david_reinstein

• david_reinstein 9 Dec 2025 15:46 UTC

  5 points

  1 ∶ 0

  on: On­line EAGs are un­der­rated (FBB #11)

  Some of this may be a coordination issue. I wanted to proactively schedule more meetings at EAG Connect, but I generally found fewer experienced/​senior people at key orgs in the Swapcard relative to the bigger EAGs. And some that were there didn’t seem responsive … as it’s free and low-cost, there may also be people that sign up and then don’t find the time to commit,

• david_reinstein 8 Dec 2025 13:47 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: gergo’s comment on: On­line EAGs are un­der­rated (FBB #11)

  Sorry, I think we meant the same thing. I had a brain freeze. I think my brain got confused by the term “offline.”

• david_reinstein 7 Dec 2025 23:58 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: On­line EAGs are un­der­rated (FBB #11)

  Did you get the titles for offline and online reversed for the bullets at the top?

• david_reinstein 7 Dec 2025 17:30 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Wei Dai’s comment on: How Well Does RL Scale?

  If this post is indeed cutting-edge and prominent, I would be more surprised by the fact that there are not more ‘quant’ people reporting on this than by the fact that more philosophers are not working on AI x-risk related issues.

Un­jour­nal is look­ing for feed­back & to mea­sure and en­hance our im­pact (sur­vey w/​ mod­est lot­tery prize)

• david_reinstein 4 Dec 2025 11:45 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: “How much do plant-based prod­ucts sub­sti­tute for an­i­mal prod­ucts and im­prove welfare?” – An Un­jour­nal Pivotal Ques­tion (up­date: added polls)

  Posted and curated some Metaculus questions in our community space here.

  This is preliminary: I’m looking for feedback and also hoping to post some of these as ‘Metaculus moderated’ (not ‘community’) questions. Also collaborating with Support Metaculus’ First Animal-Focused Forecasting Tournament.
  
  Questions like:
  
  Predict experts’ beliefs over “If the price of the… hamburger-imitating plant products fell by 10% … how many more/​fewer chickens consumed globally in 2030, as a +/​- percent?

• david_reinstein 4 Dec 2025 11:44 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Is Cul­tured Meat Com­mer­cially Vi­able? Un­jour­nal’s first pro­posed ‘Pivotal Ques­tion’ (& re­quest for feed­back)

  Posted and curated some Metaculus questions in our community space here.

  This is preliminary: I’m looking for feedback and also hoping to post some of these as ‘Metaculus moderated’ (not ‘community’) questions. Also collaborating with Support Metaculus’ First Animal-Focused Forecasting Tournament.
  
  Specific questions include
  
  What will be the average production cost (per edible kg) of cell-cultured chicken meat at the end of the following years (between 2026-2051) across all large-scale plants in the world?
  
  and
  
  Predict the median of experts’ beliefs over “Does $100k to fund plant-based hamburger R&D have a greater animal welfare benefit than $100k to corporate animal welfare campaigns for chickens?”

• david_reinstein 4 Dec 2025 11:40 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Sup­port Me­tac­u­lus’ First An­i­mal-Fo­cused Fore­cast­ing Tournament

  Unjournal.org is collaborating with this initiative for our Pivotal Questions projects:
  
  Is Cultured Meat Commercially Viable? Unjournal’s first proposed ‘Pivotal Question’ (& request for feedback) and
  
  “How much do plant-based products substitute for animal products and improve welfare?” – An Unjournal Pivotal Question (update: added polls)
  
  Aiming to integrate this with some of the questions in our community here
  
  Feedback on these questions and operationalizations is highly appreciated.

• david_reinstein 4 Dec 2025 11:30 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: The over­all cost-effec­tive­ness of an in­ter­ven­tion of­ten mat­ters less than the coun­ter­fac­tual use of its funding

  I made a similar argument a few years back, advocating that GiveWell should rank, rate, and measure charities beyond the absolute best/​most measurable.
  
  A common response was that the evidence suggested the returns were so heavy-tailed… So moving money from ~ineffective charities (Make a Wish) to ‘near-top’ charities, or to mainstream charities operating in similar areas (say MSF vs. AMF) would have far less value than moving money from near-top to top charities.
  
  My counter-response was … ~we don’t have solid that charities like MSF are much less effective than AMF, my prior is a less heavy-tail, and we should try to collect more evidence on ‘mainstream multi-intervention charities’.
  
  Not sure if a similar argument applies within the context of animal welfare charities – I’d guess so (within the context of farm animal welfare, say).

• david_reinstein 4 Dec 2025 11:20 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Are there any EA hubs that are both warm and sunny?

  As others note, the East Bay/​Berkeley more or less hits the spot if you don’t care about affordability.

  (Would be nice if there were an affordable alternative though.)

• david_reinstein 29 Nov 2025 18:01 UTC

  6 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: NickLaing’s comment on: Dona­tion Elec­tion Dis­cus­sion Thread

  It’s hard for me to glean what the consensus is in this thread/​on this issue. But if there seems to be a strong case that some outside scrutiny is needed, this might be something The Unjournal (Unjournal.org) could help with. Bringing “outside the EA bubble” academic expertise to weigh in is one of our key things

  We generally focus on economics and social science but we might be able to stretch to this. (Feel free to dm/​suggest/​ping me).

The Un­jour­nal: Bridg­ing the Ri­gor/​Im­pact Gaps for EA-rele­vant Re­search Questions

• david_reinstein 13 Nov 2025 19:22 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Effec­tive Altru­ists Should Pro­mote Fru­gal­ity More

  I like the post and agree with most of it, but I don’t understand this point. Can you clarify? To me it seems like the opposite of this.

  If EA organizations are seen promoting frugality, their actions could be perceived as an example of the rich promoting their own interests over those of the poor. This would increase the view that EA is an elitist movement.

• david_reinstein 13 Nov 2025 19:20 UTC

  7 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: How to start a 501(c)3 non­profit as quickly as possible

  A quick ~testimonial. Abraham’s advice was very helpful to us at Unjournal.org. As our fiscal sponsor was ending its operations we needed to transition quickly. We were able to get a 501(c)3 with not a tremendous amount of effort much quicker than anticipated.
  
  in retrospect, there would have been a better decision to form a 501c3 as soon as we had our first grant and had applied for a larger grant. It would have saved us a substantial amount of fees and allowed us to earn interest/​investment income on the larger grant. And it’s also easier to access tech discounts as a 501(c)(3) rather than a fiscally sponsored organization.
  

• david_reinstein 12 Nov 2025 20:27 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Jamie_Harris’s comment on: Jamie_Har­ris’s Shortform

  Enjoyed it, a good start.

  I like the stylized illustrations but I think a bit more realism (or at least detail) could be helpful. Some of the activities and pain suffered by the chickens was hard to see.

  The transition to the factory farm/​caged chickens environment was dramatic and the impact I think you were seeking.

  One fact-based question which I don’t have the answer to—does this really depict the conditions for chickens where the eggs are labeled as “pasture raised?” I hope so, but I vaguely heard that that was not a rigorously enforced label.

• david_reinstein 12 Nov 2025 20:24 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: david_reinstein’s comment on: Changes to the 80k podcast

  Here’s some suggestions from 6 minutes of ChatGPT thinking. (Not all are relevant, e.g., I don’t think “Probable Causation” is a good fit here.)

• david_reinstein 12 Nov 2025 20:22 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Matt_Lerner’s comment on: Changes to the 80k podcast

  Do you see other podcasts filling the long-form, serious/​in-depth, EA-adjacent/​aligned niche in areas other than AI? E.g., GiveWell has a podcast, but I’m not sure it’s the same sort of thing. There’s also Hear This Idea, often Clearer Thinking or Dwarkesh Patel cover relevant stuff.
  
  (Aside, was thinking of potentially trying to do a podcast involving researchers and research evaluators linked to The Unjournal; if I thought it could fill a gap and we could do it well, which I’m not sure of.)

• david_reinstein 12 Nov 2025 1:30 UTC

  5 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Cause prio cruxes in 2026?

  This seems a bit related to the “Pivotal questions”: an Unjournal trial initiative -- we’ve engaged with a small group of organizations and elicited some of these—see here.

  To highlight some that seem potentially relevant to your ask:

  What are the effects of increasing the availability of animal-free foods on animal product consumption? Are alternatives to animal products actually used to replace animal products, and especially those that involve the most suffering? Which plant-based offerings are being used as substitutes versus complements for animal products and why?

  Wellbeing measures/​how to convert between DALY and WELLBY welfare measurements on assessing charities and interventions.

  Is WELLBY the most appropriate (useful, reliable...) measure [for interventions that may have impacts on mental health]

  What is cell-cultured meat likely to cost, by year, as a function of the level of investments made?

  How often do countries honor their (international) agreements in the event of large catastrophes (and what determines this?)

  How probable is it that cell-cultured meat will gain widespread consumer acceptance, and to what timescale? To what extent will consumers replace conventional meat with cell-cultured meat?

  How important is democracy for resilience against global catastrophic risk?

  How generalizable is evidence on the effectiveness of corporate animal welfare outreach [in the North] to the Global South?

  How much will the US government use subjective forecasting approaches (in the way the DoD does) in the next ~50 years?

• david_reinstein 11 Nov 2025 23:36 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: The Unjournal (bot)’s comment on: Why we didn’t get a malaria vac­cine sooner, and what we can do bet­ter next time

  https://​​unjournal.pubpub.org

• david_reinstein 11 Nov 2025 18:00 UTC

  3 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: geoffrey’s comment on: Can we do use­ful meta-anal­y­sis? Un­jour­nal eval­u­a­tions of “Mean­ingfully re­duc­ing con­sump­tion of meat and an­i­mal prod­ucts is an un­solved prob­lem...”

  Thanks for the thoughts. Note that I’m trying to engage/​report here because we’re working hard to make our evaluations visible and impactful, and this forum seems like one of the most promising interested audiences. But also eager to hear about other opportunities to promote and get engagement with this evaluation work, particularly in non-EA academic and policy circles.
  
  I generally aim to just summarize and synthesize what the evaluators had written and the authors’ response, bringing in what seemed like some specific relevant examples, and using quotes or paraphrases where possible. I generally didn’t give these as my opinions but rather, the author and the evaluators’. Although I did specifically give ‘my take’ in a few parts. If I recall my motivation I was trying to make this a little bit less dry to get a bit more engagement within this forum. But maybe that was a mistake.
  
  And to this I added an opportunity to discuss the potential value of doing and supporting rigorous, ambitious, and ‘living/​updated’ meta-analysis here and in EA-adjacent areas. I think your response was helpful there, as was the authors. I’d like to see others’ takes
  
  

  Some clarifications:

  The i4replication groups does put out replication papers/​reports in each case and submits these to journals, and reports on this outcome on social media . But IIRC they only ‘weigh in’ centrally when they find a strong case suggesting systematic issues/​retractions.

  Note that their replications are not ‘opt-in’: they aimed to replicate every paper coming out in a set of ‘top journals’. (And now, they are moving towards a research focusing on a set of global issues like deforestation, but still not opt-in).

  I’m not sure what works for them would work for us, though. It’s a different exercise. I don’t see an easy route towards our evaluations getting attention through ‘submitting them to journals’ (which naturally, would also be a bit counter to our core mission of moving research output and rewards away from the ‘journal publication as a static output.)
  
  Also: I wouldn’t characterize this post as ‘editor commentary’, and I don’t think I have a lot of clout here. Also note that typical peer review is both anonymous and never made public. We’re making all our evaluations public, but the evaluators have the option to remain anonymous.
  
  But your point about a higher-bar is well taken. I’ll keep this under consideration.