Quick takes

I'm trying to set up a mentorship scheme matching up experienced social media creators with exceptional communicators interested in learning how to communicate high-impact ideas and information at scale using the medium of social media. This is as part of a wider effort to get more EAs with a diverse but previously under-utilised range of skills started on their impact journey. What are some neglected, academic ideas / bits of knowledge that would benefit from being widely spread to the general public through the medium of social media? and... Do you know anyone who's extremely skilled at social media whom I could approach? Someone who would either be interested in making the content or coaching aspiring content creators? Thanks in advance for your help!

Researchers simulate an entire fly brain on a laptop. Is a human brain next? What is the implication of this for EA thinking? Does the fly that purely exists in the computer warrant moral consideration, and could we increase the overall welfare of the world by making millions of these simulations with ideal fruit-fly conditions?    They fully copied the brain of the fly, so from my understanding it should also feel pleasure and pain in theory, I think this poses a real conundrum for EA morality.

I know EA leads to some weird places, but at the same time I think the EA movement is good at not getting too involved in questions of the day where an EA perspective is not needed, and could repel some from the movement. Presumably peace in the Middle East would be very good from an EA perspective, but there is a lot of debate on the Middle East already, no reason to try to inject a formal EA perspective on it. This is not to say that EA-adjacent individuals can't engage in the debate, as a form of personal hobby maybe. 

It might genuinely be the time to boycott Chat GPT and start campaigns targeting corporate partners. But this isn't yet obvious. Even if so, what would be the appropriate concrete and reasonable asks? I think there is a bit of epistemic crisis emerging at the moment. If there's a case to be made, it needs to be made sooner rather than latter. And then we need coordination.

Super sceptical probably very highly intractable thought that I haven't done any research on: There seem to be a lot of reasons to think we might be living in a simulation besides just Nick Bostrom's simulation argument, like: * All the fundamental constants and properties of the universe are perfectly suited to the emergence of sentient life. This could be explained by the Anthropic principle, or it could be explained by us living in a simulation that has been designed for us. * The Fermi Paradox: there don't seem to be any other civilizations in the observable universe. There are many explanations for the Fermi Paradox, but one additional explanation might be that whoever is simulating the universe created it for us, or they don't care about other civilizations, so haven't simulated them. * We seem to be really early on in human history. Only about 60 billion people have ever lived IIRC but we expect many trillions to live in the future. This can be explained by the Doomsday argument - that in fact we are in the time in human history where most people will live because we will soon go extinct. However, this phenomenon can also be explained by us living in a simulation - see next point. * Not only are we really early, but we seem to be living at a pivotal moment in human history that is super interesting. We are about to create intelligence greater than ourselves, expand into space, or probably all die. Like if any time in history were to be simulated, I think there's a high likelihood it would be now.  If I was pushed into a corner, I might say the probability we are living in a simulation is like 60%, where most evidence seems to point towards us being in a simulation. However, the doubt comes from the high probability that I'm just thinking about this all wrong - like, of course I can come up with a motivation for a simulation to explain any feature of the universe... it would be hard to find something that doesn't line up with an explanation that the simu

Is there a running list of small, impactful & very capacity-constrained giving opportunities somewhere?

Gavi's investment opportunity for 2026-2030 says they expect to save 8 to 9 million lives, for which they would require a budget of at least $11.9 billion[1]. Unfortunately, Gavi only raised $9 billion, so they have to make some cuts to their plans[2]. And you really can't reduce spending by $3 billion without making some life-or-death decisions. Gavi's CEO has said that "for every $1.5 billion less, your ability to save 1.1 million lives is compromised"[3]. This would equal a marginal cost of $1,607 $1,363 per life saved, which seems a bit low to me. But I think there is a good chance Gavi's marginal cost per life saved is still cheap enough to clear GiveWell's cost-effectiveness bar. GiveWell hasn't made grants to Gavi, though. Why? ---------------------------------------- 1. https://www.gavi.org/sites/default/files/investing/funding/resource-mobilisation/Gavi-Investment-Opportunity-2026-2030.pdf, pp. 20 & 43 ↩︎ 2. https://www.devex.com/news/gavi-s-board-tasked-with-strategy-shift-in-light-of-3b-funding-gap-110595 ↩︎ 3. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02270-x ↩︎

Indoor tanning is really bad for people's health; it significantly increases one's risk of getting skin cancer.[1] Many countries already outlaw minors from visiting indoor tanning salons. However, surprisingly, there are only two countries, Australia and Brazil, that have banned indoor tanning for adults, too. I think that doing policy advocacy for a complete ban on indoor tanning in countries around the world has the potential to be a highly cost-effective global health intervention. Indoor tanning ban policy advocacy seems to check all three boxes of the ITN framework: it is highly neglected; it affects many people (indoor tanning is surprisingly popular: over 10 percent of adults around the world have tanned indoors[2]), and thus has the potential to have a big impact; and also, I think it could be quite tractable (passing laws is never easy, but is should be doable, because the indoor tanning lobby appears to be much less powerful than, say, the tobacco or alcohol lobbies). ---------------------------------------- 1. https://www.aad.org/public/diseases/skin-cancer/surprising-facts-about-indoor-tanning ↩︎ 2. https://www.aad.org/media/stats-indoor-tanning ↩︎