31st January − 27th March—Alternative Protein Fundamentals Programme − 8 week programme run by the Cambridge University Alt. Protein Society, in collaboration with GFI, including technical and policy/entrepreneurship tracks. Applications close 13th January
99 good news stories from 2021 by Future Crunch, including one of the four major flu viruses going extinct, a malaria vaccine, decline in HIV infections, decline in smoking and India doubling it’s public healthcare spending
EA Updates for January 2022
Upcoming Virtual Events
5th January—Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program: Information Event
5th January—Mathematicians and Physicists interested in Effective Altruism—Join the EA Maths and Physics Slack to find out more
8th January—C.S. Lewis and Effective Altruism by Mike Morell—Organised by EA for Christians
9th January—Giving What We Can Meetup
9th January—EA for Jews Virtual Social
9th January—Lightning Talks: Life Hacks—Organised by EA NYC
16th January − 8760 Hours: How to get the most out of next year—Organised by EA Philadelphia
19th January—Doing Good Better Reading Group
19th January—Panel Q&A: Working for Animals, and the State of Animal Law in the UK
20th January—Giving What We Can Open Forum
21st January—Jason Rudall: Altruism in International Law—Organised by Legal Priorities Project
22nd January—Pandemic Preparedness and Disease Control by Ana Karina Pitol—Organised by EA for Christians
28th January—Natalie Jones: Global Justice and Global Catastrophic Risk—Organised by Legal Priorities Project
31st January − 27th March—Alternative Protein Fundamentals Programme − 8 week programme run by the Cambridge University Alt. Protein Society, in collaboration with GFI, including technical and policy/entrepreneurship tracks. Applications close 13th January
7th February − 14th March—Intro Fellowship to Risks of Astronomical Suffering—Organised by the Center on Long-Term Risk. Applications close 12th January
7th February − 3rd April—EA Virtual Programs—Applications close 31st January
Introductory EA Program
In-Depth EA Program
The Precipice Reading Group
Latest Research and Updates
Meta
Carla Zoe Cremer and Luke Kemp with the post ‘Democratising Risk—or how EA deals with critics’
The schedule for EA global conferences in 2022 was announced
WANBAM has been rebranded to Magnify Mentoring, looking to expand their mentorship programmes
Giving What We Can with their updated Effective Giving Guide
The EA Forum with a review of the first decade of posts
Habiba Islam on why 80,000 Hours wants to talk to more people than ever
A post introducing High-Impact Medicine
The 2021 EA Funds Donor Lottery is open, and closes on the 10th of January
A blog post looking at the crux between effective altruism and progress studies
There is a new EA internships board
Tessa on why we shouldn’t aim for the minimum of self-care
Ruth Grace on ‘Doing more good vs. doing the most good possible’
Lizka on ‘Native languages in the EA community (and issues with assessing promisingness)’
The winning entries from the creative writing contest on the EA Forum
Anneke Pogarell and Jona Glade with a series of posts on why and how to run a workplace/professional EA group, including case studies of the UK civil service and London EA finance groups
Sofia Balderson with three posts
‘How to get an EA-aligned job: My experience’
‘How to make your first EAG a success’
‘Why you should consider skilled volunteering’
Akash with six takeaways from EA Global and EA retreats
A post continuing on with a thread of EA Megaprojects
Alex Holness-Tofts and Joan Gass with a post on EA movement building at top universities
Richard Ngo asking ’What are some success stories of grant makers beating the wider EA community?
A post announcing EffectiveCrypto, a donation platform targeting members of the crypto community
Holden Karnofsky with five different ways that people think that they are improving the world and why this sometimes leads to conflict
Emily Jennings with the goals of the EA Mental Health Navigator service for the next 6 months
EA organisation updates for December 2021
Grants
Open Phil have made 12 grants recently with a total value of $6,000,000
$2,700,000 - Animal Welfare
$2,600,000 - California YIMBY (Land Use Reform)
$700,000 - Potential Risks from Advanced Artificial Intelligence
The Survival and Flourishing Fund made 19 grants with a total value of $9,600,000
EA Infrastructure Fund: May–August 2021 grant recommendations, they have made 42 grants with a total value of $1,700,000
Global Development
The EU has launched a 300 billion euro global development investment plan
Max Roser investigating global economic inequality
GiveDirectly on why GiveWell should donate sooner rather than later
Dylan Matthews looking into the mortality costs of pollution, with estimates that it kills 3,400,000 million people a year
Kelsey Piper on how faltering global vaccination effort paved the way for new variants
British International Investment have announced their 5 year strategy, aiming to invest up to £2 billion a year in development projects
Vox looking at whether charities should spend your money now—or save it to help people later
A 5-year global study has been started to study human flourishing, with 240,000 individuals in 22 countries
Matt Yglesias interviewing Elie Hassenfeld about GiveWell
David Wallace-Wells with an article on how pollution can kill 10 million people a year
A post on how AI could be used to accurately predict tsunamis
The Life You Can Save are starting their own in-house charity evaluation
An article asking ‘Does effective altruism drive private cross-border aid? A qualitative study of American donors to grassroots INGOs’
Bastian Herre looking at how democratic rights have changed over the last 200 years
The Wellcome Leap Health Breakthrough Network now supports a network of over 650,000 scientists and engineers, aiming to accelerate breakthroughs in human health
Open Philanthropy with their incoming program officers for South Asian Air Quality and Global Aid Advocacy
A new paper looking at biometric data and it’s connecting to subjective wellbeing
Animal Welfare
Marc Gunther on why the future of animal welfare lies beyond the US and Europe
Future Meat Technologies raises $347 million in funding, the largest investment ever made in the cultivated meat industry
Cellular Agriculture Europe has recently launched to represent the cell ag industry in Europe
The Good Food Institute Europe with their favourite moments from 2021
A post introducing the Shrimp Welfare Project
Lewis Bollard with ‘Ten big wins for farm animals in 2021’
A post looking at the world’s first octopus farm
Mosa Meat with an assessment of cultivated meat progress, including response to a recent sceptical article in The Counter
Haven King-Nobles with a 2.5 year retrospective on Fish Welfare Initiative
The BBC looking into insect suffering
Existential & Catastrophic Risks
NASA has started it’s first trial of the ‘kinetic impact’ technique as a planetary defence strategy against asteroids
80,000 Hours Podcast with Jaime Yassif on safeguarding bioscience to prevent catastrophic lab accidents and bioweapons development
An Ask Me Anything with Seth Baum, executive director of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute
Paul Ingram with the report ‘The Stepping Stones Approach to Nuclear disarmament diplomacy’
An updated Global Health Security index, measuring the capacities of 195 countries to prepare for epidemics and pandemics
An Ask Me Anything with Joan Rohlfing, President and COO of the Nuclear Threat Initiative
Improving Institutions
Kelsey Piper on ‘How bad research clouded our understanding of Covid-19’
Robert Downey Jr. introducing a new way to crowdfund science projects
The Research on Research Institute with a report on their randomisation of funding project
C Tilli with a post on ‘Improving science: Influencing the direction of research and the choice of research questions’
Vox looking at a new biomedical research institute, called the Arc Institute, an experiment in how science is conducted and funded
Ozzie Gooen asking why there is a lack of ‘red teaming’ in a lot of ambitious projects
Misha Yagudin, Nuño Sempere and Eli Lifland on ‘Prediction Markets in The Corporate Setting’
Environment
Luisa Sandkuehler, Violet Buxton-Walsh and Johannes Ackva with a report on ‘Navigating the changing landscape of climate philanthropy’
Giving Green with donation recommendations for combatting climate change in Australia
Azeem Azhar podcast with Nick hawker, discussing nuclear fusion
PWC report on the state of climate tech, with the proportion of venture capital dollars going into climate tech rising from around 6% to ~14%
Hannah Ritchie looking into ‘How much energy do countries consume when we take offshoring into account?’
Longtermism
Avital Balwit responding to recent criticisms of longtermism
Richard Fisher on why ‘long rituals’ matter
A post on the law and longtermism network, set up by the Legal Priorities Project
A post on ‘Convergence thesis between longtermism and neartermism’
The Global Priorities Fellowship and the Early Career Conference Programme are both open for applications. Deadline is 14th January
Emerging Technology
The Future of Life Institute with an introduction to autonomous weapons and why they matter
Ozzie Gooen with a post outlining 13 different stances on AGI
Ross Gruetzemacher and Jess Whittlestone wrote a paper in Futures exploring the transformative potential of AI
Larks with a 2021 AI alignment literature review and charity comparison
Will Bradshaw with a post suggesting that biosecurity needs engineers and materials scientists
Between June and August this year, Principles of Intelligent Behavior in Biological and Social Systems are running a summer research fellowship, application deadline is January 1 6th
A new paper on ‘Filling gaps in trustworthy development of AI’
Azeem Azhar discussing with Murray Shanahan where AI has exceeded and where it has fallen short of expectations
Neel Nanda with an overview of the AI alignment landscape
Stuart Russell was chosen to give the Reith Lectures for the BBC, looking at how AI could change the world
Other Links
Holden Karnofsky on the ‘Bayesian Mindset’
Spencer Greenberg on ‘Anchor Beliefs’
James Ozden with ‘A case for the effectiveness of protest’
Stephen Clare with giving recommendations for people interested in preventing great power conflicts
A post with thoughts on ‘Technocracy vs populism’
A report on how there may be less polarisation on issues than people think
Stijn with ‘The case against degrowth’
80,000 Hours interviewing U.S. presidential candidate Andrew Yang
Sam Harris interviewing Sam Bankman-Fried about EA
John Buridan with a post on how high school seniors react to advice from 80,000 Hours
Zvi Mowshowitz with thoughts on the Survival and Flourishing fund
John G. Halstead looking into whether we are going to run out of phosphorous
A psychology paper looking at intuitions around population ethics
An interview with Sophie Rose, co-founder of 1Day Sooner
An interview with Alexander Berger on philanthropic opportunities
Giving What We Can featured on the BBC
A paper looking at ‘How effective altruism can help psychologists maximize their impact’
Marcus Daniell named 2021 Arthur Ashe humanitarian of the year
Lynette Bye with the post ‘Want to be an expert? Build deep models’
Good News
99 good news stories from 2021 by Future Crunch, including one of the four major flu viruses going extinct, a malaria vaccine, decline in HIV infections, decline in smoking and India doubling it’s public healthcare spending
Spain passes a new law recognising animals as sentient beings