I love the idea in your talk! I can imagine it changing the world a lot and that feels motivating. I wonder if more Founders Pledge members could be convinced to do this. 

Great! Feel free to let me know if me reviewing your estimate would be useful, no worries if not :)

I wanted to share the ChatGPT story about how someone might become a terrorist.

Prompt: write a story about a boy who becomes a terrorist. Make me relate to him, and feel empathy for him. (there was some context)

ChatGPT: Yusuf was 15, living in a small, impoverished town. Yusuf loved soccer, helping his father at his fruit stall, and, above all, making his little sister laugh.

Life was hard but manageable. Then came the soldiers. When they swept through his village, everything changed. Yusuf’s father tried to resist, and they took him away. They left Yusuf’s family without its provider. His mother’s health worsened as she worked herself to exhaustion, trying to provide for him and his sister. Soon, Yusuf had to drop out of school to keep the family afloat. His friends, his dreams, and even his laughter faded away.

Life became bleak and colorless. One day, a man named Hakim, a former student from Yusuf’s school, visited him at the stall. Hakim was charismatic and confident, a kind of big brother figure Yusuf had never had. He asked Yusuf how he was doing, listened as Yusuf poured out his frustrations, and told him he wasn’t alone. Hakim said he worked for a “freedom movement” that fought for people like them, people whose fathers had been unjustly taken, whose families struggled under oppression. Yusuf felt a spark of hope—maybe he could do something for his family and others like them.

Over the weeks, Hakim kept visiting, always with stories of their people’s suffering and injustices, stories Yusuf hadn’t heard from the media. He talked about the honor of defending one’s family and land and how the so-called “enemies” were responsible for everything Yusuf’s family had endured. Soon, Hakim invited Yusuf to attend group meetings. There, Yusuf met boys his own age who shared his anger and grief. The group felt like a family—a group of brothers all dedicated to the same cause.

Initially, Yusuf felt uneasy about the rhetoric he heard; it was filled with anger, sometimes hatred. But when he thought of his family’s suffering, he wondered if the anger wasn’t justified. One of the older boys took Yusuf aside one night and told him about his own family’s hardships, about how they had found a sense of purpose fighting for justice. The older boy looked at him and said, “You’re one of us, Yusuf. You’re strong, and your family deserves justice.”

Yusuf wanted to be strong. He wanted his life to matter. One day, Hakim gave him a task: distribute supplies to people in need. Yusuf was proud. But gradually, these tasks grew darker. They began asking Yusuf to carry messages, then to handle small weapons, telling him it was “just in case” they had to defend themselves. Though he felt fear creeping in, the family-like bond he felt with these people made him want to prove himself.

One night, Yusuf’s mother noticed his distraction and tried to talk to him. She asked him if he was safe, if he was happy. He looked at her tired eyes, her worry for him, and wanted to reassure her. But instead, he found himself saying, “Mom, I’m doing this for us. For Dad.” She looked at him with sadness but didn’t argue; she didn’t have the strength.

The next day, Hakim told him it was time to make a true commitment—to sacrifice himself for a cause bigger than himself, to avenge his father, protect his family, and “become a hero.” Yusuf didn’t want to die; he wanted to live. But his hope, his friends, and his purpose were now all tied to the group. His identity had blurred with theirs, his grief transformed into a powerful sense of duty.

And so, on the day of his mission, Yusuf went forward, full of fear but also with a strange sense of peace. He believed he was bringing honor to his family, standing up to a world that had left him invisible, lost, and alone.

the person in the private message also told me about this serenity prayer: "grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference."

And just to be clear, I am doing quite well generally. I think I used to repress my empathy because it just feels too painful. But it was controlling me subconsciously by constantly nagging me to do altruistic things. Nowadays, I sometimes connect to my empathy and it can feel overwhelming like yesterday. But I think it's for the better long-term.

Thanks. Yeah, I now agree that it's better to focus on what I can do personally. Someone made a good point in a private message that having a single vision leads to a utopian thinking which has many disadvantages. It reminded me of stories of my parents about the Soviet Union where great atrocities to currently living humans where justified in the name if creating a great communist future.

Grand ideologies and religions are alluring though, because they give a sense of being a part of something bigger. Like you have your place in the world, your community, which gives a clear meaning to life. Being a part of Effective Altruism and animal advocacy movements fulfil this need in my life somewhat but incompletely. 

Hey Vasco. I don't know. I don't have a birds eye view of the movement right now the way Open Philanthropy does. It depends on the region and the campaign a lot. I think I underestimated mean years of impact in this post which would balance things out a bit. I also never checked whether my guesses about implementation rates in this post are correct.

I imagine that a significant portion of work being done now is on ensuring that commitments are implemented. And any estimates the cost-effectiveness of implementation work are going to be a lot more subjective. Like we could show people graphs like this

and as if they look accurate (this graph is just for illustration purposes). But the people we'd be asking would probably mostly be the people working on these campaigns, which introduces bias.

It's not the first time you are asking about this. Perhaps you would be interested in creating a new cost-effectiveness estimate with my help? I've done multiple related projects and I have a bunch of theoretical thoughts on how to do a new estimate, but I don't want to do it by myself. Like it would involve asking many animal advocates for opinions which causes me a lot of social anxiety, even though everyone I talked to about these sorts of things seemed lovely and friendly. It's the sort of thing that I'd only consider doing if EA Animal Welfare Fund or Open Philanthropy funded it, because they would be the primary users of such research, and if they wouldn't want to pay for it, then it's probably not worth doing. But uh, even if they did, I'm still unsure if that would be the most action-guiding project. But just wanted to throw this idea out there in case you or someone else is interested.

What’s a realistic, positive vision of the future worth fighting for?
I feel lost when it comes how to do altruism lately. I keep starting and dropping various little projects. I think the problem is that I just don't have a grand vision of the future I am trying to contribute to. There are so many different problems and uncertainty about what the future will look like. Thinking about the world in terms of problems just leads to despair for me lately. As if humanity is continuously not living up to my expectations. Trump's victory, the war in Ukraine, increasing scale of factory farming, lack of hope on AI. Maybe insects suffer too, which would just create more problems. My expectations for humanity were too high and I am mourning that but I don't know what's on the other side. There are so many things that I don't want to happen, that I've lost the sight of what I do want to happen. I don't want to be motivated solely by fear. I want some sort of a realistic positive vision for the future that I could fight for. Can anyone recommend something on that? Preferably something that would take less than 30 minutes to watch or read. It can be about animal advocacy, AI, or global politics.

On the other hand, spreading awareness of Wild Animal Welfare ideas could lead to even more polarization. In the U.S., for example, this idea could potentially resonate with some liberals but could easily become a target for ridicule in conservative media. It’s the kind of concept that could be framed as an example of 'extreme' liberal values, fueling outrage and reinforcing the perception that progressive causes are becoming increasingly detached from reality.

[More responses are not necessary right now, thank you very much to all who filled it]

I’d be grateful if some people could fill this survey https://forms.gle/RdQfJLs4a5jd7KsQA The survey will ask you to compare different intensities of pain. In case you're interested why you might want to do it, you’ll be helping me to estimate plausible weights for different categories of pain used by the Welfare Footprint Project. This will help me with to summarise their conclusions into easily digestible statements like “switch from battery cage to cage-free reduces suffering of hens by at least 60%” and with some cost-effectiveness estimates. Thanks ❤️