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🎧 We've created a Spotify playlist with this years marginal funding posts. 

Posts with <30 karma don't get narrated so aren't included in the playlist.

I’m part of a working group at CEA that’s started scoping out improvements for effectivealtruism.org. Our main goals are:

  1. Improve understanding of what EA is (clarify and simplify messaging, better address common misconceptions, showcase more tangible examples of impact, people, and projects)
  2. Improve perception of EA (show more of the altruistic and other-directedness parts of EA alongside the effective, pragmatic, results-driven parts, feature more testimonials and impact stories from a broader range of people, make it feel more human and up-to-date)
  3. Increase high-value actions (improve navigation, increase newsletter and VP signups, make it easier to find actionable info)

For the first couple of weeks, I’ll be testing how the current site performs against these goals, then move on to the redesign, which I’ll user-test against the same goals.

If you’ve visited the current site and have opinions, I’d love to hear them. Some prompts that might help:

  • Do you remember what your first impression was?
  • Have you ever struggled to find specific info on the site?
  • Is there anything that annoys you?
  • What do you think could be confusing to someone who hasn't heard about EA before?
  • What’s been most helpful to you? What do you like?

If you prefer to write your thoughts anonymously you can do so here, although I’d encourage you to comment on this quick take so others can agree or disagree vote (and I can get a sense of how much the feedback resonates).

I think the website is already quite good. It includes almost everything that somebody new to the community might find useful without overcrowding. If I had to come up with a couple comments:

  1. “For the first couple of weeks, I’ll be testing how the current site performs against these goals, then move on to the redesign, which I’ll user-test against the same goals.” For the testing methodology, it sounds like you’re planning to gather metrics on this version, switch to V2, and gather metrics again. I think A/B testing might be a better option if it’s not too inconvenient, since that might get you more similarity between the groups on which you gather data.
  2. You could add a section on stories of people in effective altruism in video or text form. Learning about how other people got involved, their pasts, and their motivations, might inspire people to join in-person groups and EAVP more than reading or listening to podcasts. Ideally the people would be diverse (country of origin, gender, race, primary cause area, type of contribution, etc.).

Hope that helps!

Curated and popular this week
Ben_West🔸
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> Summary: We propose measuring AI performance in terms of the length of tasks AI agents can complete. We show that this metric has been consistently exponentially increasing over the past 6 years, with a doubling time of around 7 months. Extrapolating this trend predicts that, in under a decade, we will see AI agents that can independently complete a large fraction of software tasks that currently take humans days or weeks. > > The length of tasks (measured by how long they take human professionals) that generalist frontier model agents can complete autonomously with 50% reliability has been doubling approximately every 7 months for the last 6 years. The shaded region represents 95% CI calculated by hierarchical bootstrap over task families, tasks, and task attempts. > > Full paper | Github repo Blogpost; tweet thread. 
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Epistemic status: highly certain, or something The Spending What We Must 💸11% pledge  In short: Members pledge to spend at least 11% of their income on effectively increasing their own productivity. This pledge is likely higher-impact for most people than the Giving What We Can 🔸10% Pledge, and we also think the name accurately reflects the non-supererogatory moral beliefs of many in the EA community. Example Charlie is a software engineer for the Centre for Effective Future Research. Since Charlie has taken the SWWM 💸11% pledge, rather than splurge on a vacation, they decide to buy an expensive noise-canceling headset before their next EAG, allowing them to get slightly more sleep and have 104 one-on-one meetings instead of just 101. In one of the extra three meetings, they chat with Diana, who is starting an AI-for-worrying-about-AI company, and decide to become a cofounder. The company becomes wildly successful, and Charlie's equity share allows them to further increase their productivity to the point of diminishing marginal returns, then donate $50 billion to SWWM. The 💸💸💸 Badge If you've taken the SWWM 💸11% Pledge, we'd appreciate if you could add three 💸💸💸 "stacks of money with wings" emoji to your social media profiles. We chose three emoji because we think the 💸11% Pledge will be about 3x more effective than the 🔸10% pledge (see FAQ), and EAs should be scope sensitive.  FAQ Is the pledge legally binding? We highly recommend signing the legal contract, as it will allow you to sue yourself in case of delinquency. What do you mean by effectively increasing productivity? Some interventions are especially good at transforming self-donations into productivity, and have a strong evidence base. In particular:  * Offloading non-work duties like dates and calling your mother to personal assistants * Running many emulated copies of oneself (likely available soon) * Amphetamines I'm an AI system. Can I take the 💸11% pledge? We encourage A
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Hi everybody! I'm Conor. I run the 80,000 Hours Job Board. Or I used to. As of today — April 1 — we are becoming Job Birds! We've been talking to users for the last few years about making this change, and people have overwhelmingly been in favour (remember, there are six or more birds for every human on Earth). Whether it's the daily emails asking me to finally switch, or the flocks of people accosting me at conferences to urge a migration to Job Birds, the demand is overwhelming! Luckily, the wait is over! I've included an FAQ below of the most common questions we receive. FAQ * Do these birds have jobs? * In a sense, no. In another, preferred sense, definitely! They have roles in ecological niches. * What's a good bird to get started with? * The peregrine falcon. * What's the theory of change? * Birds are fascinating creatures. * Birds are the only living animals with feathers. * Birds have hollow bones, which help facilitate flight. * Some bird species, such as parrots and corvids, display remarkable intelligence. * What was the question again? * Caw! Caw! * I have concerns about wild animal suffering. How does Job Birds intend to navigate promoting birds of prey? * The humans behind Job Birds share these concerns. Unfortunately, birds of prey we've spoken to overwhelmingly ascribe to an incompatible, sort of Avi-Nietzschean value system. Owl contractors are in the process of building a moral parliament tool in order to manage these conflicting normative claims. * I worry that sharing birds with people isn't as impactful as sharing jobs. * Okay, but consider this: you can click the media buttons to even hear the sounds of the bird! * I would like to do good with my career. Can Job Birds help me with that? * Users report that job hunting can be stressful and time-intensive. In light of this, we at Job Birds recommend breaking up your job hunts with some time learning about the wonders of over 1,000 bird species at 80,000