How often did you read an article to then forget it? With these 300+ flashcards, you can memorize key facts and test your knowledge of pressing world problems such as animal welfare, global health, longtermism, and meta-effective altruism. Get these flashcards at your fingertips from Thought Saver in the four embedded quizzes below, or download the Anki decks at the bottom.

[Note: Sources are in the Thought Saver/Anki flashcards, as I didn't want to fill this post with links. Also, applying and understanding is more valuable than memorizing facts—see Bloom's Taxonomy. My favorite sources to dig deeper are Our World in Data,  80,000 Hours' problem profiles, and Doing Good Better by William MacAskill.]

Animal Welfare

1% of US animal donations went to farmed animal organisations in 2015

3,000 US farm animals were killed for every shelter animal death in 2015

3% of US donations were aimed at helping the environment or animals in 2020

75% of agricultural land is used for livestock (including grazing and land to grow animal feed)

30B chickens were alive in 2020

A centralized nervous system is what enables animals to have experiences

Animal shelters received 65% of US animal donations in 2015

Broiler chickens in factory farms are usually killed when 6 weeks old

China is the country that produces the most meat in tons

China is the country that produces the most pigmeat

China is the country that produces the most seafood

Clean meat 
Meat grown in cell culture rather than in an animal's body

Cows eat 6 calories for each calorie of beef produced

Does the majority of seafood production come from wild fish catch or fish farming?
Fish farming

Eating 300 eggs indirectly kills one chicken

Eating 3,000 calories of chicken meat kills one chicken

Effective animal campaigns affect 10-100 chicken-life years per $ spent

Farmed hens make 20 times as many eggs as they were born to do

Fish farming has increased 50-fold globally from 1960 until 2015

Flexitarian 
A person who has a primarily vegetarian diet but occasionally eats meat or fish

foodimpacts.org 
An online tool ranking animal foods based on suffering and emissions

Global meat production grew 200% between 1970-2020

Humanity farmed 1 trillion insects in 2020

Humanity killed 100B farmed fish in 2017

Humanity killed 2,000 land animals every second in 2016

Humanity killed 300B farmed shrimp in 2017

Humanity killed 69B farmed chickens for meat in 2018

Humanity killed 70B land animals in 2016

Less than 0.1% of global donations are aimed at helping farmed animals

Mark Post developed the first cultured meat hamburger in 2013

Open Wing Alliance 
A coalition aiming to eliminate battery cages for chickens

Over 90% of global farm animals lived in intensive farms in 2018

Peter Singer wrote Animal Liberation

Speciesism 
Treating members of one species as morally more important than members of other species

Switching to a plant-based diet spares 100 vertebrates every year (mostly fish and chicken)

The average meat consumption per capita in China has grown 15-fold since 1961

The average meat consumption per capita in China was 60kg in 2017

The average meat consumption per capita in India was 4kg in 2017

The average meat consumption per capita in the United States was 120kg in 2017

The average global meat consumption per capita has grown from 20kg to 40kg between 1961-2014

The EU will ban cages for farmed chickens by 2027

The Humane League launched the Open Wing Alliance

The United States is the country that produces the most cattle and poultry

Three foods to avoid that remove the most animal suffering from your diet
-Chicken 
-Eggs 
-Fish

Top Charities recommended by Animal Charity Evaluators in 2021 
-Faunalytics 
-The Humane League 
-Wild Animal Initiative

Which animal is by far the most globally slaughtered for meat?
Chickens. 
(In 2018, humanity slaughtered for meat 69B chickens, 1.5B pigs, 600M turkeys, 600M sheep, 500M goats, and 300M cattle)

Which three animals produce the most global meat in tons?
1) Poultry
2) Pigs
3) Cattle

Global Health and Development

1 micromort = 1 in 1M chance of dying

1 micromort = 30 minutes of expected life lost if you're 20 years old

1.5M people died from vaccine-preventable diseases globally in 2019

1B people lacked access to electricity globally in 2016

200M Indians lived in extreme poverty in 2015

3B people lacked access to clean cooking fuels globally in 2016

30% of the global population lived in a democracy in 2020

40% of deaths of Nigerian children under 5 years old were vaccine-preventable in 2021

5M children younger than 5 died globally in 2020

55% of the global population lived in urban areas in 2020

60M people died globally in 2021

700M people lived in extreme poverty globally in 2018

80% of the global extremely poor lived in rural areas in 2014

800M Chinese people got out of extreme poverty between 1980-2020

80M Nigerians lived in extreme poverty in 2021

90% of people lived in extreme poverty in 1800

A person is considered to be in extreme poverty if they live on less than $2.15 per day

Air pollution from fossil fuels kills at least 4M people every year

Air pollution from inefficient cooking practices kills 4M people every year

Alcohol killed 3M people globally in 2016

An antimalarial bed lasts for 2 years

By donating 10% of their income to the Against Malaria Foundation, US college graduates can save more than 2 lives every year

Cancer killed 10M people globally in 2020

Cardiovascular diseases killed 18M people globally in 2019

Cash transfers 
Direct payments, typically by governments or nonprofits, made to eligible groups of people

China is planning 150 new nuclear reactors by 2035

DALY stands for Disability-Adjusted Life Year

Donating an antimalarial bed net cost $5 in 2020

Farm workers in Sub-Saharan Africa are 50% less productive than the global average (in terms of the ratio between agricultural value added in $ and number of farm workers)

GiveDirectly 
Charity that gives direct cash transfers to people living in extreme poverty

GiveWell 
Charity evaluator within global health and development

GiveWell aims to raise $1B every year by 2025

GiveWell raised $500M for recommended charities in 2021

GiveWell researches charities that can absorb $10M+ of annual funding

GiveWell's top charities are 10X more cost-effective than cash transfers

Global Burden of Disease 
A research program that assesses mortality and disability from major diseases

Global life expectancy increased by 40 years between 1900-2020

Happier Lives Institute 
Organisation that researches the best ways to increase global wellbeing

Happier Lives Institute: StrongMinds is 10X as effective as cash transfers

Holden Karnofsky co-founded GiveWell and Open Philanthropy

Homicide killed 400,000 people globally in 2019

In low-income countries, annual mental health spending was $0.02 per person in 2017

In Nigeria, $10 of cash incentives per infant can double the vaccination rate

In Sub-Saharan Africa, 40% of people lived in extreme poverty in 2018

India is the country with the most people living in extreme poverty

Intestinal worms affected 1B people globally in 2014

It cost $5,000 to help save a life from malaria in 2020

Malaria killed 600,000 people globally in 2019

Mental health disorders accounted for 5% of the global burden of disease in 2019

New Incentives 
An organisation giving cash to boost child vaccinations in Nigeria

Obesity killed 5M people globally in 2019

Opioid overdoses killed 70,000 people in 2021 in the US

QALY 
A measure of the improvement in quality and quantity of life lived to assess an intervention.

QALY stands for Quality-Adjusted Life Year

Road traffic crashes kill 1M people every year globally

Shenzen became China's first Special Economic Zone in 1980

Shenzen had 50,000 people in 1980

Smallpox killed 400M people in the 20th century

Snakebites kill 100,000 people every year globally

Suicide killed 800,000 people globally in 2019

Terrorism killed 25,000 people globally in 2017

The Bubonic Plague killed 200M people in the 1300s

The eradication of smallpox saved 200M lives globally between 1980-2020

The global deaths of children under 5 years old decreased from 12M in 1990 to 5M in 2017

The Spanish Flu killed 50M people

Tobacco kills 8M people every year globally

Universal basic income
A government program of periodic cash payments unconditionally delivered to every adult and sufficient to pay for a person's basic needs

Unsafe water killed 1M people globally in 2017

Vaccines prevent 2M global deaths every year

Wars killed 50,000 people globally in 2020

Why are mental health disorders underestimated at 5% of the global burden of disease? 
Suicide and self-harm aren't included in mental health disorders

WW2 killed 70M people

Longtermism

80,000 Hours: "Focus on green tech that is unpopular (e.g. nuclear) or unknown (e.g. hot rock geothermal) or unsexy (e.g. decarbonise cement)"

100B humans have lived since the start of humanity

AI alignment 
Ensuring that AI systems help rather than harm humans

AI takeoff 
Period of transition during which an advanced AI might acquire superhuman intellectual capacity

Alan Robock: In case of full-scale nuclear war, the global average temperature would drop by 7℃ for 5 years, then gradually recover over 10 more years

ALLFED researches events that could deplete food supplies for more than 5% of the global population

Annual global spending on climate change was over $600B in 2020

Anthropogenic existential risks arise from humans rather than nature

Artificial General Intelligence 
An AI that can perform any intellectual task that a human being can

Broad interventions focus on unforeseeable long-term benefits from ripple effects, while narrow interventions aim for specific effects

By traveling at 1% the speed of light, humanity can colonise the galaxy in 100M years

Castle Bravo was the most powerful US nuclear detonation

Center for Security and Emerging Technology 
The largest AI policy research center in the United States

Climate engineering 
Intentional, large-scale intervention in the Earth's climate system (e.g., to counter climate change)

Cluelessness 
Radical uncertainty about the long-term effects of our actions

Cognitive enhancement 
Intervention in the brain that improves attention, concentration, and information processing

DeepMind developed AlphaZero to play chess and go

DeepMind is owned by Alphabet (Google)

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy estimated the chance of nuclear war was between 33-50%

Elon Musk: "At the start of Tesla, I thought we had (optimistically) a 10% chance of surviving at all."

Elon Musk: Humanity will land on Mars in 2026-2031

Existential risk 
A risk that threatens the destruction of humanity's long-term potential

Fermi paradox 
Inconsistency between the lack of evidence of aliens and the high estimates for its probability

Geomagnetic storm 
A disturbance in Earth's magnetic field and atmosphere caused by bursts of radiation and particles from the Sun

Global catastrophic risk 
An event that could damage human well-being on a global scale

Great Filter
A barrier to the development of intelligence that makes us not see alien life

Hinge of history 
A hypothetical time in human history in which humanity has disproportionate influence over the long-term future

Holden Karnofsky: there's a 50% chance of transformative AI by 2060

How many countries have nuclear weapons? 
Nine

Humanity can affect a maximum of 5% of the observable galaxies

If we burned all fossil fuels in the ground, CO2 would reach 2,000 ppm

In the worst-case global warming scenario, the global average temperature could rise by 13℃ by 2100

Is China part of the International Space Station? 
No

Kessler Syndrome 
Space pollution in Earth's orbit could cause collisions between objects that cause even more collisions

Lethal autonomous weapons 
Weapon systems that use AI to identify, select, and kill targets without human intervention

Manhattan Project 
Research project to develop an atomic bomb during World War II

Nick Bostrom founded the Future of Humanity Institute

Nick Bostrom wrote Letter from Utopia

Nick Bostrom wrote The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant

North Korea has been the only nation conducting nuclear test detonations since 1999

Nuclear winter 
Severe cooling of Earth after a large-scale nuclear war

OpenAI developed GPT-3

OpenAI received a $1B investment from Microsoft

Oracle AI AI system that only answers questions

Public good 
A good or service that everyone can use

Renewables accounted for 10% of global primary energy in 2019

Robert Wiblin made the nuclear-emergency website NuclearAdvice.org

Russia is the country with the most nuclear warheads

S-risks stand for suffering risks

Sam Altman and Elon Musk co-founded OpenAI

Sam Altman is CEO of OpenAI

SpaceX's Falcon Heavy can launch a kg of payload into space for $1,500

Suffering risks 
Future events with the potential capacity to produce an astronomical amount of suffering

Superintelligence
A hypothetical agent that possesses intelligence far surpassing that of the brightest humans

The atomic bomb was 1,000X more powerful than conventional bombs

The Black Death killed more than 10% of the global population

The Cuban Missile Crisis occurred in 1962

The Doomsday Clock was set to 100 seconds to midnight in 2020

The Observable Universe has 10²² stars

The energy of one star could power 10⁴² computations per second

The Future of Life Institute organised the World Building Contest

The global average temperature increased by 1.2℃ since pre-industrial times

The Hubble Ultra-Deep Field image contains 10,000 galaxies

The hydrogen bomb was 1,000X stronger than the atomic bomb

The International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale has 7 levels

The MacArthur Foundation was the largest grantmaker in nuclear security

The Trinity Test was the first nuclear detonation

The Tsar Bomba's yield was 50 megatons (4,000-fold the Hiroshima bomb)

The Tsar Bomba was the largest atomic test in history

The World Building Contest is set in the year 2045

There are 100B stars in the Milky Way

There are more than 10,000 nuclear warheads globally

There were more than 60,000 nuclear warheads globally in the 1980s

Three existential risks according to Elon Musk: 
-Declining birthrates 
-AI 
-Religious extremism

Three types of civilisations (Kardashev scale) 
I) Use all energy on their planet 
II) Use all energy of their host star 
III) Use all energy of their galaxy

Three types of existential catastrophes 
-Extinction 
-Unrecoverable collapse
-Unrecoverable dystopia

Toby Ord wrote The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity

Toby Ord: Existential from unforeseen anthropogenic risks in the next century is 1/30

Toby Ord: Existential risk from pandemics in the next century is 1/30

Toby Ord: Existential risk in the next century is 1/6

Toby Ord's four regions of the Universe 
1) Affectable: where current events will be visible from Earth (20B galaxies) 
2) Observable: what we can now see (400B galaxies) 
3) Eventually Observable: what we will be able to see from Earth (1 trillion galaxies) 
4) Ultimately Observable: what we might be able to see with travel (2 trillion galaxies)

Transhumanism 
A movement which advocates for human longevity and cognition enhancement using technology

Two historical causes for which humanity lost more than 10% of the global population 
-Wars (e.g., Gengis Khan) 
-Pandemics (e.g., Black Death)

Vasily Arkhipov 
Soviet Navy officer who prevented nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis

Warning shot 
A global catastrophe that increases awareness about similar future risks and thus reduces the probability of an existential catastrophe

Weapons of Mass Destruction 
Weapons whose destructive capacity far exceeds that of conventional weaponry

Weapons of Mass Destruction include nuclear, biological and chemical weapons

Whole brain emulation
Scanning a brain to transfer or copy it to a computer

Windfall Clause 
Proposal to make AI firms commit to donate a significant amount of any eventual huge profits

With each doubling of installed capacity, the price of solar modules declines by 20%

Meta-Effective Altruism

5% of EAs live outside of the US and Europe

70% of EAs are male

0.7% of people in the US were incarcerated in 2018

80,000 Hours formula for the right career: (Career Capital + Impact + Supportive conditions) x Personal Fit

80,000 Hours had more than 150,000 newsletter subscribers in 2021

80,000 Hours: "The biggest risk to our productivity is probably back pain"

80,000 Hours' three key career stages 
1) Explore interests with low-cost tests (18-24 years) 
2) Invest in your career capital (25-35 years) 
3) Deploy career capital to solve problems (36+ years)

80,000 Hours' top three recommended career paths: 
1) AI Safety research 
2) AI policy 
3) Founder tackling the most pressing problems

80% of EAs are <35 years old

Altruistic wager 
Act as if something (e.g., insect sentience) is true because it seems ethically right, even if it isn't likely

An average income of €2,700 per month places you in the top 1% globally

Benjamin Todd and William MacAskill co-founded 80,000 Hours

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett co-founded the Giving Pledge

Cause neutrality 
Distributing resources based on maximising impact, irrespective of the beneficiary or intervention

Cause X 
Moral problem that will make us think, "We were barbarians!"

Charity Entrepreneurship received 3,000 applicants in 2020

Charity Entrepreneurship wrote How to Launch a High-Impact Nonprofit

Charity Entrepreneurship: starting a high-impact charity has the same impact as donating $200,000 to the most effective NGOs every year

Charity Navigator acquired charity evaluator ImpactMatters

Charity Navigator is the largest charity efficiency evaluator

Cities with the most EAs: 
1. San Francisco 
2. London

Consequentialism 
Theory where the rightness of an act is determined solely by its consequences

Cost-effectiveness analysis 
Economic analysis that compares the relative costs and effects of rival interventions

Counterfactual thinking 
Imagining what would have been the outcome if X had happened

Crucial consideration 
A consideration that warrants a reassessment of a cause or intervention

Donor lottery 
Multiple donors contribute to a common pot in exchange for a chance to win the right to decide how the pot is spent

Dustin Moskovitz co-founded Facebook before co-founding Asana

Dustin Moskowitz is the main donor of the Open Philanthropy foundation

EA megaprojects deploy $100M+ in funding every year

Earning to give 
Pursuing a high-earning career to donate a significant portion of income

Effective Ideas awards up to $100,000 to five EA-related blogs

Effective Thesis 
A project to help university students find high-impact thesis topics

Expected value 
A predicted value of a variable, calculated as the sum of all possible values each multiplied by the probability of its occurrence

Exploratory altruism 
Exploring and making a case for new cause areas

Fermi estimate 
A rough calculation which aims to be right within about an order of magnitude

Fin Moorhouse and Luca Righetti co-host the Hear This Idea podcast

Founders Pledge members pledged to donate a total of $7B+ as of 2021

Founders Pledge requires a minimum pledge of 5%

Generation Pledge encourages ultra-rich inheritors to pledge 10% of their inheritance

getguesstimate.com 
An online tool that uses Monte Carlo simulations to estimate uncertain results

Giving Green 
A charity evaluator focused on climate change

Giving What We Can members pledge to donate at least 10% of their income to effective charities

Hits-based giving 
High-risk, high-reward philanthropy

Imposter syndrome 
Doubting your abilities and feeling like a fraud

Infinite ethics 
Branch of philosophy that studies the ethical implications of living in an infinite universe

Information hazard 
The risk from the dissemination of true information

Is Founders Pledge legally binding? 
Yes

Is the Giving What We Can Pledge legally binding? 
No

Julia Galef hosted the Rationally Speaking podcast

Julia Galef wrote The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't

Karolina Sarek and Joey Savoie co-founded Charity Entrepreneurship

Karolina Sarek's three rules for research 
-Reach conclusions 
-Affect decision-making 
-Compare alternatives equally

Land use reform 
Changing legislation regulating dense housing construction in cities

Long reflection 
A long future period during which humanity figures out what we value

Minimal trust investigation 
Suspend your trust in others to understand something by yourself

Moral circle 
The circle of beings whose interests humans are willing to value similar to their own

Moral parliament 
Act as if you're run by a Parliament with members who believe in A and others who believe in B.

Moral patient 
Being that is intrinsically valuable

Neartermism 
The philosophical position where it's better to help people sooner rather than later

Open Philanthropy donated $300M to GiveWell-recommended charities in 2021

Open Philanthropy donated $400M in 2021

Open Philanthropy seeks benefits of $100 for every $1 spent in the US

Peter Singer wrote The Life You Can Save

Philip Tetlock wrote Superforecasting The Art and Science of Prediction

Quadratic Voting 
A system where a voter votes not just for or against an issue, but also expresses how strongly he feels about it

Question of moral patienthood 
Question on how to weigh the interests of animals, future people, or digital agents

Randomised controlled trial 
A scientific experiment used to control factors not under direct experimental control

Red team 
An independent group that challenges an organisation or movement to improve it

Robert Wiblin hosts the 80,000 Hours podcast

Room for more funding 
A measure of an organisation's capacity to absorb additional donations

Sam Bankman forecasted that FTX had a 20% chance of success at the beginning

Sam Bankman founded crypto exchange FTX and is the richest Forbes Under 30

Sam Harris hosts the Making Sense podcast

SoGive 
An online tool that lets donors see the impact of their donations

Spark Wave developed the flashcard web app Thought Saver

Spark Wave developed the rationality-tools website Clearer Thinking

Spencer Greenberg founded the startup foundry Spark Wave

Spencer Greenberg hosts the Clearer Thinking podcast

The company with the most EAs is Alphabet

The FTX Future Fund grants a minimum of $100,000

The FTX Future Fund plans to deploy $100M in 2022

The inside view forecasts based on the problem details, while the outside view looks at similar past situations

The Scared Straight program cost society $200 for every $1 spent

The United States is the country with the highest incarceration rate

There are 1.5M nonprofits in the US

There were 7,000 active EAs in 2020

Thinking at the margin 
Assessing the impact of a decision by considering the effects of spending an additional unit of resources

Three factors affecting your job's impact 
-Problem: How large, neglected, and tractable is it? 
-Opportunity: How effective is your intervention at solving the problem? 
-Personal fit: How suited are you for the opportunity?

Three factors in the ITN Framework 
Importance, Tractability and Neglectedness

Three main cause areas within EA 
-Global Health and Development 
-Animal Welfare 
-Longtermism

Three methods to sort charity ideas 
-Cost-Effectiveness Analysis 
-Interview Experts 
-Weighted Factor Model

Three neglected climate solutions according to Founders Pledge
-Carbon capture and storage 
-Nuclear energy 
-Heavy transport (planes, ships, trucks)

Three types of career capital 
-Skills 
-Connections 
-Credentials

Three types of information hazards 
-Ideas 
-Data 
-Attention

Toby Ord and William MacAskill co-founded Giving What We Can

Total pledges for EA-related causes were at $50B in 2021

Tractability 
The fraction of a problem that would be solved if additional resources were devoted to it

Two highly ineffective programs 
-PlayPumps 
-Scared Straight

Unilateralist's curse 
The risk of causing unintentional harm increases with the number of altruists

Value drift 
Over time, people might become less motivated to do altruistic things

Vox writes the Future Perfect newsletter on EA

William MacAskill founded the Forethought Foundation

William MacAskill will publish What We Owe The Future in August of 2022

William MacAskill wrote Doing Good Better

Anki Decks

Download the Anki decks here after downloading the Anki app on your computer: 

• Animal Welfare
• Global Health and Development
• Longtermism
• Meta-Effective Altruism

On iPhone, you can revise the cards directly on the Anki website—or get the $25 app if you’re a pro. On Android, use the free AnkiDroid app. Just download the flashcards on your computer first.

Got feedback?

I would love your feedback. You can leave general comments in the comments or line-by-line feedback in this Google Doc. For example, you can: 

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Also get in touch with me if you're interested to give me feedback or collaborate on Our World in Flashcards, a new website explaining pressing problems in articles with flashcards.

Thank You

I would like to thank Florence Hinder and Spencer Greenberg for their feedback and work to promote flashcards with Thought Saver, Cillian Crosson for inspiring me to embark on EA full-time, the team at Our World in Data for distilling pressing topics, the curators of the EA Forum topics for mapping key EA concepts, and whoever I mentioned in the flashcards for making something worth remembering. If I didn't mention something amazing that you created, let me know in the comments or Google Doc or send me a private message, and I'll add you :)