- An awful lot of people are interested in effective altruism.
- A lot of people want to use journalism as a tool for magnifying EA’s impact.
- A lot of EAs (including very senior ones) are absolutely terrified of journalists and think that shutting them out is a good thing to do.
- There are more women in EA than I realised/expected, though they are still underrepresented.
- There is a lot of interesting work going on at the intersection of agriculture / climate resiliency / global development / existential risk reduction.
- The Barbican is a fantastic conference venue.
- A sizeable number of people worry that effective altruism is too dominated by discussion of AI safety.
- There are a lot of very bright and motivated students in EA. They are much better at networking than I ever was.
- We are very lucky that Kremer et al did a meta-analysis of water treatment, despite GiveWell previously deeming it to be cost ineffective. We need to figure out how to encourage more of this kind of work.
- Despite the large amounts of attention longtermism gets, the bulk of EA money in the next few years is expected to fund work in global health and development.
- Vegan food, when prepared well, is very good. Meat substitutes have got a lot better in the last couple of years, but vegan food that doesn’t try to imitate meat (which is often food inspired by Asian cooking) is always better.
- EA needs to adopt a “startup mindset” of aiming for high-value outcomes, even if they are unlikely to be achieved. It needs to get very comfortable with the idea of failure.
- Will MacAskill is absolutely ripped.
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