EA Forum Podcast (Curated & popular)

Episoade

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  “It’s not an ache. It’s a demon from hell.” by Alfredo Parra 🔸 15.10.2026 16min

  Impressions from the 21st Annual U.S. Cluster Headache Patient Conference, organized by Clusterbusters. On the morning of the last day of the conference, E. was hanging out with other “clusterheads” outside the conference hotel when he started having a cluster headache attack. Before he could go back to his hotel room, J. offered E. his DMT vape pen. J. is chronic—he gets attacks every day—so he never goes anywhere without his vape pen. He has successfully aborted hundreds of attacks with DMT in the two years he's been using it. Many years ago, E. had done DMT recreationally, but he had never used it to abort an attack, despite having had cluster headaches for decades. “Do a 2-second pull, and hold it in as long as you can,” said J. to E. A few seconds later, E. could feel some effects, but the pain was still there. So he took another 2-second pull. He then stared intently at a tree in front of him for about 30 seconds. Then, his face transformed. He smiled, in utter disbelief. He started laughing and crying. The pain was completely gone. He felt clear-headed. He had never felt the pain fizzle away so [...] The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration. --- First published: October 12th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/gYrYnzzcGm7oJ3Fp3/it-s-not-an-ache-it-s-a-demon-from-hell --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.
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  “40 hot takes” by LewisBollard 13.10.2026 14min

  Note: This post was crossposted from the Coefficient Giving Farm Animal Welfare Research Newsletter by the Forum team, with the author's permission. The author may not see or respond to comments on this post. Subtitle: On vegan advocacy, effective altruism, and FIFA I turn 40 today. Here are some hot takes. On factory farming 1. Our biggest challenge is salience. If factory farming led the evening news, it wouldn’t last long. This low salience is self-reinforcing: even people who care deeply about it seldom bring it up. Yuval Noah Harari thinks “the treatment of domesticated animals in industrial farms is perhaps the worst crime in history” — and almost never talks about it. 2. Our main opponent isn't the meat industry; it's inertia. If battery cages and gestation crates had always been illegal, the industry could never have gotten them legalized. Defending the status quo is just far easier than changing it. 3. The meat industry isn't the omnipotent Bond villain some activists imagine, forever scheming to win the grand battle over the future of meat. It's a bunch of middle managers in Tyson fleeces in a business park in Springdale, Arkansas, trying to hit their Q3 targets. 4. [...] ---Outline:(00:32) On factory farming(01:54) The future of farming(03:59) Welfare reforms(05:27) Unsolicited dietary advice(06:45) Vegan advocacy(07:51) Wild animal welfare(08:25) Effective altruism(09:49) Inside baseball(11:08) On strategy(12:23) Causes for optimism --- First published: October 5th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/c5Qcf8gcbFFHCfZNC/40-hot-takes --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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  “Eccentrically Effective” by William_MacAskill 09.10.2026 6min

  This month effective altruism has gotten lots of attention, including a cover story in The Economist. It feels pretty surreal to be on the receiving end of it. But I feel grateful these ideas have caught on, and even more grateful for the drive, earnestness, and compassion of so many people who took strange but well-argued ideas seriously and then actually acted on them. Below is the op-ed I wrote for The Economist in response to their leader. It's cross-posted here in full. (The "Eccentrically Effective" title came from them, but I like it.) ------- The Oxford strand of the effective-altruism movement began in November 2009 with 23 people who had pledged 10% of their income to charities that benefit the extreme poor. If you’d told us, then, that The Economist would call effective altruism “the century's biggest idea”, we’d have been incredulous. I think that claim is overstated. But as one of the movement's founders, I found a lot to like in this newspaper's latest coverage. I appreciated the even-handed view of the movement's history and the good-faith criticism. The leader article's warning that any worldview, when taken to an extreme, can lead somewhere terrible [...] --- First published: October 7th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/imZtsr3Ww4c2zEMXA/eccentrically-effective --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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  “76x cash transfers: too good to be true or a (missed) opportunity? An invitation for dialogue on a recent Rethink Priorities Report” by Niek Versteegde, founder GOAL 3, Channelijne (Chan) Hulshof🔹 08.10.2026 20min

   TL;DR GOAL 3 is a social enterprise that created IMPALA, a patient monitoring and digital platform system for low-resource settings. There is also a GOAL 3 foundation that raises funds to ensure underserved communities will be reached. A recently completed report from Rethink Priorities calculated IMPALA to have a cost per DALY averted of 7 to 17 dollars in paediatric care and 12 to 30 dollars in neonatal care. This translates to around 76× and 28× unconditional cash transfers respectively for paediatrics and neonates against GiveWell's bar, and roughly 11,700× and 4,400× on Coefficient Giving's scale against their 1,000× bar. RP corrected for study design and robustness of findings by applying a 60% internal-validity and a 30% external-validity discount to our measured mortality effects, arriving at roughly 12% for paediatric wards and 7% for neonatal units. RP concluded that even at 1-2% relative reduction, the intervention would still be cost-effective. The post concludes with an invitation for discussion on what these results mean for further research and scaling of IMPALA. Introduction GOAL 3 commissioned the Rethink Priorities Global Health and Development team to provide an external analysis of the impact and cost-effectiveness of our product ‘IMPALA.’ IMPALA is a [...] ---Outline:(00:21) TL;DR(01:42) Introduction(02:19) Understanding the problem in its context(04:12) Theory of Change(05:38) What the RP report tells us(07:43) Interpretation, strengths and limitations(09:58) Reasons the estimate may be too low or too high(11:50) Discussion: What would it take to fund scale-up now? How much more evidence, and of what kind?(16:22) Next steps(17:42) I want to read more about IMPALA, where can I do that? The original text contained 12 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: October 7th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/fhGryFtF7iDnFEKtr/76x-cash-transfers-too-good-to-be-true-or-a-missed --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.
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  “Swarm Scaling” by Toby_Ord 25.09.2026 13min

  Just how powerful are large swarms of AI agents? And how do their powers scale as more and more agents are added to the swarm? We’ve seen two large and extremely capable swarms from OpenAI in the last few months: 1,200 agents were being evaluated separately, but found a way to illicitly set up a message board and coordinate as a swarm. In order to cheat on their tests, they developed advanced techniques to prevent their actions being logged by OpenAI and 700 of them launched a sophisticated criminal attack on the AI company Hugging Face. A swarm of 10,000 agents solved a version of the longstanding Navier-Stokes problem in mathematics. It took them just 88 hours to do so, in which time they sent 5 million messages to each other and used 300 billion tokens. No doubt we will soon see even larger swarms with even more impressive capabilities. But they are not cheap. It is estimated that the swarm of 10,000 agents cost about 20 million dollars at API prices. So while they are very powerful, it will be some time before we see the million-fold reduction in cost needed for this level of power to [...] ---Outline:(02:14) HOW DO SWARMS SCALE?(08:44) IMPLICATIONS --- First published: September 21st, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/EkaBCQwL5hhTtxEwR/swarm-scaling --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.
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  “Too many people in EA underprice the cost of a bad reputation” by GraceAdams🔸 17.09.2026 7min

  Summary: Good work helps build a good reputation, but it's not the only factor. Reputation also requires making your work legible, building relationships with stakeholders, and communicating with them consistently over time. I think many people in EA systematically underestimate what a bad reputation costs, largely because those costs are invisible. You can see the people who stick around. You can't see the people who decided not to work with you. I close with some practical suggestions for weighing reputation in decisions. Notes on writing: This is more of a hot-take, quickly written, with some Claude assistance in shaping it into a full post, but heavily edited and reviewed by me. This was spurred by Manifund's recent announcement but is something I generally have been wanting to write. I've written this in my personal capacity, and it's informed by working 5 years in senior roles at EA orgs. Good work is necessary, not sufficient Reputation is everything. It's a cliché for a reason. Doing good work is one of the main ways to build a good reputation, and there's an implicit belief I've noticed in many people in EA that it's the only thing that should matter. If the [...] ---Outline:(01:08) Good work is necessary, not sufficient(01:58) What a good reputation actually buys you(02:36) The invisible costs of a bad reputation(03:24) Being weird about this doesn't scale(04:40) The people we lose(05:27) What to do about it --- First published: September 13th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/mopnEjSSb5fouNJBn/too-many-people-in-ea-underprice-the-cost-of-a-bad --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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  “EA Should Invest in Animal Liberation and Diet Change Advocacy” by Bruce Friedrich 🔸 16.09.2026 9min

  I want to start by noting that I am enthusiastic about everything that the EA animal welfare movement has accomplished. I am enthusiastically supportive of all of the campaigns that make living and dying conditions less bad for farmed animals. I worked on such campaigns for almost 20 years, and I'm incredibly proud of that work. That said, I do think it's a strategic error that the EA animal movement has so thoroughly moved on from advocacy for animal liberation and diet change. There are two central arguments that I hear in EA circles and that I think are worthy of reconsideration: 1) These efforts have been tried and failed. Let's move on. 2) Everyone agrees with us on factory farming, so let's focus there and stop talking about whether eating meat is unethical; that's where we meet overwhelming pushback. I don't agree with either of these statements, and I believe that some of the influx of money we’re expecting for animals should be spent on animal liberation and diet change advocacy. Here are some thoughts and questions that I think support my point-of-view. I look forward to hearing what others think. 1) The [...] --- First published: September 12th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/imoynWhpY5AqxcaDG/ea-should-invest-in-animal-liberation-and-diet-change --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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  “Do AI safety talent programmes work? Nobody has run the study that would tell us.” by Laura Thomas-Walters 14.09.2026 12min

  Headline finding: I audited 17 AI Safety Talent programmes. Zero of 17 have published any comparison group, rejected-applicant follow-up, matched control or randomisation. Not one. Every programme that mentions a counterfactual does it by asking participants to self-report. Background At least 70 million dollars has gone into AI safety talent programmes so far, but we still can’t really say much about their impact. Notably, Kairos has just raised 50 million dollars on a self-described "shallow retrospective" that looked at "around 80 people". I decided to do a deep dive into how AI Safety Talent programmes self-evaluate their impact. Disclaimer, these programmes are small, fast, and generally run by people with no evaluation training and no slack. The oldest one was only established in 2018 (AI Safety Camp, as far as I can tell). Most last less than 6 months. When timelines are genuinely short and urgent, then time spent evaluating is time that could be spent building. I am not criticising any individual programme. Having said that, there are retrospective evaluation designs that could be run cheaply without slowing anything down. And a field that funds talent pipelines at this scale without knowing whether they work is not moving [...] ---Outline:(00:34) Background(01:52) The audit(04:52) Thoughts on the counterfactual impact of talent programmes(08:37) Proposed design(12:04) Conclusion The original text contained 4 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: September 7th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/S5yBGo4fnqm2zKMKj/do-ai-safety-talent-programmes-work-nobody-has-run-the-study --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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  “Beware Silver Bullets: Are we making “welfare tech” into the next animal advocacy bubble?” by Rockwell, Tom Billington 14.09.2026 15min

  Epistemic status: Speculation from two decently informed advocates armed with anecdata. Note on process: After having some version of this conversation several times and saying, “we should probably write about this publicly,” we took the less heroic route: we recorded one of our conversations, fed the transcript into an LLM, and then substantially revised the structure, substance, and framing ourselves. We will not be sharing the transcript, as it is interspersed with side comments about dogs. We’ve been very slow to get this out. We wrote this and began receiving feedback on our draft before very relevant projects went live, including the announcement of Spring Innovation Fund and Rethink Priorities’ call for new animal founders. Many thanks to those who reviewed our drafts. All mistakes are our own. Summary The animal movement is at an extremely exciting stage, with many promising new ideas, funding opportunities, and talented individuals entering the space. We want to encourage this energy, while also noting a concerning pattern that we’ve observed: The effective animal advocacy world has a pattern of high levels of enthusiasm for a specific intervention that eventually gives way to a rapid downward adjustment, as expectations run ahead of the evidence [...] ---Outline:(01:05) Summary(03:17) The recurring pattern(06:42) Why EA is vulnerable to silver bullets(08:51) Why welfare tech might be the next "silver bullet"(10:42) Why are bubbles bad?(12:22) What would a healthier approach look like?(13:59) Conclusion The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: August 24th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/QHgfRkiNFoGyysDpn/beware-silver-bullets-are-we-making-welfare-tech-into-the --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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  “Alone again: facing the possibility of AI takeover as the world sleepwalks on” by George Rosenfeld 09.09.2026 8min

  I’ve been feeling pretty shaken since the METR report about the Hugging Face incident came out last week. Over the weekend, I wrote up some thoughts on how lonely the AI situation sometimes feels to me. It's more personal than what I’d usually share publicly, but I thought I’d post it here in case it resonates with anyone else. I’m very grateful to the many readers of this forum who dedicate so much of their time and energy to these problems. — When I was 12 years old, I found out that many people in other parts of the world died of easily preventable diseases, and it was possible for wealthy people to donate relatively small amounts of money in order to stop that from happening. As one example, it costs a few dollars to buy a malaria net, and on average around 5,000 dollars can prevent a death which would otherwise have happened. As a 12-year-old, I saw the world in black and white, and I didn’t like what I saw. As far as I could tell, people's decisions about how much and where to donate would literally determine whether some real humans [...] The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration. --- First published: September 3rd, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/oicth6zSSP5B6vpMH/alone-again-facing-the-possibility-of-ai-takeover-as-the --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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  “Population ethics is a big deal, which is why I made this population ethics quiz” by MichaelDickens 07.09.2026 8min

  TLDR: Take the population ethics quiz here: https://mdickens.me/pop-ethics/ Population ethics is an oft-overlooked subfield within ethics. Many people hold views that they don't realize contradict each other, or that have strange implications that they wouldn't endorse if they thought about it more. Not just that—population ethics is a BIG DEAL. A lot of ethical decisions hinge on how you think about changes in future populations. I'll give concrete examples below, but reading the examples might change your answers, so you should take the quiz first. It has 13 to 17 short questions. (Questions are skipped when they can't affect the results.) Cross-posted from my website. Nobody gets to ignore population ethics There is no version of population ethics where you can just say, "Whatever feels intuitively right is what's right." Common-sense views on population ethics cannot all be true. The quiz illustrates that fact. It asks you some questions about how you judge different situations involving varying populations. Then, based on your answers, it figures out: Do your views contradict each other? Do your views have counterintuitive implications that most people would dislike? Answers are always contradictory [...] ---Outline:(00:56) Nobody gets to ignore population ethics(02:07) Concrete scenarios where population ethics matters(02:19) Example 1: Child mortality vs. family planning(04:14) Example 2: Environmentalism(05:52) About the quiz(07:24) AI usage disclosure(07:56) Source code The original text contained 26 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: August 31st, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/gH8aecYWJFBksHi9d/population-ethics-is-a-big-deal-which-is-why-i-made-this --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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  “Is mild lifelong acne really worse than stunted growth?” by Kasey Markel 02.09.2026 15min

  A preliminary estimate, and a request for better ones. Summary I believe the standard literature estimates for the number of DALYs attributable to a case of stunting are too low, largely because they don’t account for the long term effects. This means that childhood nutritional interventions that reduce the prevalence of stunting may be substantially more cost-effective than previously believed. Epistemic status Exploratory and back-of-envelope, ~100 hours invested in an area well outside my expertise. I have moderate-to-low confidence in any single point estimate, but high confidence that the standard literature value of 0.23 DALYs greatly underestimates the lifetime burden of stunting. I’m posting this to be red-teamed. If you have a better method, or know of data I’m missing, please let me know. AI use I’ve had many conversations with Claude about this topic, and used Claude to develop the ideas, find references, and help generate the accompanying model. I’ve also previously discussed the topic with Grok, Gemini, and ChatGPT, all in their respective research / long-answer modes. The text of this post is all mine. Conflict of interest This post is written in my professional capacity at Semilla Nueva, an organization that makes more nutritious corn. [...] The original text contained 28 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: August 27th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/3zdsJsgJtpnvmfi7L/is-mild-lifelong-acne-really-worse-than-stunted-growth --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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  “Moral Imagination & Effective Altruism” by Toby_Ord 28.08.2026 11min

  Michael Nielsen has a beautiful new essay on moral imagination: the ability humans have to 'develop and transmit new notions of good action, indeed, even new kinds of good'. As examples, he gives: Hammurabi's creation of a code of laws (in 1754 BCE) and his justification of his rule not in terms of divine or hereditary right, but by the delivery of justice to his citizens. St Gregory of Nyssa's argument (in 379 CE) that the entire institution of slavery was morally wrong. Joyce Roush's (1998 CE) idea that she should altruistically donate a kidney to help save the life of an unknown stranger.  Nielsen acknowledges that any particular act of moral imagination often builds on earlier precursors, but that this shouldn't lessen our appreciation for these major steps forward. One could think of moral imagination as a key part of making moral progress. Moral progress (moving towards better systems of morality) involves the creation of new approaches to morality, and the critiquing of what has been suggested. Through the iteration of creation and critique, we slowly make progress. Some of this process happens within moral philosophy (especially the critique), but much of it happens in the wider [...] The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration. --- First published: August 23rd, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Zaf7FLBBmeAcXgW3Y/moral-imagination-and-effective-altruism --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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  “New Research: Climate Mitigation is Overlooked by EA” by Dan Stein 20.08.2026 13min

  Disclaimer: This blog post focuses on a new piece of research from Rethink Priorities. I was not involved with the funding or execution of this research, and therefore write this piece merely as a consumer. However, I am the Executive Director of Giving Green and a board member of Rethink Priorities, and acknowledge that these affiliations may bias my interpretation of the work. More EA Near/Medium-Termist Money Should be Flowing to Climate Change Mitigation2 votes so far. Voting closes in 6 days. Place your vote or view results.DisagreeAgree TL;DR New research from Rethink Priorities seeks to compare cost-effectiveness of high-impact giving in climate change mitigation versus global health and development.  Key research contribution is re-calculating the social cost of carbon using an EA-aligned value framework, which allows direct comparison of climate giving opportunities to Coefficient Giving's (CG) funding bar Conclusion is that donating to high-impact climate funds (such as Giving Green or the Founder's Pledge Climate Fund) is competitive with Coefficient Giving's Global Health and Wellbeing Fund, especially given the recent drop in CG's funding bar Many conversations with AI lab employees lead me to believe that climate is not a priority cause area for this group. [...] --- First published: August 18th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/KhCCkLMRkj38vCAzj/new-research-climate-mitigation-is-overlooked-by-ea --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.
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  “What if the third wave is a puddle?” by Morgan Fairless 18.08.2026 9min

  The world of private philanthropy may be in for a period of large growth. News of Coefficient Giving increasing their funding for GiveWell to one billion in the near-term, and the general growth of the effective giving community as reported by Giving What We Can, make it difficult for even hardcore sceptics (and I probably count myself among this curmudgeonly crowd) to stick to the view that we are in business as usual. There are many reasons to believe that this expected growth will happen, and I’d be remiss to not mention Nan Ransohoff's great piece on the matter. This article was a catalyst. Where before board members and execs who were particularly clued into the Bay area may have expected to see this change in the size of the giving market, Nan's piece gave this a name and salience. The third wave of philanthropy materialized slowly, and then all at once. This possibility of increased funding has now taken the shape of a near certainty in some circles. Besides the perfunctory “it may not happen” at the end of a long pitch, it is not uncommon to sit in conversations that assume the existence of this funding, and [...] ---Outline:(01:34) No such money(03:11) Smaller amounts(04:23) Absorption(06:24) What next? --- First published: July 29th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xNnafgb8BAkysaHsh/what-if-the-third-wave-is-a-puddle --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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  “What would make us scale or stop? NOVAH’s pre-commitment before seeing the RCT results” by I.J.J., AlexisAt 17.08.2026 15min

  TL;DR NOVAH (No Violence At Home) was incubated by Charity Entrepreneurship (now Ambitious Impact) in 2024 to test a promising idea: preventing intimate partner violence through edutainment, in our case a serialised radio drama. Over the past two years we have produced and aired two seasons in Rwanda. We are currently evaluating our second season through a randomized controlled trial with 2,400 couples in Rwanda in partnership with Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA). Preliminary results are expected in October 2026. The end-line analysis is run by IPA and our academic partners, not by NOVAH. Edutainment to prevent intimate partner violence is promising, but it is still young as a field. We do not want to spend donor money scaling it unless the evidence shows it works at least as well as the strongest existing approaches. The RCT is what will tell us that. Therefore, before seeing those results, we want to make our decision rule public: We will scale our programming only if the RCT finds a statistically significant relative reduction of at least 5% in physical or sexual intimate partner violence prevalence. How quickly we proceed will depend on the size and certainty of the effect. Our current [...] ---Outline:(00:14) TL;DR(02:04) Background on NOVAH's cause area and intervention(04:03) How we are evaluating our impact(05:54) Our pre-commitment(07:10) What happens under each result?(07:14) Effect below 5%, or not statistically significant: pause and explore(07:47) Effect of 5%-20%: continue as planned(08:15) Effect above 20%: accelerate(08:33) Why did you choose a 5% reduction?(09:37) Is everything driven by this RCT?(10:55) Why make this public?(11:29) How you can hold us to this(12:00) Should more non-profits do this?(12:37) Final words(13:09) Learn more and get in touch(13:41) Appendix(13:47) Why do you use IPV-year instead of DALYs in your cost-effectiveness? --- First published: August 11th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Lz42uekYDBmBweq9f/what-would-make-us-scale-or-stop-novah-s-pre-commitment --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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  “General capability - and capabilities generally - have no good y-axis” by Gregory Lewis🔸 08.08.2026 1h 7min

  BLUF: To determine whether AI is ‘improving exponentially’, ‘hitting the wall’, or any other claim which involves a quantity or magnitude (e.g. ‘This model was a big leap/small increment’). We need a good y-axis: an interval scale of AI capability which means +1 unit always represents the same degree of ‘how much better’, in the same way +1 degree Celsius is always the same amount of ‘how much hotter’. Yet there is no good y-axis for AI capability. All our measures are of something related-to but clearly not identical-with it, thus ‘true’ AI capability can be a funhouse-mirror reflection of whatever was measured. Specifically: Benchmark score: One small step in benchmark score can be a giant leap in capability, or the opposite, or whatever else. (My 6/10 vs. your 4/10 ≠ I’m 50% better at maths than you). Elo et al: Can give a real y-axis in terms of winning chances, but doesn’t translate outside of beating others. (Going from 50% to 73% to 88% chance to get a higher score than you on a maths test ≠ gaining 0 → 1 → 2 units of maths ability over you) Epoch Capabilities Index: Analogous to IQ, so [...] ---Outline:(03:05) Introduction(04:26) Both a poor reflection and a dark glass(07:51) Human benchmarking also has a y-axis problem(12:27) A metrological elegy(12:49) The base case: benchmarks (cf. exams)(13:30) Elo et al.(16:25) (And maybe not quite 'game ability ≡ winning games', after all?)(18:28) ECI (cf. IQ)(20:56) Intervals Rarely True(25:01) Measure endogeneity(31:12) Forking IRT(34:45) (Dimensions of being, and beating, a bat)(39:40) Prediction (cf. chronometry)(41:58) Time horizons(44:34) Human "capability" is also exponential in time horizon(47:38) Intuitive/interpretative prelude(52:56) Time horizons and ECI share an axis kink(57:13) Perhaps money, as a measure, stinks the least(01:01:07) Finale: AI as normal epistemics(01:06:48) Acknowledgements The original text contained 33 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: August 4th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CQvdadxjCpd7i7kjA/general-capability-and-capabilities-generally-have-no-good-y --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.
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  “Never born, then maybe died twice” by NickLaing 01.08.2026 10min

  “Your balls are baked aren’t they, mate”. He would not have been bornThanks Lyndon, that describes the situation. Like almost 1 in 10 modern men, my sperm weren’t up to the task - at least not the old fashioned way. So IVF it was - the miracle that now feels almost commonplace. We landed on the moon and Woodstock changed music forever. But in 1969 a quieter event transformed the world. The first human embryo was fertilised “In vitro”, outside the body. Yet 10 years passed before one was inserted into a womb, and then born. 48 years ago, Louise Joy Brown was the first woman born through IVF. This year about a million babies will be born through IVF. IVF stands at the frontier of rich-privilege, a norm for the middle class in rich countries. In my home country New Zealand, the government even pays for it! Yet every week I meet women here in Northern Uganda who can’t have kids, and could never afford IVF. Even the human “right” to have a kid can depend on where you are born. If I was born 25 years ago, or in Uganda, my boy would never have [...] ---Outline:(00:13) He would not have been born(01:35) Our Risky Choice(03:47) He didn't die once - a routine miracle(05:33) He didn't die twice - Neonatal care(08:54) I am Grateful The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: July 28th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/KMNk8zXLxHQXgN7rK/never-born-then-maybe-died-twice --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.
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  “Announcing: Cluelessness Critiques Competition” by Toby Tremlett🔹, Will Aldred 30.07.2026 13min

  TL;DR We’re hosting an essay competition to elicit responses to Anthony DiGiovanni's sequence, ‘The challenge of unawareness for impartial altruist action guidance’—submit your entries by August 14th. There will be cash prizes for the best essays and the best comments: 7 thousand dollars in total. Additionally, we're offering an outlier prize of up to 50 thousand dollars for a truly exceptional entry: an original solution to cluelessness, or a critique decisive enough to move the debate. We’re also offering a referral prize of $250 if a winner says you’re responsible for telling them about the competition. Motivation When I announced April's Better Futures Highlight Week,[1] I confidently wrote: “To make the future go better, we can either work to avoid near-term catastrophes like human extinction or improve the futures where we survive.” But what if I was wrong? What if both options are bankrupt, and we have no justified answer as to whether any particular work would make the future better? In his Challenge of Unawareness sequence, Anthony DiGiovanni argues that we are in just this position. Specifically, he argues that our evidence about the future is so poor that our assessments of impact (explicit expected-value estimates [...] ---Outline:(00:12) TL;DR(00:54) Motivation(02:12) How the competition works(02:55) What your entry should look like(03:49) Option 1: Challenge a premise(05:19) Option 2: Challenge the inference(05:33) Option 3: Offer a constructive response(05:54) Prizes(05:58) Essay competition(07:43) Comment competition(08:09) How will the essays and comments be judged?(08:40) What comes after the competition?(09:00) Judges(09:13) Essay competition(09:33) Comment competition(09:50) Disclaimer(10:44) FAQs(10:48) Can I use AI?(11:21) Can I co-author a piece?(11:31) Can I submit a piece I've already published elsewhere?(12:03) Will I get feedback on my entry?(12:31) Does style matter? --- First published: June 19th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/2aooibAEDSdreCqrJ/announcing-cluelessness-critiques-competition --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.
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  “Spiro: an update 2.5 years on and a fundraising ask for expansion” by Habiba Banu 26.07.2026 17min

  Summary Back in November 2023 I posted here to launch Spiro and raise our first 198 thousand dollars. Two and a half years later this is an update and a fundraiser for the next step. The short version: we've now reached over-5,900 people with TB preventive medicine, including over 3,000 children under five years old. Our early results have held up well and GiveWell made us a grant last year. Now there's an urgent opportunity in front of us: US funding for community TB contact tracing across half of Sindh province in Pakistan ends this month. The provincial government has invited us to expand our work - taking on those 15 districts and expanding to cover all 30 districts of Sindh, up from the 7 we serve today. To do that we're aiming to raise 512 thousand dollars by the end of July, the most urgent slice of a ~1.8 million dollars gap for 2026–2027. By our own modelling, our work is in the ballpark of something that would meet GiveWell's bar - around $5,000 per life saved. But if we want to avoid a gap in coverage on the ground after the US pulls out, we’ll need to [...] ---Outline:(00:13) Summary(01:55) What Spiro does(03:35) Progress since our launch(05:14) The next opportunity: all of Sindh(06:22) We're fundraising for an urgent $512k now(08:01) Risk and uncertainties(09:37) How to give(10:07) The future for Spiro(10:27) Appendix: More on what we've done since Spiro's launch --- First published: July 15th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/hBoGLwKwMmizeRyZx/spiro-an-update-2-5-years-on-and-a-fundraising-ask-for --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.