Because the donation election fund raised $15,000 dollars, the Forum unlocked the collective prize: "The Forum audience will propose and vote on a debate week topic next year, and I’ll run it during Q1."
This thread is your opportunity to propose the debate topic.
What's an EA Forum Debate Week?
Here are the debate weeks I have run on the EA Forum before:
- AI Welfare Debate Week (July 2024) – debated "AI welfare should be an EA priority"
- Animal Welfare vs Global Health Debate Week (Oct 2024) – debated "It would be better to spend an extra $100m on animal welfare than on global health"
- Existential Choices Debate Week (March 2025) – debated "On the margin, it is better to work on reducing the chance of our extinction than increasing the value of futures where we survive."
As you can see, each of them revolved around a statement, which Forum users could signal their level of agreement/ disagreement on. The statements were then posted on the banner at the top of the EA Forum, on a debate slider like this:
Alongside the central debate, which happens in a thread linked to this debate slider, we also elicit posts from interested parties, and once hosted a symposium.
How this works
Write your debate week topic suggestions below. Preferably each different suggestion in a different answer[1]. You can include some rationale for the debate week if you like.
Remember to write your debate topic as a statement, not a question. See the above examples. You don't need to worry about getting the wording absolutely perfect yet - we can work on that together if your topic is chosen.
I'll take this post down a week from when it is posted (though if we need to extend the deadline to get more submissions, I'll let you know).
The week after next (Jan 26- Feb 1) I'll write another post, where you can vote on the top suggestions[2]. The highest voted by Feb 2nd will be the topic of a debate week, held in Q1.
A reminder
If your favourite option doesn't win, remember that you can always make a poll yourself. There are so many valuable discussions we could have that I don't have time to run, so I'm always excited when I see people using the poll feature to kick off debates.
Beyond just making a poll, I'm interested in working with others who would like to run events for the community, so please reach out if you have an idea for a theme week/ debate week that you'd like to run.
Writing a good debate topic
I am the foremost global expert in EA Forum debate weeks in that I have run three of them. With that pedigree in mind... to write a good debate week:
- Find a topic that the average reader doesn't have a knee-jerk opinion on. If you want to generate good discussion and cause people to learn/ change their minds that is.
- Write a statement the Forum community will likely be split on. The Forum community has some weird[3] opinions in common. A debate week would be a bit of a dud if we all just agreed. I enjoyed Animal Welfare vs Global Health week, but it went somewhat close to the 'too much agreement' outcome. This meant there was probably less valuable discussion and changing of minds than there could have been under a different statement.
- Ideally, pick a subject you think is important, but you don’t have a strong take on. It’s very hard not to frame debate weeks in a leading way — it really helps if you don’t have a dog in the fight.
Some ideas
There are a lot of good discussions to be had between and within cause prioritisation, and on tactics within causes. For example:
Cause prioritisation
Note that “neglected” and “prioritised” would need a more specific operationalisation for people to vote on them. You don’t need to worry about this now, we can deal with making terms precise when we have a winning topic.
- Biosecurity is adequately prioritised relative to AI Safety
- Cause prioritisation research should be prioritised higher
- Nuclear security is unduly neglected relative to bio and AI risk
Tactics
- Corporate campaigns are the most cost-effective tactic in farm animal welfare.
- Patient philanthropy should be the default for most small donors
- Meta-EA is currently more constrained by funding than by talent
That's all. Suggest away! I look forward to reading your ideas.
- ^
Reminder that answers are distinct from comments. Since this is a question post, answers will appear above comments.
- ^
I'm hoping that I'll be able to make the top 10 karma voted answers the "top suggestions" which this audience votes on. However there are a few reasons this may not end up being the case:
- If most karma is assigned near the start of the week, or there are very many answers, good suggestions might be buried. In this case I reserve the right to more actively curate the top 10.
- An entry in the top 10 is a debate week we can't host for legal or strong comms related reasons. I think this is fairly unlikely, but it wouldn't be a shock if it happened.
- ^
Relative to the general population