r/EffectiveAltruism

My answer in this essay: yes, but less money than AGI safety advocates would like, and not on typical AGI safety projects.

This is probably the #1 most common response I hear when I argue against the beliefs of the AGI safety community. As I explain in this essay, I think this response conflates a general argument about existential risk with an argument for funding certain particular projects. It’s a subtle distinction, but an important one.

In January, I wrote a satirical post on the Effective Altruism Forum that was meant to draw attention to the flaw in the idea that a tiny probability of existential catastrophe justifies giving a lot of money to AGI safety organizations. This new essay is my attempt to seriously explain what the flaw in the logic is, and to describe what I think we should do instead.

Title. I have bunch of shoes and shirts I dont need anymore.

I have a BA in Environmental Studies with a minor in Biology, and have worked in a research lab for six months. Which non-government jobs that I could get would be of most benefit to the environment?

I'm an undergrad biology student who got really into AI architecture through one of my courses. I've spent the last few days developing an idea for a model (that has been a brain baby for about a month, but sadly - finals) and want to start training a prototype, but don't have the funds to cover compute costs.

Can anyone point me toward grants, programs, or people to reach out to for this kind of thing? Any help appreciated.

The most effective altruism is to eat the rich

I was rejected from EA Global London. The rejection included notes about this not being 'a negative judgement of you or of your potential impact on the world', and they suggested that I apply for an EAGx conference (which would require me to fly to either Singapore, India or Australia), but it's hard to feel that this isn't just cope from an identical newsletter they send to the very, very small number of people they reject each year. Alongside the countless grad scheme rejections and the countless rejections from basically any good job that I've applied for over three years out of university, it is hard not to feel completely hopeless about my prospects and my potential to join any community that could help me do something.

I'll admit that I'm fairly new to Effective Altruism. I've read 'Doing Good Better', I've made extensive notes on the 80,000 hours career pages (they haven't helped that much with getting a good job), and I've been through the forum for a while. I've been desperately trying to break through to the next step in life for years without any progress whatsoever.

Is it worth applying for EAGx and flying elsewhere for it? What next steps would you recommend for me in EA? What can I actually do to get involved? Even volunteer positions seem tough to get. I went to a good university, and I performed well throughout, but I didn't do STEM, and, honestly, this community seems geared towards those from STEM backgrounds. I'm not saying that's why I've been rejected. What I mean to say is that it feels like I'm an extreme outlier here.

What can I do within this space to actually build towards something useful? Something that I can put on a CV? Something that would, eventually, make me worth letting in? Regardless of being an outlier.

Is that an effective altruistic use of my resources?

Obviously raising kids costs a lot of money that could be donated to charity, so it could be considered 'wrong', but if the kid grows up to be an effective altruist themselves, you'd actually be increasing how much can be donated, so maybe it's actually obligatory? What does the Reddit Nation think?

One thing I find interesting is that US prediction markets increasingly drift toward:
- political spectacle
- meme markets
- gambling dynamics

I wonder whether Europe could actually build a different model:
- more forecasting-oriented
- more research/media integrated
- more reputation-based
- less dopamine-driven

Do you think there’s room for that kind of ecosystem?

I've been a follower of GiveWell for some years now and sometimes would donate to its unrestricted fund because I appreciated what it did in assessing charity's effectiveness.

However, as outlined on their unrestricted funds page, GiveWell's operational costs have risen from $5m in 2017 to $21m in 2025. They call this "modest," I call it "quadruple."

Granted there is inflation, but even before looking at these numbers I started to question GiveWell's purpose today. Their Top Charities list is by and large unchanged for what seems like 10 5 years now, with some charities dropping off but the causes more or less the same.

I already was only a halting believer in this list anyway . . I appreciate the attempt but the data seems to me to be in danger of a garbage in, garbage out scenario. Their Vitamin A evidence from what I remember has a significant chance of being wrong, and seems stuck at the same level uncertainty for over a decade (I'm sure this isn't exactly true but why are we still stuck with so much uncertainty with so much money being allocated for this cause?)

Anyway looks like another year I throw my hands up and donate to give directly

This is a half-formed idea, but I think it is worth putting in front of people who understand prediction markets, market making, and event design better than I do.

There is a site called mysterybox.art. The basic structure is simple: there is a cube made up of purchasable blocks, and each block costs $1. People buy blocks, the cube changes state, users move on a leaderboard, and eventually some “mystery” at the center is revealed. On its face, it's an ARG-like experience but more barebones.

At first glance, this sounds like a gimmick. Maybe it is. But I think the more interesting part may not be the cube itself. The interesting part may be that the cube generates public and measurable state changes that could be used as signals or resolution criteria for prediction markets. The key point is that every block purchase is both an economic action and a public data point, which makes it potentially useful for prediction markets because the activity is not obviously tied to traditional political or economic news cycles.

A single block costs $1, so the basic unit of action is very clean. If someone buys 1,000 blocks, that is $1,000 of visible activity. If 10,000 blocks are bought in a day, that is $10,000 of demand expressed through the cube. If buying activity accelerates, slows down, concentrates around one user, or suddenly spikes, those are all market-relevant signals.

The markets could be designed around clearly resolvable questions, such as:

1-day markets:

Will more than 5,000 blocks be purchased in the next 24 hours?

Will the current leaderboard leader increase their total by at least 1,000 blocks today?

Will there be a single purchase/break above 500 blocks today?

30-day markets:

Will total blocks purchased exceed 100,000 by the end of the month?

Will the current top user still be first on the leaderboard in 30 days?

Will there be at least one “whale” purchase above 10,000 blocks this month?

90-day markets:

Will the cube be fully completed before a specific date? (This one would be relevant when the progress bar nears completion)

Will the largest single break exceed 25,000 blocks before expiry?

Will total spending on the cube exceed $250,000 within 90 days?

These are clean prediction-market events because the resolution criteria can be public and mechanical. Either the number of blocks purchased crosses the threshold or it does not. Either the leaderboard changes or it does not. Either a whale purchase happens or it does not.

The reason I think this could be interesting is that the prediction markets around the cube could become much larger than the cube itself.

Imagine the cube is seeing $10,000 of block purchases per day. That is not huge by itself. But if prediction markets form around the pace of purchases, the leaderboard, the expected completion date, and the probability of major whale activity, the market volume could easily exceed the underlying block spend.

I'll give an example... Suppose there is a market:

“Will at least 50,000 blocks be purchased in the next 7 days?”

Since each block costs $1, the underlying required activity is $50,000.

Now imagine prediction-market traders price the probability at 40%. Shares trade at $0.40. If the market attracts $200,000 of trading volume, the speculative market is already 4x larger than the actual block activity required to resolve it.

That is not crazy. Prediction markets often trade far more volume than the cost of influencing or observing the underlying event, especially when the event is simple, visible, and has momentum.

The math becomes more interesting when you think about incentives.

If a trader buys “Yes” at $0.30 on a market asking whether 10,000 blocks will be purchased today, and the market later reprices to $0.60 after strong buying activity, they can double their mark-to-market value before resolution.

A $1,000 position at $0.30 buys about 3,333 shares.

If the price moves to $0.60, those shares are worth about $2,000.

That is a $1,000 gain from correctly anticipating activity.

Separately, because each block costs $1, someone could theoretically spend money on the cube in a way that affects market expectations. 

That creates an interesting reflexive loop:

Blocks bought → traders update probabilities → market prices move → more attention goes to cube → more blocks may be bought, and the cycle continues and impacts the 30-day markets and 90-day markets even more, making nice monthly and quarterly markets that are fed by the daily markets and cube activity. And this isn't a forever thing. The key here is that this major event will end. The market WILL resolve at a final net amount. And the race to the end fuels the speculation that grows the market and forces everyone to eventually cash in on this activity. Unlike stocks where you never really want to cash out, this market will eventually force all participants to cash out.

This is not necessarily manipulation. In many prediction markets, the underlying event is influenced by real-world participation. The important thing is to design the markets around metrics that are clear, public, and resistant to cheap gaming.

For example, a bad market would be: “Will MysteryBox be popular?”

A better market would be: “Will at least 25,000 blocks be purchased between May 15 and May 22, according to the public MysteryBox counter?” Or: “Will the top leaderboard account increase its block count by at least 5,000 blocks before June 1? Requires same name and a verification by the Admin of MysteryBox against hidden metrics only monitored by them.)” 

The most interesting part is that the cube is not controlled by politicians, central banks, courts, or corporate insiders. It is a behavioral system. People can watch it, model it, speculate on it, and participate in it. That makes it different from most event markets, where traders are usually reacting to news they cannot influence.

Here, the underlying system is closer to an on-chain game, a leaderboard economy, or a public contest. If the data is visible enough, traders could build models around: daily block purchase velocity, acceleration or slowdown in purchases, leaderboard concentration, whale behavior, time-of-day buying patterns, probability of a final rush near completion, and whether prediction-market attention itself increases cube activity.

A very simple model might look like this:

If the cube has averaged 2,000 blocks per day over the last 7 days, then a 30-day market asking whether 60,000 blocks will be purchased is roughly pricing continuation. But if purchases are accelerating from 1,000/day to 2,000/day to 4,000/day, then a static average understates the probability of hitting the target. Likewise, if one user has already spent $20,000 on blocks, the probability of a future large purchase is different than if the leaderboard is made up entirely of small buyers. This creates markets that are about attention, momentum, public behavior, and incentive loops.

I am not saying this definitely works. I am saying the structure is interesting. A $1 block is a clean unit. The leaderboard gives public behavioral data. The cube state gives measurable progress. The possible markets are easy to resolve. The prediction-market volume will be much larger than the underlying cube economy. And because traders can observe and model the activity in real time, it may create a genuinely tradable signal environment.

Smarter market makers will probably see flaws in this or better versions of it. But summing up my above rambling into a basic idea, it would basically sound like this: MysteryBox may be less interesting as a cube, and more interesting as a public state machine that generates prediction-market events. And once all of it is over, the leaderboard will always be there for everyone to see their impact and remember the good times (and slightly less good times).

I think anyone who gets it will get it. As for me, I'd like to see if my half-idea is applicable and worth pursuing. I hope a market maker will look at this and see the potential and get the ball rolling.