Toby Tremlett🔹

• Toby Tremlett🔹Jun 6, 2025, 10:50 AM

  7 points

  1 ∶ 1

  in reply to: AndeanCondor’s comment on: Strate­gic Neu­tral­ity for ACE: Max­i­miz­ing Im­pact by Avoid­ing Divi­sive Signaling

  Just to note that I think we should be sceptical that a review from 4 years ago still applies today. I’m fairly sure that the staff and research direction has changed over the last 4 years such that this may no longer apply (though I’m not stating that it doesn’t for sure).
  
  Sidenote: I don’t think a “diversity survey” is egregious side-taking. Just going off the title, seems pretty normal and (at least) mildly good. Also, so much of animal advocacy is at least somewhat left-coded that I’d be very surprised if someone who would be scared off by “diversity survey” in a title hadn’t already been scared off by something else.
  

• Toby Tremlett🔹Jun 5, 2025, 11:09 AM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Toby Tremlett🔹’s comment on: All Fo­rum events (I’ve been in­volved in) retrospective

  Also, whoops- should have linked to this

• Toby Tremlett🔹Jun 5, 2025, 11:07 AM

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Vasco Grilo🔸’s comment on: All Fo­rum events (I’ve been in­volved in) retrospective

  Interesting point r.e. karma. I do think it increases somewhat non-linearly, i.e. a post above 50 karma is one I am very likely to include in the digest, and I think that people do vote based on some sort of fixed deservingness number for karma. I.e. a post can hit 60 karma very quickly from the first day’s voters, and then be read by many others who don’t vote much at all (because they think the post is worth about 60 objectively). Maybe I’m wrong though, I should check if karma totals anchor around particular numbers or not.

• Toby Tremlett🔹Jun 5, 2025, 7:31 AM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Tim Hua’s comment on: Tacit knowl­edge: how I *ex­actly* ap­proach EAG(x) con­fer­ences

  Big +1 on this, I used to use the ‘open everyone interesting in a new tab’ method, and I had far too few meetings at EAGs + it took me ages. The spreadsheet has saved me a lot of time, and got me a lot more meetings.

• Toby Tremlett🔹Jun 4, 2025, 9:11 AM

  9 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: 1. The challenge of un­aware­ness for im­par­tial al­tru­ist ac­tion guidance: Introduction

  This is great—I’m looking forward to reading the rest.
  I often avoid thinking in this direction because it feels dangerous to expose yourself to a possibly unbounded scepticism about impact. But it’s not authentic to avoid the question of unawareness. Thanks for nudging me to think about this again!
  PS- unless this is answered in later posts in the sequence—what’s the relationship between ‘unawareness’ and ‘complex cluelessness’ and ‘crucial considerations’? They seem to be pointing at the same concept (we don’t know for sure that we are aware of the biggest effect our actions will have/​ the most relevant value to the actions we are taking).

• Toby Tremlett🔹Jun 3, 2025, 1:01 PM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: questionhaver8733’s comment on: Donat­ing to make an in­di­vi­d­ual im­pact

  It depends on what you mean by ‘know’. Everything is probabilistic, so you can rely on analyses which say that your donation is expected to avert X deaths, but in reality, it will almost certainly be more or less than X.
  
  Also, you can do a lot with $1000.

  I think a more specific question might be helpful. Are you looking for the best way to donate to help the most lives, or the most certain donation, even if it leads to a smaller expected impact?

• Toby Tremlett🔹Jun 2, 2025, 11:05 AM

  3 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Deco 🔹’s comment on: Deco ’s Quick takes

  Out of that list I’d guess that the fourth and fifth (depending on topics) bullets are most suitable for the Forum.

  
  The basic way I’d differentiate content is that the Forum frontpage should all be content that is related to the project of effective altruism, the community section is about EA as a community (i.e. if you were into AI Safety but not EA, you wouldn’t be interested in the community section), and “personal blog” (i.e. not visible on frontpage) is the section for everything that isn’t in those categories. For example posts on “Miscellaneous topics such as productivity and ADD” would probably be moved to personal blog, unless they were strongly related to EA. This doesn’t mean the content isn’t good—lots of EAs read productivity content, but ideally, the Forum should be focused on EA priorities rather than what EAs find interesting.

  
  Feel free to message me with specific ideas that I could help categorise for you! And if in doubt, quick-takes are much more loose and you can post stuff like the bi-weekly updates there to gauge interest.

• Toby Tremlett🔹Jun 2, 2025, 8:00 AM

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: NickLaing’s comment on: EAG Lon­don ’25 Co­or­di­na­tion Thread

  You should be able to see all of them in the “my event” section.

• Toby Tremlett🔹May 30, 2025, 2:08 PM

  3 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Deco 🔹’s comment on: Deco ’s Quick takes

  I love the model—and I’m happy to give feedback on ideas for EA Forum posts if that would ever be helpful! (I’m the Content Strategist for the Forum).

• Toby Tremlett🔹May 30, 2025, 10:59 AM

  6 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: EAG Lon­don ’25 Co­or­di­na­tion Thread

  At this EAG I’m hoping to talk to some great Forum authors who I haven’t met in person yet, but also to identify people who could get (and generate) a lot of value from writing on the Forum, but haven’t tried it.
  
  You can help me (and the Forum) by recommending:

  • People who are coming to EAG with expertise and writing ability, but no Forum presence.

  • People who’ve been in the EA bubble for a while, and want to do a better job of sharing their work.

  Here’s my swapcard. (NB- edited link, to get the link to your profile, look yourself up in the attendees tab)

EAG Lon­don ’25 Co­or­di­na­tion Thread

• Toby Tremlett🔹May 29, 2025, 1:29 PM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Kazik’s comment on: Open thread: April—June 2025

  Hey Kazik!
  Thanks for joining. If you want any hints or tips about the Forum—or want to find people doing similar work, let me know.
  Cheers
  Toby, from the Forum team.

• Toby Tremlett🔹May 29, 2025, 1:27 PM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Dima Bogdanov (undimmable)’s comment on: Open thread: April—June 2025

  Hey Dima!
  Thanks for joining the Forum! Let me know if you want any tips, feedback on posts, etc…
  Toby, from the Forum team.

• Toby Tremlett🔹May 29, 2025, 1:26 PM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: FionnaTadiwa’s comment on: Open thread: April—June 2025

  Hey Tadiwa—
  Hope you’re getting something valuable out of the EA Forum. If you want some recommendations of where to look for great content—let me know,

  Toby—from the Forum team.

• Toby Tremlett🔹May 29, 2025, 1:25 PM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: TamisOnAPath’s comment on: Open thread: April—June 2025

  That’s so cool Tami!
  I hope you find some valuable ideas on the EA Forum.
  Message me or reply to the comment if you’d like to know where to look. To start, I’d recommend the best of page and the EA Handbook.
  For 7-8 year olds, there are some very cool EA-related videos on the rational animations, TED-Ed and kurtzegesagt youtube channels. Let me know if you want recommendations :)
  Toby—from the Forum team.

• Toby Tremlett🔹May 29, 2025, 1:21 PM

  3 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Karl Mechkin’s comment on: Open thread: April—June 2025

  Hey Karl,

  Thanks for joining the Forum! Message me or reply to the comment if you have any questions about the Forum!

  Toby—from the Forum team.

• Toby Tremlett🔹May 29, 2025, 1:18 PM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Benton 🔹’s comment on: Open thread: April—June 2025

  Hey Benton! Great to have you here. Message me or reply to the comment if you have any questions about the Forum!
  Toby—from the Forum team.

All Fo­rum events (I’ve been in­volved in) retrospective

• Toby Tremlett🔹May 27, 2025, 11:10 AM

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: James Herbert’s comment on: State of the EA Newsletter

  Interesting! It doesn’t give a %, just shows this:

  

  Based on your comment, this seems less unlikely. But the “these locations look accurate to me” thing at the bottom suggests mailchimp isn’t very confident here.

• Toby Tremlett🔹May 22, 2025, 11:10 AM

  12 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: State of the EA Newsletter

  Here is the very sketchy first salvo at measuring “Impact-weighted clicks” (not sure how much I endorse this anymore, but feel free to treat me as if I do endorse it in responses to the comment—that’ll help me figure out what I think).
  
  Was going to just share a doc with @Vasco Grilo🔸 but I figured there is no reason not to make it public. Very happy to get input on this as well, especially if you have experience trying to measure the value of content (outside of just “clicks on jobs”)

  Impact-weighted clicks

  Not all EA Newsletter clicks are created equal. The EA Newsletter contains links to impactful jobs, but also interesting podcasts, videos, and articles — where the only further call to action is subscribing. This content isn’t of no value, but it’s very unlikely to be the source of most of the newsletter’s value.

  The metric I’m making will give categories of clicks a value from 0-1, and then produce a total number of “impact-weighted” clicks, where the total amount of unique clicks each category is multiplied by the value assigned to that category.

  What is the value of content clicks?

  Firstly — retention. Without content (hypothesis 1), people wouldn’t be interested in the EA Newsletter.

  Secondly — content pipelines. If someone starts reading an EA friendly outlet, subscribes to the 80k podcast, buys a book, subscribes to rational animations, etc… They increase their chance of coming across EA content in the future.

  Third — Changing minds. People who are aware of big problems might decide to work on them.

  How should we categorise EANL clicks?

  Category	% of clicks for the march newsletter
  Content	69%
  Job ad (and job boards)	23%
  Fellowship/​ funding	7%
  Courses	1%
  Donation opportunities	0% (none included)

  What value should we give to each type of click?

  An obvious ranking is:

  1. Job ads (this person is already engaged and ready to act)

  2. Fellowship/​ funding (likewise ready to act, but funding is short term and fellowship is the step before the impactful job)

  3. Courses (intent to get more involved, learn more, but step before deeper engagement)

  4. Donation (signals strong interest, and likely to sign them up to marketing from an effective charity)

  5. Content (value described above, pretty loosely valuable)

  I would stand by the obvious ranking (though maybe more quibling should separate “fellowship/​ funding”). However, we also need to provide values for each step. In the ideal world, we could base this on the drop off rate between each step in our funnel (perhaps X% of people who do a fellowship don’t end up getting a relevant job, therefore fellowship clicks should be ranked as the value of job ads—X). We should come back to this, but for now, I’ll do some crude estimates.

  • Job ad clicks = 1

  • Let’s say 50% of fellowship graduates , or funding recipients get a relevant job. Fellowship = 0.5

  • 25% of courses graduates do something relevant afterwards = 0.25

  • Donation = 0.05

  • Content = 0

  Category	Value per click
  Content	0
  Job ad (and job boards)	1
  Fellowship/​ funding	0.5
  Courses	0.25
  Donation opportunities	0.05

  How could the metric be better?

  • If we knew more about our audience, we could multiply the impact-weighted total clicks by the “value” of our current email-opening audience (i.e. each click is more valuable in expectation if the audience is highly motivated, educated, etc…). Hopefully if we get a marketer involved we could learn more about this.

  Hypotheses to test:

  H1: “Without content, people wouldn’t be interested in reading the EA Newsletter”. I.e. without content, overall clicks go down.

  • This might be wrong—the content doesn’t seem to have led to more subscribers.

  • And yet—people come back to click every month.