sanctions, which literally kill more people than Putin. Americans should be appalled by the atrocity committed in their names. The banality of the incompetence of foreign policy elites does not excuse their evil. With how entrenched the special interests are, I have no idea if it’s even worth trying, but at the very least the sheer amount of suffering and death from sanctions should be made common knowledge. Nuclear security is one of the top priorities in Effective Altruism, per 80,000 Hours, Future of Life Institute, and Our World In Data. Toby Orb, who wrote the definitive book on existential risk, The Precipice, estimates x-risk from nuclear war to be ~1 in 1000 in the next century. Luisa Rodriguez estimates a 1.1% chance of nuclear war each year and that the chances of a US-Russia nuclear war may be in the ballpark of 0.38% per year; summarised by Max Roser as: Nuclear risk is neglected by the public because of Pax Americana since the collapse of the USSR, and is not discussed as often in EA as it’s thought to be relatively well-funded and mainstream, but in fact major donors like the MacArthur Foundation have been withdrawing funding. As Joan Rohling details in an 80,000 Hours podcast there is much to be done, especially when Ukraine gave up their nuclear arsenal in 1994 in exchange for Russia’s promise to never threaten or use military force against them. A worthwhile adjacent cause area might be de-escalation of public outcry to reduce x-risk from nuclear war beyond just regular anti-proliferation efforts — even a Russian specialist from the RAND Corporation is surprised by how much public outrage is driving policy: Even just the pace of the sanctions: we went to 11 out of 10 in like two days — farther than many expected we’d ever get in short order. And I think the same is true about these military assistance initiatives. We’re just trying to do something because there’s a public demand for action. So that’s what worries me, that the sort of public outrage that’s being channeled in Western democracies through political systems could result in decisions that prove ultimately unwise. Despite how odd it is that some wars are “legal” while others aren’t, we should be glad UNSC exists as much as everyone laughs at how useless the rest of the UN is. All is fair in love and war, but international norms is all that stands between us and nuclear annihilation. It is hard to emphasise just how delusional it is for the public to fixate on no-fly zones — I, like Scott, am surprised we’re still capable of jingoism. 80,000 Hours has updated their top career recommendations to include China specialist to improve China-Western coordination on global catastrophic risk, which seems more important after reading how irrational and captured the American foreign policy apparatus is. As Hanania writes, “great power competition” is an anachronism. If Ukraine is the first war warped by hyperreality, it won’t be the last. Now that US foreign policy elites have driven Putin into the arms of China, let’s hope IR specialists can imbibe the public choice model instead of antagonising yet another nuclear rival. Public Choice Theory and the Illusion of Grand Strategy is an important work because it raises the sanity waterline, which at the least should make us stop killing millions for no reason, and at the most should make the human race more knowledgeable of how to prevent total extinction from nuclear armageddon. Pax Americana is dead, but a multipolar world will be more humane. Endnotes In the fiscal year 2018, the top five government contractors were all weapons manufacturers, with Lockheed Martin in first place at $40.6 billion. The Department of Defence spent $358 billion on contracting, ten times higher than second place Department of Energy. Collective action problems that stop a bunch of smaller companies from effectively influencing policy are no hindrance for companies like Lockheed Martin.
Inline links: writes, interview, 80,000 Hours, Future of Life Institute, Our World In Data, The Precipice, ~1 in 1000, estimates, summarised, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!PRc2!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe90b1bb5-d84b-45dc-b9fa-2edddbf6b9fa_1600x1006.png, Pax Americana, MacArthur Foundation, details, gave up, surprised, Scott, jingoism, China specialist, captured, writes, the sanity waterline, a multipolar world will be more humane
Open Thread 231
July 04, 2022 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
Impact Markets: The Annoying Details
July 15, 2022 · Original source
This is how I’ve always explained it before - and you can read other explanations like Paul Christiano’s or Vitalik Buterin’s. This post isn’t about the theory. It’s about the annoying implementation details. It may not be very interesting to people who are neither effective altruists nor institution design wonks, sorry.
Inline links: Paul Christiano’s, Vitalik Buterin’s
Advantage: This is very simple, and can be done right now: in fact, a team is already doing this for good Effective Altruism Forum posts.
Inline links: is already doing this
Disadvantage: We probably couldn't get them right away, and there aren’t that many who really understand effective altruism yet.
Criticism Of Criticism Of Criticism
July 20, 2022 · Original source
But I'm Not Racist: Racism, Implicit Bias, And The Practice Of Psychiatry Disruption! Grabbing the third rail! Asking about what we’re overlooking! It seems that psychiatry, like EA, is really good at criticizing itself. Even better: these aren’t those soft within-the-system critiques everyone is worried about. These are hard challenges to the entire paradigm of capitalism or whatever. And it’s not just the APA as an institution. Go to any psychiatrist at the conference and criticize psychiatry in these terms - “Don’t you think our field is systemically racist and sexist and fails to understand that the true problem is Capitalism?” and they will enthusiastically agree and maybe even tell you stories about how their own experience proves that’s true and how they need to try to do better. Is there any criticism that can touch these people at all? Here’s my proposal: ask why they prescribe s-ketamine instead of racemic ketamine for treatment-resistant depression. If you say this, psychiatrists will push back. If you say it in a confrontational way - maybe you hint that they’ve outsourced their thought processes to a handful of regulators and pharmaceutical companies even when this severely disadvantages patients, because thinking for themselves is hard and scary - they’ll get offended. The world is full of psychiatrists who will confess to systemic racism with a smile on their face, then get all huffy when you ask them about esketamine. Here are other criticisms that I think can actually start fights: should tricyclics be higher on our treatment algorithm for depression than atypical antipsychotics? Should we use levothyroxine more (or less) often? And my nominee for “highest likelihood of people actually coming to blows” would be asking if they’re sure it’s ethical to charge poor patients three-digit fees for no-shows. All of these are the opposite of the racism critique: they’re minor, finicky points entirely within the current paradigm that don’t challenge any foundational assumptions at all. But you can actually start fights if you bring them up, instead of getting people to nod along and smile vacuously. The racism critique doesn’t imply any specific person is doing any specific thing wrong. Certainly not you! It doesn’t demand any specific response except maybe more awareness, saying the right slogans, and maybe having some other person form a committee to make meaningless changes to some set of bylaws. But the esketamine critique actually demands that you in particular go out and learn about a different medication which is kind of scary and could get you in trouble if you use it wrong. It implies that you personally are failing patients, in a way that some other doctors aren’t failing patients. Maybe it means those other doctors are better than you! And so the knives come out. III. This is also how I think about EA criticism. I’m going to give an example of criticism I don’t like. I hate doing this, because all the criticism pieces are heartfelt and people worked hard on them. But I have to pick on someone in particular, so I’m going to pick on Some Blindspots In Rationality And Effective Altruism (disclaimer: I appreciate the work that went into this and like the people involved). It tries to get ahead of any “this isn’t paradigm-busting enough” by making extremely general and abstract points, like: EA assumes people are individuals, but actually, they are interdependent. Instead of swallowing western individualism, we need to be better at thinking within communalist and collectivist paradigms.
Inline links: why they prescribe s-ketamine instead of racemic ketamine, Some Blindspots In Rationality And Effective Altruism
Highlights From The Comments On Criticism Of Criticism Of Criticism
July 28, 2022 · Original source
Last month, when I posted why I thought that a recent crime wave was because of anti-police protests, was that evanglizing? If I were Bahai, and I posted something about why I thought the Bahai religion was true, using the same style of argument, would that be evangelizing? If I posted my interesting thoughts about charity in 2005, and those happened to be the exact same thoughts that later became effective altruism, would I have been evangelizing then? If I write a post now about why you should all join EA, would that be evangelizing now?
Highlights From The Comments On Subcultures
August 19, 2022 · Original source
Postcycle: Since 2020 Now things are pretty stable, partly because we put enough distance between ourselves and our growth phase that we can start to get a little hipster cool again, and partly because effective altruism is the Hot New Thing that everyone is supposed to have an opinion on. This is the usual pattern of exciting talked-about movements spawning successor movements that then get to be exciting and talked-about in turn, while the original movement gets to go back to being normal people with a common interest again. By the way, in the past week, effective altruism has gotten long, glowing profiles in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Vox, the cover of TIME Magazine, shoutouts from Elon Musk and Andrew Yang, podcast interviews with Tyler Cowen and Tim Ferriss, and criticism from Freddie deBoer. Enjoy it while it lasts! ___________________ 7: MT writes: A lot of this sounds like truism, or selection bias. Thing isn't popular or exciting to most, then it catches on and grows, then it stops growing, fragments into new directions and isn't novel but becomes part of the mainstream. This HAS TO describe literally anything in the past that was ever popular/exciting, because it wasn't always that way (started small) and can't grow indefinitely without becoming either an institution (stable leadership/direction), fragmented (new leadership/direction), or just falling apart. The germ of this idea was my feeling that I’ve been in movements where it starts out feeling like everyone can’t stop gushing about how great we are, and then later there’s another phase where criticism reigns and everyone feels slightly embarrassed to be involved. This doesn’t feel tautological to me, although it might become trivial if you allow enough selection bias (some movement where this hasn’t happened “isn’t the kind of movement this happens to”). I could prove this by making nontrivial predictions about which movements are going to get less camaraderie and more internecine struggle in the future. Four years ago I would have said “new left socialism”, and I think I did endorse Robby Soave’s article to that effect at the time, but I think new left socialism is well into involution or even postcycle now. Last year I would have said YIMBYism, but I’m not up-to-date on it and maybe it’s already transitioned too. The only movement I see that’s still clearly high on “we are so great and such good friends with each other” is postrationalism/ingroup/TPOT, so sure, I expect things to get worse for them (sorry for this potentially self-fulfilling prophecy). (I’m nervous about saying EA because they still have more money than they can spend in a reasonable amount of time; as long as that situation continues they won’t be exactly resource-scarce, and the people with the purse-strings will have a natural advantage as “elites”.) I’m actually surprised how few uncomplicated happy growth spurt movements I can think of now, compared to how many I can think of that seem to have passed through that stage. I think this is a combination of: This is a pretty pessimistic social moment (eg the thing where dystopian SF has become more popular than the utopian SF of the late 20th century).
Inline links: the New Yorker, New York Times, Vox, cover of TIME Magazine, Elon Musk, Andrew Yang, Tyler Cowen, Tim Ferriss, Freddie deBoer, MT, Robby Soave’s article to that effect, postrationalism/ingroup/TPOT
Book Review: What We Owe The Future
August 23, 2022 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
22
October 18, 2022 · Original source
Several additional plaintiffs I can’t find good information about You can find the complaint here. The plaintiffs write: The [CFTC’s action], without explanation or other indication of reasoned decisionmaking, without “written notice of the facts or conduct which may warrant” the Revocation, and without providing anyone “an opportunity to demonstrate or achieve compliance” with the terms of No-Action Relief or other requirements, violates the Administrative Procedure Act. 5 U.S.C. §§ 558, 706. Among other things, the Revocation is “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, [and/or] otherwise not in accordance with law” and occurred “without observance of procedure required by law.” The Court should “hold unlawful and set aside” the Revocation, including its command that contracts that would otherwise turn on events occurring after February 2023 be prematurely liquidated. 5 U.S.C. § 706. The Court also should enter a preliminary and then permanent injunction against the prescriptions in the Revocation requiring the liquidation of contracts by February 2023, including contracts that concern the 2024 elections, well before they would ordinarily mature. I am not a lawyer, but it sounds kind of like they’re saying “the decision was bad, and the Administrative Procedure Act says regulators shouldn’t do bad things”. I am split between the part of me which hates government regulators doing bad things, and the part of me which feels like this is how you get a cover-your-ass-ocracy that never does anything at all without fifteen layers of paperwork and ten trillion dollars per action. Whatever. At least this time it’s in my favor. Of course there are prediction markets about it: Source: Insight Prediction Nuclear Warcasting, Part 2 Samotsvety Forecasting is a team made of top prediction market players and tournament winners, vaguely affiliated with effective altruism, who make predictions in the public interest. Earlier this year, they got attention for forecasting the risk of nuclear war - in particular, they said there was an a 0.01% per month chance of London getting nuked this spring. Since then, most of the fear has crystallized into a specific scenario. Suppose Russia is losing very badly in Ukraine. Putin, fearing a coup or revolution at home if he gives up, decides to use a tactical nuclear weapon, ie a “small” nuke more suited to winning battles than destroying cities. He nukes a Ukrainian battlefield position. The West is enraged at this violation of the nuclear taboo and feels like it needs to respond decisively - maybe by nuking something on Russia’s side, or through some other act of extreme escalation. Then Russia feels like they need to respond, and eventually it escalates to strikes on major cities and global nuclear war. There are reasons for doubt. Tactical nukes wouldn’t really be useful in Ukraine; the battle lines are too spread out and there’s no single place where a nuclear explosion could take out a substantial portion of Ukraine’s forces. In the past, nuclear powers have accepted lost wars gracefully rather than turning to nukes. And the Russians deny it, and saying this is all just Western propaganda intended to scare people. Amid this uncertainty, Samotsvety has published an update: now they are at 16% chance that “Russia uses any type of nuclear weapon in Ukraine in the next year”, and 0.02% per month of a strike on London. Although they didn’t mention it this time, they previously said the risk of a strike on San Francisco was a little over half that of London; I don’t know if that’s changed. See also Dan Keys’ comment here for some skepticism of Samotsvety’s process. Swift Centre is a lot like Samotsvety; they’re a collection of top forecasters brought together by EA to make important predictions. They also took a swing at the nuclear question, and said 9.1% chance of a hostile nuclear detonation in Europe in the next six months. They didn’t calculate the risk that this would spread to global war, but they did discuss how different scenarios would bring the risk up or down: One of my hopes for forecasting is that it eventually becomes so well-validated that decision-makers can take these kinds of considerations into account: “Should we sent ATACMS missiles to Ukraine? It would have such-and-such benefits, but also increase the risk of nuclear escalation by 3.6%, is it worth it?” We can’t directly compare Samotsvety and Swift because they’re predicting over different time periods. But assuming that there’s more risk in the next six months than in the six months after that, I think Samotsvety is a little higher but they’re not embarrassingly far off. Metaculus is a bit more optimistic than either, believing there’s only a 4% chance of detonation in Ukraine in 2023 and a 7% chance of any use in the next ~year. Max Tegmark is going much higher than anyone else and says 16% chance of global nuclear war. Kalshi Applies For Election Markets Kalshi is a regulated and fully-legal prediction market with good lobbyists and a compliance team. This means the CFTC probably won’t randomly shut them down one day. But it also means they can only create new markets with CFTC permission. In July, Kalshi asked the CFTC for permission to make midterm election prediction markets - specifically, which party will win control of the House and Senate. The CFTC has said they will make a decision by October 28 (which doesn’t leave much time for predicting to happen before the November 8 election, but I guess it sets a precedent). September was the Request For Comment period, when the CFTC solicited comments from stakeholders about what they should do. Kalshi tried really hard to get lots of people to send in positive assessments - I know this because of how many people asked me “why is the CEO of Kalshi emailing me about this thing?” Their strategy seems to have worked; among the people who wrote to the CFTC in support were: A managing director at JP Morgan
Inline links: additional plaintiffs, here, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!LaYa!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0aaec309-35d6-430d-aeaa-b7cab022f4d6_548x215.png, Insight Prediction, Samotsvety Forecasting, Earlier this year, accepted lost wars gracefully, published an update, comment here, Swift Centre, They also took a swing at the nuclear question, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!TczM!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F702c1236-47d9-4c60-9b99-ab9b2ca320e7_737x377.png, a 4% chance, a 7% chance, 16% chance, In July, they will make a decision by October 28, A managing director at JP Morgan
Highlights From The Comments On Nerds And Hipsters
April 27, 2023 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
Followup: Quests And Requests
November 10, 2023 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
In Continued Defense Of Effective Altruism
November 28, 2023 · Original source
Become so influential in AI-related legislation that Politico accuses effective altruists of having “[taken] over Washington” and “largely dominating the UK’s efforts to regulate advanced AI”.
Inline links: “[taken] over Washington”, “largely dominating the UK’s efforts to regulate advanced AI”
Played a big part in creating the YIMBY movement - I’m as surprised by this one as you are, but see footnote for evidence17. I think other people are probably thinking of this as par for the course - all of these seem like the sort of thing a big movement should be able to do. But I remember when EA was three philosophers and few weird Bay Area nerds with a blog. It clawed its way up into the kind of movement that could do these sorts of things by having all the virtues it claims to have: dedication, rationality, and (I think) genuine desire to make the world a better place. II. Still not impressed? Recently, in the US alone, effective altruists have: ended all gun violence, including mass shootings and police shootings
Inline links: 17
People aren’t acting like EA has ended gun violence and cured AIDS and so on. all those things. Probably this is because those are exciting popular causes in the news, and saving people in developing countries isn’t. Most people care so little about saving lives in developing countries that effective altruists can save 200,000 of them and people will just not notice. “Oh, all your movement ever does is cause corporate boardroom drama, and maybe other things I’m forgetting right now.”
Contra DeBoer On Movement Shell Games
November 30, 2023 · Original source
I think less than a tenth of people do (1), less than a tenth of those people do (2), and less than a tenth of people who would hypothetically endorse both of those get to (3). I think most of the people who do all three of these would self-identify as effective altruists (maybe adjusted for EA being too small to fully capture any demographic?) and most of the people who don’t, wouldn’t.
Followup to: In Continued Defense Of Effective Altruism
Inline links: In Continued Defense Of Effective Altruism
Freddie deBoer says effective altruism is “a shell game”:
Inline links: is “a shell game”
Open Thread 305
December 04, 2023 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
Highlights From The Comments On Capitalism & Charity
January 11, 2024 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
Spring Meetups Everywhere 2024 - Call For Organizers
March 08, 2024 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
Spring Meetups Everywhere 2024
March 30, 2024 · Original source
BELGRADE Contact: Tanja Contact Info: tanja[dot]trninic[at]efektivnialtruizam[dot]rs Time: Sunday, April 7th, 2:00 PM Location: Venezelosova 20, Belgrade, Serbia. Effective Altruism Serbia is organizing a casual hang out + lunch in vegan and low-waste Kafe VeZa Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8GP2RFC9+36 Group Link: https://efektivnialtruizam.rs/ Notes: Please RSVP to tanja.trninic@efektivnialtruizam.rs so we can reserve enough tables for everyone.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8GP2RFC9+36, https://efektivnialtruizam.rs/
Profile: The Far Out Initiative
May 15, 2024 · Original source
If the effective altruists are firmly on the Plato/Marx side of the divide, developing the Buddhist/Stoic version of transhumanist utilitarianism fell to David Pearce.
This is Pearce’s thesis. It’s not as popular as the normal effective altruism that just tries to help solve poverty and cure diseases. While Ord and Bostrom and MacAskill got followers and press coverage and friendly billionaires, Pearce and his movement (“suffering abolitionism”) got a few very devoted email correspondents.
Contra Stone On EA
May 30, 2024 · Original source
According to Rethink Priorities, the organization that keeps track of this kind of thing, there were about 7,400 active effective altruists in 2020 (90% CI: 4,700 - 10,000). Growth rate was 14% per year but has probably gone down lately, so there are probably around 10,000 now. This matches other sources for high engagement with EA ideas (8,898 people have signed the Giving What We Can pledge).
Inline links: According to Rethink Priorities,, have signed
Suppose that the Bay Area contains 25% of all the effective altruists in the world. That means it has 2,500 effective altruists. Its total population is about 10 million. So effective altruists are 1/4000th of the Bay Area population.
Suppose that the average person gives 3% of their income to charity per year, and the average effective altruist gives 10%. The Bay Area with no effective altruists donates an average of 3%. Add in the 2,500 effective altruists, and the average goes up to . . . 3.0025%. Stone’s graph is in 0.5 pp intervals. So this methodology is way too underpowered to detect any effect even if it existed.
Meetups Everywhere Fall 2024 - Call for Organizers
August 01, 2024 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
2024
September 26, 2024 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
Open Thread 371.5
March 05, 2025 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
Meetups Everywhere Spring 2025: Times & Places
March 25, 2025 · Original source
Contact: Laura Contact Info: laura[period]leighton94[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Sunday, April 13th, 5:00 PM Location: The Burrow, West End - we will be downstairs and probably towards the back where it tends to be quieter Coordinates: https://plus.codes/5R4MG2C7+44M Notes: This event will be co-hosted with the regular meetup of Effective Altruism Brisbane as there's usually a ~75% overlap in attendance.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/5R4MG2C7+44M
Contact: Sam Celarek Contact Info: scelarek[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Friday, April 18th, 06:00 PM Location: 133 SE Madison Street, Portland, OR 97214 United States, Portland, OR There will be a large sign saying PEAR with a light shining on it outside the BRIDGESPACE building. Of note, the entrance is on the East side of the building! Feel free to call Sam Celarek at 5134323310 if you can't find it. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/84QVG87P+7C Group Link: https://discord.gg/JwJ [remove this bit] tAJKA Notes: Feel free to bring food, but vegan food and drinks will be provided. RSVP on the meetup here: Portland Effective Altruism and Rationality (PEAR): https://meetu.ps/e/NV6r6/Ywbrj/i
Inline links: https://plus.codes/84QVG87P+7C, https://meetu.ps/e/NV6r6/Ywbrj/i
Links For December 2025
December 10, 2025 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
Open Thread 428
April 06, 2026 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.