With the AI windfall, mental health may be taken increasingly seriously by mainstream EA. There’s increasingly room to explore the cause area and answer some of the biggest uncertainties; at the same time, costs of the most effective interventions are continuing to fall. StrongMinds is now treating for ~$35, about a third of GiveWell’s best guess from a few years ago, and is expected to...
Summary: The actions taken this decade may be exceptionally important for the future of civilization, but we should be unusually hesitant to proclaim that any course of action is “best.” Still, we should try to think carefully about how we'll influence the future.
This post was written as part of an introduction to a new reading group I’m starting called “Doing Good in the Age of AGI.” If you want to follow along, the full curriculum can be found ...
My advice for smart young people just starting university in 2026: be warned -- if you don't graduate from college within the next four years, you risk getting stuck as a freshman forever, thus joining the ranks of the Permanent Underclassmen.
Pretty controversial. I'd like to see more of an argument and consideration of counterarguments. Or alternatively, constructive advice for how to avoid this.
Note this is a joke, a play on the word "underclass" versus "underclassMEN", which is a word used in anglo countries to refer to freshman and sophmores at university. I'm not actually a fan of the "permanent underclass" idea; I think it's dumb (basically for the reasons explained in the astral codex ten "permanent moon ownership" essay). Hence my attempt to make fun of the idea.
Oh - that went totally over my head 😅