[Edit: Giving Season plans are live, but I'm still taking suggestions, here or in the comments on the post]

Aiming to finalise plans for Giving Season this week. I'm not running a donation election (for reasons I'll explain in the announcement), which gives us some more space to focus directly on having important conversations to do with funding and resource allocation in the movement. 

I'll run a marginal funding week (week starting 16 Nov - message me if you'd like to take part), and a debate week (planning it for week starting Nov 30). I reckon I have capacity for two more themed weeks, as well as AMAs etc... 

What would you like to see us run over Giving Season? 

As a welcome back gift, @Ollie Etherington reviewed my first claude-coded feature from months ago: multiple-choice polling. It only works in comments so far (though you can still put slider polls in posts. 

To add a multiple choice poll to a comment or quick take, select some text, click the three dot menu in the pop up -> poll dropdown -> select multiple choice. 

They look like this:

I put a little poll here to follow up on whether minds were changed by the cluelessness critiques competition. If you read the posts during that week, check it out. 

It looks like we had a pretty massive bot attack last night, with over 600 accounts logging in and messaging users about an iPad scam. Please don't click on any of their links. The scam looks like this:

We'll remove the accounts, and karma-gate messaging to 10 karma so that this cannot happen again. Sorry everyone - and thanks so much to everyone who reported this. I can't respond to all of you, but thank you. 

Me and @Fran are co-hosting a podcast, The World Can Be Better! (hosted on Substack, also on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube)

In our first co-hosted episode we interview @finm about better futures, the intelligence explosion, and Fin's underrated post 'No ghost in the machine'. 

We'll be recording more episodes soon. We're aiming to a) keep it accessible to an interested but non-specialist audience, and b) to talk to cool people who are working on making the world better. This is on top of full time jobs for both of us, so we're not promising weekly uploads or anything too fancy. 

LMK in the comments or dm if there is someone you'd love to be a guest on our podcast! The ideal guest is a) doing good effectively in an interesting way and b) is down to joke around a bit. 

Podcast episode with @Fran and @NickLaing is here! Turns out Nick's a great guy in real life as well as on the Forum. 

We talked about how One Day Health manages to set up a clinic for $4000, how AI might help One Day's nurses diagnose better (correct diagnosis rates were surprisingly low, even for a limited list of conditions), and much more. Transcript is here if you prefer to skim. 

PS- if you listened, I'm personally keen on getting feedback (Not speaking for Frances here, so via Forum DM please). Also, suggestions for guests are always welcome. 

Me and @Fran are interviewing @GraceAdams🔸 tomorrow evening. Is there anything you'd like us to ask her? 

 

Man, I was just re-reading the 'why I donate' posts while compiling the Digest. Some really beautiful sentiments in there. 

I grew up in a deeply ironic and uncaring culture (i.e. I went to an all boys school). I didn't like it! It means a lot to me to be in a community now where people can write such heartfelt and authentic posts. 

Some of my favourites:

• Lorenzo's post, for a great articulation of money considered as a vote: "€1.70 votes to be allocated into a slice of pizza for Lorenzo" or "$5.85 votes for an insecticide-treated bednet for a family in DRC"
• Aaron's post: this one made me emotional, which surprised me given the Pokemon-rap context. I think it was the picture Aaron made of the world conspiring to create something he loved.
• Bentham's Bulldog: The title alone is wonderful "A Life That Cannot Be A Failure"
  
   

After the initial experiment period, we've decided to keep the featured page.

One of the key graphs in making this decision is below:
 

Now that the featured page is likely to stick around long term, I'd like to start collecting ideas for V2^[1]. Do you use the page? Do you pointedly not use the page? I'd love to get any and all feedback, in the comments here, or via this form. 

Please share small things like aesthetic tweaks as well as larger issues such as a disagreement on the kind of posts that get featured, or how featuring is done. Happy to answer questions too. 

1. ^{^}

   I.e., the current version is a prototype, and I'm ready to do a full redesign if necessary. Because of some protracted OOO I might have to take soon - V2 might land near the end of September, or even early October. 

Just under a month until the Cluelessness Critiques Competition deadline. How's it going? Any hints on what people are writing about? 

Just a reminder that anyone can set off a Forum debate! I'd love to see more of these. 

The RSPCA is holding a "big conversation", culminating in a citizens' assembly. If you have opinions about how animals in the UK are treated (which you probably do), you can contribute your takes here.
A lot of the contributions are very low quality, so I think EA voices have a good chance of standing out and having their opinions shared with a broader audience. 

If you work in an office with other EAs/ interesting and interested people, consider putting the debate slider from our upcoming debate on a big whiteboard. It can lead to some interesting conversations, and even better, some counterfactual forum posts. 
 

PS- I'm aware this looks a bit 'people selling mirrors'

There have been a lot of posts over the last couple of weeks, and when I've been putting together the Digests, I've seen several which seem criminally underrated. 

I'm quick-taking to remind you of the 'customize feed' feature. The link is at the top of the frontpage - click it to decide how your frontpage weights posts on different topics. If Forum readers used this more, there would be less underrated posts (I think!). 

Anyone know any Earn-To-Givers who might be interested in participating in an AMA during Giving Season? If a few are interested, it might be fun to experiment with an AMA panel, where Forum users ask questions, and any of the AMA co-authors can respond/ co-authors can disagree.

Why? Giving Season is, in my opinion, a really great time to highlight the earn-to-give work which is ongoing all year, but is generally under-celebrated by the EA community. + Earn-to-givers might have good insights on how to pick donation targets during the donation election, and Giving Season more generally. 
 

Since we've got so many good entries to the Cluelessness Critiques Competition, I'm currently planning not to feature any of them (even those that would otherwise qualify). This'll mean that you can escape the cluelessness conversation by toggling to the featured page.

Alternatively, on the 'new and upvoted' page, you can customise your feed to hide the Cluelessness Critiques Week tag. 

FYI, next week we will be highlighting the first batch of articles from In Development, @Lauren Gilbert's new global development magazine. 

Lauren and most of the authors will be on the Forum to answer your questions throughout the week. More info to come on Monday, but I figured I'd mention in case anyone wanted to read the articles in advance (they are here, and all authors apart from Paul Niehaus will be around to answer questions). 

I'm looking forward to the discussion. 

You guys overused the button... so we're putting Bulby on bed rest for a bit. 

Look at the poor guy:

Londoners!
@Gemma 🔸 is hosting a co-writing session this Sunday, for people who would like to write "Why I Donate" posts. The plan is to work in poms, and publish something during the session. 

FAQ: “Ways the world is getting better” banner

The banner will only be visible on desktop. If you can't see it, try expanding your window. It'll be up for a week. 

How do I use the banner?

1. Click on an empty space to add an emoji, 
2. Choose your emoji, 
3. Write a one-sentence description of the good news you want to share, 
4. Link an article or forum post that gives more information. 

If you’d like to delete your entry, click the cross that appears when you hover over it. It will be deleted for everyone.

What kind of stuff should I write?

Anything that qualifies as good news relevant to the world's most important problems. 

For example, Ben West’s recent quick takes (1, 2, 3).

Avoid posting partisan political news, but the passage of relevant bills and policies is on topic. 

Will my entry be anonymous?

All submissions are displayed without your Forum name, so they are ~anonymous to users, however, usual moderation norms still apply (additionally, we may remove duplicates or borderline trollish submissions. This is an experiment, so we reserve the right to moderate heavily if necessary).

Ask any other questions you have in the comments below. Feel free to dm me with feedback or comments.

I'm running a session on 'writing on the EA Forum' at EAG London at this moment, and participants are going to reply to this quick take with ideas for Forum posts. 
Please encourage any ideas you'd like to see written up as full posts!

[edit: the forum went down halfway through the activity, there were many more great ideas in the session]

Just wanted to publicly thank @Sudhanshu Kasewa, @Matt Beard, @Simon27, @Rockwell, @Lorenzo Fruscella, @Tom Rowlands 🔸, @Conor Barnes 🔶 , as well as other users who chipped in on the Ask Career Advisors Anything event. A lot of thought and time went into those answers, and I felt very grateful reading them. The careers week would have reached (and helped) far less people without this aspect of the event. Thank you all!

We (especially @Agnes Stenlund 🔸, @Ollie Etherington and @Will Howard🔹 ) have made a fancy page to showcase the Marginal Funding posts. 

Check it out, and please also consider sharing it (on social media, or with friends/ family). We've designed it to make more sense/ be more navigable to readers who aren't used to the Forum. I.e. we hope it's the page you can send to your Mum. 

Let me know if it successfully leads to any donations! It'll stay live throughout giving season. 

Reminder: if you represent an organisation and you'd like to take part in marginal funding week on the Forum - let me know and I'll send you the details. 

I'd love it if someone wrote a thoughtful review of Rethink Priorities' new moral parliament tools (see Hayley Clatterbuck's last 4 posts). For example, I can imagine someone using one of the tools on a decision they need to make, and writing up the result. 

Why should you donate to the Forum’s Donation Election Fund?

• It could change the way you donate, for the better: We all have limited information to decide how we should donate. Giving via the Donation Election Fund let’s you benefit from the collectively held information of the Forum’s users, as well as up to date facts from the marginal funding posts from organisations. If enough users take part in the voting, you won’t have to read all of the marginal funding posts to benefit from the information they contain. 
• It could boost engagement in the election, which leads to:

  • More funding for charities: Last year, the donation election and surrounding events moved a lot of money. In our squiggle model, we get this distribution:

    

  • The headline “$30k raised through the election” does not represent all of the money raised because of the Forum’s events. But giving money to the election fund will likely increase the attention on the Forum, the amount of effort that organisations and individuals put into posts etc… in a way which will increase the amount raised overall. 
  • Influencing other’s donations for the better: In the EA survey (post coming soon) we saw that the donation election had influenced people’s donation choices. We also saw in the comments on last years votes that specific posts had influenced donations, especially, shifting people towards animal welfare organisations, and increasing donations to rethink priorities. 

Also, maybe you just want to get these sweet sweet rewards. 

I've had a couple of organisations ask me to clarify the Donation Election's vote-brigading rules. Understandably, they want to promote the donation election amongst their supporters, but they aren't sure to what extent this is vote-brigading. The answer is- it depends. 

We want to avoid the Donation Election being a popularity contest/ favouring the candidates with bigger networks. Neither popularity, nor size of network, is perfectly correlated with impact. 

If you'd like to reach out to your audience, feel free, but please don't tell them to vote for you. You can explain the event, and mention that you are a candidate, but we want the votes to inform us of the Forum audience's opinions of marginal impact of money donated to these charities, not to the strength of their networks. 

I'm aware this exortation won't do all the work- we will also be looking into voting patterns, and new accounts (made after October 22, when the election was announced) won't be eligible to vote. 

Thanks to everyone who voted for our next debate week topic! Final votes were locked in at 9am this morning. 

We can’t announce a winner immediately, because the highest karma topic (and perhaps some of the others) touches on issues related to our politics on the EA Forum policy. Once we’ve clarified which topics we would be able to run, we’ll be able to announce a winner. 

Once we have, I’ll work on honing the exact wording. I’ll write a post with a few options, so that you can have input into the exact version we end up discussing. 

PS: Apologies for the delay here — in retrospect, I should have checked on adherence to our policy before allowing voting. In the now very likely event that we cannot have the highest karma discussion on the EA Forum, I’d remind you that this is not the only place for EA-related discussions on the internet — Substack and Twitter do not have our politics policy. 

I'm recording a podcast (TWCBB) with @Lauren Gilbert [edit: we had to reschedule so I can still collect questions]. If there's anything you'd like us to ask her, comment here.

Reminder that if we reach $15K, we'll run a debate week of the Forum's choice. 
 

For those among us who want to get straight back to business - I've tagged (I think) all the april fools posts, so you can now filter them out of your frontpage if you prefer by adding the "April Fools' Day" tag under the "Customize feed" button at the top of the frontpage, and changing the filter to hidden. 

Mini EA Forum Update

You can now save comments, as well as posts, to your Saved & read page. 

If you want to save a comment, just click the three dots on the top right of a comment, select save, and you’ll find the comment at the bottom of your Saved & read page.

Thanks to the LessWrong team for adding this to the codebase!

SummaryBotV2 didn't seem to get more agree reacts than V1, so I'm shutting it down. Apologies for any inconvenience. 

I've made a public Forum Events calendar, which you can add to your Gcal. Hopefully, this will give people longer to think about and write for events like Debate Weeks or Theme Weeks. Let me know if you have any issues adding the calendar, or have suggestions for other ways to track Forum events. 
 

I'm starting to put together plans for this year's Giving Season events (roughly, start of November to end of December). If you remember the events last year, it'd be cool to know:
1- What was memorable to you from that period?
2- Was anything in particular valuable for you or for your donation decisions?
3- Is there anything you would expect to see this year?
4- What would you hope to see this year?
Thanks!

We've passed the deadline for the essays on longtermism competition! Thanks to everyone who took part. I'm getting to work with the judges now, and we should have the results in a couple of weeks. If you were drafting something and missed the deadline, please do consider posting regardless, with the competition tag. You won't be eligible for a prize or judging, but you might be included in summaries/ a best-of sequence (and I'd very much like to read your essay). 

In late June, the Forum will be holding a debate week (almost definitely) on the topic of digital minds. Like the AI pause debate week, I’ll encourage specific authors who have thoughts on this issue to post, but all interested Forum users are also encouraged to take part. Also, we will have an interactive banner to track Forum user’s opinions and how they change throughout the week. 

I’m still formulating the exact debate statement, so I’m very open for input here! I’d like to see people discuss: whether digital minds should be an EA cause area, how bad putting too much or too little effort into digital minds could be, and whether there are any promising avenues for further work in the domain. I’d like a statement which is fairly clear, so that the majority of debate doesn’t end up being semantic. 

The debate statement will be a value statement of the form ‘X is the case’ rather than a prediction 'X will happen before Y'. For example, we could discuss how much we agree with the statement ‘Digital minds should be a top 5 EA cause area’-- but this is specific suggestion is uncomfortably vague. 

Do you have any suggestions for alternative statements? I’m also open to feedback on the general topic. Feel free to dm rather than comment if you prefer. 

I'm writing a retro for the AGI & Animals debate week. Do you have any feedback, positive or negative?
I'll use it to improve the next debate week, and I don't get that much feedback, so the chances of me actually changing how I run the event based on your comment are relatively high. 

We've decided to add another $5000 match for the last stretch of the Donation Election (you can see how much of it is left on the banner). This is in addition to the first $5000, which we already matched. I know that the word shouldn't be used loosely, but this match seems genuinely counter-factual to me- based on the pace of donations so far, I put low odds (20%) on the full match amount being reached. That is, unless potential donors suddenly see the value of Bulbys exploding from Forum buttons. 

The Marginal Funding posts were really valuable this year, and it's been great to have so many candidates, and see so much effort going into them. We had some money left in our 2024 events budget, and we wanted to make sure that the event is worthwhile to our candidates, and that they are excited to take part next year. 

Thanks to those who have donated, voted, and commented so far!

The Donation Election will end, at a specific yet undisclosed time, on December 3rd. 
 

I've added this sentence to the top-level description of the Essays on Longtermism competition: "Your essay must show deep engagement with the book, or one particular chapter"

I've seen a few early submissions which don't seem particularly related to the contents of the book. This is to be expected, but I wanted to make this extra clear just in case someone was putting serious time into an essay which is an 'essay on longtermism' but isn't responding to 'Essays on Longtermism'.

As described in the announcement post - I'll only send plausible winners along to our judging panel. 

There is still plenty of time to vote in the Donation Election. The group donation pot currently stands at around $30,000. You can nudge that towards the projects you think are most worthwhile (plus, the voting system is fun and might teach you something about your preferences). 

Also- you should donate to the Donation Election fund if: 
a) You want to encourage thinking about effective donations on the Forum.
b) You want to commit to donating in line with the Forum's preferences. 
c) You'd like me to draw you one of these bad animals (or earn one of our other rewards): 

NB: I can also draw these animals holding objects of your choice. Or wearing clothes. Anything is possible. 

I've just given $1000 to the Donation Election Fund. 
I'm really excited about the quality of the organisations and the discussion this year, and I think a larger fund will raise the stakes for the donation election. If you feel the same, please consider donating!
Also, it feels a bit lame to draw myself a bad animal. Would anyone like to volunteer to draw one? I'd like a monkey on a computer.