Quick takes

1. If you have social capital, identify as an EA. 2. Stop saying Effective Altruism is "weird", "cringe" and full of problems - so often And yes, "weird" has negative connotations to most people. Self flagellation once helped highlight areas needing improvement. Now overcorrection has created hesitation among responsible, cautious, and credible people who might otherwise publicly identify as effective altruists. As a result, the label increasingly belongs to those willing to accept high reputational risks or use it opportunistically, weakening the movement’s overall credibility. If you're aligned with EA’s core principles, thoughtful in your actions, and have no significant reputational risks, then identifying openly as an EA is especially important. Normalising the term matters. When credible and responsible people embrace the label, they anchor it positively and prevent misuse. Offline I was early to criticise Effective Altruism’s branding and messaging. Admittedly, the name itself is imperfect. Yet at this point, it is established and carries public recognition. We can't discard it without losing valuable continuity and trust. If you genuinely believe in the core ideas and engage thoughtfully with EA’s work, openly identifying yourself as an effective altruist is a logical next step. Specifically, if you already have a strong public image, align privately with EA values, and have no significant hidden issues, then you're precisely the person who should step forward and put skin in the game. Quiet alignment isn’t enough. The movement’s strength and reputation depend on credible voices publicly standing behind it.

In light of recent discourse on EA adjacency, this seems like a good time to publicly note that I still identify as an effective altruist, not EA adjacent. I am extremely against embezzling people out of billions of dollars of money, and FTX was a good reminder of the importance of "don't do evil things for galaxy brained altruistic reasons". But this has nothing to do with whether or not I endorse the philosophy that "it is correct to try to think about the most effective and leveraged ways to do good and then actually act on them". And there are many people in or influenced by the EA community who I respect and think do good and important work.

I’m in a WeChat group initiated by Plant Future and Good Food Fund. It is meant to connect young Chinese students who are interested in promoting vegetarianism. We have a weekly discussion (in English) every Wednesday morning 7:30AM. If you’re interested in joining, please send me a message. Note that you do need a WeChat account.

I used to feel so strongly about effective altruism. But my heart isn't in it anymore. I still care about the same old stuff I used to care about, like donating what I can to important charities and trying to pick the charities that are the most cost-effective. Or caring about animals and trying to figure out how to do right by them, even though I haven't been able to sustain a vegan diet for more than a short time. And so on. But there isn't a community or a movement anymore where I want to talk about these sorts of things with people. That community and movement existed, at least in my local area and at least to a limited extent in some online spaces, from about 2015 to 2017 or 2018. These are the reasons for my feelings about the effective altruist community/movement, especially over the last one or two years: -The AGI thing has gotten completely out of hand. I wrote a brief post here about why I strongly disagree with near-term AGI predictions. I wrote a long comment here about how AGI's takeover of effective altruism has left me disappointed, disturbed, and alienated. 80,000 Hours and Will MacAskill have both pivoted to focusing exclusively or almost exclusively on AGI. AGI talk has dominated the EA Forum for a while. It feels like AGI is what the movement is mostly about now, so now I just disagree with most of what effective altruism is about. -The extent to which LessWrong culture has taken over or "colonized" effective altruism culture is such a bummer. I know there's been at least a bit of overlap for a long time, but ten years ago it felt like effective altruism had its own, unique culture and nowadays it feels like the LessWrong culture has almost completely taken over. I have never felt good about LessWrong or "rationalism" and the more knowledge and experience of it I've gained, the more I've accumulated a sense of repugnance, horror, and anger toward that culture and ideology. I hate to see that become what effective altruism is like. -The stori

I'm a 36 year old iOS Engineer/Software Engineer who switched to working on Image classification systems via Tensorflow a year ago. Last month I was made redundant with a fairly generous severance package and good buffer of savings to get me by while unemployed. The risky step I had long considered of quitting my non-impactful job was taken for me. I'm hoping to capitalize on my free time by determining what career path to take that best fits my goals. I'm pretty excited about it.  I created a weighted factor model to figure out what projects or learning to take on first. I welcome feedback on it. There's also a schedule tab for how I'm planning to spend my time this year and a template if anyone wishes to use this spreadsheet their selves. I got feedback from my 80K hour advisor to get involved in EA communities more often. I'm also want to learn more publicly be it via forums or by blogging. This somewhat unstructured dumping of my thoughts is a first step towards that.

I'm going to be leaving 80,000 Hours and joining Charity Entrepreneurship's incubator programme this summer! The summer 2023 incubator round is focused on biosecurity and scalable global health charities and I'm really excited to see what's the best fit for me and hopefully launch a new charity. The ideas that the research team have written up look really exciting and I'm trepidatious about the challenge of being a founder but psyched for getting started. Watch this space! <3 I've been at 80,000 Hours for the last 3 years. I'm very proud of the 800+ advising calls I did and feel very privileged I got to talk to so many people and try and help them along their careers! I've learned so much during my time at 80k. And the team at 80k has been wonderful to work with - so thoughtful, committed to working out what is the right thing to do, kind, and fun - I'll for sure be sad to leave them. There are a few main reasons why I'm leaving now: 1. New career challenge - I want to try out something that stretches my skills beyond what I've done before. I think I could be a good fit for being a founder and running something big and complicated and valuable that wouldn't exist without me - I'd like to give it a try sooner rather than later. 2. Post-EA crises stepping away from EA community building a bit - Events over the last few months in EA made me re-evaluate how valuable I think the EA community and EA community building are as well as re-evaluate my personal relationship with EA. I haven't gone to the last few EAGs and switched my work away from doing advising calls for the last few months, while processing all this. I have been somewhat sad that there hasn't been more discussion and changes by now though I have been glad to see more EA leaders share things more recently (e.g. this from Ben Todd). I do still believe there are some really important ideas that EA prioritises but I'm more circumspect about some of the things I think we're not doing as well as we could (

I was extremely disappointed to see this tweet from Liron Shapira revealing that the Centre for AI Safety fired a recent hire, John Sherman, for stating that members of the public would attempt to destroy AI labs if they understood the magnitude of AI risk. Capitulating to this sort of pressure campaign is not the right path for EA, which should have a focus on seeking the truth rather than playing along with social-status games, and is not even the right path for PR (it makes you look like you think the campaigners have valid points, which in this case is not true). This makes me think less of CAIS' decision-makers.

80,000 Hours has completed its spin-out and has new boards We're pleased to announce that 80,000 Hours has officially completed its spin-out from Effective Ventures and is now operating as an independent organisation. We've established two entities with the following board members: 80,000 Hours Limited (a nonprofit entity where our core operations live): * Konstantin Sietzy — Deputy Director of Talent and Operations at UK AISI * Alex Lawsen — Senior Program Associate at Open Philanthropy and former 80,000 Hours Advising Manager * Anna Weldon — COO at the Centre for Effective Altruism and former EV board member * Joshua Rosenberg — CEO of the Forecasting Research Institute * Emma Abele — Former CEO of METR 80,000 Hours Foundation: * Susan Shi — General counsel at EV, soon to move to CEA * Katie Hearsum — COO at Longview Philanthropy * Anna Weldon — An overlapping member of both boards Within our mission of helping people use their careers to solve the world's most pressing problems, we've recently sharpened our focus on careers that can help make AI go well. This organizational change won't affect our core work or programs in any significant way, though we're excited about the strategic guidance our new boards will provide and the greater operational flexibility we'll have going forward as we address these crucial challenges. See our blog post announcing our completed spin-out here.