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Hey, there's a new university around!
EAs have long floated the idea of starting or buying a university, but a group of sustainability activists and experts has actually done so. It's privately funded, accredited in Germany, offers bachelor's, master's and MBA degrees. Teaching is online-only, I suppose for cost savings and global inclusivity.
What do you think?
Do you have any takes on insect farming? There's a company that sells protein powder made from crickets, and they basically claim they feel no pain and are super efficient. Could that be on the same scale or even better than vegan protein powder, made from e.g. peas?
Tomasik 2019, Tomasik 2017a and Tomasik 2017b argue against this:
- Even if insects are unlikely to be sentient, assuming marginally decreasing sentience with neuron count and nonzero probability of insect sentience imply that eating bigger animals is probably better.
- The conditions of insects in insects farming are pretty bad.
- Eating plants is usually more efficient.
I'm quite excited about cricket protein! Nutritionally it's superior to vegan protein supplements, especially for people who are otherwise vegan and won't get animal protein.
My intuition is that it very much comes down to whether one views an undisturbed cricket life as net-positive or negative. A cricket farm breeds millions of crickets in a 6 week cycle where the crickets are frozen to death not long before they naturally would die of old age.
Rethink Priorities recently incubated the insect institute who I think are exploring insect sentience. They're more qualified to speak on this than I am.
EDIT: turns out I don't know shit about crickets or nutrition. Rethink has a cool report on insect farming, also points out my claim on their death being soon before natural old age is likely wrong. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ruFmR5oBgqLgTcp2b/insects-raised-for-food-and-feed-global-scale-practices-and#Cricket_farming_practices_and_conditions
There’s nothing magical about “animal protein.” Plants and plant-based protein powders provide the same nutrients, minus the moral atrocity.
Insect sentience is debated, but I’m not sure why we’d take the risk when we can just go vegan.
I’m highly skeptical that farmed crickets would live “undisturbed” lives, given the historical track record of how animals are treated when we optimize their lives for meat production rather than their own welfare. Generally, we should treat sentient beings as an end in themselves, not as a means to an end.
This is a common misconception!
- Several plants, including soy and quinoa, are complete proteins.
- Vegan protein powders contain all the amino acids in appropriate ratios – just check the label of any pea protein powder next time you’re at the store. Pea protein powder is nutritionally identical to whey for all intents and purposes.
- If you eat enough calories and a variety of legumes and grains as a vegan, it’s basically impossible to be deficient in any amino acid. It’s true that plant foods have amino acids in varying amounts, but they complement each other such that you easily get all of the amino acids, unless you’re on a black beans-only diet or something. For example, a peanut butter sandwich is a complete protein. I’d encourage you to check out this article for more info on vegan protein.
Nutritionfacts.org, veganhealth.org, and the vegan.com guide are all great resources, I recommend looking into it!
I’ve been vegan for three years, and I’m in good health. Years ago I would have said that being vegan sounded impossible, but it’s much easier than I would have expected. Happy to set up a call to chat about vegan nutrition if you’re ever interested.
Bioavailability stuff is pretty technical and I’m not an expert, but here’s the upshot according to me:
Bioavailability is sometimes slightly lower in plants but not enough to matter. For example, a recent review stated:
There is very little evidence at present regarding a marked difference in protein digestibility in humans. The more precise data collected so far in humans, assessing real (specific) oro-ileal nitrogen digestibility, has shown that the differences in the digestibility between plant and animal protein sources are only a few percent, contrary to historical findings in rats or determinations using less precise methods in humans. For soy protein isolate, pea protein flour or isolate, wheat flour and lupine flour, the figures were 89–92%, similar to those found for eggs (91%) or meat (90–94%), and slightly lower than those reported for milk protein (95%).
Additionally, combining multiple plant sources in one meal (e.g. soy and potato) often achieves bioavailability competitive with meat (I think this is one reason why many vegan protein powders combine multiple ingredients, e.g. rice & pea protein). So the generic vegan advice of “eat a variety of foods and supplement B12” has this covered.
In the rich world, we get way more protein than we need, so vegans are very unlikely to end up protein deficient due to bioavailability issues.
And if you’re an athlete or trying to bulk up, I think it’s generally advisable to err on the side of overshooting your protein intake targets, even if you’re eating meat. Slightly overshooting your protein target should more than compensate for any bioavailability gap.
We can also measure protein synthesis and muscle strength and mass directly instead of using bioavailability as a proxy, and such studies don’t find downsides to plant protein. Germany’s strongest man can confirm.
Also, things are more forgiving when one eats -- as the typical Westerner does -- significantly more overall protein than actually needed. On the other hand, the third bullet point might not always hold for those following low-calorie diets (which can be appropriate on medical advice) or who have certain medical conditions.
Local groups have an opportunity to do much more than just creating and connecting local effective altruists. Being local to a place, we have special knowledge and influence. A few ideas:
- Fundraising for effective charities: Being local, we can promote effective organisations to local rich people.
- Help existing local organisations to be more effective.
- Manage a small fund and be forced to actually live and think through the challenges of prioritization.
Anything else?
See this post on "local priorities research" for more ideas. The author shares this "non-exhaustive list of examples":
- Local cause area prioritisation
- Local problem profile research
- High impact local career pathway research
- Risk assessment
- Giving and philanthropy landscape research
- Charity evaluation
- Public policy research
- Analysis of the convergence and divergence between EA and local culture/religion/ethics
Curated and popular this week
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I am writing this to reflect on my experience interning with the Fish Welfare Initiative, and to provide my thoughts on why more students looking to build EA experience should do something similar.
Back in October, I cold-emailed the Fish Welfare Initiative (FWI) with my resume and a short cover letter expressing interest in an unpaid in-person internship in the summer of 2025. I figured I had a better chance of getting an internship by building my own door than competing with hundreds of others to squeeze through an existing door, and the opportunity to travel to India carried strong appeal. Haven, the Executive Director of FWI, set up a call with me that mostly consisted of him listing all the challenges of living in rural India — 110° F temperatures, electricity outages, lack of entertainment… When I didn’t seem deterred, he offered me an internship.
I stayed with FWI for one month. By rotating through the different teams, I completed a wide range of tasks:
* Made ~20 visits to fish farms
* Wrote a recommendation on next steps for FWI’s stunning project
* Conducted data analysis in Python on the efficacy of the Alliance for Responsible Aquaculture’s corrective actions
* Received training in water quality testing methods
* Created charts in Tableau for a webinar presentation
* Brainstormed and implemented office improvements
I wasn’t able to drive myself around in India, so I rode on the back of a coworker’s motorbike to commute. FWI provided me with my own bedroom in a company-owned flat. Sometimes Haven and I would cook together at the residence, talking for hours over a chopping board and our metal plates about war, family, or effective altruism. Other times I would eat at restaurants or street food booths with my Indian coworkers. Excluding flights, I spent less than $100 USD in total. I covered all costs, including international transportation, through the Summer in South Asia Fellowship, which provides funding for University of Michigan under
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This is a personal essay about my failed attempt to convince effective altruists to become socialists. I started as a convinced socialist who thought EA ignored the 'root causes' of poverty by focusing on charity instead of structural change. After studying sociology and economics to build a rigorous case for socialism, the project completely backfired as I realized my political beliefs were largely psychological coping mechanisms.
Here are the key points:
* Understanding the "root cause" of a problem doesn't necessarily lead to better solutions - Even if capitalism causes poverty, understanding "dynamics of capitalism" won't necessarily help you solve it
* Abstract sociological theories are mostly obscurantist bullshit - Academic sociology suffers from either unrealistic mathematical models or vague, unfalsifiable claims that don't help you understand or change the world
* The world is better understood as misaligned incentives rather than coordinated oppression - Most social problems stem from coordination failures and competing interests, not a capitalist class conspiring against everyone else
* Individual variation undermines class-based politics - People within the same "class" have wildly different cognitive traits, interests, and beliefs, making collective action nearly impossible
* Political beliefs serve important psychological functions - They help us cope with personal limitations and maintain self-esteem, often at the expense of accuracy
* Evolution shaped us for competition, not truth - Our brains prioritize survival, status, and reproduction over understanding reality or being happy
* Marx's insights, properly applied, undermine the Marxist political project - His theory of ideological formation aligns with evolutionary psychology, but when applied to individuals rather than classes, it explains why the working class will not overthrow capitalism.
In terms of ideas, I don’t think there’s anything too groundbreaking in this essay. A lot of the
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I’m a long-time GiveWell donor and an ethical vegan. In a recent GiveWell podcast on livelihoods programs, providing animals as “productive assets” was mentioned as a possible program type. After reaching out to GiveWell directly to voice my objection, I was informed that because GiveWell’s moral weights currently don’t include nonhuman animals, animal-based aid is not categorically off the table if it surpasses their cost-effectiveness bar.
Older posts on the GiveWell website similarly do not rule out animal donations from an ethical lens.
In response to some of the rationale GiveWell shared with me, I also want to proactively address a core ethical distinction:
* Animal-aid programs involve certain, programmatic harm to animals (breeding, confinement, separation of families, slaughter).
* Human-health programs like malaria prevention have, at most, indirect and uncertain effects on animal consumption (by saving human lives), which can change over time (e.g., cultural shifts, plant-based/cultivated options).
Constructive ask to GiveWell: Until you have publicly considered how to incorporate animal welfare into your moral weights, please avoid funding programs that use animals as aid.
I share this with respect for GiveWell’s impact and to help animal rights-aligned donors make informed choices. If I’ve misunderstood anything, I’m happy to be corrected.
See this post on "local priorities research" for more ideas. The author shares this "non-exhaustive list of examples":