Toby Tremlett🔹

• Toby Tremlett🔹 8 May 2026 16:26 UTC

  10 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: to­bytrem’s Quick takes

  FYI, next week we will be highlighting the first batch of articles from In Development, @Lauren Gilbert’s new global development magazine.
  
  Lauren and most of the authors will be on the Forum to answer your questions throughout the week. More info to come on Monday, but I figured I’d mention in case anyone wanted to read the articles in advance (they are here, and all authors apart from Paul Niehaus will be around to answer questions).

  I’m looking forward to the discussion.

• Toby Tremlett🔹 8 May 2026 14:56 UTC

  4 points

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  in reply to: NickLaing’s comment on: New EA Fo­rum LLM-use policy

  I agree a lot of the time but there are also some absolute banger comments on the Forum that I’m glad people sweated over. And there is a difference between thinking seriously and being loose about form and just being loose all around.

• Toby Tremlett🔹 8 May 2026 13:27 UTC

  2 points

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  in reply to: NickLaing’s comment on: New EA Fo­rum LLM-use policy

  ‘higher overall qualirt of writing’ lol Nick was that on purpose.

• Toby Tremlett🔹 8 May 2026 9:06 UTC

  4 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Owen Cotton-Barratt’s comment on: New EA Fo­rum LLM-use policy

  I can clarify that in writing this policy that was definitely part of my reasoning (i.e. to make it slightly costlier to use AI for final drafting).

  I do think that “even if this makes their posts worse” is going to be fairly rare.

  Though, as AI gets better at writing, we might all come to look on disclaimers differently. At some point readers may even prefer to know an AI has already checked over a post before they bother to read it.

• Toby Tremlett🔹 7 May 2026 13:03 UTC

  4 points

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  in reply to: Chris Leong’s comment on: New EA Fo­rum LLM-use policy

  Yep, should have made that clearer. I’ll edit.

• Toby Tremlett🔹 7 May 2026 11:26 UTC

  4 points

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  in reply to: NickLaing’s comment on: New EA Fo­rum LLM-use policy

  Thanks Nick, I appreciate this take. I’m personally hoping that mandatory disclosure will serve to discourage AI-writing where it isn’t necessary, but we will see. Let me know if you’re seeing signs of the policy being insufficient.
  
  PS- I agree with substack, but that’s partially just a good algorithm. If you look at the best-sellers … it’s not so good.

New EA Fo­rum LLM-use policy

• Toby Tremlett🔹 7 May 2026 8:25 UTC

  5 points

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  on: AMA: Svetha Janumpalli, CEO and Founder of New Incentives

  Hey Svetha! Thanks for doing this AMA.

  Two questions:

  1. What have you learned about delivering this program in northern Nigeria that you don’t think would apply elsewhere? In other words, are there culturally specific features which make the program harder/​ easier to implement?

  2. Congrats on your program’s cost effectiveness! Sometimes, the analysis updates the other way. How do you personally manage the possibility that your program might end up being less cost-effective than you hoped, and you may have to pivot?^[1]

  1. ^

     Not picking your program out in particular, this is a problem everyone trying to do good faces, including our team on the EA Forum.

• Toby Tremlett🔹 6 May 2026 14:09 UTC

  2 points

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  in reply to: LeonieW’s comment on: Open thread: 2026 Q2 (April—June)

  Hey Leonie! Welcome to the EA Forum.

  I’m around if you ever have questions,

  Toby, from the EA Forum team :)

• Toby Tremlett🔹 27 Apr 2026 8:47 UTC

  7 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Noah Birnbaum’s comment on: Noah Birn­baum’s Quick takes

  Thanks Noah! I cosign your suggestions, but probably not your ‘super dead’ diagnosis.

  I’d add:

  1. Remember to give and remove karma. A better sorted Forum is a better use of everyone’s time.

  2. Consider commenting more. I started drafting a post about this last week, but basically I think that at its best, comments on the Forum can be its greatest comparative strength. Forum comments are definitely better than comments on Substack (in my view) and I’d like to make that difference even starker.

     1. Addendum: don’t undervalue comments. A good comment can get as much karma as a good post. A graph I made last week [at bottom of quick take] shows that the average karma given to comments has decreased. Proportionally this can’t be completely explained by the userbase being smaller—so either people are giving less karma across the board for a non-quality reason, or they value comments less. (LMK if you have other Qs about this, now AI can write the SQL for me I can access a lot more statistics.)

  3. Tell me people I should crosspost (dm me or comment here). When we ask substackers if we can crosspost them they almost always say yes.

  Also FWIW—I don’t see the LessWrong thing as the reason for the Forum seeming more dead, that isn’t a new development.

  

  PS- The Forum team will be on a retreat this week, and we are having a team day on Friday, so all comments on the state of the Forum/​ suggestions and requests for what you want to see are massively appreciated and timely.

• Toby Tremlett🔹 27 Apr 2026 8:35 UTC

  2 points

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  in reply to: Dylan Richardson’s comment on: Noah Birn­baum’s Quick takes

  Very keen to hear suggestions of blogs to crosspost—I agree that getting more substack content on here seems important (we’ve done this a bit, but in a fairly ad hoc way)

• Toby Tremlett🔹 24 Apr 2026 11:00 UTC

  5 points

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  on: Has Any­one Com­piled The Most Effec­tive Char­i­ties Ac­cord­ing to Differ­ent Wor­ld­views?

  This isn’t a precise answer to your question, but you might find this from Rethink pretty interesting. They’ve made a few different tools which help you figure out where you should donate based on your philosophical beliefs. It won’t tell you which real-life charity to donate to, but it will tell you which kind of charity you should look for in real life.

• Toby Tremlett🔹 23 Apr 2026 9:11 UTC

  4 points

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  on: Why clini­cal tri­als are bro­ken & how to fix them: a read­ing list

  I feel like clinical trial abundance has at least the whiff of a new cause area within global health. I’m curating this post as a way to kickstart the issue a little bit.
  
  I agree with the author that “It deserves an EA-specific post”, i.e. I’d love to see someone make the case for clinical trial abundance as a cause area. It could be compared to economic growth/​ progress work (as a more targeted niche) or to the distribution of existing medicines (vaccines for malaria etc...).

  Thanks for writing this @Siebe!

• Toby Tremlett🔹 23 Apr 2026 8:28 UTC

  3 points

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  on: Dis­cus­sions of (p)sen­tience of small an­i­mals miss the point

  By the by but I love a post that makes one point clearly, and kicks off some discussion. Kudos.

• Toby Tremlett🔹 21 Apr 2026 10:09 UTC

  2 points

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  in reply to: Seidenpuma’s comment on: Why we need to re­sist the idea of net nega­tive lives in insects

  Thanks Hans, and yes you’re absolutely right, I agree this is a crucial issue.

• Toby Tremlett🔹 21 Apr 2026 8:18 UTC

  3 points

  1 ∶ 1

  in reply to: Tandena Wagner’s comment on: Why we need to re­sist the idea of net nega­tive lives in insects

  Hey Tandena, thanks for raising this. I do think in retrospect that the comment was a bit patronising. Apologies.

  I also now worry that this comment will also seem patronising. I’d appreciate that feedback if it does—I’m considering getting a bit more involved in promoting good quality content through commenting, but it’s a hard line to tread.

  It is unfortunately dense and long and from 10 years ago, but it make me see this is well-trodden ground and left me wanting to know what the more recent developments are.

  Yep, I started looking for other posts and then realised it would take too long for me to justify it. It’s worth spending some time with an LLM finding more readings, there is a lot of good stuff here.

  I have heard some counter arguments. I’m not completely uninformed. I’m unconvinced. (So far.)

  I was writing the comment kind of specifically for someone in this position to see. I think that it isn’t a good post to read if you are still exploring the question; the arguments are forceful, appealing and engaging but uninformed in pretty crucial areas, meaning that overall they can be misleading. I wrote the comment because it seemed like the post was getting disproportionate attention given this fact, and might therefore be taken as having more authority than it does.

  To be clear, my first posts on the Forum were of similar quality or worse, and I’m glad the author posted this. I hope that Hans keeps exploring the question and posting.

• Toby Tremlett🔹 20 Apr 2026 15:31 UTC

  2 points

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• Toby Tremlett🔹 20 Apr 2026 15:30 UTC

  2 points

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  in reply to: EllieKay’s comment on: Open thread: 2026 Q2 (April—June)

  Hey Elena,

  This is a very cool list of interests. What’s the game about?
  If you love to debate and write essays, you’re in the right place.

  Let me know if you every have Qs about the Forum, EA, or if you’d like feedback on a post draft or idea.
  
  Toby, for the EA Forum team.

• Toby Tremlett🔹 20 Apr 2026 15:28 UTC

  2 points

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  in reply to: Chathurya’s comment on: Open thread: 2026 Q2 (April—June)

  Welcome Chathurya!
  I’m around if you ever have questions about how to use the Forum, or about EA in general.
  Cheers,
  Toby

Bet­ter Fu­tures Dis­cus­sion Thread: With Fin Moorhouse