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MichaelDickens

Karma: 7,359

I do independent research on EA topics. I write about whatever seems important, tractable, and interesting (to me).

I have a website: https://​​mdickens.me/​​ Much of the content on my website gets cross-posted to the EA Forum, but I also write about some non-EA stuff over there.

My favorite things that I’ve written: https://​​mdickens.me/​​favorite-posts/​​

I used to work as a software developer at Affirm.

Re­turn Stack­ing Funds: A New Way to Get Leverage

MichaelDickens18 Jan 2026 18:21 UTC
45 points
9 comments7 min readEA link

If AI al­ign­ment is only as hard as build­ing the steam en­g­ine, then we likely still die

MichaelDickens10 Jan 2026 23:10 UTC
35 points
8 comments4 min readEA link

War­time ethics is weird

MichaelDickens20 Dec 2025 16:21 UTC
14 points
11 comments2 min readEA link

Align­ment Boot­strap­ping Is Dangerous

MichaelDickens27 Nov 2025 18:18 UTC
14 points
0 comments2 min readEA link

Where I Am Donat­ing in 2025

MichaelDickens22 Nov 2025 23:21 UTC
90 points
9 comments14 min readEA link

We won’t solve non-al­ign­ment prob­lems by do­ing research

MichaelDickens21 Nov 2025 18:03 UTC
70 points
5 comments4 min readEA link

Epistemic Spot Check: Ex­pected Value of Donat­ing to Alex Bores’s Con­gres­sional Campaign

MichaelDickens13 Nov 2025 19:09 UTC
67 points
3 comments6 min readEA link

Writ­ing Your Rep­re­sen­ta­tives: A Cost-Effec­tive and Ne­glected Intervention

MichaelDickens9 Nov 2025 1:33 UTC
14 points
1 comment9 min readEA link

Will Welfare­ans Get to Ex­pe­rience the Fu­ture?

MichaelDickens2 Nov 2025 1:21 UTC
64 points
20 comments2 min readEA link

How Much Does It Cost to Offset an LLM Sub­scrip­tion?

MichaelDickens4 Oct 2025 21:50 UTC
19 points
1 comment4 min readEA link

AI Safety Land­scape & Strate­gic Gaps

MichaelDickens17 Sep 2025 23:02 UTC
95 points
4 comments57 min readEA link

Is It So Much to Ask for a Nice Reli­able Ag­gre­gated X-Risk Fore­cast?

MichaelDickens13 Jul 2025 20:01 UTC
29 points
3 comments3 min readEA link
(mdickens.me)

LLMs might already be conscious

MichaelDickens5 Jul 2025 19:31 UTC
33 points
8 comments2 min readEA link
(mdickens.me)

Why would AI com­pa­nies use hu­man-level AI to do al­ign­ment re­search?

MichaelDickens25 Apr 2025 19:12 UTC
16 points
1 comment2 min readEA link

Do Protests Work? A Crit­i­cal Review

MichaelDickens18 Apr 2025 22:49 UTC
128 points
10 comments26 min readEA link

Don’t treat prob­a­bil­ities less than 0.5 as if they’re 0

MichaelDickens26 Feb 2025 5:14 UTC
36 points
5 comments1 min readEA link

Char­ity Cost-Effec­tive­ness Really Does Fol­low a Power Law

MichaelDickens28 Jan 2025 22:52 UTC
57 points
7 comments4 min readEA link

Thoughts on My Dona­tion Process

MichaelDickens28 Jan 2025 22:49 UTC
26 points
2 comments4 min readEA link

Where I Am Donat­ing in 2024

MichaelDickens19 Nov 2024 0:09 UTC
181 points
73 comments46 min readEA link

Re­think Pri­ori­ties’ Cross-Cause Cost-Effec­tive­ness Model: In­tro­duc­tion and Overview

Derek Shiller3 Nov 2023 12:26 UTC
236 points
95 comments13 min readEA link