Hi!
I'm Tobias Baumann, co-founder of the Center for Reducing Suffering, a new longtermist research organisation focused on figuring out how we can best reduce severe suffering, taking into account all sentient beings. Ask me anything!
A little bit about me:
I’m interested in a broad range of research topics related to cause prioritisation from a suffering-focused perspective. I’ve written about risk factors for s-risks, different types of s-risks, as well as crucial questions on longtermism and artificial intelligence. My most-upvoted EA Forum post (together with David Althaus from the Center on Long-Term Risk) examines how we can best reduce long-term risks from malevolent actors. I’ve also explored various other topics, including space governance, electoral reform, improving our political system, and political representation of future generations. Most recently, I’ve been thinking about patient philanthropy and the optimal timing of efforts to reduce suffering.
Although I'm most interested in questions related to those areas, feel free to ask me anything. Apologies in advance if there are any questions which, for any of many possible reasons, I’m not able to respond to.
Does CRS (or do you and Magnus Vinding) have a relatively explicit, shared theory of change? Do you each have somewhat different theories of change, but these are still relatively explicit and communicated between you? Is it less explicit than that?
Whichever is the case, could you say a bit about why you think that's the case?
(I'm basically just porting these questions over from the AMA with Owen Cotton-Barratt of FHI. I think the questions are slightly less relevant here, given CRS is newer and smaller. But I still find these questions interesting in relation to basically any EA/longtermist research organisations or individual researchers.)
That makes sense, thanks.
Do you have a sense of who you want to take up that project, or who you want to catalyse it among? E.g., academics vs EA researchers, and what type/field?
And does this influence what you work on and how you communicate/disseminate your work?