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PODCAST

EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

Audio narrations from the Effective Altruism Forum, including curated posts, posts with 30 karma, and other great writing. If you"d like fewer episodes, subscribe to the "EA Forum (Curated & Popular)" podcast instead.

technology philosophy

All Episodes

5:13

[Linkpost] “Thoughts on Toby Ords AI Scaling Series”...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2026/02/05

This is a link post. I've been reading Toby Ord's recent sequence on AI scaling a bit. General notes come first, then my thoughts.Notes The Scaling Paradox basically argues that the scaling laws are actually pretty bad and mean progress will hit a wall fairly quickly unless the next gen or two of models somehow speed up AI research, we find a new scaling paradigm etc... Inference Scaling and the Log X Chart says that inference is also not a big deal because the scaling is again logarithmic. My

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4:47

“Review of MEAT by Bruce Friedrich” by Chris Bryant 🔸

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2026/02/05

Bruce Friedrich's new book, MEAT, is a deeply thoughtful, pragmatic, and hope-inspiring story about alternative proteins. In his role as the Founder and President of the Good Food Institute, Bruce is uniquely positioned to give an insider's account of how far plant-based, fermentation-derived, and cultivated meat have come, and where they are likely to go from here. The book's publication comes at what seems to be a critical junction for alternative proteins. Several years of exponential growth in

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6:26

“Request for proposals: Humane fish slaughter...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2026/02/05

Over 100 billion farmed fish are slaughtered each year. At Coefficient Giving, where I (Michelle Lavery) work as a Senior Program Associate, we estimate that only ~0.5% of them are reliably stunned before slaughter. For the more than a trillion wild-caught fish killed annually, conditions are even worse: most are left to suffocate slowly in air or in low-oxygen water, a process that can take minutes to hours. Though fish slaughter represents only a few hours in an animal's life, we believe the pain

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24:53

“Don’t overupdate on evolutionary cost-balancing...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2026/02/04

Evolutionary cost-balancing arguments in welfare biology (the study of animal well-being in the wild) assume that producing suffering and happiness has metabolic or neural costs, and that natural selection allocated these states efficiently. A specific version of this reasoning – which I'll call the "Evening Out Argument" – holds that if a type of suffering is highly likely and largely unavoidable for an animal, evolution would reduce its intensity. The logic is that, if suffering functions to

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3:22

[Linkpost] “Maybe develop your strengths” by MaxDalton

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2026/02/04

This is a link post. This is the latest from my blog about EA-org-style management, together with Brenton of 80k. You can subscribe on Substack if you like. Sometimes people review their strengths and weaknesses, and then automatically assume that they should try to improve their weaknesses. I think that you should at least consider focusing on strengths instead. Why focus on strengths? Increasing returns. You can often create a lot of value by becoming excellent at a few important things, and then

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11:57

“The Vegan Filter: Overcoming the Leading Barrier to...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2026/02/03

Key takeaways 84% of people who try veganism quit, most citing inconvenience as a major reason. The Vegan Filter is a project concept designed to make veganism dramatically more convenient. It introduces a single Vegan filter button in online supermarkets that hides all non-vegan products, effectively turning the supermarket vegan. At very low cost, the Vegan Filter could substantially increase vegan retention, making it one of the most scalable and neglected opportunities to reduce animal

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7:25

“Preparing for a flush future: work, giving, and...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2026/02/03

Note: opinions are all my own. Following Jeff Kaufman's Front-Load Giving Because of Anthropic Donors and Jenn's Funding Conversation We Left Unfinished, I think there is a real likelihood that impactful causes will receive significantly more funding in the near future. As background on where this new funding could come from: Coefficient Givingannounced: A recentNYT piece covered rumors of an Anthropic valuation at $350 billion. Many of Anthropic's cofounders and early employees have pledged to

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15:20

[Linkpost] “Dwarkesh Patel’s thoughts on AI progress...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2026/02/02

This is a link post. [Subtitle.] Why I'm moderately bearish in the short term, and explosively bullish in the long term This is a crosspost for Thoughts on AI progress (Dec 2025) by Dwarkesh Patel, which was originally published on Dwarkesh Podcast on 2 December 2025. What are we scaling? I’m confused why some people have short timelines and at the same time are bullish on the current scale up of reinforcement learning atop LLMs. If we’re actually close to a human-like learner, this whole approach

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11:56

“More EAs should consider working for the EU” by EU...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2026/02/02

Context: The authors are a few EAs who currently work or have previously worked at the European Commission. In this post, we make the case that more people[1] aiming for a high impact career should consider working for the EU institutions[2] using the Importance, Tractability, Neglectedness framework, and; briefly outline how one might get started on this, highlighting a currently open recruitment drive (deadline 10 March) that only comes along once every ~5 years.Why working at the EU can be

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5:40

“Who am I to run 1-1s? (as a community builder)” by...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2026/02/01

Epistemic status: some vague thoughts about the value of 1-1s but also how I respond to negative thoughts. There's some great advice on how to run 1-1s here. I still find it pretty surreal that my full-time job is to talk to people about career stuff (and a fair bit of admin)- I mean I’m 23- who am I to be giving careers advice? I think it's quite common in EA in general for people to feel underqualified about things they are qualified for, (see this post on imposter syndrome), so I don’t think

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26:53

“Laying Some Cause-Prioritization Groundwork for...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2026/01/31

Confidence level: Medium. This post reflects a mix of my own takes, things I’ve read, and conversations with others (especially at ConCon and elsewhere). I’m not claiming high confidence in any particular conclusion. See here for other work on digital minds cause prioritization. Background A few months ago, I attended ConCon, a conference on AI consciousness and welfare run by Eleos AI. It was excellent: good vibes, thoughtful people, and many conversations I found clarifying. One of my main

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6:27

“Reducing suffering of insects through colours of...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2026/01/31

Epistemic status: low, uncertain if this is useful Crossposted from my Substack. As part of EA Bath's Path to Impact fellowship, we are running a project where we pick a theory we have learnt from the intro fellowship, apply it to a cause area, and list some interventions we have researched that can help that cause area. Theory ITN Framework I think the ITN Framework is super important. For those who do not know what it is, it stands for Importance Tractability Neglectedness Where Importance is

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1:01

“Choose our next debate week” by Toby Tremlett🔹

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2026/01/31

As promised, here are the top ten suggestions for our next debate week. This thread will be pinned throughout the week. The statement with the highest karma when I get into work at 9am on Monday the 2nd of February, will be the subject of our debate week in March[1]. Comments (beyond those we are voting on) are disabled to make the voting easier. If you need to comment something, please do so here, or just dm me if you have feedback. Note that you are voting on the topic, not the precise wording

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23:12

“The reality of long-term EA community building:...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2026/01/30

We are Melanie and Anthony, the two community builders at EA Barcelona. In this post, we share where the group stands today and reflect on key learnings from nearly three years of grant-funded community building. We hope these reflections are useful to other community builders, funders, and CEA, particularly around what it realistically takes to build and sustain EA communities over multiple years, from funding stability and feedback loops to the personal sustainability of professional community

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2:21

“Applications Open for Impact Accelerator Program for...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2026/01/30

High Impact Professionals (HIP) is excited to announce that applications are now open for the next round of the Impact Accelerator Program (IAP). The IAP is a 6-week program, supporting experienced professionals transitioning into high-impact careers. To date, 359 people have completed the program. As a result: 76 participants have transitioned into high-impact careers—including founding new charities, starting founding-to-give companies, and joining high-impact organizations such as GiveWell,

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9:44

“Request for Proposals for AI x Animals” by Kevin Xia...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2026/01/29

TL;DR We are launching a pooled fund for projects at the AIxAnimals intersection. We are open to a broad set of ideas, but prioritize those in the following categories: Empowering Animal Advocates Strategic Field-building and Coordination Actionable Research and Strategic Foresight Applyhere by April 30th. Introduction Over the next decade, AI will increasingly shape how we produce food, manage ecosystems, and interact with animals, presenting some of the most significant risks and opportunities

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10:12

“Beware of non-evidence-based argumentation” by fergusq

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2026/01/29

Recently, many people have given increasingly short timelines for AGI. What unites many of these statements is the thorough lack of any evidence. Instead, many resort to narrative arguments, ad-hoc predictive models, and mistaken arguments. In this post, I will cover these different types of non-evidence-based arguments. I have described my views on AI risk previously in this post, which I think is still relevant. I have also laid down a basic argument against AI risk interventions in this comment

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3:18

“Rational Overconfidence: Why “Good Judgment” Fails...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2026/01/29

TL;DR: Calibration is essential for observers but dangerous for actors. in decision-dependent environments, "accurate" forecasting creates self-fulfilling prophecies of failure. To maximize expected value, you often need to strategically break your own calibration. Effective Altruism prioritizes calibration, using metrics like Brier scores to ensure our internal maps match the territory. This "Scout Mindset" is the gold standard for Observers—those predicting events they cannot influence, like

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0:42

[Linkpost] “Remembering William Foege” by JP Addison🔸

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2026/01/29

This is a link post. Dr. William Foege, a leader of one of humanity's greatest public health victories — the global eradication of smallpox — died Saturday. He was 89. For his efforts to eradicate smallpox, Foege was the co-winner of the 2020 Future of Life Award along with Viktor Zhdanov. ---First published: January 28th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Q4bd6YTGgM3hhFEsB/remembering-william-foege Linkpost

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4:43

“Do your job unreasonably well” by MaxDalton

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2026/01/27

I've just started a blog about EA-org-style management, together with Brenton of 80k. You can subscribe on Substack if you like. Here's the most recent post! I think often people treat “development” as an add-on that's quite different from their work. I think it's better to have the development and the work deeply integrated. The failure mode This is how I used to approach dev goals: Pick a goal that's kinda related to your job, but not very. A common one when I worked at CEA was “learn more

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2,179 results

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