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Topic archive: Other pressing problems

Filter by content type:
All141
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All content tagged "Other pressing problems"

2025

June

What are the most pressing world problems? (Updated)
Article

May

Beyond human minds: The bewildering frontier of consciousness in insects, AI, and more
Podcast
#216 – Ian Dunt on why governments in Britain and elsewhere can’t get anything done – and how to fix it
Podcast

April

#215 – Tom Davidson on how AI-enabled coups could allow a tiny group to seize power
Podcast

March

15 expert takes on infosec in the age of AI
Podcast
#213 – Will MacAskill on AI causing a “century in a decade” — and how we’re completely unprepared
Podcast

February

#212 – Allan Dafoe on why technology is unstoppable & how to shape AI development anyway
Podcast

2024

December

#211 – Sam Bowman on why housing still isn’t fixed and what would actually work
Podcast

November

#207 – Sarah Eustis-Guthrie on why she shut down her charity, and why more founders should follow her lead
Podcast

October

#204 – Nate Silver on making sense of SBF, and his biggest critiques of effective altruism
Podcast
Updates to our problem rankings of factory farming, climate change, and more
Blog post

September

#202 – Venki Ramakrishnan on the cutting edge of anti-ageing science
Podcast
#200 – Ezra Karger on what superforecasters and experts think about existential risks
Podcast

August

Mpox and H5N1: assessing the situation
Blog post
#196 – Jonathan Birch on the edge cases of sentience and why they matter
Podcast
#195 – Sella Nevo on who’s trying to steal frontier AI models, and what they could do with them
Podcast
AI governance and policy (Updated)
Career review

July

#194 – Vitalik Buterin on defensive acceleration and how to regulate AI when you fear government
Podcast
#192 – Annie Jacobsen on what would happen if North Korea launched a nuclear weapon at the US
Podcast
#191 – Carl Shulman on government and society after AGI (Part 2)
Podcast

June

#191 – Carl Shulman on the economy and national security after AGI (Part 1)
Podcast

May

#189 – Rachel Glennerster on why we still don’t have vaccines that could save millions
Podcast
#188 – Matt Clancy on whether science is good
Podcast
#186 – Dean Spears on why babies are born small in Uttar Pradesh, and how to save their lives
Podcast

April

#184 – Zvi Mowshowitz on sleeping on sleeper agents, and the biggest AI updates since ChatGPT
Podcast

March

Christian Ruhl on why we’re entering a new nuclear age — and how to reduce the risks
Podcast (80k After Hours)
#183 – Spencer Greenberg on causation without correlation, money and happiness, lightgassing, hype vs value, and more
Podcast
#181 – Laura Deming on the science that could keep us healthy in our 80s and beyond
Podcast

February

#180 – Hugo Mercier on why gullibility and misinformation are overrated
Podcast
#179 – Randy Nesse on why evolution left us so vulnerable to depression and anxiety
Podcast

January

#177 – Nathan Labenz on recent AI breakthroughs and navigating the growing rift between AI safety and accelerationist camps
Podcast

2023

December

#175 – Lucia Coulter on preventing lead poisoning for $1.66 per child
Podcast
#174 – Nita Farahany on the neurotechnology already being used to convict criminals and manipulate workers
Podcast
Improving China-Western coordination on global catastrophic risks (Updated)
Career review

November

#173 – Jeff Sebo on digital minds, and how to avoid sleepwalking into a major moral catastrophe
Podcast
#170 – Santosh Harish on how air pollution is responsible for ~12% of global deaths — and how to get that number down
Podcast

October

#169 – Paul Niehaus on whether cash transfers cause economic growth, and keeping theft to acceptable levels
Podcast
#166 – Tantum Collins on what he’s learned as an AI policy insider at the White House, DeepMind and elsewhere
Podcast
#165 – Anders Sandberg on war in space, whether civilisations age, and the best things possible in our universe
Podcast
#164 – Kevin Esvelt on cults that want to kill everyone, stealth vs wildfire pandemics, and how he felt inventing gene drives
Podcast

August

#161 – Michael Webb on whether AI will soon cause job loss, lower incomes, and higher inequality — or the opposite
Podcast
#160 – Hannah Ritchie on why it makes sense to be optimistic about the environment
Podcast

July

Hannah Boettcher on the mental health challenges that come with trying to have a big impact
Podcast (80k After Hours)
#156 – Markus Anderljung on how to regulate cutting-edge AI models
Podcast

June

AI governance and policy (First published)
Career review
#153 – Elie Hassenfeld on two big-picture critiques of GiveWell’s approach, and six lessons from their recent work
Podcast
Information security in high-impact areas (Updated)
Career review

May

#150 – Tom Davidson on how quickly AI could transform the world
Podcast

April

#148 – Johannes Ackva on unfashionable climate interventions that work, and fashionable ones that don’t
Podcast
Journalism (Updated)
Career review

March

#147 – Spencer Greenberg on stopping valueless papers from getting into top journals
Podcast
#146 – Robert Long on why large language models like GPT (probably) aren’t conscious
Podcast

February

How much do solutions to social problems differ in their effectiveness? A collection of all the studies we could find.
Blog post

2022

December

Information security in high-impact areas (First published)
Career review

November

Regarding the collapse of FTX
Blog post

September

Whole brain emulation
Problem profile
Preventing the spread of false ideas on social media
Problem profile
Wild animal suffering
Problem profile
Promoting positive values
Problem profile
Risks from malevolent actors
Problem profile
Journalism (First published)
Career review
‘S-risks’
Problem profile
Andrés Jiménez Zorrilla on the Shrimp Welfare Project
Podcast (80k After Hours)

July

Risks from atomically precise manufacturing
Problem profile

May

Improving incentives and governance for global public goods
Problem profile
Climate change
Problem profile
#129 – Dr James Tibenderana on the state of the art in malaria control and elimination
Podcast

April

#126 – Bryan Caplan on whether lazy parenting is OK, what really helps workers, and betting on beliefs
Podcast

March

#124 – Karen Levy on fads and misaligned incentives in global development, and scaling deworming to reach hundreds of millions
Podcast

February

Space governance
Problem profile
#120 – Audrey Tang on what we can learn from Taiwan’s experiments with how to do democracy
Podcast

2021

December

#118 – Jaime Yassif on safeguarding bioscience to prevent catastrophic lab accidents and bioweapons development
Podcast

November

#117 – David Denkenberger on using paper mills and seaweed to feed everyone in a catastrophe, ft Sahil Shah
Podcast
#116 – Luisa Rodriguez on why global catastrophes seem unlikely to kill us all
Podcast

October

#114 – Maha Rehman on working with governments to rapidly deliver masks to millions of people
Podcast
Research & advocacy promoting impactful climate solutions
Career review
Expert on formal verification
Career review
Policy careers focused on other pressing global issues
Career review
#113 – Varsha Venugopal on using gossip to help vaccinate every child in India
Podcast
#112 – Carl Shulman on the common-sense case for existential risk work and its practical implications
Podcast

September

How to compare global problems for yourself
Article
#111 – Mushtaq Khan on using institutional economics to predict effective government reforms
Podcast

July

#105 – Alexander Berger on improving global health and wellbeing in clear and direct ways
Podcast

April

#96 – Nina Schick on disinformation and the rise of synthetic media
Podcast

March

#95 – Kelly Wanser on whether to deliberately intervene in the climate
Podcast

2020

December

#88 – Tristan Harris on the need to change the incentives of social media companies
Podcast

November

#87 – Russ Roberts on whether it’s more effective to help strangers, or people you know
Podcast

October

If you care about social impact, why is voting important?
Article

August

#85 – Mark Lynas on climate change, societal collapse & nuclear energy
Podcast
#84 – Shruti Rajagopalan on what India did to stop COVID-19 and how well it worked
Podcast

July

#83 – Jennifer Doleac on ways to prevent crime other than police and prisons
Podcast
#82 – James Forman Jr on reducing the cruelty of the US criminal legal system
Podcast

May

#76 – Tara Kirk Sell on COVID-19 misinformation, who’s done well and badly, and what we should reopen first
Podcast

March

#72 – Toby Ord on the precipice and humanity’s potential futures
Podcast

2019

October

#64 – Bruce Schneier on how insecure electronic voting could break the United States — and surveillance without tyranny
Podcast

September

Rob Wiblin on plastic straws, nicotine, doping, & whether changing the long term is really possible
Podcast
#63 – Vitalik Buterin on effective altruism, better ways to fund public goods, the blockchain’s problems so far, and how it could yet change the world
Podcast

April

#57 – Tom Kalil on how to have a big impact in government & huge organisations, based on 16 years’ experience in the White House
Podcast

March

#55 – Mark Lutter on trying to end poverty by founding well-governed ‘charter’ cities, ft Tamara Winter
Podcast

February

#53 – Kelsey Piper on whether journalists have room to write about important things
Podcast
#52 – Glen Weyl on radical institutional reforms that make capitalism & democracy work better, and how to get them
Podcast

January

#51 – Martin Gurri on the revolt of the public & crisis of authority in the information age
Podcast

2018

December

#49 – Rachel Glennerster on a year’s worth of education for under a dollar and other ‘best buys’ in development
Podcast

November

#48 – Brian Christian on computer science algorithms that tackle fundamental and universal problems — and whether they can help us live better in practice
Podcast

October

#45 – Economist Tyler Cowen says our overwhelming priorities should be maximising economic growth and making civilisation more stable. Is he right?
Podcast

August

What are the most pressing world problems? (First published)
Article
#39 – How much should you change your beliefs based on new evidence? Spencer Greenberg on the scientific approach to solving difficult everyday questions
Podcast

July

#38 – Yew-Kwang Ng on ethics and how to create a much happier world
Podcast

May

#34 – Politics is so much worse because we use an atrocious 18th century voting system. Aaron Hamlin has a viable plan to fix it.
Podcast
#33 – Oxford’s Anders Sandberg on solar flares, the annual risk of nuclear war, and what if dictators could live forever?
Podcast
#32 – Economist Bryan Caplan thinks education is mostly pointless showing off. We test the strength of his case.
Podcast
#31 – Allan Dafoe on trying to prepare the world for the possibility that AI will destabilise global politics
Podcast
#30 – Eva Vivalt’s research suggests social science findings don’t generalize. So evidence-based development – what is it good for?
Podcast

April

#27 – The careers and policies that can prevent global catastrophic biological risks, according to world-leading health security expert Dr Tom Inglesby
Podcast

March

#22 – Leah Utyasheva on how to massively cut suicide rates in Sri Lanka, and her non-profit’s plan to do the same around the world
Podcast

February

Improving China-Western coordination on global catastrophic risks (First published)
Career review

January

#18 – Ofir Reich on using data science to end poverty and the spurious action/inaction distinction
Podcast

2017

October

#13 – Claire Walsh on testing which policies work & how to get governments to listen to the results
Podcast
#11 – Spencer Greenberg on speeding up social science 10-fold & why plenty of startups cause harm
Podcast
#9 – Christine Peterson on the ’80s futurist movement and its lessons for today’s idealists
Podcast

September

#7 – Julia Galef on making humanity more rational, what EA does wrong, and why Twitter isn’t all bad
Podcast

June

#2 – David Spiegelhalter on risk, statistics, and improving the public understanding of science
Podcast

2016

August

Is deep work the most underappreciated skill for career success? An interview with Cal Newport.
Blog post

May

The rent is too damn high — should you work on reforming land use regulations?
Blog post

April

Land use reform
Problem profile
Smoking in the developing world
Problem profile
The case for and against using your career to combat smoking
Blog post
Is global health the most pressing problem to work on?
Blog post
Global health
Problem profile

2015

November

In case you missed it: Open Phil would like to fund a science policy think tank
Blog post

January

A meta-analysis may not mean much
Blog post
Opportunity to work at JPAL as a Research Associate – just hours left to apply!
Blog post

2014

September

Yardsticks: how to compare the scale of different social problems (Updated)
Article

August

Yardsticks: how to compare the scale of different social problems (First published)
Article

January

Which cause is most effective?
Blog post

2013

November

What should you do with a very large amount of money?
Blog post

May

Biases: how they affect your career decisions, and what to do about them
Blog post

April

Is US gun control an important issue?
Blog post
Dramatically increase your productivity by using a task management system – Meta-skills Part 3
Blog post
How to finally do what you’ve been putting off – Meta skills part 2
Blog post

February

Two questions you won’t want to ask yourself but should
Blog post

January

Trading, donating and charter cities: An interview with Ben Gilbert
Blog post

2012

November

Should we stop interviewing people?
Blog post

October

Sunk Costs in Careers
Blog post

April

Living to 1000: an interview with Aubrey de Grey
Blog post

January

Health vs education
Blog post

2011

November

Our Worst Subjects
Blog post

Filter by content type:
All141
Podcasts90
Blog posts24
Problem profiles13
Career reviews7
Key articles4
Podcasts (80k After Hours)3

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