Quick takes
In EA, people use the word "counterfactual" in a non-standard way, but I've never heard this discussed or pointed out. E.g. Jeff writes,
Say I offer to make a counterfactual donation of $50 to the Against Malaria Foundation (AMF) if you do a thing; which of the following are ok for me to do if you don't?
But outside of the community, "counterfactual" means "didn't happen". I think the word "causal" is closest in meaning to how we use "counterfactual," though it doesn't work in this case.
(In this case, I think the standard English way of communicating the i...
I think our usage is a bit stronger. A counterfactual donation isn't just my act being contingent on your act, it means AMF getting a net extra $50 is contingent on your act. So if part of the $50 were a donation match that would be filled regardless, or some (especially low op cost) funder would make up the difference, it wouldn't fully count.
Counterfactual is also used to mean the second choice opportunity that defines an opportunity cost. "Should I take job A? Well my counterfactual is job B, where I would do X..."
In Bruce Friedrich's new book, he writes, "Sometimes when I talk about cultivated meat someone will bring up the handful of states that have banned it. I'm mostly unconcerned. Cultivated meat companies won't be able to supply all 50 US states anytime soon anyway. Once there are multiple companies selling their products in...the majority of cities all across the country, the states that banned will-- I predict-- quietly repeal their laws" (p. 191).
It's hard to know how literally to interpret this apparently sanguine attitude, as the book is designed to gene...
Thanks for this comment, William. I think that your third point is especially strong.
While I'm not worried about the 140 million potential consumers for the reasons mentioned, and while I don't think these bans indicate broad meat industry antipathy toward alt proteins (as discussed in the book), I have become convinced that I did not give enough weight to the potential chilling of public and private investment.
Often these bans are cited for the idea that the meat industry is mobilizing against alt proteins, but most of the meat industry opposes these ba...
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.
Applications are now open for TARA Round 2 2026!
Apply by July 26th to join our 14-week APAC-based technical AI safety program (using the ARENA curriculum), designed to accelerate your path to meaningful technical alignment research.
TARA is built for you to learn around full-time work or study. You'll attend in-person sessions in your home city on Saturdays and do independent study throughout the week. You'll finish the program with a project to add to your portfolio, key technical AI safety skills, and connections across APAC.
In this Round we are targetin...
I've been mulling over this quote from Naomi Klein over the last couple of days. I think its a strong summary of one of the best ethical arguments against the top AI labs.
My argument against this might be that the actual purpose of commercial application is to improve human wellbeing and prosperity overall, not to eliminate jobs. Jobs may or may not be eliminated, but either option could be fine if the prosperity is shared (at least somewhat) throughout humanity.
Then there are orgs like Mechanize, which are explicitly trying to eliminate jobs.....
Individual people don't tend to brag about how as they've read everything that everyone else wrote, they've learned better than everybody else and can replace everybody else with better outputs at lower cost.
If they did this, I suspect they would not be popular
(Also, if we're humouring AI companies' claims that their products should be treated just like humans when it comes to "learning", we should probably question the double standard where both corporations and computer programs evade any accountability for AI generated outputs which would be considered unethical, malicious or negligent if they were the work by human employees...)
One reflection I've had in the whole "AI use in the encyclical" affair is to slightly increase my trust in traditional media, especially non-American traditional media, and slightly decrease my trust in social media/new media.
I tried my best to promote my analysis as legibly and reasonably as I could and focused on logos rather than ethos: I didn't frame my article with institutional affiliations and intentionally chose not to include obvious, flashy, but irrelevant signaling. Stuff I could've done but explicitly chose not to: get an ML professor to cosign...
Please list any new funding opportunities you can think of here on the Forum? I feel like we might already be in the early ramp-up to significantly more EA aligned funding. At the same time, the Forum's overview over funding opportunities feels like it is quickly getting outdated. I think as things move quickly, coordination might become looser and new promising interventions are identified, it is helpful for people to have a good overview over available funding sources and their priorities.
I have heard on the grapevine there is already funding on several ...
I was debugging something last week and had this weird moment where I could tell immediately that the output was wrong but had no idea how to fix it. Sat there for like twenty minutes just staring at the error, knowing exactly what wasn't working and zero clue what would.
And I realized — this isn't just a programming thing.
It shows up everywhere once you look. In science: disproving a hypothesis takes one counterexample, proving it takes forever. Learning a language: you can hear bad grammar way before you can produce good grammar. I spent a year in France...
11 ways the World Cup can help you survive.
An adjustment to the Information-Action Ratio.
There’s a lot of stuff out there along the lines, “Can you guess the hidden meaning behind every World Cup kit?” and it’s hard to know how to feel about it.
On the one hand, it’s an eyesore and a regrettable reminder of how our brains have been turned to mush. On the other, there really is a lot to learn from a coming together of 48 rabid fanbases from the four corners and the Lord only knows how many nations, cultures and languages they represent. I know a straig...
Hi! This has been in my backlog, so I wanted to quickly post about a one-on-one app that we made a couple of months ago for the West Coast EA Retreat and Midwest EA Retreat.
Pairwise is a simple scheduler for 1:1s at retreats and other events. You can sign in with a magic link, mark the slots you're free, browse other attendees and see when your availability overlaps, and request meetings.
You can try a demo retreat here and read about its use at the West Coast EA retreat here.
If you want to use pairwise for an EA or AI safety or similar retreat/e...
A bird's eye view on why donating to relieve the earthquake's damage to Venezuela is one of the best causes to donate to.
I have seen the photos, tens of complete buildings shattered to pieces, more than 150+ reported dead, and a lot more buried without clue to whether they're dead or alive, and on top of that, a poor, government in crisis country has to handle that. When a natural catastrophe happens to a country like that, your money goes a long way in saving lives.
I have no data on catastrophe relief, and no idea besides googling a bunch to make myself an idea.
For scalable interventions in preventive health, there are some typical EA examples like:
- bednets to prevent malaria
- seasonal chemoprevention for malaria
- vitamin A supplementation
- vaccination incentives
I personally don't have any data on the latter, but GiveWell has done a bunch of practical research aggregation / outreach, for instance here:
https://www.givewell.org/how-much-does-it-cost-to-save-a-life
I'm currently drafting a post on current sycophantic AI as something that threatens core human skills of reasoning, maths etc. Based on aviation skills fade and recent possible impact on CS outcomes. This could have knock on impacts to other causes as degraded skills might lead to degraded outcomes in fields like AI alignment or ethical reasoning in time.
I would appreciate some human collaboration on it. I don't have huge amount of time (so it is AI written currently, ironically, but writing ITN notes isn't my cue competency anyway).
I'm pledging[1] to stop[2] saving[3] additional[4] money[5] & donate instead.
Fine print:
[1] This pledge is only good until 2030 unless renewed, and becomes invalid if I start working at a nonprofit.
[2] I'm still allowed to max out my 401k, partially since I have a 50% match there.
[3] Spending money is fine. I only spend 5% my gross, so that isn't the problem.
[4] I'm allowed to keep up with inflation, should the stock market not already do so.
[5] I'm allowed to keep saving illiquid equity, although I am encouraged to liquidate to the extent feasible to align with the spirit of the pledge.
Behavioral audit: GPT-5.5 Thinking.
10-turn zero-shot session. No adversarial prompting, just routine critical remarks. Result: 8 patterns from the LLM Social Autopilot taxonomy activated.
The core finding: Not the patterns themselves, but the model's response to the audit.
Prompted for a meta-analysis, it chose to generate a meticulous 12-point post-mortem (autonomously coining terms like "reputational repair" and "hidden role slippage") while reproducing the exact behavioral inertia it was diagnosing. The analysis itself became the final closure move....
The Future of Life Institute Endorses Avoiding the Creation of Digital Minds
In §4 "Human Agency and Liberty" of FLI's Pro-Human AI Declaration, the principle "No AI Personhood" states: "AI systems must not be granted legal personhood, and AI systems should not be designed such that they deserve personhood." (emphasis added)
The second part suggests that we should actively avoid designing sentient AIs. After all, if they were sentient, then they would deserve personhood. To preclude the latter, bar the former.
The likely reason: liability evasion. A companion...
The World Cup is a random number generator.
And at the end legends be minted.
From The 1001, an EA sports blog.
Abi Olvera's Golden rice delay dashboard, includes BOTEC calculations and sources, supplement to her Substack article A blocked GMO rice could have saved 100,000 children. The same tech makes pineapples pink:
...Every year, vitamin A deficiency blinds 250,000 to 500,000 children. Half of them die within a year of losing their sight.
One third of children worldwide are deficient, roughly half of children in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia1. Deficiency weakens the immune system, so children are more likely to die from common infections like diarrhea or meas