Pigeon Hour

SummaryIn this episode, Aaron and Robi reunite to dissect the nuances of effective charitable giving. The central debate revolves around a common intuition: should a donor diversify their contributions across multiple organizations, or go “all in” on the single best option? Robi breaks down standard economic arguments against splitting donations for individual donors, while Aaron sorta kinda defends the “normie intuition” of diversification.The conversation spirals into deep philosophical territory,

A great discussion between my two friends Max Alexander of Scouting Ahead and Robi Rahman (in response to a fundraiser that we wrapped up more than 13 months ago)Tweet with context: https://x.com/AaronBergman18/status/1999918243205779864?s=20Transcript(AI-generated, likely imperfect)MAXHello to the internet, maybe.ROBIHey internet.MAXUm, I’m Max.ROBII’m Robi.MAXUm, thank you all for donating, especially you. Um, so we’re gonna do a vegan version of Hot Ones. I actually don’t know if the camera can

This is an audio readout of my recent post Utilitarians Should Accept that Some Suffering Cannot be “Offset”, also on the EA ForumEnjoy! Get full access to Aaron's Blog at www.aaronbergman.net/subscribe

Preparing for the Intelligence Explosion is a recent paper by Fin Moorhouse and Will MacAskill.* 00:00 - 1:58:04 is me reading the paper.* 1:58:05 - 2:26:06 is a string of random thoughts I have related to itI am well-aware that I am not the world's most eloquent speaker lol. This is also a bit of an experiment in getting myself to read something by reading it out loud. Maybe I’ll do another episode like this (feel free to request papers/other things to read out, ideally a bit shorter than this one

IntroAround New Years, Max Alexander, Laura Duffy, Matt and I tried to raise money for animal welfare (more specifically, the EA Animal Welfare Fund) on Twitter. We put out a list of incentives (see the pink image below), one of which was to record a drunk podcast episode if the greater Very Online Effective Altruism community managed to collectively donate $10,000.To absolutely nobody’s surprise, they did ($10k), and then did it again ($20k) and then almost did it a third time ($28,945 as of March