Topics in Need of Work
Criticism of longtermism and existential risk studies collects critical discussions of longtermism and existential risk studies.
Further reading
Melchin, Denise (2021) Why I am probably not a longtermist, Effective Altruism Forum, September 23.
Tomasik, Brian (2015) Should altruists focus on reducing short-term or far-future suffering?, Essays on Reducing Suffering...
Urgent longtermism is the position that now is an unusually good time to have an outsized impact on the future (i.e., the hinge of history hypothesis). In particular, it claims that the current time is particularly pivotal and that we have some scope to change what happens. Ben Todd creates a distinction between two kinds of urgent longtermism: broad and targeted...
Further reading
Askell, Amanda (2019) AI safety needs social scientists, EAGlobal, March 4.
Irving, Geoffrey & Amanda Askell (2019) Ai safety needs social scientists, Distill, vol. 4.
Mauricio (2020) Social sciences & existential risk - syllabus, unpublished.
Related entries
economics | history | international relations | psychology | surveys
For posts that offer career advising, discuss better (and worse) types of career advising, etc.
Types of career advice research
One proposed typology of research on career advice distinguishes between career choice research ("Which career paths are especially impactful?"), career success research ("What strategies are best for succeeding in a career?"), and career...
Grantmaking is the process by which a government or an organization gives non-repayable funds or products for a particular purpose or project.
Grantmaking focused on top cause areas is one of 80,000 hours "priority paths"—the most promising career opportunities the organization is currently aware of.[1] Their medium-depth profile rates grantmaking an option...
Charity evaluation (or charity assessment) is the investigation of charities to determine whether they should receive funding. It often includes a mixture of quantitative cost-effectiveness calculations and other considerations, such as the strength of the charity's team, their theory of change, and their room for more funding.
Charity evaluators are organisations...
The burden of disease (also called disease burden and global burden of disease) is the total impact of disease on a population.
History
The concept of burden of disease originates in a study commissioned by the World Bank in 1990 and in collaboration with Harvard University and the World Health Organization (WHO). The study, published in the World Bank's 1993 ...
A supervolcano is an unusually large volcano with the potential to produce an eruption with major effects on the global climate system.
Recommendations
In The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity, Toby Ord offers several policy and research recommendations for handling risks from supervolcanic eruptions:[1]
- Find all the places where supervolcanic
A singleton is a world order in which there is a single decision-making agency at the highest level. The singleton hypothesis is the hypothesis that Earth-originating intelligent life will eventually assume the form a singleton.
The concept of a singleton expresses an abstract idea. A singleton could take the form of world government, such as global democracy...
The Motivational tag covers posts that focus on inspiring us to do good (either a specific kind of good, or whatever we already want to work on).
We hope that reading through this collection will lift your spirits and spur you to beneficial action!
If a post motivates you to do good, or you think it will motivate others, upvote it. There are no wrong answers.
Topic Voting Activity
| User | Post Title | Topic | Pow | When | Vote |
Recent Topic Activity
To make the future go better, we can either work to avoid near-term catastrophes like human extinction or improve the futures where we survive. This series from Forethought explores that second option. The essays are designed to be read in order, beginning with "Introducing Better Futures".
This week, Fin Moorhouse, one of the authors of these essays, will be available to answer your questions in the discussion thread.
You can see all the posts here.
Macroscopic Ventures is a nonprofit focused on reducing s-existential risks (suffering)from conflict (e.g., including by reducingvia cooperative AI), catastrophic AI misuse by malevolent or fanatical actors (e.g., via compute governance or information security), avoiding conflict (e.g., via cooperative AI) and improving AI welfare. It gave around $10$30 million in grants in 2024.2025.
Past grants include to the NYU Mind, Ethics, and Policy Program, the Center on Long-Term Risk, the Cooperative AI Foundation, and the Institute for Law and AI. Past investments include Anthropic's Series A and Series B.
Macroscopic Ventures was founded in 2019 under the name Center for Emerging Risk Research (CERR) and adopted its current name in February 2025.
Althaus, David, & Baumann, Tobias (2020). Reducing long-term risks from malevolent actors, Effective Altruism Forum, April 2929, 2020.
S-risks | AI governance| Reducing long-term risks from malevolent actors | Cooperative AI | Artificial sentience | Cause prioritization | Longtermism
Soil animalsinvertebrates are terrestrial invertebrates that spend most of their life in soil or litter. They influence nutrient cycling, plant growth, and carbon dynamics. Examples of soil animalsinvertebrates include soil ants, termites, springtails, mites, and nematodes. Each of these groups is much more numerous, and has many more neurons in total than wild vertebrates and farmed animals. Vasco Grilo hasargued that overall changes in welfare may be determined by effects on soil animals, invertebrates, even accounting for soil ants and termites only, instead of effects on the beneficiaries targeted by interventions. However, there is large uncertainty about the expected intensity of the subjective experiences of soil animals,invertebrates, whether they have positive or negative welfare, and what increases or decreases their population. So Vasco advocated for more research on informing how to increase the welfare of soil animalsinvertebrates over pursuing whatever land use change interventions naively seem to achieve that the most cost-effectively.
NOTE: Please refrain from tagging posts with this tag on April 1st (it ruins the joke). However, on April 2nd, please do!
Original ResearchResearch:: Faunalytics conducts several original research studies each year that are likely to have a high impact on animals. They identify research projects through a 4-stage prioritization process, which includes gathering input from advocates and topic experts to find knowledge gaps and conducting assessments to verify the potential for impact.
Research LibraryLibrary:: They host the world’s largest open-access collection of animal advocacy research. By curating 6,000+ research summaries, blogs, report translations for impactful regions, and visualizations such as infographics and videos, they ensure that advocates can access the research needed to make their efforts more effective. They have developed research synthesis pages to ensure advocates are improving their advocacy tactics. Their library receives hundreds of thousands of pageviews each year.
Research SupportSupport:: Beyond providing research, Faunalytics ensures advocates have the support they need to apply research to their work. Faunalytics has directly advised hundreds of advocates through their Office HoursHours and Research Ambassador project. They also host an annual online research symposium, Fauna Connections, to connect advocates with the latest research from the academic community.
Faunalytics' research and data empower animal protection organizations to make effective decisions and spend their limited resources wisely. Historically, there has been little capacity for research within the advocacy movement, and it is still a neglected issue due to the limited funding for farmed animals. Faunalytics addresses this gap by conducting and curating shared research resources and providing support to build capacity within organizations.
Evaluation
Since 2015, Faunalytics has been named a “Recommended Charity” by Animal Charity Evaluators. ACE considers Faunalytics "an excellent giving opportunity because of their strong programs aimed at strengthening the animal advocacy movement."
You can visit Faunalytics’ Impact Center (linked below) to read more about their successes.
Animal Charity Evaluators (2023)Faunalytics’ 2025 Year In Review & 2026 Plans
Faunalytics’ 2026-2030 Strategic Plan
The final vote at the end of the week is below:
During the week, the Forum features a frontpage debate slider where users can register their view on the statement and optionally leave comments. In parallel, users contribute posts that aim to inform or shift views on the debate.
Anti-natalism is athe philosophical position that view procreation as unethical, often based on the belief that bringing new life into the world results in more harm than good.
Anti-natalism is a philosophical position that argues against human reproduction,view procreation as unethical, often based on the belief that bringing new life into the world results in more harm than good.
Soil animals are terrestrial invertebrates that spend most of their life in soil or litter. They influence nutrient cycling, plant growth, and carbon dynamics. Examples of soil animals include soil ants, termites, springtails, mites, and nematodes. Each of these groups is much more numerous, and has many more neurons in total than wild vertebrates and farmed animals. Vasco Grilo argued overall changes in welfare may be determined by effects on soil animals, even accounting for soil ants and termites only, instead of effects on the beneficiaries targeted by interventions. However, there is large uncertainty about the expected intensity of the subjective experiences of soil animals, whether they have positive or negative experiences,welfare, and what increases or decreases their population. So Vasco advocated for more research on informing how to increase the welfare of soil animals over pursuing whatever land use change interventions naively seem to achieve that the most cost-effectively.
Soil animals are terrestrial invertebrates that spend most of their life in soil or litter. They influence nutrient cycling, plant growth, and carbon dynamics. Examples of soil animals include soil ants, termites, springtails, mites, and nematodes. Each of these groups is much more numerous, and has many more neurons in total than wild vertebrates and farmed animals. Vasco Grilo argued overall changes in welfare may be determined by effects on soil animals, even accounting for soil ants and termites only, instead of effects on the beneficiaries targeted by interventions. However, there is large uncertainty about the expected intensity of the subjective experiences of soil animals, whether they have positive or negative, experiences, and what increases or decreases their population. So Vasco advocated for more research on informing how to increase the welfare of soil animals over pursuing whatever land use change interventions naively seem to achieve that the most cost-effectively.
AGI & Animals Debate Week (March 23–29, 2026) is an EA Forum debate week centered on the statement:
If AGI goes well for humans, it’ll go well for animals.
This tag is for posts and discussions that engage with this question, including arguments, cruxes, and related considerations about how advanced AI systems may affect non-human animals.
During the week, the Forum features a frontpage debate slider where users can register their view on the statement and optionally leave comments. In parallel, users contribute posts that aim to inform or shift views on the debate.
The topic focuses on a relatively neglected question: how outcomes for animals may differ in worlds where AGI is successfully aligned with human values. Key considerations include whether human-aligned AGI would adequately account for animal welfare, how transformative AGI is expected to be, and what a “good” outcome for animals entails in post-AGI futures.
This tag can be applied to:
- Posts directly addressing the debate statement
- Analyses of AGI’s potential impact on animals
- Arguments about moral consideration of animals in AI-aligned futures
- Reflections on strategy, prioritization, or advocacy related to animals in transformative AI scenarios
Read more in the announcement post.
Related entries
Artificial intelligence | Animal welfare | AI safety | AI x Animals | AI Welfare Debate Week | Animal Welfare vs Global Health Debate Week | Existential Choices Debate Week | AI alignment | Transformative artificial intelligence | Moral circle expansion | Non-humans and the long-term future | S-risk | Events on the EA Forum
AGI & Animals Debate Week (March 23–29, 2026) is an EA Forum debate week centered on the statement:
If AGI goes well for humans, it’ll go well for animals.
The final vote at the end of the week is below:
Altruismo Eficaz. A repository of translated EA articles.
AltruismeEfficace.net. A repository of translated articles.
Note that this notion is relative to the agent's situation: for example, a technology that would allow one to dominate the world in year 1000 might no longer be sufficient today. In particular, domination may be a much higher bar than (threat of) destruction, perhaps requiring unassailability by existing or future attacks.
The next Draft Amnesty event will be held during the week starting February 23rd. Draft Amnesty is an event where Forum users can post scrappy, draft-y, or incomplete posts with impunity.
How to format your Draft Amnesty post
Draft Amnesty posts will differentiated on the Forum Frontpage (with a "draft amnesty week" tag visible), as long as they are tagged with this tag.
You can include this table at the start of your post:
| This is a Draft Amnesty Week draft. It may not be polished, up to my usual standards, fully thought through, or fully fact-checked. |
Commenting and feedback guidelines:
|
Related entries
Effective Altruism Forum | Draft Amnesty Day (2022) | Draft Amnesty Week (2024) | Draft Amnesty Week (2025) | Writing advice | Discussion norms |
The next Draft Amnesty event will be held during the week starting February 23rd. Draft Amnesty is an event where Forum users can post scrappy, draft-y, or incomplete posts with impunity.
How to format your Draft Amnesty post
Draft Amnesty posts will differentiated on the Forum Frontpage (with a "draft amnesty week" tag visible), as long as they are tagged with this tag.
You can include this table at the start of your post:...
Mission and approach
FarmKind guides donors to a curated set of animal welfare and environmental charities working on corporate reforms, public policy, and alternatives to intensive animal agriculture. The platform does not take a percentage of donations; it is grant-funded to maintain independence from the charities it recommends.
Operations
Donors can give either to an “Impact Fund,” which is distributed across six selected charities, or to individual organizations on the platform, such as The Humane League. Donation processing is handled by Every.org, with the intent that 100% of donations reach recipient charities aside from standard payment processing fees.
Background
FarmKind launched in 2024 following incubation by Charity Entrepreneurship and AIM. The organization’s stated goal is to generate substantial new funding for farmed animal welfare, with internal targets for fundraising leverage over time. It has received positive attention from prominent advocates of animal welfare and effective philanthropy.
External links
FarmKind. Official website.
Related entries
Farmed animal welfare | Corporate animal welfare campaigns | Effective giving
To make the future go better, we can either work to avoid near-term catastrophes like human extinction or improve the futures where we survive. This series from Forethought explores that second option. The essays are designed to be read in order, beginning with "Introducing Better Futures".
This week, Fin Moorhouse, one of the authors of these essays, will be available to answer your questions in the discussion thread.
You can see all the posts here.