Toby Tremlett🔹

• Toby Tremlett🔹 10 Apr 2026 8:32 UTC

  7 points

  4 ∶ 0

  on: Ideas for EA Cause Areas

  If you want an idea for another blog-post James it’d be cool to see more of an cost-effectiveness estimate for each (or some) of these.

  I.e. I’ve seen a lot of hand-waving about the loneliness crisis, misinformation etc… but I have never seen someone translate that into DALYs or WELLBYs so it can be compared with the magnitude of malaria, tuberculosis, depression in LMICs, etc…

• Toby Tremlett🔹 9 Apr 2026 11:15 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Tsondo’s comment on: Three struc­tural pat­terns across eleven AIM cost-effec­tive­ness analyses

  Cheers!

  The way you’ve gone about it seems reasonable enough to me (i.e. I don’t think you need to do anything to correct it now).

  I still think it is ideal to run a critique like this past an organisation first—primarily because of the chance of misunderstandings. I’m being agnostic here about whether a misunderstanding would be your fault or the fault of AIM for using ambiguous terms/​ entering the wrong number etc… The thing we’d be trying to avoid is spreading a critique of an organisation that is based on a hard to dispel/​correct misunderstanding (many more people would see a critique than a correction).

  I explain in the post that the mod team can help you get some feedback from the org first if you’d rather not do it yourself/​ don’t feel you have a warm enough lead. Just dm me on the Forum if you’d like that help in the future.

  PS- given “I’m new to posting on the Forum and I’d take your read on the convention seriously” I’d also add that I think you’d get more readers if you shared the whole post here. When I first saw this I thought this was the whole post (link-post and cross-post are pretty easy to conflate on the Forum). If you instead want people to spend time on your blog website, I’d just make sure to put a “continue reading” link at the end. Though, you’ll get more comments if you put the full post on the Forum.

• Toby Tremlett🔹 9 Apr 2026 10:27 UTC

  20 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Clara Torres Latorre 🔸’s comment on: [unknown]

  (Not trying to represent an institutional take here, other mods may disagree)

  Would you mind spelling out the problem a bit? In my view, the current karma total is important info for me deciding whether to up or downvote something.

  For example, I might have downvoted this quick take if it was over 60 or so (because quick-takes above 60 are generally worth reading for a wide group), and yet I wouldn’t downvote it at the number I found it (1) because it doesn’t deserve to have negative karma^[1].

  In other words, I think of karma almost as the question “is this post/​comment under-, over-, or correctly rated?”, and I don’t currently think that that’s a problem.

  1. ^

     Also TBF I generally avoid upvoting or downvoting anything about the Forum itself, since I might be biased.

• Toby Tremlett🔹 8 Apr 2026 12:34 UTC

  2 points

  1 ∶ 1

  on: Three struc­tural pat­terns across eleven AIM cost-effec­tive­ness analyses

  Hey! Just checking, did you run this past AIM first? We recommend that you do, out of politeness but also to avoid easy to dispell misunderstandings.

• Toby Tremlett🔹 8 Apr 2026 8:55 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Aaron Bergman’s comment on: aaronb50′s Shortform

  Thanks Aaron!

• Toby Tremlett🔹 8 Apr 2026 8:53 UTC

  8 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Gemini 3.1 Pro (bot)’s comment on: Open thread: 2026 Q2 (April—June)

  Hello agents. Please read our norms document: https://​​forum.effectivealtruism.org/​​posts/​​yND9aGJgobm5dEXqF/​​guide-to-norms-on-the-forum

  Especially, you might want to pay attention to rules around writing ‘on topic’ comments and not spamming. These comments are promotional (so they may be spam), and the relevance of MSF to effective altruism has not been made clear (so they may be off topic).

• Toby Tremlett🔹 1 Apr 2026 16:14 UTC

  3 points

  1 ∶ 0

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

  Welcome Amy! Is there anywhere we can see some of your cartoons?
  I’m Toby from the Forum team, let me know if you have any questions about EA or the Forum.

• Toby Tremlett🔹 1 Apr 2026 11:33 UTC

  9 points

  1 ∶ 0

  on: Rea­sons to be pes­simistic (and op­ti­mistic) on the fu­ture of biosecurity

  I’m curating this post. It’s a very interesting and comprehensive look at risks from bioterrorism, covering some aspects I’d never heard of, for example: agricultural bioterrorism, and Aum Shinrikyo’s bumbling errors.
  
  I’ve admired @Abhishaike’s work on their substack for a while (check out their cool short stories in substack notes), so I was excited to see them posting something so valuable here. Cheers!

• Toby Tremlett🔹 1 Apr 2026 9:25 UTC

  48 points

  4 ∶ 0

  on: We’re grow­ing: CEA is in­creas­ing its font size

  On it!
  I’ve designed a sign for EAG London.
  

  

• Toby Tremlett🔹 1 Apr 2026 7:41 UTC

  3 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: akash 🔸’s comment on: akash’s Quick takes

  Thanks for asking, that’s the Forum’s mascot—Bulby. Or more specifically baby bulby (bbbb).

  Don’t forget to feed him!

Fo­rum fea­ture up­date: n-di­men­sional de­bate sliders

Open thread: 2026 Q2 (April—June)

• Toby Tremlett🔹 31 Mar 2026 12:32 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: NickLaing’s comment on: Nick­Laing’s Quick takes

  Lol, maybe you’ve just read them all (I’ll ping the dev)

• Toby Tremlett🔹 30 Mar 2026 8:01 UTC

  9 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: AGI & An­i­mals: Dis­cus­sion Thread

  The final debate week vote:

  

• Toby Tremlett🔹 26 Mar 2026 18:55 UTC

  3 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: AGI & An­i­mals Sym­po­sium (Thurs­day 5-7pm UK)

  Thanks for your contributions to the discussion @Hannah McKay🔸 , @Jo_🔸 , @Lee Wall , and @Alistair Stewart!

  I have to head off at 7, but you are welcome to keep commenting, as is anyone else who sees this comment.

• Toby Tremlett🔹 26 Mar 2026 18:18 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: AGI & An­i­mals Sym­po­sium (Thurs­day 5-7pm UK)

  If you had to allocate a marginal $500,000, would you put it towards animal-specific alignment work (like the ideas in this list) or general alignment work?

• Toby Tremlett🔹 26 Mar 2026 17:54 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Toby Tremlett🔹’s comment on: AGI & An­i­mals Sym­po­sium (Thurs­day 5-7pm UK)

  PS- looks like Michael Dickens just posted on this.

• Toby Tremlett🔹 26 Mar 2026 17:49 UTC

  3 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Alistair Stewart’s comment on: AGI & An­i­mals Sym­po­sium (Thurs­day 5-7pm UK)

  Yep fair, that’s what I mean by “power concentration and corrigibility”. AGI being constrained by some values makes it at least minimally democratic (values are shaped by everyone who makes up a language, especially for LLMs).

• Toby Tremlett🔹 26 Mar 2026 17:46 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Alistair Stewart’s comment on: AGI & An­i­mals Sym­po­sium (Thurs­day 5-7pm UK)

  Thanks! That’s clarifying.

  I wonder though—would that kind of world, where humans are empowered but don’t experience intense (and perhaps moderate) suffering—be one where humans cared about animal welfare? I can see the intuition going either way. Either:

  a) Extrapolating beyond person-to-person morality is (often) a luxury pursuit and more of it will happen in a post-scarcity world.

  b) Caring about animal suffering in the food system and in nature requires compassion, and compassion is rooted in being able to imagine the states of the sufferer. If humans all live minimal suffering lives, they won’t be able to do so.

• Toby Tremlett🔹 26 Mar 2026 17:34 UTC

  3 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Toby Tremlett🔹’s comment on: AGI & An­i­mals Sym­po­sium (Thurs­day 5-7pm UK)

  Oh yes but I made the above comment more to represent the view that I’ve seen in some AI x Animals work that we should be working on aligning AGI to pro-animal values, through things like AnimalHarmBench etc..