Criticism of longtermism and existential risk studies collects critical discussions of longtermism and existential risk studies.
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...
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Mauricio (2020) Social sciences & existential risk - syllabus, unpublished.
economics | history | international relations | psychology | surveys
For posts that offer career advising, discuss better (and worse) types of career advising, etc.
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.
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.
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]
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.
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Effective Altruism Community Building Grants (or the CBG programme) (CBG) is a project rungrantmaking program supporting professional city and national effective altruism groups. The program was established in 2018 by the Groups team at the Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA), providing full-.
CBG provides funding to a set of established EA groups. Historically, CEA also provided non-monetary support to grantees, including retreats, regular check-ins, coordination calls, a shared Slack space, and part-timeresources for running groups.
In 2026, CEA began transitioning evaluation of CBG grants to individuals andEA Funds, where the portfolio is expected to be managed alongside, but remain separate from, the EA Infrastructure Fund. CEA also phased out or transitioned most CBG-specific non-monetary support. Funding for existing CBG groups doing local effective altruism community building.[1] It was started in 2018. continues, but the portfolio remains closed to new applicants.
Centre for Effective Altruism | Effective Altruism Funds | Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund will start evaluating grants for some EA | Effective altruism groups, Joan Gass.
DiGiovanni offers a comprehensive list of potential objections to his argument, and their rebuttals, but heas well as clarifications on what this argument does (not) claim. He also mentions two attempts to find action-guidance despite cluelessness: i) consequentialist bracketing, and ii) a metaepistemic wager.
DiGiovanni, Anthony. 2026.2026a. “Clarifying some misunderstandings of the unawareness argument.” Sept 1. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/LiicMNNYiLpocw3wZ/clarifying-some-misunderstandings-of-the-unawareness
DiGiovanni, Anthony. 2026b. “Cluelessness: Summary of the argument, why it matters, and counterarguments.” June 19. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/NesgdEY6yPrE9wDap/cluelessness-summary-of-the-argument-why-it-matters-and-1
Forethought is "a research nonprofit focused on how to navigate the transition to a world with superintelligent AI systems".
Forethought is "a research nonprofit focused on how to navigate the transition to a world with superintelligent AI systems".
Perry, Lucas (2019) AI Alignment Podcast: On the governance of AI with Jade Leung,AI, Future of Life Institute, July 22.
Kagan, Rebecca, Jade Leung[redacted], & Ben Clifford (2021) What we learned from a year incubating longtermist entrepreneurship, Effective Altruism Forum, August 30.
Bergal, Asya (2021) Long-Term Future Fund: May 2021 grant recommendations, Effective Altruism Forum, May 27.
Kagan, Rebecca, Jade Leung[redacted], & Ben Clifford (2021) What we learned from a year incubating longtermist entrepreneurship, Effective Altruism Forum, August 30.
For example, there are some reasons to think that the long-term effects of a marginally higher economic growth rate would be good—overall good or c-preferable—say, via drivingby fostering more patient and pro-social attitudes. This would mean that taking action to increase economic growth could have much better effects than not taking the action. We have some reasons to think that the long-term effects of a marginally higher economic growth rate would be bad —for example, via increased carbon emissions leading to climate change. This would mean that not taking the action that increases economic growth could be a much better idea. It is not immediately obvious that one of these is better than the other, but we also cannot say they have equal expected value. Rather, the EV is indeterminate.
We care about the overall effects of a marginally higher economic growth rate (~P1). If we have no reason to believe that our best guess (on whether it is overall net good or bad) is truth-tracking because of substantial unawareness, we should not follow this best guess (~P2). Given how coarse our awareness of the possible consequences of a marginally higher economic growth rate in fact is, we indeed are in such a situation (~P3).
DiGiovanni offers a comprehensive list of potential objections to his argument, and their rebuttals, but he also mentions two attempts to find action-guidance despite cluelessness: i) consequentialist bracketing, and ii) a metaepistemic wager.
While the term consequentialist bracketing was first used by DiGiovanni (2025b)[3], the idea was formalized by Kollin et al. (2025). It basically aims at providing a principled way of excluding some paralyzing considerations from our decision-making (i.e., "bracketing them out") to find action-guidance, butguidance. Still, it comes with (at least) the following potential problems:
DiGiovanni offers a comprehensive list of potential objections to his argument, and their rebuttals, but he mentions two attempts to find action-guidance despite cluelessness: i) consequentialist bracketing, and ii) a metaepistemic wager. Both are discussed below, right after we get more precise on DiGiovanni's empirical premise.
For example, there are some reasons to think that the long-term effects of a marginally higher economic growth rate would be good—say, via driving more patient and pro-social attitudes. This would mean that taking action to increase economic growth could have much better effects than not taking the action. We have some reasons to think that the long-term effects of a marginally higher economic growth rate would be bad —for example, via increased carbon emissions leading to climate change. This would mean that not taking the action that increases economic growth could be a much better idea. It is not immediately obvious that one of these is better than the other, but we also cannot say they have equal expected value. We care about the overall effects of a marginally higher economic growth rate (~P1). If we have no reason to believe that our best guess (on whether it is overall net good or bad) is truth-tracking because of substantial unawareness, we should not follow this best guess (~P2). Given how coarse our awareness of the possible consequences of a marginally higher economic growth rate in fact is, we indeed are in such a situation (~P3).
DiGiovanni also offers a comprehensive list of potential objections to his argument, and their rebuttals, but he mentions two attempts to find action-guidance despite cluelessness: i) consequentialist bracketing, and ii) a metaepistemic wager. Both are discussed below, right after we get more precise on DiGiovanni's empirical premise.
The Cross-Cause Fund (CCF) is an expert-managed cause-neutral fund. It is run by Rethink Priorities' cross-cause fund team, which is composed of members of its Leadership and Executive Team, Worldview Investigation Team, and Interdisciplinary Research Team.
It was launched in May 2026 as a fund explicitly aimed at full impartiality across(across all cause areas.areas)[1] — at a time when, per RP's own analysis, only 2% of EA prioritization resources were allocated to cross-cause prioritization, an area RP describes as historically underdeveloped in effective giving.
This sentence from the CCF website offers a good summary of the goal and intent:
With two caveats. First, RP cannot consider political candidates as potential beneficiaries of donations. Second, as of August 2026, multiple worthy causes have not yet been included in the evaluation, e.g., meta work (though the causes that have been included were prioritized intentionally, given specific cross-cause prioritization assumptions)assumptions plus lack of time to get closer to an ideal allocation). See the CCF FAQ for more related information.
Greaves, Hilary, and William MacAskill. 2025. “The Case for Strong Longtermism.” In Essays on Longtermism: Present Action for the Distant Future, edited by Hilary Greaves, Jacob Barrett, and David Thorstad. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/9780191979972.003.00030003..
Impartial Partially. 2026. "Bottom-Up Bracketing: A Person-Centered Response to Cluelessness." October 17. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/qpQSEy7n2WjxazFnf/bottom-up-bracketing-a-person-centered-response-to
To differentiate it from metanormative bracketing.
The Cross-Cause Fund (CCF) is an expert-managed cause-neutral fund. It is run by Rethink Priorities' cross-cause fund team, which is composed of members of its Leadership and Executive team,Team, Worldview Investigation Team, and Interdisciplinary Research Team.
It was launched in May 2026 as a fund explicitly aimed at full impartiality across all cause areas.[1] — at a time when, per RP's own analysis, only 2% of EA prioritization resources were allocated to cross-cause prioritization, an area RP describes as historically underdeveloped in effective giving.
This sentence from the CCF website offers a good summary of the goal and intent:
I've now brought back and lightly edited this paragraph that gives a helpful example. I think all the rest had low relevance, was misleading, or outright false.
Many objections/reactions to DiGiovanni's argument would be worth discussing, but I'm worried about transforming this tag page into a long paper. So a lot of work is done by: