Open thread: 2026 Q1 (January - March)

Hi there everyone! 🪷

My name is Shivani, new to the Forum! I'm based in Stockholm, Sweden. I got involved with EA thorugh the career guidence service, which I'm very grateful for. EA wasn't a complete stranger before that, however, it wasn't until I got approached about it that I did get involved. 

Being someone passionate about impact and the betterment of our planet and society, I feel like I should've explored the EA community before. At the same time, I'm quite shy when it comes to getting into new spaces, so not that surprising. 

I relate to what many people say about the EA community being a bit overwhelming at the beginning, and I join to what @Karen Maria Alston said about being a reader and a lurker. However, I'm excited about being part of this forum and having the chance to grow in it. 

I'm currently living the akward limbo between the end of my studies and landing THE job. I have a Master's in Sustainable Societies and, after more than a year applying to a wide variety of positions, I realized that I should focus on Operations. Thanks to a presentation durig the Summit I attended last November, I realized that ops in EA is the role I want to play. Currently I'm also participating in the CEA Operations Career Bootcamp. 

Speaking in EA terms, the problem I want to focus on is social and climate justice, and more recently, the intersection between AI governance and climate change. I know that those are not considered neglected topics, but I'm very passionate about them and, until I find a more neglected niche intersection, I'll stick with those. I'd say I'm still working on my plan to improve the world and my theory of change. 

I don't know what else I should say, so I'll say thank you for reading my rambling, and I welcome anyone who wants to connect and/or chat. 

I'd like to finish with a quote from Freedom is a constant struggle by Angela Y. Davis: " We will have to go to great lengths. We cannot go on as usual. We cannot pivot the center. We cannot be moderate. We will have to be willing to stand up and say no with our combined spirits, our collective intellects, and our many bodies." 

And, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

Thank you to everyone involved here, to everyone who wants to contribute to make our world and reality a little bit better everyday. 

Kindly, 

Shivani 💫🌺🩷

Hello everyone,

I'm Oli Beatson, south coast of England.

I came to EA sideways via LessWrong in the mid-2010s — attended a couple of conferences and a CFAR workshop. I'm a vegetarian since 2000, but I also think I might be a sociopath because if someone came to my door and said "wanna try fried NIMBY" I'd probably have a bite. Into political daydreaming (mostly housing/abundance these days).

I got deep into libertarian econ — I still think the EA community sleeps on Caplanian bullet-biting on housing and borders — but years of weed and life have left my "powerful economic intuition" mostly as instinctive recoil from anything coercive, without a fully coherent moral framework anymore. These days I'm basically a Western-civ-maximalist neoliberal who cares way more about personal survival and cultures-I-like than distant bednets.

I was pretty convinced of AI doom (or at least plan-obviating-world-changes from AI) around 2028-32; some stuff seems roughly on track, but I'm trying to quarantine the doom as latent irrationality/psychosis because I have not seen or generated a single plausible rigorous roadmap that goes from human-level to anything scary. After enough podcasts, it's clear most people are just throwing electrons at matrices. Still interested in x-risk but also kind of Buddhist about the idea of massive population decrease. I think it's unviable to try to control everything and unhealthy to even think about, so I will stay out of discussions my brain can't afford.

Tried breaking into EA orgs as a web dev because the culture/personality fit. "Earning to give" was mostly a polite cover for earning to live independently. A decade later I'm significantly closer to homelessness, which has flipped my personality: used to be oversensitive about "working outside the system," now a little more gung-ho. Still, I'm a little lonely, bad at collaborating, and wasting cycles on one-shot schemes to fix housing or grab arbitrary power/status as a pretext. I'd kind of like to be part of a utilitarian improv troupe or something but I'm terrified of putting stuff like this out there.

Think I'm dark-triad, so these days I'm mostly here to lurk drama, feel smug about dodging it, and track community evolution. Might eventually write about how taking applied utilitarianism too literally as a core "believed belief" sent me down surprisingly easy (and bad) psychological rabbit holes. For now, channeling remaining energy into music — the secret dream I've avoided forever. Expect a terrible hip-hop album or zoning-laws musical theater.

Hoping the Forum acts as an antidote to my inner edgelord. Looking forward to reading, lurking, and maybe dropping thoughts later. Nice to (re)meet you all.

Hi,

Thank for posting this Toby. I have visited the EA forum for the past years but never really felt like posting or engaging.

After reading your post, I fell encouraged to share my thoughts and participate in the discussions brought along by the community.

Thanks.

Have applications for EAG San Francisco already closed? The website states that the application deadline is February 1, but the application form only includes checkboxes for London and NYC.

Hello everyone

I’m Karen Maria and I am based in Washington, DC in the USA. I was introduced to effective altruism through my 80,000 Hours coach, and I’m still orienting myself within the community.

I’ll be honest, the EA Forum can feel overwhelming and intimidating at times. There’s a level of rigor here that I deeply respect, and I’m currently more of a reader and lurker but I do plan to post and be a contributor.  I’m learning how to sit with ideas, follow arguments carefully, and build understanding before I form strong views. 

I’m making a late career pivot into AI safety and governance. I come from a background in marketing, communications, stakeholder engagement and brand strategy. Over the past year my curiosity about AI tools turned into deeper concern about societal impact, power concentration, persuasion, and who is most vulnerable as these systems advance. I am currently working on my theory of change. 

Most of my downtime now is spent studying. I’m reading research papers, policy analysis, and watching lots of podcasts, often slowly and repeatedly, to build real comprehension rather than surface familiarity. This transition is intentional and, at times, uncomfortable, but it’s necessary.

I’d love recommendations from this community:

• Articles or papers that will help me build foundational understanding
• Writers or researchers worth following closely
• Posts on the Forum that you think are especially clarifying for someone earlier in the journey

I’m here because I value the norms this community upholds: intellectual honesty, seriousness about impact, and humility in the face of uncertainty. I’m grateful to learn from those further along the path and to be part of the conversation as I continue to grow into this work.

Karen Maria