Quick takes

Three big unaddressed problems in EA 2.0: * corruption (i.e., the quid pro quo between FTX and Manifund, in which Austin Chen traded Caroline Ellison a job out of prison for cash obtained in the course of stealing customer funds) * cults (e.g., Leverage Research and Dragon Army Barracks, whose former members/leaders such as Tyler Alterman and Duncan Sabien still post on the EA Forum) * misinformation (e.g., METR's use of fabricated data in the famous time horizons graph) EA sadly seems sunk to me because dire problems keep mounting and most people seem to think doing nothing is the best solution. There is also a disturbingly loud chorus of voices saying no, no, corruption is actually good (it's what having principles looks like), cults are actually good (it's part of what makes the community unique), misinformation is actually good (we're smarter than everyone else and need to save the world), which makes EA seem doomed. The force of immorality in EA is too strong and there is no equally strong force to stand against it. EA today is at best morally ambiguous, if not more evil than good. Things have gotten really rotten. No one is doing enough to clean it up. And there's apparently no floor to how much worse it can get. One of my fears is that there will be an EA mass shooting or terrorist attack because this almost already happened with Stop AI, an EA-funded and EA-supported organization. Sam Kirchner, the Stop AI activist who threatened to do a mass shooting at OpenAI, is still missing. There is a warrant out for his arrest. Besides that, a disturbing number of people in the EA community seem sympathetic to far-right, illiberal, racist views (e.g., the Manifest afterparties hosted by Curtis Yarvin, who holds authoritarian and white nationalist views). So, really, that's five big unaddressed problems in EA 2.0, including violent extremism and authoritarian, racist, far-right political views. People who want to focus on global poverty and global health and

Developing Thoughts on the Animal Advocacy Community in Africa African animal advocacy movement may be under-exploring its potential and is NOT talent-constrained. Instead, the movement is currently held back by the following: Lack of strategy R&D: This stems from two sources: limited exploratory, outside-the-box thinking, and funding habits that do not reward thorough research and the development of relevant interventions. Lack of space for innovation: Few, if any, African animal advocacy organizations have a dedicated special or new projects team, because most are scrambling to keep running into the next year. Most do not dedicate enough staff and resources to developing stealth projects that could one day spin off or open a new area of work for the organization. High risk aversion? This may be an underlying reason for the constraints above and their knock-on effects. What level of risk-taking is reasonable? Who leads or guides the norm- and behavior-setting conversations that reduce in-fighting? Cost of recruiting and training people from outside the movement: Africa has an abundant talent pool, so African groups are not talent-constrained. Rather, groups are unable to absorb this talent for several reasons, which used to be reduced to "funding". Some may say funding is being unlocked, with the dollar amounts going to African groups growing year on year, and that the barrier now surfacing is the cost of bringing in people from this large talent pool and training them. However, this growth starts from a very low base, and much of it is short-term and restricted to specific projects rather than covering core costs such as recruiting and training staff. Program support and MEL (monitoring, evaluation and learning): Several groups lack dedicated, experienced operational, administrative and program staff. A single person may be responsible for all three of these functions and more. As a result, proper monitoring, designated learning opportunities and communicati

I think most AI safety bootcamps could be improved significantly by shifting focus off from coding. None of the researchers I know code, and I think the counterfactual activity of reading / thinking high-level about concepts is better for building context and conceptual thinking. As well as this, the technical AI safety pipeline serves more than just technical research roles (people transition into startups, grantmaking, other non-technical roles), and I think context building serves all of these roles better than coding. I think a default for a lot of bootcamps is to follow the ARENA curriculum, which is in parts outdated or marginally bad (eg I think learning about the specifics of how SAEs work, instead of the huggingface incident is clearly not optimal).

I think the sex stuff (can't believe it's still being discussed on X) is a large part of the appeal for many active in EA. I don't mean that many encounter it primarily for sex (anecdotally, don't know the data on this, it seems to be 80k hours events at universities that attract people), yet it's a signal of a community willing to question the merits of dogma. Much of the appeal of EA, and utilitarian frameworks more broadly, is precisely in resisting socially dominant superstitions that are not backed by reason. I feel more comfortable in a community that accepts polycules than shuns it. I think many of us think the same too.

There should be more ongoing debate about whether it's good or not to call oneself an EA; I haven't seen many posts myself. We should try to think through all the pros and cons.  It probably depends on who you are and the career you want to have, but for some reason it feels like most people think it's bad in most cases. Even if you disagree with some subgroups or like to have a small identity, it could be bad for the world that most EA-adjacents don't call themselves EAs.  Over time, it could make some of them less effective or altruistic. It could also allow crazy people to give bad first impressions and misrepresent the movement. SBF, of course, is the prime example of this; maybe it would be better if people were autistic about EA like he was. In this state, we may be a ticking bomb just waiting for more crazy EA-adjacents to join and worsen the brand even more. And it's just a matter of cases like those until it's left in an irrecoverable state. Another reason may be that identifying with a label has to do with feelings that we cannot control and we should value honesty. But then, can we fix that from within the movement if we realize it would be better for people to identify as an EA? It could be because it sounds cringe too, but maybe it's worth enduring it.  Idk, these are just some pros and cons I just thought about.

I started a series on organizations working on burning problems that are also unusually good at growth, and what programs can learn from them. First one is Climatebase. Some numbers: their newsletter grew from about 7,000 subscribers in 2021 to 150,000 in 2026. The fellowship, launched in 2022, has had 15,000+ applicants over its first seven cohorts and 4,500 alumni to date, accepting roughly one in five, at $1,990 a seat. Cohorts grew from about 450 to about 650 at the same price. Many free, funded programs struggle to fill at a fraction of that size. I tried to understand why: https://annapit.substack.com/p/free-should-mean-more-demand-so-why Pushback welcome, and suggestions for who to look at next.

A Christian, a Buddhist, and an effective altruist walk into a bar. The Devil appears and offers to buy their souls. The Christian says, “My soul is worth more than all the treasures of the world, so there is no price you could pay me,” and leaves. The Buddhist says, “The soul is an illusion, so I have nothing to sell you,” and leaves. The effective altruist says, “I'll take a cheque for $1.5 million made out to Manifold Markets Inc. and, by the way, we're hiring.”

“We should free SBF and put him to work.” –Austin Chen (2025 interview) “I felt a keen debt to the FTX Future Fund. They provided seed funding for Manifold.” –Austin Chen on why he hired Caroline Ellison