Eevee🔹

Karma: 5,587

I’m interested in effective altruism and longtermism broadly. The topics I’m interested in change over time; they include existential risks, climate change, wild animal welfare, alternative proteins, and longtermist global development.

A comment I’ve written about my EA origin story

Pronouns: she/her

Legal notice: I hereby release under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license all contributions to the EA Forum (text, images, etc.) to which I hold copyright and related rights, including contributions published before 1 December 2022.

“It is important to draw wisdom from many different places. If we take it from only one place, it becomes rigid and stale. Understanding others, the other elements, and the other nations will help you become whole.” —Uncle Iroh

Eevee🔹 17 Oct 2025 18:27 UTC
2 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: barkbellowroar’s comment on: EA needs organic optics, not ‘no’ optics (hollywood is coming for us)
How did Sam “win”? The press coverage of him since the FTX collapse has been overwhelmingly negative. The EA movement has been caught up in that as collateral damage, but some works have criticized Sam for “twisting” EA, like the podcast Spellcaster.
...why you just assume it will be a positive representation of EAs?
No, I’m not making any assumptions about the movies being released.

Eevee🔹 17 Oct 2025 16:02 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
on: EA needs organic optics, not ‘no’ optics (hollywood is coming for us)
How do we know that the portrayals of EA in these films are going to be negative, let alone unfair? I think that suing is premature.

Eevee🔹 4 Oct 2025 6:22 UTC
4 points
1 ∶ 1
on: The day Elon Musk’s AI became a Nazi (and what it means for AI safety) | New video from AI in Context
Would you folks be up to make this series available as a podcast? I think I’d find it easier to listen to a 40-minute podcast episode while doing other things (with the option to watch video in the Spotify app) than to stay seated in front of a screen for 40 minutes.

Eevee🔹 4 Oct 2025 6:09 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: maximilianoliver’s comment on: maximilianoliver’s Quick takes
You could create a charity fundraiser on GoFundMe or Every.org and match the donations yourself.
If you want to automate the donation matching, I’d suggest batching the donations and only charging the fundraiser creator for the total amount every 14 days or when the fundraiser ends, rather than creating a matching transaction for every donation. That would cut down on payment processing fees.
You could also experiment with authorization holds on the user’s credit card—they basically hold a certain amount of money hostage on the credit card to make sure that amount (or some lesser amount) can be charged to the card later. For example, you could authorize $200, and if the fundraiser only raises $150 by the time the hold expires, charge only $150 to the card.
There are some risks to the user that you might want to design around:
- If the fundraiser raises a lot of money (> $1000 for example), the creator will be liable for a huge donation match and may not be prepared to pay that all at once. You could set a cap on the amount that the creator pledges to match, or set up a “pay over time” option.
- If the user sets up a bank transfer or debit card as their payment method, there’s a risk that the matching payments will result in an overdraft on their bank account. I’d be more comfortable using a credit card even though the processing fees are higher.

Eevee🔹 3 Oct 2025 3:25 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: dan.pandori’s comment on: AI policy 501(c)(4) recommendations for individual donors?
Not necessarily. It’s more that funding gaps of c3′s can be more easily filled by big foundations (which are also c3′s), whereas donations from c3′s to c4′s are restricted. That makes it more valuable, ceteris paribus, for individuals to fill c4 funding gaps.
Also, the “50% bonus” only applies if you itemize deductions; many people use the standard deduction, including some people who earn more than six figures.

Eevee🔹 30 Sep 2025 0:11 UTC
4 points
0 ∶ 0
on: What posts are you thinking about writing?
Best practices and pitfalls in EA-aligned campaigns for public office

Eevee🔹 24 Sep 2025 6:14 UTC
4 points
0 ∶ 0
on: The Center for AI Policy Has Shut Down
Thank you for this candid and informative post. I agree that we need to allocate more resources to advocacy (but hopefully not at the expense of research!).
I also wanted to signal boost your advice to 501(c)(3)’s in your previous post on orphaned policies, in case it’s relevant to anyone reading this thread:
Admittedly, most research work is funded by 501(c)(3) donations that cannot pay for more than a small amount of direct political advocacy. However, there are ways to word the conclusion of a research paper that provide clear guidance without crossing the line into inappropriate political work. True, you might not endorse a bill that’s currently being debated by Congress, and you certainly shouldn’t be endorsing political candidates, but you can still truthfully say that one type of policy has better consequences than another. The law clearly states that “nonpartisan analysis, study, or research may advocate a particular position or viewpoint so long as there is a sufficiently full and fair exposition of the pertinent facts to enable the public or an individual to form an independent opinion or conclusion.”
It’s therefore not “political” to point out that banning A100 chip exports while permitting A800 chip exports is ineffective; that’s a technical conclusion that a neutral researcher can reasonably draw. It’s not “advocacy” to express an opinion that the next generation of LLMs will most likely uplift the capabilities of bioweapon designers to a degree that poses risks that would be considered unacceptable in any other industry. You can have a firm opinion on an issue without being a politician; nothing about having a 501(c)(3) tax-status requires you to drown every opinion you offer in a sea of “maybe” and “could” and “warrants further research.” The point of tax-exempt research is to come up with scientifically informed opinions that politicians can draw on to inform their work; if your organization is too timid to firmly express those opinions, then it’s not upholding its part of the social contract.
The fact that c3′s can and do engage in bold advocacy increases the total amount of advocacy that private foundations and tax-sensitive donors can fund, even though their ability to fund c4′s is limited. So there’s no reason foundations couldn’t increase their effective allocation to advocacy if they wanted to.

Eevee🔹 12 Aug 2025 21:10 UTC
3 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Lorenzo Buonanno🔸’s comment on: How often is the GWWC pledge count updated?
10,001 🎉

Eevee🔹 9 Aug 2025 3:44 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: barkbellowroar’s comment on: barkbellowroar’s Quick takes
If you would like to receive email updates about any future research endeavours that continue the mission of the Global Priorities Institute, you can also sign up here.
I signed up for the mailing list! Is there any other way to support research similar to GPI’s work—for instance, would it make sense to donate to Forethought Foundation?

Eevee🔹 14 Jul 2025 7:05 UTC
6 points
0 ∶ 0
on: evelynciara’s Shortform
What if there was an effective giving org that partnered with movie studios to pledge a portion of their revenue to thematically relevant high-impact charities? e.g. “5% of gross box office revenue from Chicken Run Super 3D! will be donated to Legal Impact for Chickens”
Seeing the unexpected success of KPop Demon Hunters (released in June 2025) made me think of this idea again. Imagine how cool it would be if next year’s summer blockbusters used their reach for a good cause? This initiative would also diversify the EA funding base away from finance and tech.

Eevee🔹 7 Jul 2025 2:03 UTC
2 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Manuel Del Río Rodríguez 🔹’s comment on: Netflix Series on FTX collapse
I suppose you could say he petered out

Eevee🔹 24 Jun 2025 5:02 UTC
7 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Society for the Protection of Insects Review
Disclosure: Possible conflict of interest here. I donated close to $900 to SPI in November 2024 based on information they shared with me privately about their work and confirmation of their activities from a mutual contact. This was a large portion of my giving last year, which may bias me towards wanting to believe they will have impact.
I appreciate that you folks did a review of SPI, but why publish this linkpost without a description?
Also, is there really no information you can share about SPI’s work so far? This doesn’t match my impression of the work they were up to. I’m happy to follow up with them about their progress and share what I find out here, provided that they don’t object.

Eevee🔹 20 Jun 2025 17:33 UTC
8 points
0 ∶ 1
on: In Defense of “Sweatshops”
This is a pretty grounded take. The only thing that bugs me is this passage, in the introduction:
The national media spotlight focused on sweatshops in 1996 after Charles Kernaghan, of the National Labor Committee, accused Kathy Lee Gifford of exploiting children in Honduran sweatshops. He flew a 15 year old worker, Wendy Diaz, to the United States to meet Kathy Lee. Kathy Lee exploded into tears and apologized on the air, promising to pay higher wages.
Should Kathy Lee have cried? Her Honduran workers earned 31 cents per hour. At 10 hours per day, which is not uncommon in a sweatshop, a worker would earn $3.10. Yet nearly a quarter of Hondurans earn less than $1 per day and nearly half earn less than $2 per day.
Wendy Diaz’s message should have been, “Don’t cry for me, Kathy Lee. Cry for the Hondurans not fortunate enough to work for you.” Instead the U.S. media compared $3.10 per day to U.S. alternatives, not Honduran alternatives. But U.S. alternatives are irrelevant. No one is offering these workers green cards.
One of the lessons I draw from this issue is that people, particularly those living in extreme poverty, may have preferences different from our own and different from what we’d expect given our assumptions about them. As the piece points out, factory workers in developing countries generally “want most of their compensation in wages and little in health or safety improvements.… Employers will meet health and safety mandates by either laying off workers or by improving health and safety while lowering wages against workers’ wishes.” It’s not our place to tell third-world workers that they should want improved working conditions more than they want moolah.
By the same token, I feel that it’s arrogant for the author to tell poor people like Wendy Diaz what they should think or say, especially when he is using them to make a point. The piece doesn’t tell us what Wendy told Kathy Lee Gifford, her putative “employer,” but it’s likely that she was testifying about her lived experiences working in the factory. Expectations color our perception of our life circumstances, so her outlook could have been subsequently shaped by her being flown north to the United States and getting a glimpse of what was possible outside her home country of Honduras. I can only speculate, so I’m being cautious not to project my beliefs onto Wendy as if she “should think X” or “did in fact feel Y.” My point is that activists have a duty to respect the autonomy of their subjects—nothing about us without us.

Eevee🔹 8 Jun 2025 6:54 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Please take this anonymous, seven-question survey for my dissertation on EA!
Thanks for sharing! This is probably an abuse of notation, but I clicked the check mark reaction as a note-to-self that I completed the survey, even though it typically means “agree”.
Should we send this to our non-EA friends too?

Eevee🔹 2 Jun 2025 19:53 UTC
4 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Lorenzo Buonanno🔸’s comment on: akash’s Quick takes
Oooh, I’d better get to work on my SBF musical 😂

Eevee🔹 2 Jun 2025 19:52 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: BrianTan’s comment on: akash’s Quick takes
Yeah, he is. He was played by Joseph Mazzello.

Eevee🔹 23 May 2025 10:06 UTC
4 points
0 ∶ 0
on: evelynciara’s Shortform
Does anyone know what’s going on with Apart Research’s funding situation? I participated in one of their AI safety hackathons and it propelled me into the world of AIS research, so I’m sad to hear that they might be forced to shut down or downsize. They’re trying to raise nearly a million dollars in the next month.

Eevee🔹 13 May 2025 17:32 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Apply for ARBOx2: an ML safety intensive [deadline: 25th of May 2025]
ARBOx? I see what you did there… 🐍

Eevee🔹 28 Apr 2025 21:12 UTC
25 points
3 ∶ 0
on: Reflections on the $5 Minimum Donation Barrier on the Giving What We Can Platform — A Student Perspective from a Lower-Income Country.
You can donate to AMF via PayPal Giving Fund on this page and to Giving What We Can here. Currently, 100% of the donation amount goes to charity, as PayPal covers all payment processing fees on donations through this portal. I haven’t tried making a small donation recently, but it looks like there is no minimum amount you can donate, and users regularly make $1 donations through the Give at Checkout feature. (Caveat: These links may only work in certain countries.)
I’ve included a screenshot below of the user interface for when you donate, though I didn’t complete the checkout so I don’t know if it’d work.
(Disclosure: I worked at PayPal from 2021 to 2024.)

Eevee🔹 24 Apr 2025 22:34 UTC
24 points
4 ∶ 0
on: evelynciara’s Shortform
I’ve been thinking a lot about how mass layoffs in tech affect the EA community. I got laid off early last year, and after job searching for 7 months and pivoting to trying to start a tech startup, I’m on a career break trying to recover from burnout and depression.
Many EAs are tech professionals, and I imagine that a lot of us have been impacted by layoffs and/or the decreasing number of job openings that are actually attainable for our skill level. The EA movement depends on a broad base of high earners to sustain high-impact orgs through relatively small donations (on the order of $300-3000)—this improves funding diversity and helps orgs maintain independence from large funders like Open Philanthropy. (For example, Rethink Priorities has repeatedly argued that small donations help them pursue projects “that may not align well with the priorities or constraints of institutional grantmakers.”)
It’s not clear that all of us will be able to continue sustaining the level of donations we historically have, especially if we’re forced out of the job markets that we spent years training and getting degrees for. I think it’s incumbent on us to support each other more to help each other get back to a place where we can earn to give or otherwise have a high impact again.