Best Outside curators Podcasts (2024)

1
“Most smart and skilled people are outside of the EA/rationalist community: an analysis” by titotal 28:22

6d ago28:22

28:22

This is a link post. Introduction: The (highly interrelated) effective altruist and Rationalist communities are very small on a global scale. Therefore, in general, most intelligence, skill and expertise is outside of the community, not within it. I don’t think many people will disagree with this statement. But sometimes it's worth reminding people…

1
“Warren Buffett changes giving plans (for the worse)” by katriel 2:08

1h ago2:08

2:08

This is a link post. Folks in philanthropy and development definitely know that the Gates Foundation is the largest private player in that realm by far. Until recently it was likely to get even larger, as Warren Buffet had stated that the Foundation would receive the bulk of his assets when he died. A few weeks ago, Buffet announced that he had cha…

1
“Rethink Priorities’ Moral Parliament Tool” by Derek Shiller, arvomm, Bob Fischer, Hayley Clatterbuck 30:17

4h ago30:17

30:17

Link to tool: https://parliament.rethinkpriorities.org (1 min) Introductory Video (6 min) Basic Features Video Executive Summary This post introduces Rethink Priorities’ Moral Parliament Tool, which models ways an agent can make decisions about how to allocate goods in light of normative uncertainty. We treat normative uncertainty as uncertainty ov…

1
“Destabilization of the United States: The top X-factor EA neglects? ” by Yelnats T.J. 1:23:59

2d ago1:23:59

1:23:59

Highlights Destabilization could be the biggest setback for great power conflict, AI, bio-risk, and climate disruption. Polarization plays a role in nearly every causal pathway leading to destabilization of the United States, and there is no indication polarization will decrease. The United States fits the pattern of past democracies that have desc…

1
“Against Aschenbrenner: How ‘Situational Awareness’ constructs a narrative that undermines safety and threatens humanity” by GideonF 41:43

2d ago41:43

41:43

Summary/Introduction Aschenbrenner's ‘Situational Awareness’ (Aschenbrenner, 2024) promotes a dangerous narrative of national securitisation. This narrative is not, despite what Aschenbrenner suggests, descriptive, but rather, it is performative, constructing a particular notion of security that makes the dangerous world Aschenbrenner describes mor…

1
“The Precipice Revisited” by Toby_Ord 32:48

1h ago32:48

32:48

I'm often asked about how the existential risk landscape has changed in the years since I wrote The Precipice. Earlier this year, I gave a talk on exactly that, and I want to share it here. Here's a video of the talk and a full transcript. In the years since I wrote The Precipice, the question I’m asked most is how the risks have changed. It's now …

1
“Reliable Sources: The Story of David Gerard” by TracingWoodgrains 1:30:21

1d ago1:30:21

1:30:21

This is a linkpost for https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/reliable-sources-how-wikipedia-admin, posted in full here given its relevance to this community. Gerard has been one of the longest-standing malicious critics of the rationalist and EA communities and has done remarkable amounts of work to shape their public images behind the scenes. Note: …

1
“80,000 hours should remove OpenAI from the Job Board (and similar EA orgs should do similarly)” by Raemon 12:45

8d ago12:45

12:45

I haven't shared this post with other relevant parties – my experience has been that private discussion of this sort of thing is more paralyzing than helpful. I might change my mind in the resulting discussion, but, I prefer that discussion to be public. I think 80,000 hours should remove OpenAI from its job board, and similar EA job placement serv…

1
“We’ve renamed the Giving What We Can Pledge” by Alana HF, Giving What We Can 8:00

8d ago8:00

8:00

This is a link post. The Giving What We Can Pledge is now the 🔸10% Pledge! We cover the why (along with our near-term plans and how you can help!) below. TL;DR: The name change will help us grow awareness of the pledge by reducing brand confusion and facilitating partnerships. We see it as an important part of reaching our goal of 10,000 pledgers b…

1
“AMA: Beast Philanthropy’s Darren Margolias” by Beast Philanthropy, GiveDirectly 1:15

10d ago1:15

1:15

From Darren Margolias: I'm the Executive Director of Beast Philanthropy, the charity founded by the world's most popular YouTuber MrBeast. We recently collaborated with GiveDirectly on the video below. You can read background the project from our LinkedIn here and here (plus GiveDirectly's blog) On Thursday, July 18th I'll be recording a video AMA …

1
“Do What You Can (A Poem)” by ElliotTep 6:12

15d ago6:12

6:12

Audio is here if you prefer. Hope you like it. I got something to offer, all I ask is your time. And forgiveness for the form: a cheesy rhyme. You’re skeptical? Makes sense. But I know your type's vice. You strike me as a purveyor, of do-gooder advice. And it's pretty damn good, I don't mean to boast, This advice always fits. Well…sort of. Almost! …

1
“Center for Effective Aid Policy has shut down” by MathiasKB🔸 17:23

17d ago17:23

17:23

May 2024 marked the last month of the Center for Effective Aid Policy. This post serves as the public post-mortem. I have strived for it to be interesting to the average forum reader, who may not know much about the cause area. For professionals in development, we have a few internal private write ups which we may be more interesting, such as an ov…

1
“How can we get the world to talk about factory farming?” by LewisBollard 13:37

17d ago13:37

13:37

This is a link post. Note: This post was crossposted from the Open Philanthropy 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. Silence favors the status quo, which doesn’t favor animals It's easy to ignore factory farming. Inflation sparks public d…

1
“Animal Welfare Fund: Payout recommendations from May 2022 to March 2024” by Linch, kierangreig, KarolinaSarek, Zoë Sigle, Neil_Dullaghan 21:41

19d ago21:41

21:41

This payout report covers the Animal Welfare Fund's grantmaking from May 1 2022 to March 31st 2024 (23 months). It follows the previous March-April 2022 payout report. Since the previous report was written, the Animal Welfare Fund made a conscious decision to deprioritize public reports so that fund managers can have more time and capacity to work …

1
“Detecting Genetically Engineered Viruses With Metagenomic Sequencing” by Jeff Kaufman 14:15

19d ago14:15

14:15

This is a link post. This represents work from several people at the NAO. Thanks especially to Dan Rice for implementing the duplicate junction detection, and to @Will Bradshaw and @mike_mclaren for editorial feedback. Summary If someone were to intentionally cause a stealth pandemic today, one of the ways they might do it is by modifying an existi…

1
“Announcing The Moral Circle: Who Matters, What Matters, and Why” by jeffsebo 1:46

13d ago1:46

1:46

Hi all, just a short post to let you know that my next book, The Moral Circle: Who Matters, What Matters, and Why, is now available for preorder! This is the publisher's description: "Today, human exceptionalism is the norm. Despite occasional nods to animal welfare, we focus on humanity, often neglecting the welfare of a vast number of beings. In …

1
Episode 12: The Friendly Ghost 10:50

14d ago10:50

10:50

Not all ghost stories have to be terrifying. Elizabeth shares with us the story of a helpful spirit. Music by TunePocketBy Tom Castanos

1
“Distancing EA from rationality is foolish” by Jan_Kulveit 4:29

15d ago4:29

4:29

Recently, I've noticed a growing tendency within EA to dissociate from Rationality. Good Ventures have stopped funding efforts connected with the rationality community and rationality, and there are increasing calls for EAs to distance themselves. This trend concerns me, and I believe it's good to make a distinction when considering this split. We …

1
“Ten minutes to speak up for ~4.5 million caged chickens” by Ben Stevenson 5:41

23d ago5:41

5:41

(You can read this post as a Google Doc. You might find this easier to share with animal-sympathetic non-EAs. Also: I work at Rethink Priorities, but I'm writing in a personal capacity.) A few weeks ago, I shared some suggested responses for a Defra consultation on welfare labelling. I was really pleased to hear that many EAs and animal rights advo…

1
“Kaya Guides Pilot Results” by RachelAbbott 32:50

19d ago32:50

32:50

Summary. Who We Are: Kaya Guides runs a self-help course on WhatsApp to reduce depression at scale in low and middle-income countries. We help young adults with moderate to severe depression. Kaya currently operates in India. We are the world's first nonprofit implementer of Step-by-Step, the World Health Organization's digital guided self-help pro…

1
“Are our Top Charities saving the same lives each year?” by GiveWell 51:14

27d ago51:14

51:14

This is a link post. Author: Adam Salisbury, Senior Research Associate In a nutshell We’ve had a longstanding concern that some of our top charity programs, including insecticide-treated nets, seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC), and vitamin A supplementation (VAS), may have less impact than we've estimated due to “repetitive saving.” These prog…

1
“Why so many ‘racists’ at Manifest?” by Austin 10:50

1M ago10:50

10:50

Manifest 2024 is a festival that we organized last weekend in Berkeley. By most accounts, it was a great success. On our feedback form, the average response to “would you recommend to a friend” was a 9.0/10. Reviewers said nice things like “one of the best weekends of my life” and “dinners and meetings and conversations with people building local c…

1
“Help Fund Insect Welfare Science” by Bob Fischer, Daniela R. Waldhorn, abrahamrowe 4:00

1M ago4:00

4:00

The Arthropoda Foundation Tens of trillions of insects are used or killed by humans across dozens of industries. Despite being the most numerous animal species reared by animal industries, we know next to nothing about what's good or bad for these animals. And right now, funding for this work is scarce. Traditional science funders won’t pay for it;…

1
“Maybe let the non-EA world train you” by ElliotT 13:56

1M ago13:56

13:56

This post is for EAs at the start of their careers who are considering which organisations to apply to, and their next steps in general. Conclusion up front: It can be really hard to get that first job out of university. If you don’t get your top picks, your less exciting backup options can still be great for having a highly impactful career. If th…

1
Episode 11: Big Birds Over Texas 11:59

29d ago11:59

11:59

Did school teachers outside of San Antonio see pterodactyls in 1976? Were those same birds seen along the Mexican border that same year? Music by TunePocketBy Tom Castanos

1
“Maybe Anthropic’s Long-Term Benefit Trust is powerless” by Zach Stein-Perlman 5:15

1M ago5:15

5:15

Crossposted from AI Lab Watch. Subscribe on Substack. Introduction. Anthropic has an unconventional governance mechanism: an independent "Long-Term Benefit Trust" elects some of its board. Anthropic sometimes emphasizes that the Trust is an experiment, but mostly points to it to argue that Anthropic will be able to promote safety and benefit-sharin…

1
“Summary of Situational Awareness - The Decade Ahead” by OscarD 36:36

1M ago36:36

36:36

Original by Leopold Aschenbrenner, this summary is not commissioned or endorsed by him. Short Summary Extrapolating existing trends in compute, spending, algorithmic progress, and energy needs implies AGI (remote jobs being completely automatable) by ~2027. AGI will greatly accelerate AI research itself, leading to vastly superhuman intelligences b…

1
“I doubled the world record cycling without hands for AMF” by Vincent van der Holst 8:40

1M ago8:40

8:40

A couple weeks ago I announced I was going to try and break the world record cycling without hands for AMF. That post also explains why I wanted to break that record. Last Friday we broke that record and raised nearly €10.000 for AMF. Here's what happened on friday. You can still donate here. What was the old record? Canadian Robert John Murray rod…

1
“Announcing a $6,000,000 endowment for NYU Mind, Ethics, and Policy” by Sofia_Fogel 1:34

1M ago1:34

1:34

The NYU Mind, Ethics, and Policy Program will soon become the NYU Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy (CMEP), our future secured by a generous $6,000,000 endowment. The CMEP Endowment Fund was established in May 2024 with a $5,000,000 gift from The Navigation Fund and a $1,000,000 gift from Polaris Ventures. We now welcome contributions from other …

1
“I bet Greg Colbourn 10 k€ that AI will not kill us all by the end of 2027” by Vasco Grilo 5:57

1M ago5:57

5:57

Agreement 78 % of my donations so far have gone to the Long-Term Future Fund[1] (LTFF), which mainly supports AI safety interventions. However, I have become increasingly sceptical about the value of existential risk mitigation, and currently think the best interventions are in the area of animal welfare[2]. As a result, I realised it made sense fo…

1
“Review of Past Grants: The $100.000 Grant for a Video Game?” by Nicolae 4:29

2M ago4:29

4:29

Since 2017, EA Funds has been providing grants across four distinct cause areas. While there are payout reports available, there is a lack of reports detailing the outcomes of these grants, so I delved out of curiosity into the Grants Database to review some of the proposals that received funding and evaluate their outcomes. Some of the findings we…

1
“A Scar Worth Bearing: My Improbable Story of Kidney Donation” by Elizabeth Klugh 4:48

2M ago4:48

4:48

TL;DR: I donated my kidney and you can too. If that's too scary, consider blood donation, the bone marrow registry, post-mortem organ donation, or other living donations (birth tissue, liver donation). Kidney donation sucks. It's scary, painful, disruptive, scarring. My friends and family urged me not to; words were exchanged, tears were shed. My r…

1
“Introducing Ansh: A Charity Entrepreneurship Incubated Charity” by Supriya 21:45

2M ago21:45

21:45

Executive Summary Ansh, a 1-year-old Charity Entrepreneurship incubated charity, has been delivering an evidence-based, scientifically proven intervention called Kangaroo Care to low birth weight and premature babies in 2 government hospitals in India since January 2024. Ansh estimates that their programs are saving, on average, 4 lives a month per…

1
“Against a Happiness Ceiling: Replicating Killingsworth & Kahneman (2022)” by charlieh943 11:24

2M ago11:24

11:24

Epistemic Status: somewhat confident: I may have made coding mistakes. R code is here if you feel like checking. Introduction: In their 2022 article, Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Kahneman looked to reconcile the results from two of their papers. Kahneman (2010) had reported that above a certain income level ($75,000 USD), extra income had no as…

1
“89%of cage-free egg commitments with deadlines of 2023 or earlier have been fulfilled” by ASuchy 1:07

2M ago1:07

1:07

This is a link post. The report concludes that the cage-free fulfillment rate is maintaining its momentum at 89%. The producer, retailer, and manufacturer industries are some of the most cage-free forward sectors when it comes to fulfillment. Some major companies across sectors that fulfilled their commitments in 2023 (or years ahead of schedule) i…

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

2M 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

2M 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

2M 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

2M 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
“Announcing UK Voters for Animals!” by eleanor mcaree, James Özden, Holly Baines, Alina Salmen, Max Taylor, vicky_cox, Mandy Carter 1:54

2M 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
“What’s Going on With OpenAI’s Messaging?” by Ozzie Gooen 6:31

2M 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

2M 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

2M 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

2M 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

2M 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
“Probably Good launched a new job board!” by Probably Good 3:54

2M 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

2M 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

2M 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

2M 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
“Émile P. Torres’s history of dishonesty and harassment” by anonymous-for-obvious-reasons 1:07:34

3M 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…

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