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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

15:01

“Animal farming impacts soil nematodes, mites, and...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/07/01

Side note. You can give me feedback here (anonymously or not).Summary I estimateanimal farming: Decreases the living time of (wild) soil nematodes, mites, and springtailshugely more than it increases that of directly affected animals. Increases the welfare of soil nematodes, mites, and springtails hugely more than it changes that of directly affected animals. My best guess isthatthose soil animals have negative lives, so I think decreasing their animal-years by increasing land use is beneficial

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13:03

“Debate: Depopulation Matters” by Richard Y Chappell🔸

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/07/01

Depopulation is BadPlace your vote or view results.disagreeagree After the Spike: Population, Progress, and the Case for People by Dean Spears and Michael Geruso is one of the most [...] ---Outline:(01:36) The Facts(02:50) Is Population Bad?(03:39) Climate change(05:30) Progress comes from people(08:29) More Good is Better(09:59) Related Reading(10:29) Framing the DebateThe original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. ---First published: July 1st,

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14:16

[Linkpost] “How Unofficial Work Gets You Hired:...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/07/01

This is a link post. Tl;dr: In this post, I introduce a concept I call surface area for serendipity — the informal, behind-the-scenes work that makes it easier for others to notice, trust, and collaborate with you. In a job market where some EA and animal advocacy roles attract over 1,300 applicants, relying on traditional applications alone is unlikely to land you a role. This post offers a tactical roadmap to the hidden layer of hiring: small, often unpaid but high-leverage actions that build

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4:27

“Do we need a new Moral Weights Project?” by NickLaing

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/06/30

Is now the time to add to RP's great work? Someone should commission new moral weights work in the next yearPlace your vote or view results.disagreeagree Rethink's [...] ---Outline:(00:09) Is now the time to add to RP's great work?(01:54) Arguments against more Moral Weights work(02:32) Steps I'd like to see in a new projectThe original text contained 5 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: June 30th, 2025 Source:

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11:58

“Don’t Eat Honey” by Bentham’s Bulldog

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/06/30

Crosspost from my blog. (I think this is a pretty important article so I’d appreciate you sharing and restacking it—thanks!) There are lots of people who say of themselves “I’m vegan except for honey.” This is a bit like someone saying “I’m a law-abiding citizen, never violating the law, except sometimes I’ll bring a young boy to the woods and slay him.” These people abstain from all the animal products except honey, even though honey is by far the worst of the commonly eaten animal products. Now,

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1:09

“If you want to be vegan but you worry about health...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/06/30

1) They're unlikely to be sentient (few neurons, immobile) 2) If they are sentient, the farming practices look likely to be pretty humane 3) They're extremely nutritionally dense Buying canned smoked oysters/mussels and eating them plain or on crackers is super easy and cheap. It's an acquired taste for some, but I love them. --- First published: June 30th, 2025 Source:

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1:02

“If you want to be vegan but you worry about health...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/06/30

1) They're unlikely to be sentient (few neurons, immobile) 2) If they are sentient, the farming practices look likely to be pretty humane 3) They're extremely nutritionally dense Buying canned smoked oysters/mussels and eating them plain or on crackers is super easy and cheap. It's an acquired taste for some, but I love them. --- First published: June 30th, 2025 Source:

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4:51

“Who Are Your EA Role Models?” by EAvalues🔸

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/06/30

Learning from Inspiring Figures in Our Community Background This post emerged from discussions during the EA values project, where we observed that many community members cite specific individuals (whether EA founders, organization leaders, or mentors) as key influences in their journey into effective altruism. Understanding who inspires us and why can help us identify the values and approaches that make EA compelling to newcomers and sustaining for existing members. Historical movements have often

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4:35

“Welfare tech should be developed by welfare people”...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/06/30

This is a lightly-edited memo I wrote for the 2025 Animal Advocacy Strategy Forum, which were encouraged to be highly opinionated to generate strategy discussion. It seems strange to me that animal advocates rely on animal ag to come up with the solutions that we want to see. We identify a problem, we look to see what exists in the world, we try to find the best of those things, and then we try to get them implemented. I would like to see welfare-oriented engineers actively develop the tech that we

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24:30

“Should EAs pay more attention to Climate Tipping...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/06/28

Climate change doesn't rank as a top EA cause area because it already receives substantial funding, is less neglected than other risks, and—under gradual-warming scenarios—seems unlikely to cause human extinction. I broadly agree with that assessment. Yet some problems under the climate umbrella do fit EA criteria of scale, neglectedness, and tractability. Climate tipping points in particular could trigger catastrophic feedback loops—mass human suffering, great-power conflict, biodiversity

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28:41

“Morality Isn’t Objective” by Noah Birnbaum

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/06/27

In response to Matthew's post about the objectivity of morality, I'd thought I'd throw out a(n initially -- this became much longer than I was expecting) short post explaining why I think this view is pretty implausible. I have another post on my Substack that shows why I think some other arguments for moral realism fail (though I'm not sure I endorse everything I argue there anymore...). If you like this one, check it out! Note: The formatting of this article got a little messed up (inconsistent

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20:39

[Linkpost] “Reducing suffering given long-term...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/06/27

This is a link post. An objection against trying to reduce suffering is that we cannot predict whether our actions will reduce or increase suffering in the long term. Relatedly, some have argued that we are clueless about the effects that any realistic action would have on total welfare, and this cluelessness, it has been claimed, undermines our reason to help others in effective ways. For example, DiGiovanni (2025) writes: “if my arguments [about cluelessness] hold up, our reason to work on EA

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31:56

[Linkpost] “The Industrial Explosion” by rosehadshar

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/06/27

This is a link post. Summary To quickly transform the world, it's not enough for AI to become super smart (the "intelligence explosion"). AI will also have to turbocharge the physical world (the "industrial explosion"). Think robot factories building more and better robot factories, which build more and better robot factories, and so on. The dynamics of the industrial explosion has gotten remarkably little attention. This post lays out how the industrial explosion could play out, and how quickly

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32:15

[Linkpost] “The Industrial Explosion” by rosehadshar,...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/06/27

This is a link post. Summary To quickly transform the world, it's not enough for AI to become super smart (the "intelligence explosion"). AI will also have to turbocharge the physical world (the "industrial explosion"). Think robot factories building more and better robot factories, which build more and better robot factories, and so on. The dynamics of the industrial explosion has gotten remarkably little attention. This post lays out how the industrial explosion could play out, and how quickly

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11:59

“Anchoring AI and Animals” by Kevin Xia 🔸

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/06/27

Many thanks to Max Taylor, Alistair Stewart, Albert Didriksen, Jeff and Johannes Pichler for feedback on this post. All mistakes are my own. This post does not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.Executive Summary I believe that AI development could have an outsized impact on animal welfare and that these stakes warrant deep investigation. However, the complexity and uncertainty involved make it difficult to approach this. This post outlines three robust anchor points— concepts that we

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1:16

[Linkpost] “Is it even possible to convince people to...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/06/27

This is a link post. Kenny Torrella at Vox has written a nice piece on demand-side interventions to reduce meat consumption, and what we might lose if we focus entirely on producers and politics (supply-side interventions). The article focuses on the results of a very nice preprint about the effects of watching Dominion (Kramer and Landry 2025) and also covers a meta-analysis I worked on, and previously summarized on the forum. I am quoted in the article, and I very much believe this: “I think

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12:27

“The Practical Value of Flawed Models: A Response to...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/06/26

Crossposted from my Substack. @titotal recently posted an in-depth critique of AI 2027. I'm a fan of his work, and this post was, as expected, phenomenal*. Much of the critique targets the unjustified weirdness of the superexponential time horizon growth curve that underpins the AI 2027 forecast. During my own quick excursion into the Timelines simulation code, I set the probability of superexponential growth to ~0 because, yeah, it seemed pretty sus. But I didn’t catch (or write about) the full

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14:32

[Linkpost] “Why we ignore the suffering of wild...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/06/26

This is a link post. A hidden crisis Literally, quintillions1 of animals are suffering and dying right now in the wild, due to disease, hunger, thirst, excessive heat or cold, and other factors. Yet, most people—including those who express concern for animals—fail to give importance to this issue. Why? In this article, we explore the cognitive biases2 that lead us to ignore one of the world's largest sources of suffering and death.3 Understanding these biases can help us think more clearly about our

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45:10

“Summary of John Halstead’s Book-Length Report on...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/06/25

1 Introduction (Crossposted from my blog--formatting is better there). Very large numbers of people seem to think that climate change is likely to end the world. Biden and Harris both called it an existential threat. AOC warned a few years ago that “the world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.” Thunberg once approvingly cited a supposed “top climate scientist” making the claim that “climate change will wipe out humanity unless we stop using fossil fuels over the next

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25:52

“A History of Global Development” by DavidNash

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/06/25

Summary I've recently completed a 7 week series on global development, I thought it would be useful to share each week on the forum as well in case people missed the announcement post. The aim is to give people a more comprehensive overview of the global development landscape, either for those considering working/donating in this area, or if you are already in development but want to consider switching focus. It seemed to me that resources in development & EA spaces were narrowly focused, with

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2,311 results

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