Best James Ozden Podcasts (2024)

1
“Announcing UK Voters for Animals!” by eleanor mcaree, James Özden, Holly Baines, Alina Salmen, Max Taylor, vicky_cox, Mandy Carter 1:54

8d ago1:54

1:54

We’re excited to announce a new volunteer-run organisation, UK Voters For Animals, dedicated to mobilising UK voters to win key legislative changes for farmed animals. Our goal is to recruit and train voters to meet with MPs and prospective MPs to build political support for our key asks. Due to the upcoming general election, we think this is a cru…

1
“Articles about recent OpenAI departures” by bruce 2:21

4h ago2:21

2:21

This is a link post. A brief overview of recent OpenAI departures (Ilya Sutskever, Jan Leike, Daniel Kokotajlo, Leopold Aschenbrenner, Pavel Izmailov, William Saunders, Ryan Lowe Cullen O'Keefe[1]). Will add other relevant media pieces below as I come across them. Some quotes perhaps worth highlighting: Even when the team was functioning at full ca…

1
“I’m attempting a world record to raise money for AMF” by Vincent van der Holst 5:57

4d ago5:57

5:57

TL;DR It's time for an absurd challenge. On June 7th around 11:00, I'm going to (try to) break the world record for cycling without hands! 🚴🏻‍♂️ For more than 100km, I am raising money for the The Against Malaria Foundation (100% donated, costs covered by my company and myself) with the help of The Life You Can Save. Pledge your donation per kilome…

1
“5 things you’ve got wrong about the Giving What We Can Pledge” by Alana HF, Giving What We Can 11:35

5d ago11:35

11:35

How well do you know the details of the Giving What We Can Pledge? A surprising number of people we’ve spoken to — including many who know a lot about effective giving — shared some or all of these pledge misconceptions. Misconception #1: If you sign the pledge, you have to donate at least 10% of your income each year. The Giving What We Can Pledge…

1
“The Charity Commission has concluded its inquiry into Effective Ventures Foundation UK” by Rob Gledhill 2:10

7d ago2:10

2:10

The Charity Commission for England and Wales has concluded its statutory inquiry into Effective Ventures Foundation UK (EVF UK), which was originally launched in 2023 following the collapse of FTX. The full report on the inquiry can be found here, and the Commission's press release on the inquiry can be found here. The inquiry's scope was to examin…

1
“What’s Going on With OpenAI’s Messaging?” by Ozzie Gooen 6:31

8d ago6:31

6:31

This is a quickly-written opinion piece, of what I understand about OpenAI. I first posted it to Facebook, where it had some discussion. Some arguments that OpenAI is making, simultaneously: OpenAI will likely reach and own transformative AI (useful for attracting talent to work there). OpenAI cares a lot about safety (good for public PR and govern…

1
“GDP per capita in 2050” by Hauke Hillebrandt 41:35

3h ago41:35

41:35

Latest Draft Here Abstract. Here, I present GDP (per capita) forecasts of major economies until 2050. Since GDP per capita is the best generalized predictor of many important variables, such as welfare, GDP forecasts can give us a more concrete picture of what the world might look like in just 27 years. The key claim here is: even if AI does not ca…

1
“Call for Attorneys for OpenAI Employees and Ex-Employees” by Vilfredo’s Ghost 3:52

10d ago3:52

3:52

I am a lawyer. I am not licensed in California, or Delaware, or any of the states that likely govern OpenAI's employment contracts. So take what I am about to say with a grain of salt, as commentary rather than legal advice. But I am begging any California-licensed attorneys reading this to look into it in more detail. California may have idiosyncr…

1
“Marisa, the Co-Founder of EA Anywhere, Has Passed Away” by carrickflynn 2:31

11d ago2:31

2:31

(Apologies for errors or sloppiness in this post, it was written quickly and emotionally.) Marisa committed suicide earlier this month. She suffered for years from a cruel mental illness, but that will not be legacy–her legacy will be the enormous amount of suffering she alleviated for others. In her short life she worked with Rethink Charity, the …

1
“Presenting nine new charities - a record for the AIM (CE) Incubation Program” by CE 37:02

14d ago37:02

37:02

We are thrilled to introduce nine new charities launched through our February-March 2024 Incubation Program. This is an AIM record with an average of five charities launched per round in the previous years. We are also proud to announce that thanks to very generous donors from the Seed Network Funding Circle, these new organizations have secured ov…

1
10 Years Since Veganuary: Co-founders Matthew and Jane reflecting on the past and envisioning the future 51:40

7d ago51:40

51:40

Matthew and Jane co-founded the online campaign Veganuary in 2013, which has encouraged millions of people across the globe to try being vegan for the month of January and beyond. More recently, Matthew launched Veg Capital, an organisation that provides early-stage capital to companies striving to replace the use of animals in our food system and …

1
“Probably Good launched a new job board!” by Probably Good 3:54

17d ago3:54

3:54

We’re excited to share a new addition to our site: an impact-focused job board! We’ve considered launching a job board for some time, so we’re happy to add this feature to the Probably Good site. The job board aims to: Help people find more promising job opportunities, including in cause areas that aren’t as thoroughly covered by other impact-focus…

1
“Why I’m doing PauseAI” by Joseph Miller 7:12

12d ago7:12

7:12

GPT-5 training is probably starting around now. It seems very unlikely that GPT-5 will cause the end of the world. But it's hard to be sure. I would guess that GPT-5 is more likely to kill me than an asteroid, a supervolcano, a plane crash or a brain tumor. We can predict fairly well what the cross-entropy loss will be, but pretty much nothing else…

1
“Updates on the EA catastrophic risk landscape” by Benjamin_Todd 4:15

22d ago4:15

4:15

Around the end of Feb 2024 I attended the Summit on Existential Risk and EAG: Bay Area (GCRs), during which I did 25+ one-on-ones about the needs and gaps in the EA-adjacent catastrophic risk landscape, and how they’ve changed. The meetings were mostly with senior managers or researchers in the field who I think are worth listening to (unfortunatel…

1
“My Lament to EA” by kta 15:08

1h ago15:08

15:08

I am dealing with repetitive strain injury and don’t foresee being able to really respond to any comments. I’m a little hesitant to post this, but I thought I should be vulnerable. Honestly, I'm relieved that I finally get to share my voice. I know some people may want me to discuss this privately – but that might not be helpful to me, as I know so…

1
Sofia Balderson on how rejection can help you grow as an advocate 1:19:52

5d ago1:19:52

1:19:52

Sofia Balderson is the co-founder of Hive, formerly known as Impactful Animal Advocacy, an organisation that aims to improve coordination and collaboration in the farmed animal movement through cultivating impactful, intentional, and serendipitous communities Many listeners may be on the Impactful Advocacy Slack – a Slack workspace with over 2,000 …

1
“Émile P. Torres’s history of dishonesty and harassment” by anonymous-for-obvious-reasons 1:07:34

28d ago1:07:34

1:07:34

This is a cross-post and you can see the original here, written in 2022. I am not the original author, but I thought it was good for more EAs to know about this. I am posting anonymously for obvious reasons, but I am a longstanding EA who is concerned about Torres's effects on our community. An incomplete summary Introduction. This post compiles ev…

1
“Joining the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace” by Holden Karnofsky 3:49

30d ago3:49

3:49

Effective today, I’ve left Open Philanthropy and joined the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace[1] as a Visiting Scholar. At Carnegie, I will analyze and write about topics relevant to AI risk reduction. In the short term, I will focus on (a) what AI capabilities might increase the risk of a global catastrophe; (b) how we can catch early war…

1
“Priors and Prejudice” by MathiasKB 13:26

28d ago13:26

13:26

I Imagine an alternate version of the Effective Altruism movement, whose early influences came from socialist intellectual communities such as the Fabian Society, as opposed to the rationalist diaspora. Let's name this hypothetical movement the Effective Samaritans. Like the EA movement of today, they believe in doing as much good as possible, what…

1
“Announcing The New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness” by Sofia_Fogel 2:13

1M ago2:13

2:13

The last ten years have witnessed rapid advances in the science of animal cognition and behavior. Striking results have hinted at surprisingly rich inner lives in a wide range of animals, driving renewed debate about animal consciousness. To highlight these advances, the NYU Mind, Ethics and Policy Program and NYU Wild Animal Welfare Program co-hos…

1
[Linkpost] “Motivation gaps: Why so much EA criticism is hostile and lazy” by titotal 34:52

1M ago34:52

34:52

Disclaimer: While I criticize several EA critics in this article, I am myself on the EA-skeptical side of things (especially on AI risk). Introduction. I am a proud critic of effective altruism, and in particular a critic of AI existential risk, but I have to admit that a lot of the critcism of EA is hostile, or lazy, and is extremely unlikely to c…

1
Ignacia Uribe on some tough decisions nonprofit leaders have to make 48:56

13d ago48:56

48:56

Short but sweet episode this week from Ignacia, author of a recently released book, CEO of a leading organisation in Latin America and mother to two small kids. We're delighted that Ignacia took time out to talk to us about her experiences right across her contributions for animals. We chat about Fundacion veg and their campaigns in both diet chang…

1
“How good it is to donate and how hard it is to get a job” by Elijah Persson-Gordon 11:29

1M ago11:29

11:29

In this post, I hope to inspire other Effective Altruists to focus more on donation and commiserate with those who have been disappointed in their ability to get an altruistic job. First, I argue that the impact of having a job that helps others is complicated. In this section, I discuss annual donation statistics of people in the Effective Altruis…

1
[Linkpost] “Conferences are great for scientific entrepreneurs” by JP Addison 8:49

1M ago8:49

8:49

Attend his talk if he's giving one By Jacob Trefethen Scientific conferences are great even if you’re an outsider to the field. That's common advice for students, and there are useful guides written on how to get the most out of conferences you're new to. But I suspect people at all career stages could benefit from hearing the advice again – people…

1
“Personal reflections on FTX” by William_MacAskill 1:12

18d ago1:12

1:12

The two podcasts where I discuss FTX are now out: Making Sense with Sam Harris Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg The Sam Harris podcast is more aimed at a general audience; the Spencer Greenberg podcast is more aimed at people already familiar with EA. (I’ve also done another podcast with Chris Anderson from TED that will come out next month,…

1
[Linkpost] “Future of Humanity Institute 2005-2024: Final Report” by Pablo 9:25

1M ago9:25

9:25

Anders Sandberg has written a “final report” released simultaneously with the announcement of FHI's closure. The abstract and an excerpt follow. Normally manifestos are written first, and then hopefully stimulate actors to implement their vision. This document is the reverse: an epitaph summarizing what the Future of Humanity Institute was, what we…

1
“AIM’s new guide to launching a high-impact non-profit policy organization” by CE, weeatquince 2:53

1M ago2:53

2:53

Author: Sam Hilton, AIM Director of Research In March 2021 I received an odd letter. It was from a guy I didn't know, David Quarrey, the UK's National Security Advisor. The letter thanked me for providing external expertise to the UK government's Integrated Review, which had been published that morning. It turns out that the Integrated Review has m…

1
“Understanding FTX’s crimes” by FTXwatcher 43:24

2M ago43:24

43:24

In the aftermath of SBF's convinction, there have been a few posts trying to make sense of FTX. Some people are trying to figure out what happened, and some people are interested in trying to find clever defenses. I'm in a much more boring position: I am confident SBF is the fraud the world believes him to be. I hope this post can provide reasoning…

1
Bob Fischer: The case for including insects in our animal advocacy 1:05:35

1M ago1:05:35

1:05:35

Bob Fischer is the Senior Research Manager at Rethink Priorities and Associate Professor of Philosophy at Texas State University. Can insects feel pain? Should people who care about chickens, cows and pigs also care about reducing the suffering of crickets or black soldier flies? In this episode with Bob Fischer from Rethink Priorities, we try to a…

1
“The Rationale-Shaped Hole At The Heart Of Forecasting” by dschwarz, FutureSearch, Lawrence Phillips, hnykda, Peter Mühlbacher 24:01

2M ago24:01

24:01

Thanks to Eli Lifland, Molly Hickman, Değer Turan, and Evan Miyazono for reviewing drafts of this post. The opinions expressed here are my own. Summary: Forecasters produce reasons and models that are often more valuable than the final forecasts Most of this value is being lost due to the historical practice & incentives of forecasting, and the dif…

1
“UK moves toward mandatory animal welfare labelling” by AdamC 2:38

2M ago2:38

2:38

Here in the UK, the government is consulting on mandatory animal welfare labelling (closing 7 May 2024). People may wish to respond if they want to express their support or share thoughts and evidence that could shape the outcomes. I think such labelling has the potential to significantly improve animal welfare, not just through changing individual…

1
“Why hasn’t EA done an SBF investigation and postmortem?” by RobBensinger 3:43

2M ago3:43

3:43

Is anyone in the world being paid to do an independent investigation of how EA handled Sam Bankman-Fried, with respect to "did we screw up" and "is there stuff we should do differently going forward"? Last I heard, literally nobody was doing this and at least some EA leaders were mostly just hoping that SBF gets memoryholed — but maybe I'm out of t…

1
“Quick Update on Leaving the Board of EV” by Rebecca Kagan 2:29

2M ago2:29

2:29

A brief and belated update: When I resigned from the board of EV US last year, I was planning on writing about that decision. But I ultimately decided against doing that for a variety of reasons, including that it was very costly to me, and I believed it wouldn’t make a difference. However, I want to make it clear that I resigned last year due to s…

1
“Announcing Mandatory Draft Amnesty Day (April 2nd)” by tobytrem 1:12

2M ago1:12

1:12

Following the success of Draft Amnesty Week, the Forum team have decided to take things a bit further. April 2nd 2024 will be Mandatory Amnesty Day (aka MAD). At 09:00 UTC, all draft posts on your Forum account will be posted live on the Forum. All the posts in this section on your profile page deserve to be seen. If you have used our Google Docs i…

1
“Announcement: We are rebranding to Shrimpactful Animal Advocacy” by Impactful Animal Advocacy, Aaron Boddy 3:06

2M ago3:06

3:06

Impactful Animal Advocacy is thrilled to announce that after careful consideration and complex moral calculations, we have decided to rebrand to Shrimpactful Animal Advocacy. Why shrimp, you ask? Well, we've crunched the numbers and determined that improving the welfare of shrimp is one of the highest-impact opportunities in the animal advocacy spa…

1
“Excerpts From The EA Talmud” by Scott Alexander 11:18

2M ago11:18

11:18

(aka "surely we have enough Jews here that at least one person finds this funny") MISHNA: Rabbi Ord says that the three permissible cause areas are global health and development, animal welfare, and long-termism. Why are these the three permissible cause areas? Because any charity outside of these cause areas is a violation of bal tashchit, the pro…

1
“EA is now scandal-constrained” by Guy Raveh 1:44

1M ago1:44

1:44

It's been at least a few months since the last proper EA scandals, and we're now desperately trying to squeeze headlines out of the past ones. On the contrary, a few scandals have been wrapped up: SBF was sentenced to 25 years in prison The investigation regarding Owen Cotton-Barratt presented its findings Whytham Abbey is being sold Indeed, even O…

1
“The Centre for Effective Altruism is spinning out of the Centre for Effective Altruism” by OllieBase 1:48

1M ago1:48

1:48

The Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA), an effective altruism (EA) project which recently spun out of Effective Ventures (EV) is spinning out of the newly established Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA). The current CEO of CEA (the Centre for Effective Altruism), Zach Robinson, CEO of CEA and Effective Ventures (CEOCEV), will be taking the positio…

1
[Linkpost] “Introducing Open Asteroid Impact” by Linch, Austin 2:55

2M ago2:55

2:55

“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” Hillary Clinton, who is still alive I'm proud and excited to announce the founding of my new startup, Open Asteroid Impact, where we redirect asteroids towards Earth for the benefit of humanity. Our mission is to have as high an impact as possible. Below, I've copied over the one-pager I've sent pote…

1
[Linkpost] “Open Philanthropy: Our Progress in 2023 and Plans for 2024” by Alexander_Berger 4:41

2M ago4:41

4:41

Like many organizations, Open Philanthropy has had multiple founding moments. Depending on how you count, we will be either seven, ten, or thirteen years old this year. Regardless of when you start the clock, it's possible that we’ve changed more in the last two years than over our full prior history. We’ve more than doubled the size of our team (t…

1
“Announcement on the future of Wytham Abbey” by Rob Gledhill 1:01

1M ago1:01

1:01

The Wytham Abbey Project is closing. After input from the Abbey's major donors, the EV board took a decision to sell the property. This project's runway will run out at the end of April. After this time, the project will cease operations, and EV UK will oversee the sale of the property. The Wytham Abbey team have been good custodians of the venue d…

1
Kristie Middleton on why engineering breakthroughs are essential for low-cost plant-based alternatives 1:11:25

2M ago1:11:25

1:11:25

Kristie Middleton is vice president of business development for Rebellyous Foods where she and her team help institutions add more plant-based options to their menus. Kristie’s also the author of MeatLess: Transform the Way You Eat and Live—One Meal at a Time and a long-time animal advocate. Rebellyous Foods has created novel manufacturing technolo…

1
“Killing the moths” by Bella 8:31

1M ago8:31

8:31

This post was partly inspired by, and shares some themes with, this Joe Carlsmith post. My post (unsurprisingly) expresses fewer concepts with less clarity and resonance, but is hopefully of some value regardless. Content warning: description of animal death. I live in a small, one-bedroom flat in central London. Sometime in the summer of 2023, I s…

1
“Unflattering aspects of Effective Altruism” by NunoSempere 1:09

1M ago1:09

1:09

I've been writing a few posts critical of EA over at my blog. They might be of interest to people here: Unflattering aspects of Effective Altruism Alternative Visions of Effective Altruism Auftragstaktik Hurdles of using forecasting as a tool for making sense of AI progress Brief thoughts on CEA's stewardship of the EA Forum Why are we not harder, …

1
“Updates on Community Health Survey Results” by David_Moss, Jamie Elsey, Willem Sleegers 22:10

2M ago22:10

22:10

Satisfaction with the EA community Reported satisfaction, from 1 (Very dissatisfied) to 10 (Very satisfied), in December 2023/January 2024 was lower than when we last measured it shortly after the FTX crisis at the end of 2022 (6.77 vs. 6.99, respectively). However, December 2023/January 2024 satisfaction ratings were higher than what people recall…

1
“The current limiting factor for new charities” by Joey, CE 2:59

2M ago2:59

2:59

TLDR: we think the limiting factor for new charities has shifted from founder talent to early stage funding being the top limiting factor. We have historically written about limiting factors and how they affect our thinking about the highest impact areas. For new charities, over the past 4-5 years, fairly consistently, the limiting factor has been …

1
“The Lack of EA in US Private Foundations” by Kyle Smith 3:23

2M ago3:23

3:23

I've written before about trying to bring US private foundations into EA as major funders. I got some helpful feedback and haven't really pursued it further. I study US private foundations as a researcher and recently conducted a qualitative data collection of staff at 20 very large US private foundations ($100m+ assets). The subject of the study i…

1
“The Scale of Fetal Suffering in Late-Term Abortions” by Ariel Simnegar 5:52

2M ago5:52

5:52

This is a draft amnesty post. Summary. It seems plausible that fetuses can suffer from 12 weeks of age, and quite reasonable that then can suffer from 24 weeks of age. Some late-term abortion procedures seem that they might cause a fetus excruciating suffering. Over 35,000 of these procedures occur each year in the US alone. Further research would …

1
“EA ‘Worldviews’ Need Rethinking” by Richard Y Chappell 5:52

2M ago5:52

5:52

I like Open Phil's worldview diversification. But I don't think their current roster of worldviews does a good job of justifying their current practice. In this post, I'll suggest a reconceptualization that may seem radical in theory but is conservative in practice. Something along these lines strikes me as necessary to justify giving substantial s…

1
“We Did It! - Victory for Octopus in Washington State” by Tessa @ ALI 6:31

2M ago6:31

6:31

In 2022, Aquatic Life Institute (ALI) led the charge in Banding Together to Ban Octopus Farming. In 2024, we are ecstatic to see these efforts come to fruition in Washington State. This landmark achievement underscores our collective commitment to rejecting the introduction of additional animals into the seafood system and positions Washington Stat…

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