Dave Cortright 🔸

Karma: 832

I have been a serious philanthropist since 2004 and part of the EA community since 2017. I am audaciously optimistic we can ameliorating the global mental health crisis. I used my coaching and facilitatation skills to help grow EA capacity. I support environmental and animal welfare organizations. I am on the advisory council of Vegan Outreach and the Santa Clara County Behavioral Health Board.

I am a certified professional coach, with additional experience in crisis counseling and peer mentoring. I shifted to mental health and well-being after 25 years as a designer, manager, and director at Silicon Valley tech companies. I am passionate about helping others, and by guiding them to find their true calling, I amplify my impact on improving the world.

Dave Cortright 🔸 29 Aug 2026 18:05 UTC
2 points
1 ∶ 0
on: You Should Still Save Drowning Children (Even If They’re Far Away)
Humans didn’t evolve to understand communication at a distance. It’s a very recent phenomenon (started in the 1830s, about the last 200 years). Humans are also very capable of deception. So how can anyone who is told that a child across the world is drowning trust that:
1. It is true
2. My gift will transmit without failure
3. My gift will reach the child in time
4. My gift will be fully used to help the child
Giving locally gives me a chance to verify all of that.

Dave Cortright 🔸 27 Aug 2026 16:42 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: Every EA should at least try coaching (and/or therapy!)
My minor edits this morning completely nuked the content of my post. I’ve reached out to Forum support to help restore it. Thanks for your patience!

TL;DR if you feel like you could benefit from a session with a coach or therapist familiar with EA principles, book a session with one of them. Nearly all will do the intro session for free

Every EA should at least try coaching (and/or therapy!)

Dave Cortright 🔸26 Aug 2026 13:41 UTC

9 points

1 comment2 min readEA link

Dave Cortright 🔸 24 Aug 2026 14:55 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 2
on: New Research: Climate Mitigation is Overlooked by EA
More EA Near/Medium-Termist Money Should be Flowing to Climate Change Mitigation
A wild swing in climate is an near/medium term existential risk for most life, including humans. Look at the previous 5 mass extinction events. We have solid evidence this can and does happen

Dave Cortright 🔸 17 Aug 2026 21:32 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Philip_RoundRobin’s comment on: Mental health challenges in the AI safety ecosystem seem like a big problem
In all my research, the single most important supportive factor is healthy, positive relationships with others. The Harvard Grant Study is a great resource. I even borrowed the name for a conjecture I crafted.

Dave Cortright 🔸 17 Aug 2026 16:37 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: Mental health challenges in the AI safety ecosystem seem like a big problem
I have been in the EA space for a decade and have been more actively engaged since I started professional coaching nearly 5 years ago. I admit I’m more low-pressure and responsive in my coaching business. But outside of EAGs, I’ve fielded maybe a dozen inquiries from the EA community interested in coaching, and I formally coached less than half of them. I have also been involved in the EA Coaches and Therapists community. There are 122 members of the #role-coaches-and-therapists channel on EA Anywhere, and 80 providers listed on MentNav.
We have the therapist and coaching capacity. And—as elucidated in this article—we have a need. But for whatever reason, the people who need the services are not proactively engaging with the professionals providing the services, so…
¯\_ (ツ)_/¯

Dave Cortright 🔸 17 Aug 2026 16:24 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Mental health challenges in the AI safety ecosystem seem like a big problem
FYI, this is the canonical source of all things mental health in the EA community (Google Sheet). Please use it and make additions or changes if anything is missing or inaccurate ❤️

Dave Cortright 🔸 23 Jul 2026 2:20 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
on: I’m stepping down as Hive’s Executive Director, and we’re hiring my successor
I am interested in hearing what your ideas are for your next zero to one venture 🍿

Dave Cortright 🔸 29 Jun 2026 2:51 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 2
on: animal welfare has an evidence problem
I don’t donate to any “EA” animal welfare charities, but I 100% support vegan advocacy; about a quarter of my donations go to Vegan Outreach.

I’m all for having the good data backing up various interventions. But stepping back, killing sentient animals unnecessarily for taste preference is morally indefensible. The easiest way to solve this problem is to reduce demand.
Sometimes the simple and obvious answers are the ones worth investing in.

Dave Cortright 🔸 20 May 2026 2:54 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 1
on: Why are longtermists so much less focused on human extinction these days?
I know this is likely an unpopular view, but what makes the human species so precious? Going back in evolutionary time, what if Neanderthals or T. rex or even jellyfish decided they were the pinnacle of evolution and closed the door behind them?
I’m not saying I want humans to go extinct, but it is speciesist to say we are as good as it gets and halt the process of natural selection.

AI agents inevitably commit crimes in simulated worlds

Dave Cortright 🔸17 May 2026 20:29 UTC

2 points

0 comments1 min readEA link

(www.emergence.ai)

Dave Cortright 🔸 4 Mar 2026 19:53 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: How Are EAs Really Doing? Help Us Find Out (~15 min survey)
This dropdown is clipped for me in Chrome on my laptop. I can’t read the full text of the options

Dave Cortright 🔸 2 Mar 2026 20:52 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: The best cause will disappoint you: An intro to the optimisers curse
The other major problems with trying to calculate your way to a neat and orderly table of “the best” interventions:
1. There is no single absolute objective perspective on value weights. Just listen to conversations at EAG or in the forum. There will never be full consensus on the value of a quadrillion crustaceans vs. billions of mammals, or on the value of future sentient beings vs. current ones.
2. Preferences matter. And in fact, a diversity of preferences is essential. If we only used the final ranking, in the extreme case we devote 100% of our resources to Program A. But not everyone is passionate about A, and the world probably can not handle the capacity for everyone to productively contribute to A. So we need people to have a preference for all projects, even and especially those further down the list so we have reasonable coverage of interventions across the entire problem space.

Dave Cortright 🔸 2 Mar 2026 16:41 UTC
4 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Don’t scale up your lifestyle
For some, spending can be a soothing activity, but being a shopaholic is harmful, like many other addictions. The hole most people are trying to fill with any addiction: a lack of strong, close, healthy relationships. You must have at least one relationship (and ideally 3–5 according to Dunbar) where you can regularly be vulnerable and talk about all your feelings. If you don’t, work on that 😇 You can start with therapy or a support group to help you build up your skills. That’s what I did, since I didn’t learn this in my family of origin.

Don’t scale up your lifestyle

Dave Cortright 🔸1 Mar 2026 18:37 UTC

105 points

7 comments2 min readEA link

Dave Cortright 🔸 23 Jan 2026 3:19 UTC
6 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Celebrating wins — discussion thread
Good.store showed the Profit for Good model works (100% of profits go to charity). They continued to grow, expanding from coffee, socks, and soap into tea, undies, and cleaning products. The big milestone in 2025: they opened the maternal health center in Sierra Leone.

I bring it up because I think anyone who cares about being compassionate and effective (you 😇) should consider voting for maternal health in Africa over contributing to the profits of large international conglomerates.

Dave Cortright 🔸 26 Dec 2025 20:11 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Anton’s comment on: 3 doubts about veganism
I was responding to the No space for sinners section above, where the author claims the opposite.

Dave Cortright 🔸 28 Nov 2025 21:31 UTC
1 point
1 ∶ 2
on: 3 doubts about veganism
Is Barack Obama black? Technically, no; he is bi-racial. But he identifies as black, and most people—when asked—would say he is black (Wikipedia concurs).
I think veganism should be treated the same way. You don’t have to be 100% perfect for you or others to consider you vegan.
Being pedantic about definitions does not help reduce suffering, IMO.

Dave Cortright 🔸 25 Nov 2025 16:21 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Donation Election Discussion Thread
They all touch on mental health interventions in some way.

Dave Cortright 🔸 18 Oct 2025 19:05 UTC
6 points
5 ∶ 0
on: What If EA Actually Picked One Goal?
Maybe your belief is that if enough people “at the top” of EA agree to this, they can influence a majority of the EA community to follow. My sense is that EAs are more independent freethinkers than most other groups, so I don’t think this scenario is likely.
Given that, what you’re proposing is essentially relabeling the current set of “EAs who care about animal welfare” to “EA”. A few EAs who aren’t already in this camp might follow you over, but on the whole I strongly suspect this would alienate everyone else who doesn’t sign up for this worldview, and it would just fracture the community.

Dave Cortright 🔸

Every EA should at least try coach­ing (and/​or ther­apy!)

AI agents in­evitably com­mit crimes in simu­lated worlds

Don’t scale up your lifestyle

Every EA should at least try coaching (and/or therapy!)

AI agents inevitably commit crimes in simulated worlds