Anyone know any Earn-To-Givers who might be interested in participating in an AMA during Giving Season? If a few are interested, it might be fun to experiment with an AMA panel, where Forum users ask questions, and any of the AMA co-authors can respond/ co-authors can disagree. Why? Giving Season is, in my opinion, a really great time to highlight the earn-to-give work which is ongoing all year, but is generally under-celebrated by the EA community. + Earn-to-givers might have good insights on how to pick donation targets during the donation election, and Giving Season more generally.   

From Reuters: > SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 25 (Reuters) - ChatGPT-maker OpenAI is working on a plan to restructure its core business into a for-profit benefit corporation that will no longer be controlled by its non-profit board, people familiar with the matter told Reuters, in a move that will make the company more attractive to investors. I sincerely hope OpenPhil (or Effective Ventures, or both - I don't know the minutia here) sues over this. Read the reasoning for and details of the $30M grant here.  The case for a legal challenge seems hugely overdetermined to me: * Stop/delay/complicate the restructuring, and otherwise make life appropriately hard for Sam Altman * Settle for a large huge amount of money that can be used to do a huge amount of good * Signal that you can't just blatantly take advantage of OpenPhil/EV/EA as you please without appropriate challenge I know OpenPhil has a pretty hands-off ethos and vibe; this shouldn't stop them from acting with integrity when hands-on legal action is clearly warranted

I was surprised to find that I felt slightly uncomfortable positioning myself on the 'animal welfare' side of the debate week scale. I guess I generally think of myself as more of a 'global health & development' person, and might have subconscious concerns about this as an implicit affiliational exercise (even though I very much like and respect a lot of AW folks, I guess I probably feel more "at home" with GHD)? Obviously those kinds of personal factors shouldn't influence our judgments about an objective question like the debate week question is asking. But I guess they inevitably do. I don't know if this observation is even worth sharing, but there it is, fwiw. I guess I'd just like to encourage folks to be aware of their personal biases and try to bracket them as best they can. (I'd like to think of all EAs as ultimately "on the same side" even when we disagree about particular questions of cause prioritization, so I feel kind of bad that I evidently have separate mental categories of "GHD folks" and "AW folks" as though it were some kind of political/coalitional competition.)

Re "pivotal questions"... Some thoughts on what The Unjournal (unjournal.org) can offer, cf existing EA-aligned research orgs (naturally, there are pros and cons) ... both in terms of defining and assessing the 'pivotal questions/claims', and in evaluating specific research findings that most inform these. 1. Non-EA-aligned expertise and engagement: We can offer mainstream (not-EA aligned) feedback and evaluation, consulting experts who might not normally come into this orbit. We can help engage non-EA academics in the priorities and considerations relevant to EAs and EA-adjacent orgs. This can leverage the tremendous academic/government infrastructure to increase the relevant research base. Our processes can provide 'outside the EA bubble' feedback and perhaps measure/build the credibility of EA-aligned work. 2. Depth and focus on specific research and research findings: Many EA ~research orgs focus on shallow research and comms. Some build models of value and cost-effectiveness targeted to EA priorities and 'axiology'. In contrast, Unjournal expert evaluations can dig deeply into the credibility of specific findings/claims that may be pivotal to these models. 3. Publicity, fostering public feedback and communication: The Unjournal is building systems for publishing and promoting our evaluations. We work to link these to the scholarly/bibliometric tools and measures people are familiar with. We hope this generates further feedback, public discussion, research, and application of this research.

The 80,000 Hours team just published that "We now rank factory farming among the top problems in the world." I wonder if this is a coincidence or if this planned to coincide with the EA Forum's debate week? Combined with the current debate week's votes on where an extra $100 should be spent, these seem like nice data points to show to anyone that claims EA doesn't care about animals.