I also had a bit of a harder time following than with "pro podcasts", but I think that is because I have a default 1.8x speed increase and aggressive trimming of silences. That works fine for the typical podcast sound and cadence but I agree it got a bit intense with these (sorry, I could not be bothered with changing the playback speed).

I am surprised I only now discovered this paper. In addition to Jeff's excellent points above, what stood out to me was that the paper contained both likelihoods of different scenarios as well as what I think is some of the more transparent reasoning behind these likelihood numbers. And the numbers are uncomfortably high!

There is more detail on how the likelihoods were arrived at in the paper itself - the last column is only a summary.

I really liked your latest especially because you discussed how you think about careers, the uncertainties you have, etc. I felt that was super helpful and gave me new perspectives and confidence in making career choices.

Ok that's good to know - I will probably be pretty vegan going forward. By the way I love all the hard evidence here on the EAF about animal welfare. It really makes me viscerally upset about the scale of abuse we currently inflict on our feathered and four-legged friends. So thanks to you and everyone else on further opening my eyes and heart to this.

Thanks for writing this, it drives home to me the point of taking a broad perspective when making ethical choices. I am wondering if you take animal product consumption a step further and look at only eating animal products where you know both of the below are true?

1. The animals have a very high degree of welfare (think small, local farms you can visit, you know the farmer, etc.)
2. The way they are slaughtered is the most humane possible, ideally on-farm etc. so they more or less have no idea what is coming for them until they are gone - in my mind this more or less has no suffering from a utilitarian perspective (unless the animals somehow are able to anticipate the slaughter and have increased anxiety throughout their lives because of it).

I have been pretty vegan so far, but people around me are arguing for the type of animal products above and I have a hard time pushing back on it.

Perhaps it is included in existing comments but there is a forum post on climate change vs global development showing that one should hesitate about always prioritizing the former. Then, as I understand it, if one gives only some weight to animals compared to people, I would expect is very roughly follows that one should definitely be cautious about prioritizing climate change over animal welfare. Hopefully we can find a solution that lets us avoid this trade-off though!

I must admit I did not have time to re-read your post carefully, but thought it worth pointing out that after reading it I am left a bit confused by the multiple "culture wars" references. Could you please expand on this a bit?

I guess my confusion is that "culture wars" seem to be "attention grabbing" words you used in the beginning of your post, but I feel that after reading the full post that they were not fully addressed. I would be keen to understand if you only meant these to be rhetorical devices to make the reading more captivating, or if you have opinions on the frequent "white boys" criticisms of EA? It is fine if it is the former, I just felt a bit like I was left hanging after reading the post which I think otherwise did some good analysis on financial motives for criticism, comparing AI to e.g Climate Change.

I think others might be interested in this topic as well, especially as JEID concerns was raised by many EAs, and especially women and non-binary EAs. I also think some EAs might think that the "white boys"/culture wars criticisms of EA is actually criticism we should take seriously, although the tone in which these criticisms are made are often not the most optimal for engaging in fruitful dialogue (but I can understand if people with bad experiences can find it hard to suppress their anger - and perhaps sometimes anger is appropriate).

I want to gently push back on this being more EA than not undergoing surgery and removing important parts of one's body. I think you might be influenced a lot by your feelings (I know I am despite trying to be rational - I am rational about how irrational I am!). Therefore, I could imagine myself in your situation feeling a strong pull to be an organ donor because you feel like you are not giving enough otherwise. I therefore strongly advice to wait a few years after you have graduated and you have a comfortable, stable income. This way you will have compassion for your future self which is likely to most of the time have a stable and comfortable income - the student years pass quickly! Take care of yourself whatever you do, this is a marathon, not a sprint (unless we are unlucky with AGI timelines and alignment).

I am curious what you think of a first-principled approach to resiliency/preparedness? I wrote a blog post on this on LessWrong. I still have a feeling that from an individual, and perhaps from a nation state's perspective, one will arrive at quite different resiliency measures if one carefully starts with the likelihood of different disasters affecting one's loved ones, then the likelihood and cost of different interventions mitigating these disasters and in the end having a prioritized list of most cost-effective preparedness actions. It would, for example, surprise me if digging a hole would be a cost-effective way to avert death or permanent damage.

Am I correct in interpreting your comment as something like "Rebecca says it's costly to say more which might imply she is sitting on not yet disclosed information that might put powerful EAs in a bad light"? I did not really pick up on this when reading the OP but your comment got me worried that maybe there is some information that should be made public?