MvK🔸

Karma: 678

MvK🔸 14 Apr 2026 19:15 UTC
12 points
1 ∶ 0
on: You should write about your giving
Hi @Aaron Gertler 🔸 !

Thanks for this post—I think I needed to hear this.

Other than my replies to the annual forum post, I haven’t written much about my giving, but I suspect there could be quite some leverage in me doing so, given how committed I am (the TLDR is I have taken something similar to a Further Pledge, and have lived off less than ~30,000 USD in the last ~3-4 years), and I’d love to inspire others to show them what’s possible.

Do you have any recommendations for where to publish, and who might be interested in editorial support? (Maybe the folks over at GWWC?) I’d also consider approaching a bigger news outlet if you (or someone else) thought this was wise, though maybe your recommendation is “Just put it on LinkedIn, it’ll be fine”.

No need to respond to this at all—I just wanted to put this out there to signal my willingness to come clear about my addiction to effective giving ;-)

MvK🔸 7 Jan 2026 18:29 UTC
7 points
1 ∶ 1
on: What do you want to see from the Forum team this year?
I’d be interested in something like “Here is where I donated” but for epistemics: “Here is where I have changed my mind”. This could be a post under which anyone can comment or a series of guest posts from thought leaders from different cause areas giving their recent (or older) updates.
Why?
- I think this could be a good incentive for people to ask themselves that question and simultaneously a good way to celebrate and positively reinforce the virtue of changing one’s mind in the face of new evidence.
- Personally, I have often found discussions are much less likely to become hostile or otherwise unproductive if they begin with this as the starting point, as people are given the chance to show vulnerability, explain their opinion as the result of an unfinished trajectory, etc.
- In some cases, this could even be a good preventive measure to something that definitely happened to me when I first got involved: you read some old post from someone senior or respected and—because you haven’t been around for long and so you (rightly) defer a lot—you take this as gospel, only to later find out that that person doesn’t endorse that particular viewpoint anymore.

MvK🔸 2 Oct 2025 12:28 UTC
14 points
4 ∶ 0
in reply to: Jeffrey Kursonis’s comment on: Charity Entrepreneurship is bottlenecked by a lack of great animal founders
“Also, why don’t you put out more open calls to have applicant’s come start any kind of animal welfare org they want, not just your four pre-imagined ones?”
This may have changed, but AIM did at least previously let candidates pitch their own ideas—I know of at least one person in my cohort that came in with their own project. Admittedly, this is rare, but that is probably what we should expect if as an applicant with an idea, you are up against a team of researchers with a cumulated expertise and experience of decades who have done several of these investigations, can compare ideas, have privileged access to data about how likely it is to find the right founders, obtain funding etc.

MvK🔸 2 Oct 2025 12:21 UTC
10 points
6 ∶ 0
in reply to: Jeffrey Kursonis’s comment on: Charity Entrepreneurship is bottlenecked by a lack of great animal founders
“The ones who aren’t founders might be operations champions or tech leads.”
Ambitious Impacts graduates (including me) have in fact gone on to do a variety of things from operations to research and grantmaking.
But maybe I’m missing your point? I’ve generally found it a bit hard to understand that paragraph and other sections.

MvK🔸 30 Sep 2025 19:56 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: ChanaMessinger’s comment on: ChanaMessinger’s Shortform
@Yelnats T.J.

MvK🔸 5 Aug 2025 12:59 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: David_Moss’s comment on: EA Survey 2024: Geography
Ah yes, this is sort of what I expected. Thanks for sharing!

MvK🔸 5 Aug 2025 5:36 UTC
4 points
0 ∶ 0
on: EA Survey 2024: Geography
Very interesting!
Have you also analysed what countries have the highest percentage of EAs relative to their population?
You seem to focus mostly on total numbers—I’d be curious to see if the UK/US dominance is less pronounced when taking this into consideration. I’d be especially interested in which countries “punch above their weight^[1]” (Switzerland?) and which do not (China? India?). This would also be interesting for smaller (cities) or bigger units of analysis (geographic regions).
1. ^
  There might be a few outliers that are caused by extremely low population sizes but I still expect this to be useful data.

MvK🔸 15 Jun 2025 13:10 UTC
6 points
2 ∶ 0
in reply to: BBIL123’s comment on: BBIL123′s Quick takes
I am quite confident you would get more and better (i.e. more well-calibrated) recommendations and referrals if you shared more about your background (or CV/LinkedIn) and what roles you’d be interested in.
Feel free to DM me with the above if you don’t want to share it publicly, but how will I be able to put you on other people’s map if I do not even know your name?

MvK🔸 12 Jun 2025 5:49 UTC
2 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Vincent Niger🔸’s comment on: Vincent Niger’s Quick takes
EA-aligned organisations active in EU policy
Very surprised not to see the usual suspects (TFS, Pour Demain, Center for Future Generations...)

MvK🔸 3 Jun 2025 8:05 UTC
11 points
4 ∶ 0
on: A Defense of Mid-Tier EA/LW Writing
Papers can seem more prestigious and don’t get annoying negative comments.
Reviewer #2 would like a word

MvK🔸 9 Apr 2025 6:07 UTC
12 points
4 ∶ 0
in reply to: Benjamin_Todd’s comment on: The case for AGI by 2030
Is it? Wouldn’t you expect the auto industry to have incentives to exaggerate their possible future accomplishments in developing faster cars because it has a direct influence on how much governments will prioritise it as a means of transport, subsidise R&D, etc.?

MvK🔸 10 Jan 2025 21:12 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Sarah Cheng 🔸’s comment on: Sarah Cheng’s Quick takes
I’m seeing lots of O’s and no KR’s. Is this intentional?
(My understanding is that one of the main benefits of having KPIs or OKRs is the accountability that comes from having specific and measurable (i.e. quantifiable) outcomes that you can track and evaluate, and I can’t see any of those in the document.)

MvK🔸 27 Dec 2024 19:49 UTC
30 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Donation Celebration Post
Giving What We Can tells me that I have donated $27,846 this year, which together with my donations from last year brings me to a total of ~78k donated, comfortably ahead of my pledge of 10% (which would amount to ~12k). I donated less than last year due to a move and a few personal reasons but aspire to bring my donations up again to something closer to 50% of my income.

Here’s where my donations went^[1]:

Shoutout to the team at @Giving What We Can for providing these neat graphics, I’ve found this a) super motivating and b) very time-saving compared to how I tracked my donations last year!
1. ^
  I work on AI Governance (and support a number of field- and community building projects) so most of my donations go to GHD. I have since added a recurring donation to the Humane League and am considering adding more animal welfare charities to my donation portfolio. “Others” is mostly AW charities atm.

MvK🔸 1 Oct 2024 6:22 UTC
4 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Linch’s comment on: Gavin Newsom vetoes SB 1047
Yep, numbers ranged from 60% to 80% support for approving SB 1047, and it was impressively bipartisan, too.

MvK🔸 29 Sep 2024 6:25 UTC
3 points
3 ∶ 0
in reply to: Ebenezer Dukakis’s comment on: Linch’s Shortform
(Just to correct the record for people who might have been surprised to see this comment: All of these people work for OpenPhilanthropy, not for OpenAI.)

MvK🔸 14 Jun 2024 5:12 UTC
21 points
6 ∶ 0
on: Announcing The Midas Project — and our first campaign (which you can help with!)
Is there a reason it’s impossible to find out who is involved with this project? Maybe it’s on purpose, but through the website I couldn’t find out who’s on the team, who supports it, or what kind of organisation (nonprofit? For profit? Etc.) you are legally. If this was a deliberate and strategic choice against being transparent because of the nature of the work you expect to be doing, I’d love to hear why you made it!

[My 2 cents: As an org that is focused on advocacy and campaigns, it might be especially important to be transparent to build trust. It’s projects like yours where I find myself MOST interested who is behind it to evaluate trustworthiness, conflicting incentives, etc. For all I know (from the website), you could be a competitor of the company you are targeting! I am not saying you need Fish-Welfare-Project-level transparency with open budgets etc.,and maybe I am just an overly suspicious website visitor, but I felt it was worth flagging]

MvK🔸 2 Jun 2024 11:47 UTC
9 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: ezrah’s comment on: ezrah’s Quick takes
This is a great idea. It’s such a good idea that someone else (https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/users/aaronb50) has had it before and has already solved this problem for us:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/eag-talks/id1689845820

MvK🔸 3 May 2024 13:38 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Greg_Colbourn ⏸️ ’s comment on: Greg_Colbourn’s Shortform
Have you done some research on the expected demand (e.g. survey the organisers of the mentioned programs, community builders, maybe Wytham Abbey event organisers)? I can imagine the location and how long it takes to get there (unless you are already based in London, though even then it’s quite the trip) could be a deterrent, especially for events <3 days. (Another factor may be “fanciness”—I’ve worked with orgs and attended/organise events where fancy venues were eschewed, and others where they were deemed indispensable. If that building is anything like the EA Hotel—or the average Blackpool building—my expectation is it would rank low on this. Kinda depends on your target audience/user.)

MvK🔸 29 Mar 2024 2:12 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: ghostwheel’s comment on: Who wants to be hired? (Feb-May 2024)
https://jobs.lever.co/futureof-life/9c1b31b4-c02c-4af6-88e9-09c30157bbed

MvK🔸 26 Mar 2024 14:47 UTC
19 points
13 ∶ 3
in reply to: Manuel Allgaier’s comment on: Announcement on the future of Wytham Abbey
“It’s not common” wouldn’t by itself suffice as a reason though—conducting CEAs “isn’t common” in GHD, donating 10% “isn’t common” in the general population, etc. (cf. Hume, is-and-ought something something).

Obviously, something may be “common” because it reliably protects you from legal exposure, is too much work for too little a benefit etc., but then I’m much more interested in those underlying reasons.