Articles

Longtermism is a philosophical view based on three key ideas: 1) future people matter just as much as those alive today; 2) the future could be vast; 3) we can reliably influence how it goes.

• The 80,000 Hours podcast interviewed Philip Tetlock about his latest research on making accurate predictions about the future.
• Rethink Priorities published a new report examining features relevant to understanding the potential sentience of different species.
• Luisa Rodiriguez published a series of EA Forum posts outlining the potential consequences of nuclear war.

• Owen Ozier published a history of the Worm Wars, arguing that a simple misunderstanding was behind a massive debate within development economics over the impact of deworming.
• Brian Kateman wrote about the immense suffering animals experience in the wild, and the careful way in which researchers are beginning to approach this problem.
• Ivan Vendrov and Jeremy Nixon wrote an EA Forum post arguing that working on "recommender systems" (like Facebook's News Feed) could help us improve our ideas about AI alignment while also offering an opportunity to improve the lives of hundreds of millions of people (for example, by suggesting content that isn't as psychologically manipulative).

• The Future of Life Institute chose Dr. Matthew Meselson to receive the Future of Life Award, a yearly prize given for “a heroic act that has greatly benefited humankind”. Meselson spent his career advocating against the development and use of biological weapons. [Future of Life Institute]
• Holden Karnofsky wrote about the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, which brought together scientists from both sides of the Iron Curtain to discuss nuclear disarmament. Mostly funded by private donors, the conferences may have influenced several key nuclear treaties; however, it’s unclear whether such strong philanthropic opportunities still exist today. [Open Philanthropy Project]
• Beyond Meat just became the first vegan meat company to go public; the stock price more than doubled in the first day of trading. This may indicate a strong market for similar products being developed by startups and established companies. [Good Food Institute, Bloomberg]

Max: We are effective altruists, and we're trying to help the world. The reason we pick projects is because the effects that we can see -- that is, the first-order effects -- are positive. Maybe there are some negative things in there that we know about, but the stuff that we're seeing is net positive. That's why we're doing the projects.

Rachel Glennerster is the Chief Economist of DFID, the UK's ministry for coordinating international development. In this conversation with Nathan Labenz, she discusses the most important lessons she's learned about development and what it really means for a study's result to "generalize".

Are companies better-suited than governments to solve collective action problems around artificial intelligence? Do they have the right incentives to do so in a prosocial way? In this talk, Jade Leung argues that the answer to both questions is "yes".

• Dangerous pathogens like smallpox and SARS aren’t always handled safely by the labs that work on them. Kelsey Piper discusses the many ways in which these errors, which could kill millions of people, take place.
• Davis Kingsley argues that we should be very careful when we discuss dangerous ideas, even if they seem “obvious”.
• Timeless Classic: Lewis Bollard discusses animal advocacy on the 80,000 Hours podcast.

• GiveWell plans to drastically expand their research by examining dozens of new interventions, from economic growth to policy change.
• Bill Gates shared a chart showing massive declines in global poverty, which provoked debate over how much progress we’ve really made.
• The Global Priorities Institute just released their newest research agenda, which summarizes the field of cause prioritization.

• Applications for EA Global San Francisco (June 21-23rd) are open!
• CEA has updated the Group Funding page to better explain the different kinds of funding available for groups, and the application process.
• EA Norway had their annual general assembly with 60 attendees on the second weekend of February, with 3 days of workshops, talks, and official proceedings. They're also co-organising EAGxNordics with EA Sweden.