Causes

This page collects a few causes and value commitments that matter to me outside of my formal research program. It is not meant to be exhaustive, but it does reflect the kinds of problems and communities I think are worth paying attention to.

Values

I care a lot about intellectual honesty, scientific clarity, and trying to direct time and resources toward things that genuinely help. I am especially drawn to causes that combine moral seriousness with evidence-based thinking, long-term responsibility, and practical action.

I also think there is value in not separating technical life from moral life too sharply. The habits that matter in research – being honest about uncertainty, revising beliefs when evidence shifts, and caring about clear explanation – matter when deciding what to support and why.

Cause Areas

Effective Altruism and Better Giving

I am interested in the effective altruism movement and the broader question of how to do the most good with limited time, attention, and resources. What I find most valuable here is the emphasis on comparing interventions carefully rather than defaulting to whatever is most visible or emotionally immediate.

Here are some places to get started:

• Centre for Effective Altruism
• Giving What We Can
• 80,000 Hours
• Our World in Data

Education and Scientific Communication

I care about making difficult ideas more legible, especially in physics and mathematics. Good explanations widen access, lower barriers to entry, and give people a more realistic sense of what science actually is.

This is part of why I care about talks, public communication, notes, and site-building in the first place. Explanation is not secondary to understanding; it is one of the ways understanding gets tested.

Here are some places to get started:

• Science Communication Institute
• Science Connected
• European Science Communication Institute

AI, Interpretability, and Responsibility

A major thread in both my academic and broader interests is whether intelligent systems can remain understandable to the people who build and use them. I am interested in interpretable AI, alignment-style questions, and the challenge of building systems that are useful without becoming opaque or reckless.

Here are some places to get started:

• AI Safety Fundamentals
• Centre for AI Safety
• Alliance for Secure AI
• Future of Life Institute

Long-Term Thinking

Some of the most important decisions people make have consequences that stretch far beyond the immediate present. I think it is worth taking existential risk, institutional quality, and the long-run trajectory of science and technology seriously.

Long-term thinking can become vague if it is used as an excuse for abstraction without accountability. What interests me is the harder version: taking long horizons seriously while still asking what concrete actions help people and make sense now.

Here are some places to get started:

• Longview Philanthropy
• The Long Now Foundation

Democritization of Knowledge

One idea that has become the poster child of the information revolution is the widespread availability and accessibility of knowledge. Never in our history as a species has it been as easy to find the information that you need, and yet, there are still many people without access. Luckily there are some great organizations fighting for our right to know.

I am a huge supporter of open source software projects and the broader movement overall. The free availability of software to inspect and do as you please with has helped science and many other areas of endeavour flourish.

Here are some places to get started:

• arXiv
• Open Source Initiative
• Free Software Foundation
• Open Knowledge Foundation
• UNESCO

Citizen Science

There are so much data being generated now that scientists simply cannot parse through all of it on their own. To combat this issue, many scientific projects have set up crowd-sourced platforms where they recruit everyday citizens with little to no scientific background as data analysts and research assistants. We have an abundance of humans on this planet, and these projects have shown that with the right training, they can be leveraged to help push science forward.

Here are some places to get started:

• Zooniverse
• European Citizen Science Platform
• SciStarter

Practical Attitudes

• Take evidence seriously, but do not confuse a spreadsheet with wisdom.
• Care about scale, neglectedness, and tractability, but also about whether a cause can support real understanding and durable action.
• Leave room for moral uncertainty and revision.
• Be suspicious of prestige and trend-following as substitutes for judgment.

On This Site

If you want the more academic side of these interests, the best next stop is the Research page. If you want courses, notes, and useful links, head to the Resources page. If you want the more personal side of the site, the About page is the right place.