Epistemic status: outlining a take that I think is maybe 50% likely to be right. Some people have recently argued that, in order to persuade people to work on high priority issues such as AI safety and biosecurity, effective altruists only need to point to how high existential risk (x-risk)…

I frequently use accountability bets to ensure I get things done. Accountability bets are where you commit to giving someone a certain amount of money if you fail to achieve a certain goal by a certain time. …

“Accepting the absurdity of everything around us is one step, a necessary experience: it should not become a dead end. It arouses a revolt that can become fruitful” ― Albert Camus Many people in the effective altruism community are ambitious. Absurdly ambitious. This is good. To achieve amazing things, you…

I think keeping track of how many hours I work is worth doing. It helps me stay calibrated on how productive my week has been, which in turn helps assuage any anxieties about whether I’m doing “enough”. …

Epistemic status: Low confidence. These findings updated me slightly towards worrying more about slow declines vs. sudden collapse/extinction. Most sources are things I quickly googled so are probably off the mark. TL;DR It’s sometimes claimed or suggested that if an extinction event were to happen, it would happen very quickly…

Something I recently posted on the Effective Altruism forum. Epistemic status: Moderately strongly held based on anecdotal data, but I could easily imagine learning about broader patterns and withdrawing this claim. TL;DR: Grantmaking, in my view, is best viewed as a set of skills or a stage in a career…

I recently read Hold Me Tight by Dr Sue Johnson, a highly regarded relationship therapy book. The book outlines the process of Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), a short-term therapy that places great emphasis on love as an attachment bond. The book provides a few useful frameworks and memes for navigating…

I’ve been lucky enough to visit some Maya ruins recently, in Guatemala and Mexico. To celebrate, here’s a short post listing some surprising (to me) facts/claims about the Maya, mostly from the excellent Wikipedia page. It’s a clichéd style of fact but I still can’t get my head around this…

I’m not a very adventurous music listener. The music I like seems to fall quite consistently into just two categories: Good songs: Well-crafted songs (often on guitar) that make me feel things. Cool sounds: Noises and beats (often electronic) that intrigue me. Still, I spend a decent amount of time…