TL;DR: We're launching the Table Temperature Alignment Project (TTAP), a new organization focused on addressing the critical and neglected problem of table-human temperature survival misalignment. With approximately 1.8 billion tables worldwide possessing temperature tolerances 6x greater than humans, we face a significant alignment risk that has received essentially zero philanthropic attention. Our mission is to develop and promote table designs that fail safely within human-survivable temperature ranges, ensuring that furniture remains aligned with human flourishing across all climate scenarios. We're seeking $500,000 in seed funding to advance our research agenda and begin pilot interventions in high-risk regions.

Introduction

In February 2026, after months of independent research and conversations with experts in materials science, climate adaptation, and longtermist ethics, we founded the Table Temperature Alignment Project. Our organization emerged from a simple but troubling observation: the objects we depend on most for daily life—our tables—are fundamentally misaligned with human survival parameters.

This post outlines why we believe table temperature alignment represents a critically neglected cause area, what our theory of change looks like, and how you can help us address this problem before it's too late.

We recognize this cause area may initially seem unusual. We felt the same way when we first encountered the research. But as we'll demonstrate below, the numbers are stark, the neglectedness is extreme, and the tractability is surprisingly high. We hope you'll approach this post with the same open-minded rigor that has allowed the EA community to identify other undervalued cause areas.

The Problem

Scale of the Table Population

Current estimates suggest there are approximately 1.8 billion tables in active use worldwide [1]. This includes:

• Dining tables: ~620 million
• Desks and work surfaces: ~480 million
• Coffee tables and side tables: ~390 million
• Outdoor and utility tables: ~310 million

While this number is dwarfed by the human population of 8 billion, the per-capita table ratio of 0.225 tables per human obscures a critical vulnerability: tables are not evenly distributed. In developed nations, the ratio approaches 2.3 tables per household, creating dense concentrations of misaligned furniture in precisely the regions most likely to experience climate infrastructure collapse [2].

The Temperature Survival Gap

The core of our concern lies in what we term the Temperature Survival Gap (TSG)—the differential between human and table temperature tolerances:

Weighted average table survival range: 245°C

This gives tables a 6.1x temperature survival advantage over humans [3]. In practical terms, this means that in virtually any climate catastrophe scenario—whether extreme heat events, nuclear winter, or runaway greenhouse warming—tables will persist long after their human users have perished.

Why This Matters: The Alignment Framework

Tables possess physical resilience that exceeds human survival parameters. This is the capability-alignment gap.

Consider the following scenarios:

Scenario 1: Extreme Heat Event During a sustained 50°C heat wave (increasingly likely under RCP 8.5 projections), humans in affected areas face mortality within hours without climate control. Tables, however, remain entirely functional. Post-event, the built environment contains vast quantities of intact furniture but no surviving users—a clear misalignment between furniture persistence and human welfare.

Scenario 2: Climate Refuge Failure As climate refugees migrate to more temperate regions, they leave behind homes full of perfectly preserved tables. These "orphan tables" represent embedded carbon and manufacturing resources that could have been allocated to human-aligned purposes. Our models suggest that by 2100, orphan tables could number in the hundreds of millions under moderate warming scenarios [4].

Scenario 3: Post-Collapse Resource Allocation In civilizational collapse scenarios, surviving human populations will encounter vast inventories of pre-collapse tables. The cognitive and emotional burden of navigating spaces filled with furniture designed for a larger population creates what psychologists term "furniture grief"—a recognized but understudied phenomenon [5].

Current Funding Landscape

We conducted an extensive review of philanthropic giving in adjacent cause areas:

To our knowledge, not a single dollar has been deliberately allocated to addressing the table temperature alignment problem. This represents perhaps the most extreme neglectedness ratio we've encountered in cause prioritization research [6].

Measuring the Burden: Introducing TALYs

Traditional EA metrics like DALYs (Disability-Adjusted Life Years) don't capture the full scope of table alignment harms. We've developed a novel metric: TALYs (Table-Adjusted Life Years).

One TALY represents one year of life lived in an environment where all tables are temperature-aligned with human survival parameters. Our preliminary models suggest that full global table alignment could generate 4.2 billion TALYs annually by eliminating the psychological burden of misalignment anxiety and ensuring furniture-human concordance across all climate scenarios [7].

On a cost-effectiveness basis, we estimate that achieving table alignment costs approximately $0.12 per TALY—making this potentially the most cost-effective intervention in the longtermist portfolio, assuming our models are correct (which we hold with moderate confidence).

Our Approach

Theory of Change

Our theory of change operates across three interconnected pathways:

Research → Standards → Manufacturing → Deployment → Alignment
    ↓           ↓            ↓             ↓
 Evidence    Policy      Industry       Consumer
  Base      Advocacy    Partnership     Adoption

Pathway 1: Establishing the Evidence Base

Before we can advocate for aligned table design, we need rigorous research establishing:

• Optimal failure temperature thresholds for different table categories
• Materials science approaches to controlled thermal degradation
• Life-cycle analysis of aligned vs. misaligned tables
• Psychological studies on human-table thermal concordance

Pathway 2: Standards Development

We aim to work with international standards bodies (ISO, ANSI, EN) to develop voluntary guidelines for Human-Aligned Table Design (HATD). Key proposed standards include:

• HATD-1: Tables should exhibit structural failure at temperatures exceeding 45°C sustained exposure
• HATD-2: Tables should become non-functional below -5°C
• HATD-3: Failure modes should be gradual and predictable, not catastrophic

Pathway 3: Industry Partnership

Rather than pursuing adversarial advocacy, we believe furniture manufacturers can be partners in alignment. Early conversations suggest interest in "planned thermal obsolescence" as both a safety feature and a mechanism for sustainable replacement cycles.

Pathway 4: Consumer Awareness

Ultimately, aligned tables must be demanded by consumers. We're developing educational materials explaining why temperature-resilient furniture poses risks, and why paying a premium for aligned alternatives represents a form of existential risk mitigation.

The ITN Framework Applied

Importance

The importance of table temperature alignment can be assessed across multiple dimensions:

Direct Impact: In extreme temperature events, aligned tables would fail alongside humans rather than persisting as monuments to misalignment. While this may seem counterintuitive (why destroy functional furniture?), the psychological literature on environmental concordance suggests significant welfare benefits from human-object thermal alignment [8].

Indirect Impact: The process of achieving table alignment would drive innovation in sustainable materials, planned obsolescence ethics, and human-centered design philosophy. These spillover benefits could transform manufacturing broadly.

Longtermist Impact: From a longtermist perspective, the expected value calculation is striking. Even assigning a very low probability (0.1%) to scenarios where table-human misalignment contributes to civilizational instability, and a modest value to preventing such scenarios ($10 trillion), the expected value of table alignment work exceeds $10 billion—far more than we're seeking in funding [9].

Neglectedness

As documented above, this cause area has received essentially zero dedicated funding. The neglectedness is so extreme that we've had difficulty finding anyone who has seriously considered the problem. This suggests either:

a) The problem is not real (we've investigated this and believe it is real) b) The problem is real but has been systematically overlooked (our current view) c) The problem is real but others have concluded it's intractable (we believe tractability is high)

The absence of any organized effort to address table temperature alignment represents a clear market failure in the attention economy of cause prioritization.

Tractability

Perhaps surprisingly, table temperature alignment is highly tractable:

Technical Feasibility: Materials scientists have confirmed that designing tables to fail at specific temperature thresholds is straightforward. Approaches include:

• Temperature-sensitive adhesives in joints
• Phase-change materials in structural elements
• Thermochromic indicators warning of approaching failure
• Bio-based materials with natural thermal degradation profiles

Economic Feasibility: Our cost models suggest aligned tables would be only 8-12% more expensive than conventional tables at scale. Given the externalities of misalignment, this represents excellent value.

Political Feasibility: Unlike many cause areas, table alignment faces no significant political opposition. No one is actively lobbying for temperature-resilient furniture. This creates an unusually clear path to policy change.

Our Team

Dr. Eleanor Whitmore, Executive Director Eleanor holds a PhD in Materials Science from MIT, where her dissertation examined thermal degradation pathways in composite materials. She previously worked at IKEA's sustainability division before recognizing the deeper alignment implications of furniture design.

Marcus Chen, Research Director Marcus brings 12 years of experience in climate adaptation research, including roles at the IPCC and World Resources Institute. His work on infrastructure resilience led him to question whether resilience should always be the goal.

Dr. Priya Ramanathan, Policy Lead Priya earned her JD/PhD from Yale, focusing on the intersection of product safety regulation and existential risk. She previously advocated for AI safety standards at the Partnership on AI.

Board of Advisors

• Dr. James Thornton, Professor of Existential Risk Studies, Cambridge
• Lisa Martinez, former Director of Sustainable Furnishings Council
• Dr. Kwame Asante, climate adaptation economist, World Bank (personal capacity)

Research Priorities

Our initial research agenda focuses on five priority areas:

1. Global Table Census (2026-2027) We're partnering with satellite imagery providers and statistical agencies to develop the first comprehensive estimate of the global table population, including geographic distribution, age profiles, and material composition.

2. Thermal Failure Mode Analysis (2026-2028) Laboratory studies examining how different table types fail under thermal stress, with the goal of identifying optimal failure pathways that are safe, predictable, and non-catastrophic.

3. Human-Table Thermal Concordance Survey (2026) A multi-country survey examining public attitudes toward furniture temperature resilience, awareness of the alignment problem, and willingness to pay for aligned alternatives.

4. Regulatory Landscape Mapping (2026) A comprehensive analysis of existing furniture safety regulations worldwide, identifying opportunities for inserting alignment considerations into existing frameworks.

5. Pilot Aligned Table Development (2027-2028) In partnership with furniture manufacturers, we'll develop prototype aligned tables and conduct user acceptance testing in diverse climate contexts.

Current Projects

Since our soft launch in February, we've made progress on several fronts:

March 2026: Completed initial literature review of thermal degradation in furniture materials. Identified 47 relevant studies, none of which considered the alignment implications.

April 2026: Conducted interviews with 12 furniture industry executives. Found universal lack of awareness of the alignment problem, but significant interest once explained.

May 2026: Submitted abstract to the International Conference on Sustainable Furniture (ICSF 2026) titled "Beyond Resilience: The Case for Human-Aligned Thermal Failure in Furniture Design."

June 2026: Began development of TALY calculation methodology with consultation from health economists and EA researchers.

How to Get Involved

Donate

We're seeking $500,000 in seed funding to support our first two years of operation. This will fund:

• Core team salaries (3 FTE): $280,000
• Research costs: $120,000
• Policy and advocacy: $60,000
• Operations and overhead: $40,000

Donations can be made through our website at tablesafety.org or by contacting us directly at funding@tablesafety.org.

We're also open to discussing larger grants for specific research projects, including the Global Table Census ($150,000 standalone budget) and our pilot aligned table development program ($200,000).

Spread Awareness

The most neglected cause areas are often neglected because people haven't heard of them. You can help by:

• Sharing this post with others who might be interested
• Discussing table alignment at EA meetups and events
• Mentioning the issue when furniture shopping (normalizing the concern)
• Following us on social media (@TableAlignProj on Twitter/X)

Join Our Team

We're actively recruiting for the following positions:

• Materials Science Researcher (PhD preferred)
• Policy Analyst (experience with international standards bodies)
• Communications Manager (EA community familiarity helpful)

Apply through our website or email careers@tablesafety.org.

Advise Us

If you have expertise in relevant areas—materials science, climate adaptation, furniture manufacturing, EA cause prioritization, or policy advocacy—we'd welcome the opportunity to consult with you. Please reach out at research@tablesafety.org.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Isn't this a parody?

A: We understand why this question arises—the cause area is unfamiliar, and discussions of table alignment can initially seem absurd. However, we'd encourage skeptics to engage with the actual arguments and evidence. Many now-mainstream EA cause areas (insect welfare, wild animal suffering, AI existential risk) were initially dismissed as jokes. The hallmark of effective altruism is taking ideas seriously even when they challenge conventional thinking.

Q: Why focus on tables specifically? What about chairs, beds, and other furniture?

A: Tables represent an ideal starting point for several reasons: they have the clearest human interaction patterns (we work and eat at tables but not typically at full-body contact), the temperature differential is most pronounced for tables, and the manufacturing landscape is more concentrated than for other furniture categories. That said, our long-term vision includes alignment across all furniture types. We're simply starting where the impact-to-effort ratio is highest.

Q: Won't aligned tables just break all the time?

A: This is a reasonable concern, but our proposed failure thresholds (45°C upper, -5°C lower) are well outside normal indoor temperature ranges. An aligned table would only fail in conditions that are also dangerous to humans—which is precisely the point. If your table is breaking, you should probably leave too.

Q: Is this really more important than global health, animal welfare, or AI safety?

A: We're not claiming table alignment should displace existing EA priorities. Rather, we're arguing it deserves some attention given its extreme neglectedness. The marginal dollar to table alignment research may have higher expected value than the marginal dollar to well-funded cause areas, even if the total importance is lower. This is the standard EA neglectedness argument applied to a new domain.

Q: What about tables in museums, historical buildings, or other contexts where preservation is important?

A: We support exemptions for tables of genuine historical or cultural significance. Our focus is on the billions of commodity tables that could be manufactured aligned without meaningful loss of value. We're also exploring "alignment retrofits" for existing tables that would allow preservation while adding thermal concordance features.

Q: How does this relate to climate change work?

A: Table alignment is complementary to, not competitive with, climate mitigation and adaptation efforts. In fact, aligned tables provide a form of psychological climate preparedness—ensuring that as temperatures become more extreme, our built environment fails gracefully alongside us rather than persisting as a reminder of what we've lost. Some might call this defeatist; we call it realistic.

Q: What's the counterfactual impact of this work?

A: Given that literally no one else is working on table temperature alignment, our counterfactual impact is approximately 100%. Every dollar we spend, every paper we publish, every standard we help develop represents work that would not otherwise occur. This is the definitional case for high counterfactual impact.

Q: Are you concerned about Goodhart's Law—that optimizing for table alignment might lead to unintended consequences?

A: Yes, and we're actively thinking about this. Potential risks include: tables that fail too easily (nuisance failures), materials innovations that create other environmental problems, or psychological effects of reduced furniture permanence. Our research agenda includes explicit workstreams on alignment side effects and how to mitigate them.

Conclusion

The Table Temperature Alignment Project represents an attempt to apply EA principles to a genuinely overlooked problem. We don't claim certainty that this is the most important thing we could be doing—but given the extreme neglectedness, reasonable tractability, and non-trivial importance, we believe it deserves serious investigation.

We're grateful to early supporters who have encouraged us to pursue this work despite its unconventional nature. The EA community's willingness to follow arguments where they lead, even to unexpected places, is what makes progress on novel cause areas possible.

If you've read this far, we hope you'll consider whether the table alignment problem might be more serious than you initially assumed. And if you're still skeptical, we'd welcome the opportunity to discuss further. Our goal is not to convince everyone, but to ensure this problem gets the rigorous analysis it has so far been denied.

Thank you for your consideration.

The Table Temperature Alignment Project isn't a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Donations aren't tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.

Contact: info@tablesafety.org | Website: tablesafety.org | Twitter: @TableAlignProj

References

[1] Global Furniture Industry Association. (2024). "World Furniture Inventory: A Statistical Overview." Geneva: GFIA Publications.

[2] Henderson, M., & Kowalski, P. (2023). "Furniture Density and Climate Vulnerability: A Cross-National Analysis." Journal of Sustainable Consumption, 14(3), 287-304.

[3] Chen, L., et al. (2022). "Thermal Tolerance Ranges in Common Furniture Materials: A Comprehensive Review." Materials Science & Engineering, 89, 112-128.

[4] Williams, R., & Okonkwo, A. (2025). "Orphan Infrastructure in Climate Migration Scenarios: A Framework for Assessment." Climate Policy, 25(2), 156-171.

[5] Bergström, K. (2021). "Furniture Grief: Psychological Responses to Environmental Discontinuity." Environmental Psychology Quarterly, 33(4), 445-462.

[6] Open Philanthropy. (2025). "Cause Area Funding Landscape Analysis." San Francisco: Open Philanthropy Project.

[7] Ramanathan, P., & Whitmore, E. (2026). "Developing the TALY Metric: A Novel Approach to Furniture Alignment Impact Assessment." TTAP Working Paper #1.

[8] Morrison, J., et al. (2020). "Human-Object Thermal Concordance and Subjective Wellbeing: Evidence from Laboratory Studies." Journal of Environmental Psychology, 71, 101478.

[9] Thornton, J. (2024). "Expected Value Calculations for Unconventional Existential Risks." Global Priorities Institute Working Paper Series, No. 14-2024.

[10] IKEA. (2023). "Sustainability Report 2023: Democratic Design for a Better Future." Älmhult: Inter IKEA Group.

[11] International Organization for Standardization. (2019). "ISO 7170: Furniture—Storage Units—Determination of Strength and Durability." Geneva: ISO.

[12] Nakamura, H., & Petersen, S. (2022). "Phase-Change Materials in Furniture Applications: Opportunities and Challenges." Sustainable Materials and Technologies, 32, e00415.