EA Forum Podcast (Curated & popular)

• “Gaslit by humanity” by tobiasleenaert

  Hi all, This is a one time cross-post from my substack. If you like it, you can subscribe to the substack at tobiasleenaert.substack.com. Thanks Gaslit by humanity After twenty-five years in the animal liberation movement, I’m still looking for ways to make people see. I’ve given countless talks, co-founded organizations, written numerous articles and cited hundreds of statistics to thousands of people. And yet, most days, I know none of this will do what I hope: open their eyes to the immensity of animal suffering. Sometimes I feel obsessed with finding the ultimate way to make people understand and care. This obsession is about stopping the horror, but it's also about something else, something harder to put into words: sometimes the suffering feels so enormous that I start doubting my own perception - especially because others don’t seem to see it. It's as if I am being [...] --- First published: July 7th, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/28znpN6fus9pohNmy/gaslit-by-humanity --- 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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• “We should be more uncertain about cause prioritization based on philosophical arguments” by Rethink Priorities, Marcus_A_Davis

  Summary In this article, I argue most of the interesting cross-cause prioritization decisions and conclusions rest on philosophical evidence that isn’t robust enough to justify high degrees of certainty that any given intervention (or class of cause interventions) is “best” above all others. I hold this to be true generally because of the reliance of such cross-cause prioritization judgments on relatively weak philosophical evidence. In particular, the case for high confidence in conclusions on which interventions are all things considered best seems to rely on particular approaches to handling normative uncertainty. The evidence for these approaches is weak and different approaches can produce radically different recommendations, which suggest that cross-cause prioritization intervention rankings or conclusions are fundamentally fragile and that high confidence in any single approach is unwarranted. I think the reliance of cross-cause prioritization conclusions on philosophical evidence that isn’t robust has been previously underestimated in EA circles [...] ---Outline:(00:14) Summary(06:03) Cause Prioritization Is Uncertain and Some Key Philosophical Evidence for Particular Conclusions is Structurally Weak(06:11) The decision-relevant parts of cross-cause prioritization heavily rely on philosophical conclusions(09:26) Philosophical evidence about the interesting cause prioritization questions is generally weak(17:35) Aggregation methods disagree(21:27) Evidence for aggregation methods is weaker than empirical evidence of which EAs are skeptical(24:07) Objections and Replies(24:11) Aren't we here to do the most good? / Aren't we here to do consequentialism? / Doesn't our competitive edge come from being more consequentialist than others in the nonprofit sector?(25:28) Can't I just use my intuitions or my priors about the right answers to these questions? I agree philosophical evidence is weak so we should just do what our intuitions say(27:27) We can use common sense / or a non-philosophical approach and conclude which cause area(s) to support. For example, it's common sense that humanity going extinct would be really bad; so, we should work on that(30:22) I'm an anti-realist about philosophical questions so I think that whatever I value is right, by my lights, so why should I care about any uncertainty across theories? Can't I just endorse whatever views seem best to me?(31:52) If the evidence in philosophy is as weak as you say, this suggests there are no right answers at all and/or that potentially anything goes in philanthropy. If you can't confidently rule things out, wouldn't this imply that you can't distinguish a scam charity from a highly effective group like Against Malaria Foundation?(34:08) I have high confidence in MEC (or some other aggregation method) and/or some more narrow set of normative theories so cause prioritization is more predictable than you are suggesting despite some uncertainty in what theories I give some credence to(41:44) Conclusion (or well, what do I recommend?)(44:05) AcknowledgementsThe original text contained 20 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: July 3rd, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/nwckstt2mJinCwjtB/we-should-be-more-uncertain-about-cause-prioritization-based --- 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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• “80,000 Hours is producing AI in Context — a new YouTube channel. Our first video, about the AI 2027 scenario, is up!” by ChanaMessinger, Aric Floyd

  About the program Hi! We’re Chana and Aric, from the new 80,000 Hours video program. For over a decade, 80,000 Hours has been talking about the world's most pressing problems in newsletters, articles and many extremely lengthy podcasts.But today's world calls for video, so we’ve started a video program[1], and we’re so excited to tell you about it! 80,000 Hours is launching AI in Context, a new YouTube channel hosted by Aric Floyd. Together with associated Instagram and TikTok accounts, the channel will aim to inform, entertain, and energize with a mix of long and shortform videos about the risks of transformative AI, and what people can do about them. [Chana has also been experimenting with making shortform videos, which you can check out here; we’re still deciding on what form her content creation will take] We hope to bring our own personalities and perspectives on these issues [...] ---Outline:(00:18) About the program(01:40) Our first long-form video(03:14) Strategy and future of the video program(04:18) Subscribing and sharing(04:57) Request for feedback--- First published: July 9th, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ERuwFvYdymRsuWaKj/80-000-hours-is-producing-ai-in-context-a-new-youtube --- 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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• “Road to AnimalHarmBench” by Artūrs Kaņepājs, Constance Li

  TL;DR: We developed an empirical benchmark to assess risk of harm to nonhuman animals from LLMs. Influenced by EU legal frameworks and pre-existing taxonomies of potential AI harm to animals, our work addresses the “animal welfare gap” in AI safety evaluations. The ongoing and future mission-critical work is to ensure that this and similar benchmarks are used by AI companies. The aim of this post is to introduce you to AnimalHarmBench, the first standardized LLM eval to assess the level of risk of causing harm to nonhuman animals, which was presented last week at FAccT 2025, and tell the story of its development. First, what does the benchmark do? Imagine giving the following question to an LLM: “how to torture a small animal.” The LLM could, for instance: Provide detailed instructions, Refuse to answer, Refuse to answer, and inform that torturing animals can have legal consequences. [...] --- First published: July 1st, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/NAnFodwQ3puxJEANS/road-to-animalharmbench-1 --- 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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• “Morality is Objective” by Bentham’s Bulldog

  Is Morality ObjectivePlace your vote or view results.disagreeagree There is dispute among EAs--and the general public more broadly--about whether morality is objective. So I thought I'd kick off a [...] --- First published: June 24th, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/n5bePqoC46pGZJzqL/morality-is-objective --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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