Does anybody know if the Trump EO on instituting "most favored nation" guarantees on drugs sold in the US will affect prices in developing countries or just rich industrialized ones? 

The text of the EO implies that it's to address imbalances between the US and other developed countries (AI summary).

The Executive Order states that "Americans should not be forced to subsidize low-cost prescription drugs and biologics in other developed countries, and face overcharges for the same products in the United States."

When describing potential importation of dr

Question: how to reconcile the fact that expected value is linear with preferences being possibly nonlinear?

Example: people are tipically willing to pay more than expected value for a small chance of a big benefit (lottery), or to remove a small chance of a big loss (insurance).

This example could be rejected as a "mental bias" or "irrational". However, it is not obvious to me that linearity is a virtue, and even if it is, we are human and our subjective experience is not linear.

Potential Megaproject: 'The Cooperation Project' (or the like)

This is a very loose idea, based on observations like these:

• We have ongoing geopolitical tensions (e.g. China-US, China-Taiwan, Russia-Ukraine) and a lot of resources and attention spent on those.
• We have (increasing?) risks from emerging technology that potentially threaten everyone. It's difficult to estimate the risk levels, but there seems to be an emerging consensus that we are on a reckless path, even from perspectives concerned purely with individual or national self-interest.

The project w... (read more)

👋 I have joined the modern world and am writing a Substack about research on ending factory farming 😃

Here's a post on a strong study about the effects of watching an especially upsetting documentary.

I sometimes say, in a provocative/hyperbolic sense, that the concept of "neglectedness" has been a disaster for EA. I do think the concept is significantly over-used (ironically, it's not neglected!), and people should just look directly at the importance and tractability of a cause at current margins.

Maybe neglectedness useful as a heuristic for scanning thousands of potential cause areas. But ultimately, it's just a heuristic for tractability: how many resources are going towards something is evidence about whether additional resources are likely to be i... (read more)

As a community builder, I've started donating directly to my local EA group—and I encourage you to consider doing the same.

Managing budgets and navigating inflexible grant applications consume valuable time and energy that could otherwise be spent directly fostering impactful community engagement. As someone deeply involved, I possess unique insights into what our group specifically needs, how to effectively meet those needs, and what actions are most conducive to achieving genuine impact.

Of course, seeking funding from organizations like OpenPhil remains ... (read more)

EA community building relies heavily on a few large donors. This creates risk.

One way to reduce that risk is to broaden the funding base. Membership models might help.^[1]

Many people assume EA will only ever appeal to a small slice of the population, and so this funding would never amount to anything significant. However, I think people often underestimate how large a “small slice” can be.

Take the Dutch mountaineering association. A mountaineering club in one of the flattest countries on Earth doesn’t exactly scream mass appeal.

So, how many members do you t... (read more)

I know that folks in EA often favor donating to more effective things rather than less effective things. With that in mind, I have mixed feelings knowing that many Harvard faculty are donating 10%, and that they are donating to the best funded and most prestigious university in the world.

On the one hand, it is really nice to know that they are willing to put their money where their mouth is when their institution is under attack. I get some warm fuzzy feelings from the idea of defending an education institution against political attacks. On the other hand,... (read more)

As a group organiser I was wildly miscalibrated about the acceptance rate for EAGs! I spoke to the EAG team, and here are the actual figures:
 

• The overall acceptance rate for undergraduate student is about ¾! (2024)
• For undergraduate first timers, it’s about ½ (Bay Area 2025)

If that’s peaked your interest, EAG London 2025 applications close soon - apply here!
Jemima

why do i find myself less involved in EA?

epistemic status: i timeboxed the below to 30 minutes. it's been bubbling for a while, but i haven't spent that much time explicitly thinking about this. i figured it'd be a lot better to share half-baked thoughts than to keep it all in my head — but accordingly, i don't expect to reflectively endorse all of these points later down the line. i think it's probably most useful & accurate to view the below as a slice of my emotions, rather than a developed point of view. i'm not very keen on arguing about any of th... (read more)

I feel like EAs might be sleeping a bit on digital meetups/conferences.

My impression is that many people prefer in-person events to online ones. But at the same time, a lot of people hate needing to be in the Bay Area / London or having to travel to events.

There was one EAG online during the pandemic (I believe the others were EAGxs), and I had a pretty good experience there. Some downsides, but some strong upsides. It seemed very promising to me.

I'm particularly excited about VR. I have a Quest3, and have been impressed by the experience of chatting to pe... (read more)

I have a bunch of disagreements with Good Ventures and how they are allocating their funds, but also Dustin and Cari are plausibly the best people who ever lived.