I am a generalist quantitative researcher. I am open to volunteering and paid work. I welcome suggestions for posts. You can give me feedback here (anonymously or not).
Hi Chris. Thanks for the clarifications. I agree including more effects on wild animals would be difficult. Note my question was whether you have "considered excluding effects on wild animals (such as wild fishes used for feed)". You might have read "including" instead of "excluding". Would it be better to exclude effects on all wild animals? It could be that the wild fishes used for feed would have suffered more if they were not caught.
Hello ion. Welcome to the EA Forum. On 1, I am open tobetsagainst short timelines for transformative AI (TAI), or what they supposedly imply, up to 10 k$. On 2, the environmental and survival pressures are to a significant extent established by humans, who are the ones setting up the training of AIs?
Hi Jim. There is no particular reason. I have just been sharing content I find interesting. My views about AI risk have not changed much recently. I guess the risk of human extinction over the next 10 years is something like 10^-7.
Corrected days-of-suffering formula. The old formula multiplied indirect impacts (like feed fish and pre-slaughter mortality) by the primary animal’s lifespan. A wild-caught anchovy used as feed suffers for one day regardless of what eats them. The corrected formula treats indirect impacts separately.
Have Faunalytics and Bryant Research (@Chris Bryant 🔸 or @Richie?) considered excluding effects on wild animals (such as wild fishes used for feed)? I am very uncertain about whether expanding agricultural land increases or decreases the welfare/suffering/happiness of soil invertebrates, and Ibelieve effects on these may be much larger than the effects on farmed animals and wild animals used for feed.
I also do not know whether decreasing the catch of wild fishes for feed increases or decreases animal welfare. Michael St. Jules concluded "decreasing the catch of wild aquatic animals for feed is likely to decrease aquaculture and increase insect farming, but has unclear effects on brine shrimp nauplii and other live feed".
Weighting each grant’s modeled social return on investment [SROI] by its funding amount gives a mean of roughly 5,500x — though these are early, uncertain estimates.
How do you estimate the benefits of a career transition in CG$ (1 CG$ is the value of giving 1 $ to someone earning 50 k$/year)? Have you considered estimating this from the product between the marginal SROI of the organisation benefiting from the transition, and their willingness to pay for the transition?
The most common grants were to EA-affiliated career advising programs and high-impact fellowship programs in Sweden, France, Israel, Norway, Estonia, and Poland. These were explicitly evaluated by how many high-impact career transitions could be facilitated per unit of budget cost, and measured against our bar.
How did you evaluate the other organisations?
Based on our cost-effectiveness estimates for about 85% of the recommended grants, weighted by funding, every dollar invested is expected to create about $5,500 of social benefit.
Which % of funding is covered by the 85 % of grants for which you estimates the cost-effectiveness?
Of the 28 grants, 13 are cause-neutral, supporting high-impact transitions across our priority areas. The other 15 overlap strongly with one or two specific cause areas, with global health and development the heaviest concentration. We set out to focus on mid-career and senior professionals (much existing infrastructure skews toward students), and on LMIC talent pipelines, where many high-impact organizations operate but career infrastructure remains thin. The bigger surprise was about the ecosystem itself. We estimated a 25% chance we’d receive more than 40 applications; we got almost 500. We also came in assuming we’d fund far fewer proposals and give away considerably less money.
That is an impressive number of applications. I like that you shared a forecast you made for the number of applications despite it being far off.
That makes sense. I do not know what the ideal giving multiplier on total spending is, but I think the marginal giving multiplier should be close to 1 (assuming it accounts for all effects). Spending should increase if it is above 1 because this would mean spending 1 $ more would lead to more than 1 $ of benefits.
Hi Fin. Great post. I have also become persuaded by illusionism since I started learning about it in June 2026 (after reading this comment from @Michael St Jules 🔸). You may be interested in chapter 9, "Losing Your Religion: Ethics After Illusionism", of François Kammerer's book "House of Mirrors: The Illusion of Phenomenal Consciousness".
Hi Chris. Thanks for the clarifications. I agree including more effects on wild animals would be difficult. Note my question was whether you have "considered excluding effects on wild animals (such as wild fishes used for feed)". You might have read "including" instead of "excluding". Would it be better to exclude effects on all wild animals? It could be that the wild fishes used for feed would have suffered more if they were not caught.
Hi Seth. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I agree.
Hi Peter. I am open to bets against short timelines for transformative AI (TAI), or what they supposedly imply, up to 10 k$.
I would be happy to review your estimates of the SROI of the grants for free if you think it may be useful.
Hello ion. Welcome to the EA Forum. On 1, I am open to bets against short timelines for transformative AI (TAI), or what they supposedly imply, up to 10 k$. On 2, the environmental and survival pressures are to a significant extent established by humans, who are the ones setting up the training of AIs?
Hi Jim. There is no particular reason. I have just been sharing content I find interesting. My views about AI risk have not changed much recently. I guess the risk of human extinction over the next 10 years is something like 10^-7.
Hi Jienna. Thanks for the update.
Have Faunalytics and Bryant Research (@Chris Bryant 🔸 or @Richie?) considered excluding effects on wild animals (such as wild fishes used for feed)? I am very uncertain about whether expanding agricultural land increases or decreases the welfare/suffering/happiness of soil invertebrates, and I believe effects on these may be much larger than the effects on farmed animals and wild animals used for feed.
I also do not know whether decreasing the catch of wild fishes for feed increases or decreases animal welfare. Michael St. Jules concluded "decreasing the catch of wild aquatic animals for feed is likely to decrease aquaculture and increase insect farming, but has unclear effects on brine shrimp nauplii and other live feed".
Hello Kearney and Melanie. Thanks for the update.
How do you estimate the benefits of a career transition in CG$ (1 CG$ is the value of giving 1 $ to someone earning 50 k$/year)? Have you considered estimating this from the product between the marginal SROI of the organisation benefiting from the transition, and their willingness to pay for the transition?
How did you evaluate the other organisations?
Which % of funding is covered by the 85 % of grants for which you estimates the cost-effectiveness?
That is an impressive number of applications. I like that you shared a forecast you made for the number of applications despite it being far off.
That makes sense. I do not know what the ideal giving multiplier on total spending is, but I think the marginal giving multiplier should be close to 1 (assuming it accounts for all effects). Spending should increase if it is above 1 because this would mean spending 1 $ more would lead to more than 1 $ of benefits.
Hi Fin. Great post. I have also become persuaded by illusionism since I started learning about it in June 2026 (after reading this comment from @Michael St Jules 🔸). You may be interested in chapter 9, "Losing Your Religion: Ethics After Illusionism", of François Kammerer's book "House of Mirrors: The Illusion of Phenomenal Consciousness".