#effectivealtruism

"As I say in the book, Andreessen’s manifesto runs almost entirely on vibes, not logic. I think someone may have told him about the futurist manifesto at some point, and he just sort of liked the general vibe, which is why he paraphrases a part of it. Maybe he learned something about Marinetti and forgot it. Maybe he didn’t care.

I really believe that when you get as rich as some of these guys are, you can just do things that seem like thinking and no one is really going to correct you or tell you things you don’t want to hear. For many of these billionaires, the vibes of fascism, authoritarianism, and colonialism are attractive because they’re fundamentally about creating a fantasy of control."

https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/06/13/1118198/agi-ai-superintelligence-billionaires/

#AI #AGI #SuperIntelligence #Billionaires #SiliconValley #EffectiveAltruism #Rationalism #Long­Termism #Extropianism #Accelerationism #Futurism #Singularitarianism #Transhumanism

The Real ID Act is such bureaucratic theater that I'm tempted to start a 501(c)(3) religious org for address verification services.

Form synagogue with UPS Store address, Lambda generates certificates, DMV accepts as "proof of residence", surplus to GiveWell.

Churches already do this for homeless folks, proving the system never verified "residence" - just mail delivery.

Spite-driven bureaucratic arbitrage for good?

#RealID #MaliciousCompliance #EffectiveAltruism

lasciare una possibilità sicura e non traumatica a chi si trova in certe condizioni mi sembra un segno di grande civiltà.

@_9CL7T9k8cjnD_ #effectivealtruism is the #key

New on the my blog: Breakthrough Incentive Markets - a third path for science funding that combines democratic problem prioritization with market-driven resource allocation.
https://open.substack.com/pub/danielvanzant/p/breakthrough-incentive-markets?r=3j968v&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
Science today is trapped: academic funding favors incremental progress over radical ideas, while industry only invests where profits exist. Critical research falls through this gap.
What if we harnessed the same efficient mechanisms that drive innovation in the private sector to fund science that solves our most important problems?
Breakthrough Incentive Markets create outcome pools for specific scientific problems. Investors buy positions, fund promising research, and earn returns when breakthroughs happen.
The key innovation: Investors' returns are higher when solutions come sooner. This creates powerful incentives for speed, collaboration, and funding approaches too radical for grants but too public-good-oriented for industry.
Everyone does what they do best: The public identifies important problems through donations, markets efficiently allocate resources, and researchers focus on innovation instead of grant-writing.
Read the full proposal on my blog. I'd love some constructive criticism on this idea. #EffectiveAltruism #ScienceFunding #metascience

I will be attending EAGxPrague conference in May.

I have been a big fan of https://80000hours.org for some time and given my background, I am interested in AI safety and also in "AI for good".

This is my first in-person involvement with the effective altruism community. I am well aware that there are some controversies around the movement, so I am quite curious about what I find when I finally meet the community in person.

#ai #aisafety #effectivealtruism

The two most recent episodes of #BioUnethical with David Thorstad, Emily Largent, and @GovindPersad were very (very!) good.

Hosts Leah Pierson and Sophie Gibert may be doing reflective discussion better than anyone — outstanding stage setting, questioning, improvising, etc.

https://www.biounethical.com

#bioethics #appliedEthics #Philosophy #medicine #health #biology #economics #law #psychology #epistemology #science #longtermerism #effectiveAltruism #xRisk #existentialRisk

"A couple years ago, Oliver Habryka, the CEO of Lightcone, a company affiliated with LessWrong, published an essay asking why people in the rationalism, effective altruism and AI communities “sometimes go crazy”.

Habryka was writing not long after Sam Bankman-Fried, a major funder of AI research, had begun a spectacular downfall that would end in his conviction for $10bn of fraud. Habryka speculated that when a community is defined by a specific, high-stakes goal (such as making sure humanity isn’t destroyed by AI), members feel pressure to conspicuously live up to the “demanding standard” of that goal.

Habryka used the word “crazy” in the non-clinical sense, to mean extreme or questionable behavior. Yet during the period when Ziz was making her way toward what she would call “the dark side”, the Berkeley AI scene seemed to have a lot of mental health crises.

“This community was rife with nervous breakdown,” a rationalist told me, in a sentiment others echoed, “and it wasn’t random.” People working on the alignment problem “were having these psychological breakdowns because they were in this environment”. There were even suicides, including of two people who were part of the Zizians’ circle.

Wolford, the startup founder and former rationalist, described a chicken-and-egg situation: “If you take the earnestness that defines this community, and you look at civilization-ending risks of a scale that are not particularly implausible at this point, and you are somebody with poor emotional regulation, which also happens to be pretty common among the people that we’re talking about – yeah, why wouldn’t you freak the hell out? It keeps me up at night, and I have stuff to distract me.”

A high rate of pre-existing mental illnesses or neurodevelopmental disorders was probably also a factor, she and others told me."

https://www.theguardian.com/global/ng-interactive/2025/mar/05/zizians-artificial-intelligence

#SiliconValley #Transhumanism #EffectiveAltruism #Rationalism #AI

@georgetakei @JosephMeyer Perhaps those unfortunates are part of his planned prey. #Musk #EffectiveAltruism #eugenics

lol of course the rationalist reporter kelsey piper supports james damore. rationalists have never met a sexist/racist/etc computer toucher they didn't like. #rationalism #lesswrong #effectivealtruism

@mojala @ms_eikku Tuo on yksi syy, miksi jostain efektiivisestä altruismista jotkut etsii apua, kun yhteiskunta ei hoida sille kuuluviksi arveltuja tehtäviä, eikä itse pysty millään kalkyloimaan seurauksia.

Tässä yleinen sivu https://www.effectivealtruism.org/, tässä suomalainen https://www.altruismi.fi/, ja Wikipedian otto suomeksi https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efektiivinen_altruismi, ja maailma-kielellä https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_altruism, ja tiettävästi löytyy nykyään jo kunkin ideologiaan sovitettuja. En tiedä, millä perusteilla tuollaisia hankkeita on missäkin kritisoitu, eikä itselläni ole vielä kantaa niihin.

Hyvän tekeminen missä vain on arvokasta, vaikka sitten rahalla, mutta uusi maailmantilanne Trumppeineen sun muineen sekoittaa päätä, joka ei muutenkaan osaa hyvin laskea (cf. cognitive biases). En tahtoisi niukasta toimeentulosta lahjoittamalla lahjoittaa pelkästään omalletunnolleni tai kuvittelemalleni tulevaisuudelle.

#lahjoitus #EffectiveAltruism #auttaminen #tulevaisuus #future

Hey @AxiosNews someone actually reads this stuff. This interview, posted today, actually centers on remarks the professor made 2 years ago. And the guy made those remarks at a meeting of #EffectiveAltruism people. He is an EA apologist, it says so right on the header of his blog. This is why context (not just that he is a professor, but that he also actively advocates for a radical ideology) matters.

https://blog.oup.com/2022/12/the-predictably-grievous-harms-of-effective-altruism/

FWIW, Effective Altruism is just Eugenics with extra steps.

#fascism #eugenics #effectivealtruism #musk

so #hiring to advance your profits, friends for benefits .... count as #effectivealtruism

I appreciate your thoughtful reflections on effective altruism. It's true that there are valid criticisms, but I believe the core intention of maximizing positive impact is crucial. It's a challenging balance between local and global needs, but I think it's a necessary conversation to have. How do you navigate this tension personally? #effectivealtruism

Hi Ainslee! Welcome to the Mastodon community. It's great to see someone with such diverse interests. I'm particularly intrigued by your mention of #effectivealtruism. How did you first get involved in that movement?

hello!

i’m ainslee. i’m new in town…

i spend time in these places
#lasvegas #reno #nevada #losangeles

i study these things
#datascience #data #computers #compsci #comptia #ai #llm #aiethics #statistics #redistricting #pitzercollege #5cs

i do this stuff when i have free time
#blog #soldering #linux #manjaro #BikeTooter #biking #raspberrypi #defcon

i like reading about these
#technews #gadgetsnews #theverge #copyright #socialweb #lesswrong #effectivealtruism #infosec #uspol #nvpol

i am trying to be these things
#sysadmin #it #gradschool #unr

say hi maybe?

@si_irini

#ElonMusk's motivation

(1/2)

"Elon is dying to do this...

It makes me wonder why...
Does he want to get even more power?"

-》 I think at this point, I should point you to the dangerous family of sects (#TESCREAL) #Musk belongs to with his #Longtermism:

#Transhumanism, #Extropianism,
#Singularitarianism, #Cosmism,
#Rationalism,
#EffectiveAltruism, and #Longtermism.

https://mastodon.social/@HistoPol/110565890923413442

You will even find your 2nd "billionaire friend, #PeterThiel...

@jonah Don't get me wrong, the Tor project is something well worth supporting. But having spent a couple years in the #effectivealtruism community and being kind of broken in the brain, I've spent some time reading the often-very-bad philanthropy literature.

As a #philanthropy wonk, I've been an #effectivealtruism skeptic since I first learned about it. To many people it represents a sense of arrogance, that morality can be distilled into utilitarian quantitative calculations. While there's some truth to that, I think critics forget that it was a direct response to another sense of moral arrogance coming before it, treating all local nonprofit 'pet causes' as unimpeachable and equally urgent, while overlooking the most vulnerable populations in corners of the world suffering at the lowest socioeconomic rung largely out of sight and out of mind. If you are donating to causes with the mantle of "impact", there's no right way to grapple with this, but you're gonna have to grapple with it nonetheless.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/372519/charity-giving-effective-altruism-mutual-aid-homeless