Podcasts about beckstead

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 10, 2023 4:06

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Concepts of existential catastrophe (Hilary Greaves), published by Global Priorities Institute on November 10, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. This paper was originally published as a working paper in September 2023 and is forthcoming in The Monist. Abstract The notion of existential catastrophe is increasingly appealed to in discussion of risk management around emerging technologies, but it is not completely clear what this notion amounts to. Here, I provide an opinionated survey of the space of plausibly useful definitions of existential catastrophe. Inter alia, I discuss: whether to define existential catastrophe in ex post or ex ante terms, whether an ex ante definition should be in terms of loss of expected value or loss of potential, and what kind of probabilities should be involved in any appeal to expected value. Introduction and motivations Humanity today arguably faces various very significant existential risks, especially from new and anticipated technologies such as nuclear weapons, synthetic biology and advanced artificial intelligence (Rees 2003, Posner 2004, Bostrom 2014, Haggstrom 2016, Ord 2020). Furthermore, the scale of the corresponding possible catastrophes is such that anything we could do to reduce their probability by even a tiny amount could plausibly score very highly in terms of expected value (Bostrom 2013, Beckstead 2013, Greaves and MacAskill 2024). If so, then addressing these risks should plausibly be one of our top priorities. An existential risk is a risk of an existential catastrophe. An existential catastrophe is a particular type of possible event. This much is relatively clear. But there is not complete clarity, or uniformity of terminology, over what exactly it is for a given possible event to count as an existential catastrophe. Unclarity is no friend of fruitful discussion. Because of the importance of the topic, it is worth clarifying this as much as we can. The present paper is intended as a contribution to this task. The aim of the paper is to survey the space of plausibly useful definitions, drawing out the key choice points. I will also offer arguments for the superiority of one definition over another where I see such arguments, but such arguments will often be far from conclusive; the main aim here is to clarify the menu of options. I will discuss four broad approaches to defining "existential catastrophe". The first approach (section 2) is to define existential catastrophe in terms of human extinction. A suitable notion of human extinction is indeed one concept that it is useful to work with. But it does not cover all the cases of interest. In thinking through the worst-case outcomes from technologies such as those listed above, analysts of existential risk are at least equally concerned about various other outcomes that do not involve extinction but would be similarly bad. The other three approaches all seek to include these non-extinction types of existential catastrophe. The second approach appeals to loss of value, either ex post value (section 3) or expected value (section 4). There are several subtleties involved in making precise a definition based on expected value; I will suggest (though without watertight argument) that the best approach focuses on the consequences for expected value of "imaging" one's evidential probabilities on the possible event in question. The fourth approach appeals to a notion of the loss of humanity's potential (section 5). I will suggest (again, without watertight argument) that when the notion of "potential" is optimally understood, this fourth approach is theoretically equivalent to the third. The notion of existential catastrophe has a natural inverse: there could be events that are as good as existential catastrophes are bad. Ord and Cotton-Barratt (2015) suggest coining th...

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EA - How Rethink Priorities is Addressing Risk and Uncertainty by Marcus A Davis

rockies little rock beckstead

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 7, 2023 16:53

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: How Rethink Priorities is Addressing Risk and Uncertainty, published by Marcus A Davis on November 7, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. This post is part of Rethink Priorities' Worldview Investigations Team's CURVE Sequence: "Causes and Uncertainty: Rethinking Value in Expectation." The aim of this sequence is twofold: first, to consider alternatives to expected value maximization for cause prioritization; second, to evaluate the claim that a commitment to expected value maximization robustly supports the conclusion that we ought to prioritize existential risk mitigation over all else. Introduction RP has committed itself to doing good. Given the limits of our knowledge and abilities, we won't do this perfectly but we can do this in a principled manner. There are better and worse ways to work toward our goal. In this post, we discuss some of the practical steps that we're taking to navigate uncertainty, improve our reasoning transparency, and make better decisions. In particular, we want to flag the value of three changes we intend to make: Incorporating multiple decision theories into Rethink Priorities' modeling More rigorously quantifying the value of different courses of action Adopting transparent decision-making processes Using Multiple Decision Theories Decision theories are frameworks that help us evaluate and make choices under uncertainty about how to act.[1] Should you work on something that has a 20% chance of success and a pretty good outcome if success is achieved, or work on something that has a 90% chance of success but only a weakly positive outcome if achieved? Expected value theory is the typical choice to answer that type of question. It calculates the expected value (EV) of each action by multiplying the value of each possible outcome by its probability and summing the results, recommending the action with the highest expected value. But because low probabilities can always be offset by corresponding increases in the value of outcomes, traditional expected value theory is vulnerable to the charge of fanaticism, "risking arbitrarily great gains at arbitrarily long odds for the sake of enormous potential" (Beckstead and Thomas, 2021). Put differently, it seems to recommend spending all of our efforts on actions that, predictably, won't achieve our ends.Alternative decision theories have significant drawbacks of their own, giving up one plausible axiom or another. The simple alternative is expected value maximization but with very small probabilities rounded down to zero. This gives up the axiom of continuity, which suggests for a relation of propositions A B C, that there exists some probability that would make you indifferent between B and a probabilistic combination of A and C. This violation causes some weird outcomes where, say, believing the chance of something is 1 in 100,000,000,000 can mean an action gets no weight but believing it's 1.0000001 in 100,000,000,000 means that the option dominates your considerations if the expected value upon success is high enough, which is a kind of attenuated fanaticism. There are also other problems like setting the threshold for where you should round down.[2] Alternatively, you could go with a procedure like weighted-linear utility theory (WLU) (Bottomley and Williamson, 2023), but that gives up the principle of homotheticity, which involves indifference to mixing a given set of options with the worst possible outcome. Or you could go with a version of risk-weighted expected utility (REU) (Buchak, 2013) and give up the axiom of betweenness which suggests the order in which you are presented information shouldn't alter your conclusions.[3] It's very unclear to us, for example, that giving up continuity is preferable to giving up homotheticity, and neither REU or WLU really logically eliminate issues w...

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Embracing the Zero Drop: Brian Beckstead Shares the Journey of Altra Footwear [EP 406]

The Outdoor Biz Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 17, 2023 36:18

Hey everyone, welcome back to The Outdoor Biz podcast and Episode 406. Today, I'm talking with Brian Beckstead, Co-founder of Altra Footwear. After 11 years in the run and outdoor specialty retail space, Brian worked to create Altra Footwear with Golden Harper. He built a sales team as VP of Sales, pioneering the early years of Altra before becoming President. He then worked to finalize and transition of Altra from ICON Health and Fitness to the VF Corporation. Brian currently focuses on Strategic Projects and PR. He is an avid outdoorsman who enjoys problem-solving and strategizing, usually in the mountains trail running or fly fishing where he says . . . ideas thrive! Facebook Twitter Instagram The Outdoor Biz Podcast Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Sign up for my Newsletter HERE. I'd love to hear your feedback about the show! You can contact me here: email: rick@theoutdoorbizpodcast.com Or leave me a message on Speakpipe! Brought to you this week by The Running Event Show Notes [00:02:15] Initially reluctant, Brian joined the track team in junior high and ended up enjoying it. [00:06:20] Brian started working at The Running Store at 16, now in the industry for 25 years. [00:08:26] Two shoe nerds experiment by putting a shoe in a toaster oven and turning it into a flat shoe. we'd always kind of been a little bit In the barefoot movement. we always like to finish our runs doing strides, you know, sprints barefoot on grass [00:10:12] Since we took out the drop in the shoe, we needed a name for this. And so we coined the term somehow it came up with, we coined the term zero drop. That was our, that was our concept. And so that was something that, uh, with the ultra brand we still use to this day is zero drop [19:55:09] I had the CEO of ICON, our ownership group, pulled me in one day and he said, Hey, Brian, you know, we really want to take ultra to the moon. We want you guys to be as big as you possibly can. And he said, we are, uh, we're looking at some investment groups, uh, for Altra. And I was like, what investment groups are you selling us? Like, well, not necessarily. Like we're going to be meeting with some people over the next two weeks. And I ended up meeting with VF a week later, not even knowing that my company was up for sale as founder and president of the president at the time. So it was a bit of a shock. We were not prepared for that acquisition [00:14:29] We all had different roles, but we helped each other in every aspect of the business. Golden focused on research and development, Jeremy on website marketing, and I ran the sell side. Golden and I collaborated on designing shoes and I tested them in trail races. [00:21:38] REI is our biggest account, specializing in Altras. Our focus is on run specialty and full service running stores. We also branch out online but primarily wholesale. [00:24:16] Angel investor Joe Morton and the narrator's father were influential mentors. Morton took a risk and had a positive influence, while the narrator's dad helped in desperate times. [00:29:31] I have a daily meditation practice that brings mental clarity and emotional balance, derived from departing a strict religion. It's the most beneficial part of my routine. Favorite Books: One of my favorites is Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. It's an absolute gem just in terms of the way the brain works. So I find that those types of things very fascinating. I read all sorts of stuff. I'm just reading one right now, Boliviar of Simon Boliviar, who's just amazing, kind of like George Washington of South America. [00:32:14] Favorite Piece of Outdoor Gear: The Katadyn BeFree 0.6L Water Filter is a convenient way to carry and drink water directly from natural sources like rivers and lakes while fishing or trail running. It is durable, affordable, comes in different sizes, and has an effective filtering system. [00:34:52] Brian is active on social media and, open to feedback, loves the outdoor exercise industry. Follow Brian Instragram Facebook Linkedin Follow Brian Instragram Facebook Linkedin

Episode 35 - Jentry Beckstead

Heading For Home

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 8, 2023 66:53

This week on the pod, Zack chats with former teammate and high school coach Jentry Beckstead. They discuss Jentry's roots and the tough decision to pick baseball over football, his minor league journey with the Rockies, and a tragic day at the ballpark in Little Rock in 2007 when a freak accident led to the loss of a beloved coach. Jentry opens up about his struggle with depression after his career ended and his continuing journey with mental health. This is an amazing episode and we are excited for you to check it out.

195 | Brian Beckstead, Altra Co-Founder

The Drop

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 2, 2023 57:13

At a time when every shoe was over 10 mm in drop, Brian Beckstead and Golden Harper came along and took an idea from zero to, well... zero drop. Since then, Altra has become a staple brand in the running, walking, and hiking scenes, known for its footshape shoes and focus on a natural running lifestyle. However, everything has changed with the all-new 4 mm drop AltraFWD Experience. Does it matter? We ask Brian about that, the history and future of the brand, and what it's like to fly fish in South America. Check out Altra: https://www.altrarunning.com/ Read the review of the AltraFWD Experience ➡ https://believeintherun.com/shoe-reviews/altrafwd-experience-review/

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EA - Nick Beckstead is leaving the Effective Ventures boards by Eli Rose

Effective Altruism Forum Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 6, 2023 2:30

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Nick Beckstead is leaving the Effective Ventures boards, published by Eli Rose on September 6, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. On 23rd August, Nick Beckstead stepped down from the boards of Effective Ventures UK and Effective Ventures US. For context, EV UK and EV US host and fiscally sponsor several (mostly EA-related) projects, such as CEA, 80,000 Hours and various others (see more here). Since November 2022, Nick has been recused from all board matters related to the collapse of FTX. Over time, it became clear that Nick's recusal made it difficult for him to add sufficient value to EV and its projects for it to be worth him remaining on the boards. Nick and the other trustees felt that this was sufficient reason for Nick to step down. Nick wanted to share the following: Ever since the collapse of FTX, I've been recused from a substantial fraction of business on both boards. This has made it hard to contribute as much as I would like to as a board member, during a time where engaged board members are especially important. Since this situation may not change for a while, I think it's a good time for me to step down. I am grateful to have played a role in getting EV UK and EV US off the ground and helping them develop over the last 14 years since the launch of Giving What We Can. Projects at EV have accomplished a great deal, drawing substantial resources and attention toward addressing some of the world's most pressing problems, with impacts that are varied, large, and difficult to quantify. The people at EV are amongst the most thoughtful, generous, kind, and dedicated that I've had the pleasure to interact with. I feel very proud of all that we have accomplished together, and optimistic about the work that will continue in my absence. As a founding board member of EV UK (then called CEA), Nick played a vital role in getting EV US, EV UK and their constituent projects off the ground. For example, Nick was involved in setting up the first Giving What We Can student group and helped to hire the first full-time staff at what was then CEA. We are very grateful to Nick for everything he's contributed to the effective altruism movement to date and look forward to his future positive impact; we wish him the best of luck with his future work. This is because the recusal affected not just decisions that were directly related to the collapse of FTX, but also many other decisions for which the way EV UK and EV US have been affected by the collapse of FTX was important context. Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org

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“Nick Beckstead is leaving the Effective Ventures boards” by Eli Rose, lincolnq

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 6, 2023 2:37

On 23rd August, Nick Beckstead stepped down from the boards of Effective Ventures UK and Effective Ventures US.For context, EV UK and EV US host and fiscally sponsor several (mostly EA-related) projects, such as CEA, 80,000 Hours and various others (see more here).Since November 2022, Nick has been recused from all board matters related to the collapse of FTX. Over time, it became clear that Nick's recusal made it difficult for him to add sufficient value to EV and its projects for it to be worth him remaining on the boards[1]. Nick and the other trustees felt that this was sufficient reason for Nick to step down.Nick wanted to share the following:Ever since the collapse of FTX, I've been recused from a substantial fraction of business on both boards. This has made it hard to contribute as much as I would like to as a board member, during a time [...] The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration. --- First published: September 6th, 2023 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Defu3jkejb7pmLjeN/nick-beckstead-is-leaving-the-effective-ventures-boards --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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EA - New Princeton course on longtermism by Calvin Baker

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Play Episode Listen Later Sep 2, 2023 16:21

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: New Princeton course on longtermism, published by Calvin Baker on September 2, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. This semester (Fall 2023), Prof Adam Elga and I will be co-instructing Longtermism, Existential Risk, and the Future of Humanity, an upper div undergraduate philosophy seminar at Princeton. (Yes, I did shamelessly steal half of our title from The Precipice.) We are grateful for support from an Open Phil course development grant and share the reading list here for all who may be interested. Part 1: Setting the stage Week 1: Introduction to longtermism and existential risk Core Ord, Toby. 2020. The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity. London: Bloomsbury. Read introduction, chapter 1, and chapter 2 (pp. 49-56 optional); chapters 4-5 optional but highly recommended. Optional Roser (2022) "The Future is Vast: Longtermism's perspective on humanity's past, present, and future" Our World in Data Karnofsky (2021) 'This can't go on' Cold Takes (blog) Kurzgesagt (2022) "The Last Human - A Glimpse into the Far Future" Week 2: Introduction to decision theory Core Weisberg, J. (2021). Odds & Ends. Read chapters 8, 11, and 14. Ord, T., Hillerbrand, R., & Sandberg, A. (2010). "Probing the improbable: Methodological challenges for risks with low probabilities and high stakes." Journal of Risk Research, 13(2), 191-205. Read sections 1-2. Optional Weisberg, J. (2021). Odds & Ends chapters 5-7 (these may be helpful background for understanding chapter 8, if you don't have much background in probability). Titelbaum, M. G. (2020) Fundamentals of Bayesian Epistemology chapters 3-4 Week 3: Introduction to population ethics Core Parfit, Derek. 1984. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Read sections 4.16.120-23, 125, and 127 (pp. 355-64; 366-71, and 377-79). Parfit, Derek. 1986. "Overpopulation and the Quality of Life." In Applied Ethics, ed. P. Singer, 145-164. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Read sections 1-3. Optional Remainders of Part IV of Reasons and Persons and "Overpopulation and the Quality of Life" Greaves (2017) "Population Axiology" Philosophy Compass McMahan (2022) "Creating People and Saving People" section 1, first page of section 4, and section 8 Temkin (2012) Rethinking the Good 12.2 pp. 416-17 and section 12.3 (esp. pp. 422-27) Harman (2004) "Can We Harm and Benefit in Creating?" Roberts (2019) "The Nonidentity Problem" SEP Frick (2022) "Context-Dependent Betterness and the Mere Addition Paradox" Mogensen (2019) "Staking our future: deontic long-termism and the non-identity problem" sections 4-5 Week 4: Longtermism: for and against Core Greaves, Hilary and William MacAskill. 2021. "The Case for Strong Longtermism." Global Priorities Institute Working Paper No.5-2021. Read sections 1-6 and 9. Curran, Emma J. 2023. "Longtermism and the Complaints of Future People". Forthcoming in Essays on Longtermism, ed. H. Greaves, J. Barrett, and D. Thorstad. Oxford: OUP. Read section 1. Optional Thorstad (2023) "High risk, low reward: A challenge to the astronomical value of existential risk mitigation." Focus on sections 1-3. Curran, E. J. (2022). "Longtermism, Aggregation, and Catastrophic Risk" (GPI Working Paper 18-2022). Global Priorities Institute. Beckstead (2013) "On the Overwhelming Importance of Shaping the Far Future" Chapter 3 "Toby Ord on why the long-term future of humanity matters more than anything else, and what we should do about it" 80,000 Hours podcast Frick (2015) "Contractualism and Social Risk" sections 7-8 Part 2: Philosophical problems Week 5: Fanaticism Core Bostrom, N. (2009). "Pascal's mugging." Analysis, 69 (3): 443-445. Russell, J. S. "On two arguments for fanaticism." Noûs, forthcoming. Read sections 1, 2.1, and 2.2. Temkin, L. S. (2022). "How Expected Utility Theory Can Drive Us Off the Rails." In L. S. ...

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#36 | Scott Beckstead | Leading Voice for our Wild Herds

Reinforce the Horse

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 24, 2023 61:46

A lifelong student and admirer of American wild horses, Scott Beckstead is a leading voice for our wild herds in his role as director of campaigns for Center for a Humane Economy and Animal Wellness Action. He grew up with horses on his family's farm and spent much of his childhood and youth on horseback in the mountains of Idaho. After receiving his bachelor's degree from Utah State University and his JD from the University of Utah, Beckstead worked as a litigation attorney in private practice for 17 years on the central Oregon coast before going to work full-time in the animal protection sector. During his time on the coast he also served as the mayor of Waldport, Oregon from 2002 to 2007.He became known for his special expertise in the field of animal law, and has taught that subject at the University of Oregon and Willamette University law schools. In 2000, he co-authored Animal Law, the first casebook on the subject, and continues to teach animal law, wildlife law and policy, the Endangered Species Act, animal agriculture law, and cannabis law and policy as an adjunct professor at Willamette University.Because of his close familiarity with horses, livestock, and farm animals, Beckstead provides training to law enforcement agencies on how to handle and work with those animals, and how to investigate equine and livestock cruelty and neglect.Beckstead lives with his family in Sutherlin, Oregon. Scott's FaceBookScott's Emailhttp://centerforahumaneeconomy.orgMusic by Justin TammingaMusic provided by Justin Tamminga

Darren Beckstead joins SGWS

Turnbuckle Turmoil

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 18, 2023 55:00

We are thrilled to bring you STF promoter Darren Beckstead. Darren has been hard at work to bring fans in Utah a fantastic wrestling show with top talent. He's had legends such as Madusa, Kevin Sullivan, and Shane Douglas on his booking sheets along with some great independent talent such as JD Mason, Tombstone Jesus, and Andrea the Giant. We'll sit down with Darren and find out what he thinks of promoting wrestling and where he sees STF going in the future.

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EA - EA Architect: Dissertation on Improving the Social Dynamics of Confined Spaces & Shelters Precedents Report by Tereza Flidrova

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 6, 2023 17:02

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: EA Architect: Dissertation on Improving the Social Dynamics of Confined Spaces & Shelters Precedents Report, published by Tereza Flidrova on June 6, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. TL;DR In this post, I will share the work I have done on the topic of civilisational shelters (1), (2), over the last year as an architecture master's student. I will share my dissertation on improving the social dynamics of confined spaces, including a practical design guide that can be used to design new or evaluate and improve existing confined spaces. I will also share the Shelters Precedents Report Draft I worked on last spring. Key links from this post include: My dissertation in pdf or flipbook formats Link to the Wellbeing Worksheet, an interactive design guide proposed in my dissertation Video summarising the research and findings (especially useful if you want to learn about my design proposal and the design guide) Link to the Shelters Precedents Report Draft Outline Since last spring, I have explored ways to get involved in EA with my skills as an architect. So far, I wrote this and this article about my ideas and journey of becoming the ‘EA Architect', and have also started to help anyone with architectural or planning background get involved through the EA Architects and Planners group. One of the key areas I got involved in was civilisational shelters. This summer, I am going to Zambia to intern with the Charter Cities Institute. This post has two parts: Part 1: My architectural research-led dissertation on ‘Improving the Social Dynamics of Confined Spaces Located in Extreme Environments'; Part 2: Sharing the Shelters Precedents Report Draft I developed last spring and so far only shared internally. Part 1: Improving the Social Dynamics of Confined Spaces Located in Extreme Environments After co-organising the SHELTER Weekend last summer (see this post by Janne for a summary of what has been discussed), as well as studying various precedents and talking to many experts, I concluded that the best way I can contribute to the shelters work is by understanding what influences the social dynamics of very confined spaces. Hence, I chose this as my master's thesis at Oxford Brookes. Why I did it Global catastrophes, such as nuclear wars, pandemics, asteroid collisions or biological risks, threaten the very existence of mankind (Beckstead, 2015). These challenges have caused people to consider distant locations such as polar regions, deep sea, outer space, and even underground facilities as potential locations to seek safety during such crises (Beckstead, 2015; Jebari, 2015). However, living in confined spaces for prolonged periods brings prominent social challenges that might prevent their long-term success (Jebari, 2015). To ensure the successful habitation of confined spaces, special attention needs to be given to their design, allowing humans to survive and thrive long-term. While there is existing research on the design of specific confined spaces, like the design of research stations in polar regions (Bannova, 2014; Palinkas, 2003), space stations (Basner, Dinges, et al., 2014; Harrison et al., 1985), prisons (Karthaus et al., 2019; Lily Bernheimer, Rachel O'Brien, Richard Barnes, 2017), biospheres testing space habitation (Nelson et al., 1994; Zabel et al., 1999) or nuclear bunkers (Graff, 2017; NPR, 2011), there seems to be a lack of a comprehensive architectural framework that can be utilised by designers of confined spaces in extreme environments to help improve their liveability. This is despite the fact there has been much research on the impacts of the physical environment (Klitzman and Stellman, 1989), including staying indoors (Rashid and Zimring, 2008), thermal comfort (Levin, 1995), the impact of light (Basner, Babisch, et al., 2014) and noise (Levin, 1995) on ...

EA - Time Article Discussion - "Effective Altruist Leaders Were Repeatedly Warned About Sam Bankman-Fried Years Before FTX Collapsed" by Nathan Young

Gettin Your Life Back with Cade Cooper

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 15, 2023 7:28

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Time Article Discussion - "Effective Altruist Leaders Were Repeatedly Warned About Sam Bankman-Fried Years Before FTX Collapsed", published by Nathan Young on March 15, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. There is a new Time article Seems certain 98% we'll discuss it I would like us to try and have a better discussion about this than we sometimes do. Consider if you want to engage I updated a bit on important stuff as a result of this article. You may disagree. I am going to put my "personal updates" in a comment Excepts from the article that I think are relevant. Bold is mine. I have made choices here and feel free to recommend I change them. Yet MacAskill had long been aware of concerns around Bankman-Fried. He was personally cautioned about Bankman-Fried by at least three different people in a series of conversations in 2018 and 2019, according to interviews with four people familiar with those discussions and emails reviewed by TIME. He wasn't alone. Multiple EA leaders knew about the red flags surrounding Bankman-Fried by 2019, according to a TIME investigation based on contemporaneous documents and interviews with seven people familiar with the matter. Among the EA brain trust personally notified about Bankman-Fried's questionable behavior and business ethics were Nick Beckstead, a moral philosopher who went on to lead Bankman-Fried's philanthropic arm, the FTX Future Fund, and Holden Karnofsky, co-CEO of OpenPhilanthropy, a nonprofit organization that makes grants supporting EA causes. Some of the warnings were serious: sources say that MacAskill and Beckstead were repeatedly told that Bankman-Fried was untrustworthy, had inappropriate sexual relationships with subordinates, refused to implement standard business practices, and had been caught lying during his first months running Alameda, a crypto firm that was seeded by EA investors, staffed by EAs, and dedicating to making money that could be donated to EA causes. MacAskill declined to answer a list of detailed questions from TIME for this story. “An independent investigation has been commissioned to look into these issues; I don't want to front-run or undermine that process by discussing my own recollections publicly,” he wrote in an email. “I look forward to the results of the investigation and hope to be able to respond more fully after then.” Citing the same investigation, Beckstead also declined to answer detailed questions. Karnofsky did not respond to a list of questions from TIME. Through a lawyer, Bankman-Fried also declined to respond to a list of detailed written questions. The Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA) did not reply to multiple requests to explain why Bankman-Fried left the board in 2019. A spokesperson for Effective Ventures, the parent organization of CEA, cited the independent investigation, launched in Dec. 2022, and declined to comment while it was ongoing. In a span of less than nine months in 2022, Bankman-Fried's FTX Future Fund—helmed by Beckstead—gave more than $160 million to effective altruist causes, including more than $33 million to organizations connected to MacAskill. “If [Bankman-Fried] wasn't super wealthy, nobody would have given him another chance,” says one person who worked closely with MacAskill at an EA organization. “It's greed for access to a bunch of money, but with a philosopher twist.” But within months, the good karma of the venture dissipated in a series of internal clashes, many details of which have not been previously reported. Some of the issues were personal. Bankman-Fried could be “dictatorial,” according to one former colleague. Three former Alameda employees told TIME he had inappropriate romantic relationships with his subordinates. Early Alameda executives also believed he had reneged on an equity arrangement that would have left Bankman-Frie...

Episode 23 - Gabe Beckstead: How Dying Led me from an Atheist to an Advocate

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 6, 2023 64:48

In this episode I sit down with one of my best friends Gabe. We talk about his upbringing and how circumstances got so bad Gabe took his life. He describes an incredible experience when he died that taught him the reality of God and Christ. He talks about how his gifts with energy started to manifest after that and how you can guard yourself from people that use those gifts for the wrong purposes. He shares an insightful visual aid about unconditional love, and at the end sings a powerful song he wrote about learning that he matters to God. This episode is FIRE! Get your life back!

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No Mistakes- Bruce Beckstead

NTC Massena Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 19, 2023 31:17

This week at NTC Massena, we hear from Bruce Beckstead as he shares on the life of Ruth and what we can take from it. We hope you are encouraged and challenged today!

no mistakes beckstead

December 4th- Bruce Beckstead

NTC Massena Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 4, 2022 43:54

We welcome you to listen to an encouraging and challenging message by Bruce Beckstead with us as we approach the Holliday season!

holliday beckstead

EA - The FTX Future Fund team has resigned by Nick Beckstead

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 11, 2022 1:59

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: The FTX Future Fund team has resigned, published by Nick Beckstead on November 11, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. We were shocked and immensely saddened to learn of the recent events at FTX. Our hearts go out to the thousands of FTX customers whose finances may have been jeopardized or destroyed. We are now unable to perform our work or process grants, and we have fundamental questions about the legitimacy and integrity of the business operations that were funding the FTX Foundation and the Future Fund. As a result, we resigned earlier today. We don't yet have a full picture of what went wrong, and we are following the news online as it unfolds. But to the extent that the leadership of FTX may have engaged in deception or dishonesty, we condemn that behavior in the strongest possible terms. We believe that being a good actor in the world means striving to act with honesty and integrity. We are devastated to say that it looks likely that there are many committed grants that the Future Fund will be unable to honor. We are so sorry that it has come to this. We are no longer employed by the Future Fund, but, in our personal capacities, we are exploring ways to help with this awful situation. We joined the Future Fund to support incredible people and projects, and this outcome is heartbreaking to us. We appreciate the grantees' work to help build a better future, and we have been honored to support it. We're sorry that we won't be able to continue to do so going forward, and we deeply regret the difficult, painful, and stressful position that many of you are now in. To reach us, grantees may email grantee-reachout@googlegroups.com. We know grantees must have many questions, and in our personal capacities we will try to answer them as best as we can given the circumstances. Nick Beckstead Leopold Aschenbrenner Avital Balwit Ketan Ramakrishnan Will MacAskill Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org.

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EA - Longtermist terminology has biasing assumptions by Arepo

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 31, 2022 12:58

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Longtermist terminology has biasing assumptions, published by Arepo on October 30, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Sequence summary This sequence investigates the expected loss of value from non-extinction global catastrophes. This post is a criticism of the biases and ambiguities inherent in longtermist terminology (including ‘global catastrophes'). The next post, A proposed hierarchy of longtermist concepts, lays out the terms which I intend to use for the rest of this sequence, and which encourage less heuristic, more expected-value thinking. Finally, for now, Modelling civilisation after a catastrophe lays out the structure of a proposed model which will inform the direction of my research for the next few months. If feedback on the structure is good, later parts will populate the model with some best-guess values, and present it in an editable form. Introduction Longtermist terminology has evolved haphazardly, so that much of it is misleading or noncomplementary. Michael Aird wrote a helpful post attempting to resolve inconsistencies in our usage, but that post's necessity and its use of partially overlapping Venn diagrams - implying no formal relationships between the terms - itself highlights these problems. Moreover, during the evolution of longtermism, assumptions that originally started out as heuristics seem to have become locked in to the discussion via the terminology, biasing us towards those heuristics and away from expected value analyses. In this post I discuss these concerns, but since I expect it to be relatively controversial and it isn't really a prerequisite for the rest of the sequence so much as an explanation of why I'm not using standard terms, I would emphasise that this is strictly optional reading for the rest of the sequence, so think of it as a 'part 0' of the sequence. You should feel free to skip ahead if you disagree strongly or just aren't particularly interested in a terminology discussion. Concepts under the microscope Existential catastrophe Recreating Ord and Aird's diagrams of the anatomy of an existential catastrophe here, we can see an ‘existential catastrophe' has various possible modes: Figure from The Precipice Venn diagram figures all from Aird's post It's the ‘failed continuation' branch which I think needlessly muddies the waters. An ‘existential catastrophe' doesn't necessarily relate to existence. In theory an existential catastrophe can describe a scenario in which civilisation lasts until the end of the universe, but has much less net welfare than we imagine it could have had. This seems odd to consider an ‘existential' risk - there are many ways in which we can imagine positive or negative changes to expected future quality of life (see for example Beckstead's idea of trajectory change). Classing low-value-but-interstellar outcomes as existential catastrophes seems unhelpful both since it introduces definitional ambiguity over how much net welfare must be lost for them to qualify, and since questions of expected future quality of life are very distinct from questions of future quantity of life, and so seem like they should be asked separately. . nor involve a catastrophe that anyone alive recognises The concept also encompasses a civilisation that lives happily on Earth until the sun dies, perhaps even finding a way to survive that, but never spreading out across the universe. This means that, for example, universal adoption of a non-totalising population ethic would be an existential catastrophe. I'm strongly in favour of totalising population ethics, but this seems needlessly biasing. ‘Unrecoverable' or ‘permanent' states are a superfluous concept In the diagram above, Ord categorises ‘unrecoverable dystopias' as a type of existential risk. He actually seems to consider them necessarily impermanent, but (in...

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EA - Announcing the Future Fund's AI Worldview Prize by Nick Beckstead

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Play Episode Listen Later Sep 23, 2022 21:53

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Announcing the Future Fund's AI Worldview Prize, published by Nick Beckstead on September 23, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Today we are announcing a competition with prizes ranging from $15k to $1.5M for work that informs the Future Fund's fundamental assumptions about the future of AI, or is informative to a panel of superforecaster judges. These prizes will be open for three months—until Dec 23—after which we may change or discontinue them at our discretion. We have two reasons for launching these prizes. First, we hope to expose our assumptions about the future of AI to intense external scrutiny and improve them. We think artificial intelligence (AI) is the development most likely to dramatically alter the trajectory of humanity this century, and it is consequently one of our top funding priorities. Yet our philanthropic interest in AI is fundamentally dependent on a number of very difficult judgment calls, which we think have been inadequately scrutinized by others. As a result, we think it's really possible that: all of this AI stuff is a misguided sideshow, we should be even more focused on AI, or a bunch of this AI stuff is basically right, but we should be focusing on entirely different aspects of the problem. If any of those three options is right—and we strongly suspect at least one of them is—we want to learn about it as quickly as possible because it would change how we allocate hundreds of millions of dollars (or more) and help us better serve our mission of improving humanity's longterm prospects. Second, we are aiming to do bold and decisive tests of prize-based philanthropy, as part of our more general aim of testing highly scalable approaches to funding. We think these prizes contribute to that work. If these prizes work, it will be a large update in favor of this approach being capable of surfacing valuable knowledge that could affect our prioritization. If they don't work, that could be an update against this approach surfacing such knowledge (depending how it plays out). The rest of this post will: Explain the beliefs that, if altered, would dramatically affect our approach to grantmaking Describe the conditions under which our prizes will pay out Describe in basic terms how we arrived at our beliefs and cover other clarifications Prize conditions On our areas of interest page, we introduce our core concerns about AI as follows: We think artificial intelligence (AI) is the development most likely to dramatically alter the trajectory of humanity this century. AI is already posing serious challenges: transparency, interpretability, algorithmic bias, and robustness, to name just a few. Before too long, advanced AI could automate the process of scientific and technological discovery, leading to economic growth rates well over 10% per year (see Aghion et al 2017, this post, and Davidson 2021). As a result, our world could soon look radically different. With the help of advanced AI, we could make enormous progress toward ending global poverty, animal suffering, early death and debilitating disease. But two formidable new problems for humanity could also arise: Loss of control to AI systemsAdvanced AI systems might acquire undesirable objectives and pursue power in unintended ways, causing humans to lose all or most of their influence over the future. Concentration of powerActors with an edge in advanced AI technology could acquire massive power and influence; if they misuse this technology, they could inflict lasting damage on humanity's long-term future. For more on these problems, we recommend Holden Karnofsky's “Most Important Century,” Nick Bostrom's Superintelligence, and Joseph Carlsmith's “Is power-seeking AI an existential risk?”. Here is a table identifying various questions about these scenarios that we believe are central, our curren...

Methamphetamine Self-Administration Differential Effects on Mesolimbic Glutathione Levels, Mitochondrial Respiration, and Dopamine Neuron Firing Activity

PaperPlayer biorxiv neuroscience

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 13, 2022

Link to bioRxiv paper: http://biorxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2022.09.12.507550v1?rss=1 Authors: Dominguez-Lopez, S., Ahn, B., Sataranatarajan, K., Ranjit, R., Beckstead, M. J., Van Remmen, H. Abstract: Acute and neurotoxic regimens of METH are known to increase reactive oxygen species (ROS), affect redox homeostasis, and lead to cellular damage in dopamine neurons. However, functional changes induced by long-term METH self-administration on mitochondrial respiratory metabolism and redox homeostasis are less known. To fill this gap in our knowledge, we implanted adult mice with a jugular catheter and trained them to nose poke for METH infusions in operant chambers. After completing several weeks of METH self-administration exposure, we collected samples of the ventral striatum (vSTR) and the ventral midbrain (vMB), containing the nucleus accumbens (NAc) and the ventral tegmental area (VTA), respectively. We used HPLC to determine the levels of the ROS scavenger glutathione in its reduced (GSH) and oxidized (GSSG) forms. Then, we used high-resolution respirometry to determine the oxygen consumption rate (OCR) of mitochondrial complexes under several substrates and inhibitors. Finally, we used in vivo single-unit extracellular recordings to assess changes in dopamine neuron firing activity in the VTA. METH self-administration produces a progressive decrease of the GSH pool in vST, which correlates with METH lifetime intake. We observed increased mitochondrial respiration across the two mesolimbic regions, but only vMB OCR correlates with METH lifetime intake. We recorded an increased number of spontaneously active dopamine neurons with decreased firing rate and burst activity in the VTA. METH lifetime intake inversely correlates with firing rate, the percentage of spikes in a burst, and directly correlates with the number of neurons per track. We conclude that METH self-administration progressively decreased the antioxidant pool in sites of higher dopamine release and produced an increased mitochondrial metabolism in the mesolimbic areas, probably derived from the increased number of dopamine neurons actively firing. However, dopamine neuron firing activity is decreased by METH self-administration, reflecting a new basal level of dopamine neurotransmission in response to the prolonged effects of METH on dopamine release and circuitry feedback. Copy rights belong to original authors. Visit the link for more info Podcast created by PaperPlayer

EA - Odds of recovering values after collapse? by Will Aldred

values speech negative odds recovering collapse rodriguez ea precipice malthusian aldred rationalist toby ord beckstead

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 25, 2022 5:58

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Odds of recovering values after collapse?, published by Will Aldred on July 24, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. (This question is inspired by conversations with Haydn Belfield and Hannah Erlebach, though I'm not certain both would endorse the full version of my question.) Question Let's say we roll the dice 100 times with respect to values. In other words, let's say civilization collapses in 100 worlds, each very similar to our current world, and let's say full tech recovery follows collapse in all 100 of these worlds. In how many of these 100 worlds do you think that, relative to pre-collapse humanity, the post-recovery version of humanity has: worse values? similar values? better values? I encourage the reader to try answering the question before looking at the comments section, so as to not become anchored. Context Components of recovery It seems, to me, that there are two broad components to recovery following civilizational collapse: P(Tech Recovery|Collapse) i.e., probability of tech recovery given collapse where I define "tech recovery" as scientific, technological, and economic recovery P(Values Recovery|Tech Recovery) i.e., probability of values recovery given tech recovery where I define "values recovery" as recovery of political systems and values systems (where "good" on the values axis would be things like democracy, individualism, equality, and secularism, and "bad" would be things like totalitarianism) It also seems to me that P(Tech Recovery|Collapse) ≈ 1, which is why the question I've asked is essentially "P(Values Recovery|Tech Recovery) = ?", just in a little more detail. Existing discussion I ask this question on values recovery because there's less discussion on this than I would expect. Toby Ord, in The Precipice, mentions values only briefly, in his "Dystopian Scenarios" section: A second kind of unrecoverable dystopia is a stable civilization that is desired by few (if any) people. [...] Well-known examples include market forces creating a race to the bottom, Malthusian population dynamics pushing down the average quality of life, or evolution optimizing us toward the spreading of our genes, regardless of the effects on what we value. These are all dynamics that push humanity toward a new equilibrium, where these forces are finally in balance. But there is no guarantee this equilibrium will be good. (p. 152) The third possibility is the “desired dystopia.” [...] Some plausible examples include: [...] worlds that forever fail to recognize some key form of harm or injustice (and thus perpetuate it blindly), worlds that lock in a single fundamentalist religion, and worlds where we deliberately replace ourselves with something that we didn't realize was much less valuable (such as machines incapable of feeling). (pp. 153-154) Luisa Rodriguez, who has produced arguably the best work on civilizational collapse (see "What is the likelihood that civilizational collapse would directly lead to human extinction (within decades)?"), also only very briefly touches on values: Values is the other one. Yeah. Making sure that if we do last for a really long time, we don't do so with really horrible values or that we at least don't miss out on some amazing ones. (Rodriguez, Wiblin & Harris, 2021, 2:55:00-2:55:10) Nick Beckstead and Michael Aird come the closest, as far as I've seen, to pointing to the question of values recovery. Beckstead (2015): Negative cultural trajectory: It seems possible that just as some societies reinforce openness, toleration, and equality, other societies might reinforce alternative sets of values. [...] Especially if culture continues to become increasingly global, it may become easier for one kind of culture to dominate the world. A culture opposed to open society values, or otherwise problematic for utilitarian-type values,...

EA - Future Fund June 2022 Update by Nick Beckstead

god wraps jedediah beckstead

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 1, 2022 33:36

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Future Fund June 2022 Update, published by Nick Beckstead on July 1, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Summary Background The FTX Foundation's Future Fund publicly launched in late February. We're a philanthropic fund that makes grants and investments to improve humanity's long-term prospects. For information about some of the areas we've been funding, see our Areas of Interest page. This is our first public update on the Future Fund's grantmaking. The purpose of this post is to give an update on what we've done and what we're learning about the funding models we're testing. (It does not cover a range of other FTX Foundation activities.) We've also published a new grants page and regrants page with our public grants so far. Our focus on testing funding models We are trying to learn as much as we can about how to deploy funding at scale to improve humanity's long-term prospects. Our primary objective for 2022 is to perform bold and decisive tests of new funding models. The main funding models we have tested so far are our regranting program and our open call for applications. In brief, these models worked as follows: The basic idea of regranting was, "There are a lot of people who share our values and might know of great people or projects we could support that we wouldn't know about by default. Let's make it rewarding, simple, and fast for them to make grants. We'll give them budgets of $100k to a few million to work with, and we'll presumptively approve their recommendations (after screening for various risks/issues)." The basic idea of the open call was, "Let's tell people what we're trying to do, what kinds of things we might be interested in funding, give them a lot of examples of projects they could launch, have an easy and fast application process, and then get the word out with Twitter blitz." We wrote some about the review process here. Our staff also made grants and investments that were not part of these programs (hereafter "staff-led grantmaking"). Grantmaking by funding model So far we have made 262 grants and investments, totaling ~$132M. These break down as follows: Regranting: We have onboarded >100 regrantors (with discretionary budgets) and >50 grant recommenders (without discretionary budgets). We set aside >$100M for them to use over the course of our 6 month experiment (April-October 2022). So far, regrantors have made 168 grants and investments, totaling ~$31M Open call: We received over 1700 applications and funded 69 (4%) of them, totaling ~$26M. (The acceptance rate for proposals focused squarely on our top priorities was much higher.) Staff-led grantmaking: Separate from these programs, we have made 25 grants and investments otherwise sourced by our staff, totaling ~$73M. There are also ~$25M of grants we are likely to make soon, but have some relevant aspects TBD. Some example grants and investments Below are some grants and investments that we find interesting and/or representative of what we are trying to fund. Regranting $1M investment in Manifold Markets to build a play-money prediction market platform. The platform is also experimenting with impact certificates and charity prediction markets. $490k for ML Safety Scholars Program to fund a summer program for up to 100 students to spend 9 weeks studying machine learning, deep learning, and technical topics in AI safety. We have funded >30 talent development and career transition grants that range from $1,450 to $175,000 depending on the duration and seniority level of the individual. Some examples include: $42,600 to Andi Peng to support salary and compute for research on AI alignment. $175,000 to Braden Leach to support a recent law school graduate to work on biosecurity, researching and writing at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. $37,500 to Thomas Kwa to support researc...

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Episode 108: Jedediah Beckstead | When God wants to give you a gift, He wraps it up in a problem.

Parrish The Thought

Play Episode Listen Later May 30, 2022 108:06

When God wants to give you a gift, He wraps it up in a problem. The bigger the gift, the bigger the problem. My next guest is Jedediah Beckstead and he is with us today to talk about how on a random spring day in March of 2015 his life changed forever. While doing a front summersault jump onto a trampoline, a move done hundreds of times before, he fell on his head and suffered a life altering injurie that left him a quadripeligic. As Jed puts it, God sat him down in order to teach him to stand tall. CONTACT JED Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/jedediah.beckstead.3 #JedediahsInspiration #ParrishTheThoughtPodcast #ParrishTheThought #ChronicNervePain #Depression #Cutting #SelfMutalation #Quadriplegic #OvercomingDepression #BeingPresent #LemonsToLemonaid #PersonalTriumph #SuicidalAwarenes #SelfHarm #FamilyFirst #GodKnows #GodHasAPlan --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/parrishthethought/message

Spencer Beckstead of Frikintech

Auto Remarketing Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later May 24, 2022 12:32

Spencer Beckstead, chief revenue officer of Frikintech, joins the show to talk about the friction points in automotive and why digital retail complements — not replaces — salespeople, plus a bit of the background behind Frikintech.

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59 The New Odyssey House Journals - Courtney Beckstead

Odyssey House Journals

Play Episode Listen Later May 20, 2022 30:29

FROM MORMON MISSIONARY TO HEROIN ADDICT IN 4 YEARS Courtney Beckstead is beloved by the Odyssey family. He's property manager and keeps watch over clients in sober living, but that's the new Courtney. The old Courtney started drinking after his mission. That escalated to meth and heroin, stealing pills from his grandma and then entering a toxic relationship. Watch a CLIP at the bottom as he talks about that relationship, or you can catch the FULL podcast to learn how he finally recovered by clicking on this link: https://youtu.be/37-GLbgg97U You can also listen and subscribe to the audio version on iTunes at https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/odyssey-house-journals/id1462333385 or Spotify at https://open.spotify.com/show/4Basx2YsjYcRmmrSufLX3z?si=Wni9usSiQbun-W0WsjNC-g or iHeart podcasts at https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-odyssey-house-journals-59417265/

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EA - Becoming an EA Architect: My First Month as an Independent Researcher by Tereza Flidrova

covid-19 ceo pr speech spending researchers architects websites spaces bahamas ea oxfordshire first month tereza refuges rationalist independent researcher linch eaf beckstead

Play Episode Listen Later May 12, 2022 9:23

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Becoming an EA Architect: My First Month as an Independent Researcher, published by Tereza Flidrova on May 12, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. I am on the mission of figuring out how to use my education and skills as an architect and urban designer to pursue a high-impact career. For a long time, I did not think there were many intersections between EA and architecture. However, this spring I am trying to prove my past self wrong. Having come to the Bahamas as an FTX EA fellow, I have quit my job in urban design in Oxfordshire to devote all my time and resources to potentially making a major career shift into the EA/longtermist spaces. This post (my first one on EAF, so bear with me) is about the first month of my exploration. By writing it, I hope to gain insights from the EA community, connect with like-minded people, gather feedback or advice, and perhaps inspire people with similar skillsets to come and join me on my mission. So far, I have identified 4+ major categories where my skills might be useful and spend different amounts of time pursuing them. They are: Refuges from biological and nuclear threats Design of spaces for disease mitigation Office space design Charter Cities All else (so far, things like graphic design or Street Votes) 1. Refuges Building refuges to protect from biological and nuclear threats could increase chances that humanity would recover from a global catastrophe (Beckstead 2015). It seems plausible that devoting my time to help kickstart the project of building refuges (or superbunkers, as described by Linch and Ajay in their post) could be valuable. Linch offered me mentorship and resources (as part of the FTX Regranting Program) to explore ways to fit in. Spending last month on initial learning and research, I plan to next work on: a comprehensive Superbunkers Precedents Report (including examples from existing governmental and private bunkers, submarines, remote research stations and experiments, space explorations, peoples living in seclusion, etc. and comparing things like costs, size and level of protection); and creating materials (currently imagining 10ish slides very clearly stating and illustrating the main points) for PR and marketing purposes to be used to contact potential suppliers and funders to get a better understanding of what's feasible/achievable; to maximise my learning experience while potentially starting to produce outcomes. In the longer term and the most optimistic scenario, I hope that helping to progress work on superbunkers might lead to attracting a potential CEO that could take ownership of the project (as Linch and Ajay described in their post from last month, this will be a crucial milestone for superbunkers). 2. Spaces for disease mitigation Nonpharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs) such as designing buildings for sustainable disease mitigation can play an important role in helping to slow the spread of illnesses and prevent future pandemics (“Nonpharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs)” 2020). After the COVID-19 pandemic, there might be a capacity to implement new design solutions to provide the required protection from virus attacks, adding more layers to the defence system of our built environment (Megahed and Ghoneim 2020). It seems that the design and user experience of such interventions could be an impactful cause to focus on during the upcoming years. My discussions with people in the space so far indicate that designers or architects could aid researchers to implement interventions into the built environment and public spaces in ways that make them more effective. Websites like Building Survey, developed by Arvie Violett to assist different sizes of buildings with different budgets and preferences in choosing the most suitable interventions, show an example of how architects could contribute. I b...

EA - Some clarifications on the Future Fund's approach to grantmaking by Nick Beckstead

Play Episode Listen Later May 10, 2022 4:55

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Some clarifications on the Future Fund's approach to grantmaking, published by Nick Beckstead on May 10, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. This post comments on concerns people have about the FTX Foundation and the Future Fund, and our contribution to free-spending EA worries. I think there are a lot of important and reasonable concerns about spending money too quickly and without adequate oversight. We're making decisions that directly affect how many people spend a majority of their working hours, those decisions are hard to make, and there can be community-wide consequences to making them badly. It's also possible that some of our grantees are spending more than is optimal, and our funding is contributing to that. (If there are particular FTX Foundation grants that you think were a significant mistake, we would love feedback about those grants! You can share the feedback (anonymously if you prefer) via this form.) Our processes are of course imperfect and we'll need to continue to improve over time. Below, I explain some more about our processes and how we're managing downside risk. Some people seem to think that our procedure for approving grants is roughly "YOLO #sendit." This impression isn't accurate. In reality, before a typical grant goes out it is: Recommended by a staff member or regrantor, Screened for red flags by a staff member, and then when needed reviewed (in specialized Slack channels created for this purpose) to address legal risks, public communications risks, interference with the work of other EA grantmakers, community health risks, and other potential harms, (we usually find a way to make good grants, but this process often improves them and reduces their risks) (If relevant) Reviewed by technical expert(s), Endorsed by another staff member, and Independently reviewed for final signoff (For regrantors, the process is primarily focused on avoiding downsides, or giving optional suggestions on how to improve the grants.) Often, this process can move swiftly because we can quickly tell that some idea has significant upside and minimal downside, or just isn't a fit for our interests. For more complex decisions that require more input and discussion, it can take as long as it needs to. In addition, I heard some people express confusion about how we can hit our funding targets with such a small team. A big part of the answer is that we're relying on a large number of regrantors and over a dozen external advisors that we frequently consult. (We've gotten a lot of help from folks at Open Phil in particular, which we really appreciate!) For example, for our recent open funding call, every application was reviewed by two people. For most of the grants that we ultimately funded, we had the applications reviewed by two or more further domain experts. Relatedly, I get the sense that people are particularly worried by community building expenditure, and tie that expenditure to the FTX Foundation. But we've not actually done much community-building funding, that which we have done is very recent, and we're not the primary funder of most of the issues that are discussed in this post (insofar as I can tell what grants are being discussed). (Note: although I do want to clarify that FTX Foundation is not actually the primary funder of this activity, I don't mean to take a stand on whether the spending is in fact excessive. I'm not totally sure which grants are being discussed, and it isn't clear to me that CEA in particular is overspending.) Finally, I wanted to emphasize that we're generally giving a lot of consideration to downside risks and community effects as part of our work. As one example, the core of the regranting program was designed in early January, and it was fully launched in early April. Much of the working time in the interval was talking with...

speech fund slack ea recommended yolo endorsed cea clarifications screened relatedly rationalist grantmaking beckstead open phil

EA - Awards for the Future Fund's Project Ideas Competition by Nick Beckstead

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 24, 2022 20:55

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Awards for the Future Fund's Project Ideas Competition, published by Nick Beckstead on March 24, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. This post announces the winners of the Future Fund's Project Ideas Competition, and reflects on the process of running the competition. We got an overwhelming response to the competition, receiving close to 1000 submissions. The blog post received more comments than any other post on the Forum; in fact, more than double the second-most-commented post. We were thrilled at the level of excitement that the competition generated. So that we can appropriately reward the submissions, we've decided to include a category of “honorable mentions”: these will not go onto the website, but will receive an award of $1000. We will be contacting the winners individually about how to receive their prizes. Winners The winners - which will soon go up on our project ideas page (often in modified form) - are as follows: gavintaylor - Infrastructure to support independent researchers Epistemic Institutions, Empowering Exceptional People The EA and Longtermist communities appear to contain a relatively large proportion of independent researchers compared to traditional academia. While working independently can provide the freedom to address impactful topics by liberating researchers from the perverse incentives, bureaucracy, and other constraints imposed on academics, the lack of institutional support can impose other difficulties that range from routine (e.g. difficulties accessing pay-walled publications) to restrictive (e.g. lack of mentorship, limited opportunities for professional development). Virtual independent scholarship institutes have recently emerged to provide institutional support (e.g. affiliation for submitting journal articles, grant management) for academic researchers working independently. We expect that facilitating additional and more productive independent EA and Longtermist research will increase the demographic diversity and expand the geographical inclusivity of these communities of researchers. Initially, we would like to determine the main needs and limitations independent researchers in these areas face and then support the creation of a virtual institute focussed on addressing those points. Konstantin Pilz - EA content translation service Effective Altruism, Movement-Building EA-related texts are often using academic language needed to convey complex concepts. For non-native speakers reading and understanding those texts takes a lot more time than reading about the same topic in their native language would. Furthermore, today many educated people in important positions, especially in non-western countries, do not speak or only poorly speak English. (This is likely part of the reason that EA currently mainly exists in English speaking countries and almost exclusively consists of people speaking English well.) To make EA widely known and easy to understand there needs to be a translation service enabling e.g. 80k, important Forum posts or the Precipice to be read in different languages. This would not only make EA easier to understand - and thus spread ideas further - but also likely increase epistemic diversity of the community by making EA more international. Mackenzie Arnold - A regulatory failsafe for catastrophic or existential biorisks Biorisk and Recovery from Catastrophes Currently, many government regulators (like the FDA in the US) apply a static set of criteria when evaluating countermeasures used to fight disease or other public harms. While these criteria may operate relatively well during normal times, during catastrophic events, they would likely impose overly cautious limitations on response efforts and, in some cases, may even prohibit the development or deployment of countermeasures with relatively minor risk p...

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EA - Announcing the Future Fund by Nick Beckstead

speech fund ea 100m ftx 1b caroline ellison rationalist gary wang beckstead will macaskill nishad singh

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 28, 2022 5:50

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Announcing the Future Fund, published by Nick Beckstead on February 28, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. We're thrilled to announce the FTX Foundation's Future Fund: a philanthropic fund making grants and investments to ambitious projects in order to improve humanity's long-term prospects. We plan to distribute at least $100M this year, and potentially a lot more, depending on how many outstanding opportunities we find. In principle, we'd be able to deploy up to $1B this year. We have a longlist of project ideas that we'd love to fund, but it's not exhaustive—we're open to a broad range of ideas. We're particularly keen to launch massively scalable projects: projects that could grow to productively spend tens or hundreds of millions of dollars per year. Our areas of interest include the safe development of artificial intelligence, reducing catastrophic biorisk, improving institutions, economic growth, great power relations, effective altruism, and more. If you'd like to launch one of our proposed projects, or have another idea for a project in our areas of interest—please apply! Please submit your applications by March 21 to be considered in our first open funding round. We can't wait to see your applications! Some further details: On the same apply page, you can also express interest in working with us, recommend a grant or investment to us, or recommend a prize for us to launch. We fund non-profits and for-profits alike, so long as they are aligned with our mission. We aim to respond quickly, ask for the information that is needed and no more, and keep you posted on when to expect a final decision. We are willing to make big bets, and we respect grantee autonomy. There is no limit on how much you can apply for. You can read about our principles and approach to funding on our website. In addition to our request for projects, today we're launching: Our Regranting Program. We're offering discretionary budgets to independent grantmakers. Our hope is that regrantors will fund great people and projects that weren't on our radar! We've already invited the first cohort, and we're also opening up a public process to be considered as a regrantor. Our Project Ideas Competition. We're announcing a prize for new project ideas to add to our website—submit your ideas by next Monday (March 7)! Our team is Nick Beckstead (CEO), Leopold Aschenbrenner, Will MacAskill, and Ketan Ramakrishnan. About the FTX Foundation The Future Fund is part of the FTX Foundation, a philanthropic foundation funded primarily by Sam Bankman-Fried. When Sam was 20 years old, he set out to to “earn to give”: make as much money as he could, in order to give away everything he earned to charity. He initially worked as a trader, then founded FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange. FTX Foundation is also funded by major contributions from Caroline Ellison, Gary Wang, and Nishad Singh. Our 2022 plans For people who want to follow our work closely, here is some more on our initial focus and priorities. We are just getting started and we'd like to fund a lot of great projects quickly. So our primary goal for 2022 is to perform bold and decisive tests of highly scalable funding models. We think this is important for helping us make the most of our resources. The initial strategies we're testing are highly decentralized: The first strategy is to simply describe very clearly a broad range of projects we'd be excited to fund, and offer open applications for funding. We're hoping this generates many exciting proposals for us to fund. The second strategy we're testing is a regranting program. We hope this program will help us identify great grants that we would have missed, enable new people to launch exciting projects, and find and empower people who could be strong grantmakers. The third strategy we're considering is of...

EA - The Future Fund's Project Ideas Competition by Nick Beckstead

Justice For All With Jeff Bell

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 28, 2022 2:38

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: The Future Fund's Project Ideas Competition, published by Nick Beckstead on February 28, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. The FTX Foundation's Future Fund is a philanthropic fund making grants and investments to ambitious projects in order to improve humanity's long-term prospects. We have a longlist of project ideas that we'd be excited to help launch. We're now announcing a prize for new project ideas to add to this longlist. If you submit an idea, and we like it enough to add to the website, we'll pay you a prize of $5,000 (or more in exceptional cases). We'll also attribute the idea to you on the website (unless you prefer to be anonymous). All submissions must be received in the next week, i.e. by Monday, March 7, 2022. We are excited about this prize for two main reasons: We would love to add great ideas to our list of projects. We are excited about experimenting with prizes to jumpstart creative ideas. To participate, you can either Add your proposal as a comment to this post, or Fill in this form Please write your project idea in the same format as the project ideas on our website. Here's an example: Early detection center Biorisk and Recovery from Catastrophes By the time we find out about novel pathogens, they've already spread far and wide, as we saw with Covid-19. Earlier detection would increase the amount of time we have to respond to biothreats. Moreover, existing systems are almost exclusively focused on known pathogens—we could do a lot better by creating pathogen-agnostic systems that can detect unknown pathogens. We'd like to see a system that collects samples from wastewater or travelers, for example, and then performs a full metagenomic scan for anything that could be dangerous You can also provide further explanation, if you think the case for including your project idea will not be obvious to us on its face. Some rules and fine print: You may submit refinements of ideas already on our website, but these might receive only a portion of the full prize. At our discretion, we will award partial prizes for submissions that are proposed by multiple people, or require additional work for us to make viable. At our discretion, we will award larger prizes for submissions that we really like. Prizes will be awarded at the sole discretion of the Future Fund. We're happy to answer questions, though it might take us a few days to respond due to other programs and content we're launching right now. We're excited to see what you come up with! (Thanks to Owen Cotton-Barratt for helpful discussion and feedback.) Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org.

covid-19 project ideas recovery competition speech fund prizes ea rationalist beckstead

On Animal Wellness & Preventing Animal Cruelty with Scott Beckstead | Justice For All Ep.15 | LegalShield

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 13, 2022 44:25

On Animal Wellness & Preventing Animal Cruelty with Scott Beckstead | Justice For All Ep.15 | LegalShield Join @LegalShield CEO Jeff Bell as he chats with Scott Beckstead - the Director of Campaigns at Animal Wellness Action, an organization focused on preventing animal cruelty by promoting and enforcing good public policies. Scott has also served as the Mayor of Waldport Oregon (from 2002 to 2007), and served in a multitude of roles for the Humane Society of the United States. Scott was State Director and Equine Protection Specialist and Rural Outreach Director and he helped lead a successful ballot measure in 2016 to ban the trade of endangered wildlife in Oregon amongst many things. 00:00 Introduction 01:28 How did you become a lawyer and get involved in animal wellness? 05:33 Could you tell us more about the business side of the animal industry? 09:18 About mink farming and state and federal laws in the US 15:05 How did you halt the capture of the “onachiii??” Horses? 20:00 About meat production and the variables of animal life 23:27 Have you noticed students having a different opinion on animal management now? 29:44 What results have you seen from training law enforcement on how to work with animals? 35:48 What are your thoughts on the current discussion around cannabis and the law? 42:43 About defining law and the three strike rule #AnimalWellness #PreventAnimalCruelty #HumaneSociety #AnimalProtection #ProtectedSpecies #AnimalRights #JusticeForAll #Scott Beckstead #LegalShield Watch, listen and subscribe on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Read more about the LegalShield mission at https://bit.ly/2Wx69uD Head over to our website to learn more about the different ways LegalShield can help you! https://bit.ly/3iaoNko Follow Us on Social Media: --- Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/LegalShield/ --- LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/company/legalshieldofficial --- Twitter | https://twitter.com/legalshield --- Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/legalshield/ LegalShield, a consumer brand under PPLSI, is leading the quest to provide equal access to legal advice, protection, and representation to every human, everywhere. Serving 4.5 million individuals and 140,000 businesses, we are the world's largest platform for legal, identity, and reputation management services. Founded in 1972, we provide the tools and services needed to affordably live a just and secure life. We’re using technology and innovative products and partnerships to transform how and where people receive legal care by connecting members to our expansive network of trusted, qualified attorneys and law firms right at the palm of your hands.

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Ep. 33: How Our Sonic Sausage Gets Made (Mack Hagood w/ Dario Llinares & Lori Beckstead)

Phantom Power: Sounds about Sound

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 11, 2022 62:37

This episode, we take you behind the scenes of Phantom Power. Producer/host Mack Hagood was invited by Dario Llinares and Lori Beckstead to be a guest on their show, The Podcast Studies Podcast. As you may or may not know, there are a lot of academics out there not only making podcast themselves but also studying podcasts and podcasting as a genre and an industry--and Dario and Lori are in that camp. Their podcast is a tremendous resource for those who want to understand this emerging academic field. In the interview, Dario prompted Mack to go pretty deep into the production of Phantom Power, exploring the techniques and philosophy behind the show, as well as the potential Mack sees for podcasting as a format for generating scholarly knowledge. And after the interview, Lori had some intriguing comments about what counts as "original scholarship" when we do it in sound. So, as we prepare our 2022 season of Phantom Power, we thought we'd share this discussion of how our sonic sausage gets made. And we'll be back next month with a new original episode! Things we talk about in this episode: Hush: Media and Sonic Self-Control by Mack Hagood (Duke, 2019) "Emotional Rescue" by Mack Hagood (Real Life, December 3, 2020) "The Scholarly Podcast: Form and Function in Audio Academia" by Mack Hagood in Saving New Sounds: Podcast Preservation and Historiography, Jeremy Wade Morris and Eric Hoyt, Eds (University of Michigan Press, 2021). Ep. 8: Test Subjects (Mara Mills), Phantom Power Ep. 29 | R. Murray Schafer (1933-2021) Pt.1, Phantom Power. Ep. 30 | R. Murray Schafer Pt. 2: Critiques & Contradictions, Phantom Power.

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Shelly Kagan - readings for Ethics and the Future seminar (spring 2021) by velutvulpes

The Nonlinear Library: EA Forum Top Posts

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 11, 2021 11:53

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is:Shelly Kagan - readings for Ethics and the Future seminar (spring 2021) , published by velutvulpes on the LessWrong. This is a linkpost for This is a list of the readings from Shelly Kagan's seminar, “Ethics and the Future,” taught at Yale in Spring 2021. See the original linked Google Doc for full introduction. Background on Existential Risks: 1. Toby Ord, The Precipice, Chapters 3-6 and Appendices C and D (about 124 pages) The Basic Case for Longtermism: 1. Perhaps start with this very brief overview: Todd, “Future Generations and Their Moral Significance” (about 7 pages), which can be found online at:/ 2. Then look at the somewhat longer (but still breezy) exposition in Ord, The Precipice, Intro and Chapters 1-2, and Appendix E (65 pgs.) 3. Then read Chapters 1 and 3 from Nick Beckstead's dissertation, On the Overwhelming Importance of Shaping the Far Future (about 44 pages) 4. Finally, Greaves and MacAskill, “The Case for Strong Longtermism” (about 25). That will come to about 140 pages, most of which reads fairly quickly. If you want even more (consider what is listed next as recommended but not required)--look at: 5. Bostrom, “Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority” (17 pages), and also 6. Bostrom, “Astronomical Waste” (10 pages) 7. Finally, there is a passage from Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons, that is quoted regularly in the longtermist literature (for example, by Beckstead). If you would like to see it in its original context, it is on pp. 453-4 (2 pages). All of these things can be found in the Files folder for the class, other than the Todd, the Ord, and the Parfit. The Social Discount Rate: 1. Start with Cowen, Discount Rates Table, a short passage from his Stubborn Attachments, which gives a quick sense of how even a “modest” discount rate effectively wipes out the significance of the long term future (1 page). 2. Then Parfit, Reasons and Persons, Appendix F (7 pages), for arguments against the social discount rate. 3. Cowen and Parfit, “Against the Social Discount Rate,” (from Peter Laslett & James S. Fishkin (eds.) Justice between age groups and generations, Yale University Press: New Haven, 1992, pp. 144–161) repeats much of the Parfit but gives some additional arguments. To (mostly) avoid the repetition, only read the two introductory pages (pp. 144-145) and the section on “economic arguments” (pp. 150-158). Though the first such economic argument (on opportunity costs) very closely follows the earlier Parfit, it does add some extra details. (11 pages.) 4. Then Ord, The Precipice, Appendix A (6 pages) for further discussion. 5. Next, read Greaves, “Discounting for Public Policy,” section 7, which is pages 404-409 (5 pages). That's the bit on the “pure” discount rate. (The rest of the paper isn't required, but is recommended for anyone who would like a thorough (though a bit technical) survey of some of the economics debates on the discount rate.) 6. Finally, Mogensen, “The Only Ethical Argument for Positive Delta” (33 pages). That's about 62 pages. 7. If you are interested in further discussion of the discount rate from an economist's perspective, you could take a look at Broome, “Discounting the Future,” (29 pages) though this is primarily on discounting with regard to future resources, not pure discounting of future welfare, so it is only recommended. Population Ethics I: Parfit, Reasons and Persons, Chapters 16-18, and Appendix G (70 pages). Population Ethics II: 1. Start with Boonin, “How to Solve the Non-Identity Problem” (30 pages) 2. Next, Harman, “Can We Harm and Benefit in Creating?” (25 pages) 3. Then McMahan, “Climate Change, War, and the Non-Identity Problem” (27) 4. Beckstead, Overwhelming Importance, Chapter 4 (23 pages) 5. Ord, The Precipice, Appendix B (6 pages) 6. Finally, a few pages from Kagan, “Singer on Killing Animals...

Request for proposals for projects in AI alignment that work with deep learning systems by abergal, Nick_Beckstead

The Nonlinear Library: Alignment Forum Top Posts

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 5, 2021 9:24

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Request for proposals for projects in AI alignment that work with deep learning systems, published by abergal, Nick_Beckstead on the AI Alignment Forum. As part of our work on reducing potential risks from advanced artificial intelligence, Open Philanthropy is seeking proposals for projects working with deep learning systems that could help us understand and make progress on AI alignment: the problem of creating AI systems more capable than their designers that robustly try to do what their designers intended. We are interested in proposals that fit within certain research directions, described below and given as posts in the rest of this sequence, that we think could contribute to reducing the risks we are most concerned about. Anyone is eligible to apply, including those working in academia, industry, or independently. Applicants are invited to submit proposals for up to $1M in total funding covering up to 2 years. We may invite grantees who do outstanding work to apply for larger and longer grants in the future. Proposals are due January 10, 2022. Submit a proposal here. If you have any questions, please contact ai-alignment-rfp@openphilanthropy.org. Our view of alignment risks from advanced artificial intelligence This section was written by Nick Beckstead and Asya Bergal, and may not be representative of the views of Open Philanthropy as a whole. We think the research directions below would be pursued more fruitfully by researchers who understand our background views about alignment risks from advanced AI systems, and who understand why we think these research directions could help mitigate these risks. In brief: We believe it is plausible that later this century, advanced AI systems will do the vast majority of productive labor more cheaply than human workers can. We are worried about scenarios where AI systems more capable than humans acquire undesirable objectives that make them pursue and maintain power in unintended ways, causing humans to lose most or all influence over the future. We think it may be technically challenging to create powerful systems that we are highly certain have desirable objectives. If it is significantly cheaper, faster, or otherwise easier to create powerful systems that may have undesirable objectives, there may be economic and military incentives to deploy those systems instead. We are interested in research directions that make it easier to create powerful systems that we are highly certain have desirable objectives. In this request for proposals, we are focused on scenarios where advanced AI systems are built out of large neural networks. One approach to ensuring large neural networks have desirable objectives might be to provide them with reward signals generated by human evaluators. However, such a setup could fail in multiple ways: Inadequate human feedback: It's possible that in order to train advanced AI systems with desirable objectives, we will need to provide reward signals for highly complex behaviors that have consequences that are too difficult or time-consuming for humans to evaluate. Deceiving human evaluators: It may be particularly difficult to provide good reward signals to an AI system that learns undesirable objectives during training and has a sophisticated model of humans and the training setup. Such a system may “deceive” the humans, i.e. deliberately behave in ways that appear superficially good but have undesirable consequences. Competent misgeneralization: Even if an AI system has an abundant supply of good reward signals and behaves consistently with desirable objectives on the training distribution, there could be contexts outside of the training distribution where the system retains its capabilities but pursues an undesirable objective. Deceptive misgeneralization: Rather than subtly misbehaving during ...

ai speech projects alignment ea proposals deep learning applicants deceptive competent inadequate deceiving rationalist learning systems ai alignment beckstead open philanthropy

Ep. 57: Dr Joel Beckstead - More on Vulnerability

Mequell Buck: Thriving with Mental Illness

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 5, 2021 52:42

Mequell and Adam are joined by clinical psychologist Dr. Joel Beckstead to discuss more in depth about how to be vulnerable in a healthy way. He answers listener questions about how to respond, appropriate ways to share and how to come out still feeling okay even if the response isn't what we wanted. He discusses how to have successful relationships and deep connections regardless of the type of struggles each person comes into the relationship with. Someone doesn't have to "get mental illness" to connect with you they just have to be willing to come into your world and see things from your perspective which is the same way we can support and connect with other people too. Most importantly vulnerability is a lifelong process for both those sharing and for those receiving. Great advice Joel! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/mequell-buck/message

vulnerability beckstead

Halee Beckstead Watters ON: Reuniting with her mother years after she had given up custody. She shares a powerful story of Survival and Forgiveness. Halee and Mom Cori are now best of Friends!

Come Towards Delight

Play Episode Listen Later May 25, 2021 92:41

Halee is an incredibly strong woman who faced more as a young girl than most do in a full length lifetime. This is a really neat episode as her mother, Cori Valdez, was on Episode 35, and her wife Chelsea Watters was on Episode 25, so if you would like to here the version on both sides of the story it is absolutely worth it listening to both of them share. Both Halee and Cori share their experiences with their very own Pain, Shame, and Challenges that their separation brought into their lives. She is an incredibly strong woman and has had to be even as a little girl to survive what she has been through. As you listen in to her share her experiences you will see clearly that she had no choice but to "roll with the punches" for the majority of her youth. Moving from apartment to apartment, never really having a place of her own to call home, and the divorce of her parents at an early age, didn't provide Halee with much opportunity for security and structure in her life. This is when Tragedy struck... Halee's mother Cori was beaten nearly to death in a church parking lot by her Step Father, who left her to die. By the Grace of God a Father and Son out for a walk later that night saw Cori laying on the ground and called 911. You can imagine the Trauma this would bring not only to Cori, but also to Halee. Because of this event and the pain Cori endured she became addicted to drugs to help her cope, and her life became unmanageable to the point that she felt she had to sign away her rights to Halee and her little sister. Halee describes the last time that she ever saw her mother as a young girl and how she watched her walkaway for what could have easily been forever. Halee was so young she didn't know how to process feelings of abandonment and as young children do, she held onto hope that one day she would be with her mom again, but the pain was there and it was real as she often wondered why she wasn't good enough for her mother to return into her life. Hearing Cori's Episode and being able to feel and understand the pain that she was going through, and feeling unaccepted even by her own family, makes this story incredibly compelling. It is nothing short of a miracle that Halee and Cori were able to reunite years later. After hearing both sides to the story, I believe that both of them manifested hope that they would be reunited one day even though they didn't know how it was possible. Never doubt the faith and hope of a little child. Years later as Halee's grandmother was in the hospital nearing death and as she went to the hospital to say her goodbye's, her mother Cori, out of respect, communicated to Halee through a family member that she would leave out of respect, and Halee's empathetic response to that truly shows that she had wisdom beyond her years as a result of enduring so many heavy and difficult things. She let her family know that her mom should stay and that she would come anyway. A short time later Haylee found herself standing face to face with her mother, and the feeling that overwhelmed her and her mother was love and a sense of longing to be together again. Haylee said Forgiveness came immediately, and she didn't even have to think about it. Cori and Halee are now best of friends, they truly love each other and have each others backs always. They have been able to hear each others stories, process the pain they both dealt with, and come together in love to be a family again. I am so grateful to know Halee. She is an incredible person and has such a kind, good, and compassionate heart, that said, this is another of the countless examples I have seen in my life, how a persons trials, challenges, and pain create a tender heart and an empathetic soul capable of showing up for others when they are hurting. Halee, you are incredible, I am inspired by your strength, your faith to keep going. We live in a world that tells us "Nice people finish last", but your story is a witness that this idea is completely false... You are as kind a person as I have met, and because you held onto hope and love rather than bitterness and anger, things shifted in your world causing miracles to happen around you, bringing healing into you and your mothers life, love into your own, and the sense of belonging that we all hope for during our lives on earth. Way to go! Thank you for sharing your story with us and for inspiring me and so many. I am better because of the opportunity to learn from you.

god father mother moving pain challenges forgiveness trauma powerful shame tragedy survival custody reuniting given up stepfathers watters best of friends halee beckstead

Fireside Chat | Nick Beckstead

future oxford university fireside chat humanity institute beckstead open philanthropy

Play Episode Listen Later May 21, 2021 25:09

Nick Beckstead oversees a substantial part of Open Philanthropy’s research and grantmaking related to global catastrophic risk reduction. Previously, Nick led the creation of their grantmaking programs in scientific research and effective altruism. Prior to that, he was a research fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University. This talk was taken from … Fireside Chat | Nick Beckstead Read More »

Brian Beckstead: Tales From Local Ultra Runner Turned Shoe Designer

KPCW The Mountain Life

Play Episode Listen Later May 19, 2021 24:23

On The Mountain Life , local entrepreneur and ultra runner Brian Beckstead joins the show to talk about his rumming shoe company. Beckstead is the co-founder of Altra Running Shoes, which he launched in 2010 as a college student. The inspiration for the new shoe design came from Beckstead wanting to avoid the painful blisters he got while running the Wasatch 100.

local tales shoes designers ultra runner wasatch beckstead

Utilitarianism and Its Flavors with Nick Beckstead

The Valmy

Play Episode Listen Later May 17, 2021 90:42

Podcast: Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg (LS 41 · TOP 1.5% )Episode: Utilitarianism and Its Flavors with Nick BecksteadRelease date: 2021-05-16What is utilitarianism? And what are the different flavors of utilitarianism? What are some alternatives to utilitarianism for people that find it generally plausible but who can't stomach some of its counterintuitive conclusions? For the times when people do use utilitarianism to make moral decisions, when is it appropriate to perform actual calculations (as opposed to making estimations or even just going with one's "gut")? And what is "utility" anyway? Nick Beckstead is a Program Officer for the Open Philanthropy Project, which he joined in 2014. He works on global catastrophic risk reduction. Previously, he led the creation of Open Phil's grantmaking program in scientific research. Prior to that, he was a research fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University. He received a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Rutgers University, where he wrote a dissertation on the importance of shaping the distant future. You can find out more about him on his website.

future philosophy oxford university rutgers university flavors utilitarianism program officer humanity institute beckstead open philanthropy project open phil

Utilitarianism and Its Flavors (with Nick Beckstead)

Play Episode Listen Later May 16, 2021 90:42

What is utilitarianism? And what are the different flavors of utilitarianism? What are some alternatives to utilitarianism for people that find it generally plausible but who can't stomach some of its counterintuitive conclusions? For the times when people do use utilitarianism to make moral decisions, when is it appropriate to perform actual calculations (as opposed to making estimations or even just going with one's "gut")? And what is "utility" anyway?Nick Beckstead is a Program Officer for the Open Philanthropy Project, which he joined in 2014. He works on global catastrophic risk reduction. Previously, he led the creation of Open Phil's grantmaking program in scientific research. Prior to that, he was a research fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University. He received a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Rutgers University, where he wrote a dissertation on the importance of shaping the distant future. You can find out more about him on his website.[Read more]

future philosophy oxford university rutgers university flavors utilitarianism program officer humanity institute beckstead open philanthropy project open phil

Utilitarianism and Its Flavors (with Nick Beckstead)

Play Episode Listen Later May 16, 2021 90:42

future philosophy oxford university rutgers university flavors utilitarianism program officer humanity institute beckstead open philanthropy project open phil

Utilitarianism and Its Flavors with Nick Beckstead

Play Episode Listen Later May 16, 2021 90:42

What is utilitarianism? And what are the different flavors of utilitarianism? What are some alternatives to utilitarianism for people that find it generally plausible but who can't stomach some of its counterintuitive conclusions? For the times when people do use utilitarianism to make moral decisions, when is it appropriate to perform actual calculations (as opposed to making estimations or even just going with one's "gut")? And what is "utility" anyway? Nick Beckstead is a Program Officer for the Open Philanthropy Project, which he joined in 2014. He works on global catastrophic risk reduction. Previously, he led the creation of Open Phil’s grantmaking program in scientific research. Prior to that, he was a research fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University. He received a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Rutgers University, where he wrote a dissertation on the importance of shaping the distant future. You can find out more about him on his website.

future philosophy oxford university rutgers university flavors utilitarianism program officer humanity institute beckstead open philanthropy project open phil

Utilitarianism and Its Flavors with Nick Beckstead

New Aural Cultures Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later May 16, 2021 90:42

future philosophy oxford university rutgers university flavors utilitarianism program officer humanity institute beckstead open philanthropy project open phil

Branded Podcasts and Audience Connection with Dan Misener (in conversation with Lori Beckstead)

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 5, 2021 44:05

Guest host Lori Beckstead interviews Dan Misener, head of Audience Development at the branded podcasting agency Pacific Content, and host/producer of the delightful podcast Grown Ups Read Things They Wrote As Kids. Dan explains what branded podcasts are and the various considerations relating to connecting to podcast audiences, such as understanding 'podcast neighbourhoods', recognizing that a potential listener will see your podcast before they're able to listen to it, and that radio (and podcasting) is all about people talking to people about people. Episode notes: Guest host Lori Beckstead is an Associate Professor of Sound Media at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada where she teaches podcasting, radio broadcasting, and other courses related to sound studies and audio production. Lori was a guest on a previous episode of New Aural Cultures, talking about using podcasting as a form of peer review, and about her research examining podcasting as a medium. Dan Miser's insightful writing about podcasting can be found at https://medium.com/@misener. Dan talks about Choiceology with Katy Milkman as an example of a branded podcast. Dan's thoughts on podcast neighbourhoods are here: https://blog.pacific-content.com/the-podcast-ecosystem-is-made-up-of-distinct-neighborhoods-9e4ec105026e and here: https://blog.pacific-content.com/how-to-find-podcast-niches-you-didnt-even-know-existed-c27849dca0a And he made a really neat data visualization of podcast cover art here: https://blog.pacific-content.com/the-podcast-artwork-rainbow-7a83e4316931 If you you would like a text transcript of this episode please contact Dario Llinares: d.llinares@brighton.ac.uk --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/newauralcultures/message

canada podcasts toronto associate professor audience branded ryerson university katy milkman audience development pacific content choiceology beckstead dan misener new aural cultures

EP3 - Brian Beckstead - Co-founder of Altra Shoes

Throwing Sparks with Nate Sanel

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 9, 2020 76:40

Brian Beckstead is the Co-founder of Altra Shoes. He is also a long distance runner, fly fisherman and outdoorsman. While working as a running store employee, he and the other co founder started modifying shoes to help with their customers running injuries. After pitching their innovative approach to many shoe companies and getting nowhere, they decided to form a company to produce them on their own. Now 9 years later Altra is a major brand in the space. In this interview Brian talks very candidly about managing the rapid growth of Altra, and the struggle of trying to maintain a good life/work balance. It is a discussion that will resonate with a lot of entrepreneurs.

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Episode #67: Brian Beckstead, Co-Founder of Altra Running

Clean Sport Collective

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 20, 2020 45:02

One of the best ways to support #cleansport is to buy products from companies that have signed the Clean Sport pledge. Altra Running is one of those companies. In this episode, Shanna and Kara interview Altra co-founder Brian Beckstead. Brian shares the story of how Altra was born from his entry into the sport by following the footsteps of his older sisters to meeting his co-founder Golden Harper on the first day of high school cross-country. He and Golden went on to work together in a specialty running store where they began to modify shoes at home to balance the cushioning and provide more room for the toes to splay in the forefoot. They then tried to give their ideas away for free to established shoe companies at the time, who wouldn't listen or who ridiculed their ideas in some cases. With no one responding, they decided to just build the shoes themselves and Altra Running was born. Brian gives several of the behind-the-scenes stories in the roller coaster journey that led Altra to be the success story it is today, including the spiritual moment near the end of a 100-mile race when he realized that the company was going to make it. Finally, Brian talks about what companies like Altra can do to support clean sport including the creative ways they are choosing to sponsor clean athletes and build the running community in grassroots ways. The fight for clean sport needs more companies like Altra to step up and set the tone with a zero tolerance policy for doping. Thank you to Brian and the full team at Altra for doing their part.

co founders golden altra beckstead altra running golden harper

Brian Beckstead

The Low Carb Runner Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 2, 2020 33:21

Brian Beckstead, one of the founders of Altra footwear, shares with us why he wanted to create a shoe company at the young age of 27. We also dive into some of the struggles he faced in the early stages, as well as "the moment" when he knew that Altra was going to make it. Instagram: @brian_altra

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Ep. 13: Dr. Joel Beckstead

Mequell Buck: Thriving with Mental Illness

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 28, 2020 52:09

Clinical psychologist Dr. Joel Beckstead joins Mequell and Adam to discuss the number one health care crisis in America. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/mequell-buck/message

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Episode 54 - Jill Lamping

Salt Lake 2002 Retrospective

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 4, 2020 63:02

Jill Lamping (formerly Beckstead) takes us all the way back to the Salt Lake 2002 Olympic bid in a fascinating episode, with wonderful stories of the Torch Relay, Opening Ceremony and, yes, Rancho Bowling Lanes (recorded 23 July 2020). A breakdown of...

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In conversation with Professor Lori Beckstead

New Aural Cultures Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 18, 2020 65:21

Dario met Lori Beckstead when they both delivered keynote lectures at the Podcasting Poetics Conference in Mainz, Germany last year (and a lifetime ago). They immediately shared an interest in exploring the potential of podcasting within an academic context. In this episode, they explore this topic in detail by differentiating between podcasting as an object of study and podcasting as a tool for academic research. The context of this is a project that Lori is undertaking which explores the potential for podcasting to be utilised for academic peer review in a way that is more developmentally useful to the research process. In a trial session held last week, Dario acted as the peer reviewer to Lori's research on what she calls the 'genetic codes' of podcasting. They reflect on that session as well as discussing many of the key issues that pervade current thinking on sound communication. Dario and Lori are joined by her research assistants Valentina Passos Gastaldo and Anna Ashitey who give their insights into some of the current trends with regards to the use and status of podcasting pedagogy and research in the context of digital culture. Show Notes Lori Beckstead is a professor of audio & digital media in the RTA School of Media at Ryerson University, where she teaches courses in radio production, sound design, and digital media production. Also a sound artist, she has a particular interest in soundscape recording and interactive installation art. Lori spent ten years in hardscrabble yet rewarding work at several campus & community radio stations around Ontario, and has done freelance work for CBC Radio as a producer, online journalist, web producer and reporter. In addition to holding three undergraduate degrees--in Science, Radio & Television Arts, and Education--she also has a Master of Media Arts & Production from the University of Technology, Sydney (Australia). As Program Leader for the Canadian Women in Communications/Corus Career Accelerator from 2009 to 2012, Lori developed and delivered an intensive professional development program in digital media and technology for women across Canada each year. Lori served as Associate Chair in the RTA School of Media from 2010 to 2014. Twitter: @lbeckste Valentina Passos Gastaldo is a fourth-year Media Production undergraduate student at Ryerson University. She is Lori's Beckstead research assistant for the 'Podcasting as Open Peer Review' project and she hopes to focus her studies on the use of media for knowledge mobilization and research dissemination. Anna Ashitey is currently in her fourth year of a Bachelor of Media Production in the RTA School of Media at Ryerson University. As a research assistant, Anna has worked alongside Lori Beckstead on research projects pertaining to Podcasting, Women in Radio and Diversity in Sewing Patterns. Anna hopes to further her academic career by completing her masters in research pertaining to podcasting as an education tool for children with learning accommodations. Podcast Recommendations The Walking Podcast Missing and Murdered: Finding Cleo Ologies Research in Action Podcast Tai Asks Why --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/newauralcultures/message

Fixing the Broken Running Shoe Industry ft. Altra Running Co-Founder Brian Beckstead

Between the Reps with Brooke Ence & Jeanna Cianciarulo

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 23, 2020 67:08

Today we welcome Brian Beckstead, the Co-Founder and Head of Strategy/PR of Altra Running, a shoe company that creates zero-drop footwear with a natural foot-shape design. Altra Footwear was launched in 2009 by Brian and Golden Harper, partnering with Pulse Labs, an engineering firm at Brigham Young University. They chose the name "Altra" based on the Latin word "altera", which means "to fix or mend something that is broken." From their humble origins cutting up existing shoes and re-soling them in a toaster oven, Altra is now sold all over the U.S. and in 55 countries around the world. To learn more about Altra, go to: https://www.altrarunning.com To check out Brian on Insta: @brian_altra To check out Altra on Insta: @altrarunning To watch Between the Reps podcast videos on YouTube: https://bit.ly/BTRYouTube Send us emails at: betweenthereps@gmail.com For more Brooke on Insta: @brookeence For more Jeanna on Insta: @jeanna_cianciarulo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Brian Beckstead: Altra - From Hacked Up Shoes To Industry Leader - R4R 183

The Running for Real Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 24, 2020 71:31

The first pair of Altra Running shoes probably don’t look anything like what you have in mind. In fact, the first several hundred pairs of running shoes that co-founders Golden and Brian worked on had a variety of logos on them. Altering other running shoes is how they got their start in the shoe-making business and how they came up with their name, Altra. With a goal to fix the running shoe industry, Altra did whatever was necessary to help runners feel great and perform well. Meet Brian Brian Beckstead is a lifelong runner, but running hasn’t always been an enjoyable experience for him. He ran competitively in college but sustained four stress fractures in a short period of time that stopped him in his tracks. He took a year off of running about that time, and decided to pursue other hobbies such as fishing. However, he never escaped the running community, working at a running store all the while. Zero Drop After Brian finished college, his friend Golden took over the running store they had been working at, and Brian left to work for another company. Not long after, Brian received a call from Golden telling him that he had altered a shoe by cutting off the heel and noticed how much better the running mechanics were. Soon, they came up with the term “Zero Drop” and were using a variety of methods to remove the heels from shoes including bandsaws and belt sanders. Golden began suggesting this alteration to chronically-injured runners that were coming into the store, and the reviews were outstanding. Longtime injuries were disappearing, and before they knew it, Golden and Brian had altered 1000 pairs of shoes for customers. Altra is Born At the time, they didn’t really look at these alterations as a business opportunity. They simply wanted to help runners. Soon they realized that shoe brands were not interested in changing their shoes to incorporate the positives of zero drop. If these shoes were going to be made, Brian and friends either needed to buy more bandsaws, or create their own shoes. One thing led to another; soon Golden found an advanced prototype company in Oregon while Brian landed their first angel investor. “We got really lucky,” says Brian, referring to the timing of the investment. It was 2009 and startup investors were hard to come by. However, everything seemed to work out, and one inheritance and a lot of hard work later, they had their first pair of Altra running shoes—this time with their brand name on the side. Fixing the Running Industry In Latin, Altera is “to fix or mend something that is broken.” From the beginning, that has been the goal of Altra. Even before it existed as a shoe company, its founders were doing unconventional things to try to help runners. Creating a wide toe box by skipping the bottom two eyelets when lacing a shoe, or literally cutting off pieces of a shoe—these were simply the best improvements they could do at the time. Now Altra is a global company, with resources to make the best possible shoe for all runners. Their goal is to question and challenge the status quo in the running industry in order to help everyone run injury free. “[Altra] is not for the elite, fast runners,” says Brian, “Beginning runners are our favorite people to get into Altras.” Helping runners is the goal, and they have been willing to challenge many norms in that pursuit. A Changing Industry The running industry is changing and Altra has definitely been a part of that thus far. Nearly every big brand company that makes running shoes has some type of zero drop option. Creating a shoe that encourages great running mechanics is just the beginning. Treating those they sponsor with equality is hopefully something else that starts to gain momentum in the running world. One of Altra’s core values is “disruptive.” Sometimes not a popular term among their investors, it can have a bit of a negative connotation. But the goal isn’t to be disruptive just for disruptive’s sake; it is the way to create big change. This has proved successful for Altra thus far, and should only create more positive change in the future. Resources: Brian on Instagram Brian on Facebook Altra Running Shoes Thank you to my wonderful sponsors Athletic Greens and Tracksmith for sponsoring this episode of the Running for Real Podcast. Athletic Greens is a simple and easy way to get 75 vitamins, minerals, and whole food source ingredients. Just to help my immune system be stronger and greater! It is so simple to do and it taste good as well. Now you can get a free travel pack with 20 servings with your first purchase, Visit here to learn more! Tracksmith is a Boston based running clothing company that truly cares about the quality and care of their running clothes. Running can be a demanding lifestyle for our clothes, they definitely go through the wear and tear to where we may be purchasing new clothes constantly. Tracksmith designers truly work with the finest materials and think of you as a runner in mind with spots for your keys, phone, and fuel. You can get 15% off your first purchase, click here and enter code TINA. One of the things that I truly LOVE to do every week to get to know my audience better is my Newsletter I will cherish and guard your email. It is a way that I can get to know you all and to build a true connection with you, as social media has been tough on me lately. I know how annoying it is when you sign up for something and suddenly find yourself on 50 other email lists. This is just you and me. I promise. If you are interested go here to sign up! Thanks for Listening! I hope you enjoyed today's episode. To share your thoughts: Leave a note in the comment section below. Join the Running for Real Facebook Group and share your thoughts on the episode (or future guests you would like to hear from) Share this show on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest. To help out the show: Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews will really help me climb up the iTunes rankings and I promise, I read every single one. Not sure how to leave a review or subscribe, you can find out here. Thank you to Brian, I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the show.

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24: Don't Melt Your Shoes at Home, Kids: The Altra Story (Brian Beckstead)

Humans Outside

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 16, 2020 42:44

Sometimes you follow your gut for problem solving. And sometimes you follow your … feet? That, at least, is what Biran Beckstead did when he co-founded the running shoe company Altra. Looking to solve both his own running shoe problems and the problems of clients hitting up a store where he sold running shoes, he worked with a partner to design a shoe that did what they needed. What can designing a running shoe teach about building a business? And how does staying in touch with the outdoors make a difference? Brian shares his secrets as well as a few tips about shoe design (hint: it involves a toaster oven) in this fascinating episode. Find Altra online, and follow Brian’s ultra running and fishing adventures on Instagram. Mentioned in the show: Altra ShoesAltra EscalanteCross country runningBunions Neuromas Hammer toesMount MarathonLaura VanderkamBryce Canyon National ParkOrem, UtahFly fishingUltra Trail Mount FujiNew Zealand Favorite Gear: Altra Lone Peak Shoes & Katadyn BeFree Water Filtration System Most Essential Gear: Positive Attitude Affiliate links included above. ----- Register for our newsletter for a chance to win a free Humans Outside decal: https://humansoutside.com/contact-us/ Don’t forget to follow @HumansOutside on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/humansoutside/ Share your own outdoor life with the hashtag #humansoutside365. Connect with us on Facebook: https://humansoutside.com/ How are you spending your outdoor time? Leave us a message and we might feature you on our weekly Outdoor Diary episode. Call ‪(360) 362-5317‬.

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Episode 1276 - Critical Mass Radio Show - March 12, 2020 Ken Beckstead

Critical Mass Radio Show

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 12, 2020 23:05

Do you know how much litter is made up solely of cigarette butts? When Ken Beckstead realized the shocking percentage, he saw an opportunity to make a change. By developing Butts Only Box receptacles and founding the Butts To Watts program, Ken has been able to reduce litter and landfill waste, as well as create renewable energy. Ken joined our show to share his entrepreneurial journey.

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Ultra Living with Brian Beckstead

EXTRAordinary Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 11, 2020 82:01

Disrupting an industry is not an easy task, but then again neither is running 100 miles. But that didn’t stop a couple of guys from Orem, UT from doing both. Growing up at the base of Mt. Timpanogas, these cross-country kids spent their youth working at their local running store. After struggling with their own shoe dilemmas, the experimenting began, and the idea of a form-fitting, zero drop shoe was born. After trying to give to the idea away to the top shoe companies and being turned down by all of them, they were so sure they had something good, the trio decided to do it on their own. And the result is a shoe company that completely changed to the game, particularly in endurance running. Redesigning footwear for the endurance community, Altra Shoes not only created a cult-like following but also found a home with the greater population. Creating a shoe that is actually in the shape of a foot and accounting for the slower gait of a long-distance runner, Altra shoes inadvertently began appealing to the masses and these more casual runners have been buying them in droves. The resulting explosive growth and religious following over the past decade have proven that these guys really have changed the game. But in the process, the game change for Brian as well. Going from college grad to company president in an incredibly short amount of time, he had to develop the leadership skills to grow the company to scale despite very little background or executive training. He was up for the challenge and saw the company continue to grow as a result. But, despite all their success and the explosive growth, Brian found himself in a tailspin with the purchase and relocation of the company. With his life now in limbo and his company in flux, Brian did the one thing he always struggled to do…. Ask for help. Both with the business but also for himself as well. In doing so, not only did he get the help he needed, but he was able to finally take the time to craft the lifestyle he had strayed away from. He reevaluated his life, figured out what He needed, and asked for it. Now Brian has turned the page, has a new role within the company, and lives life on his terms creating a lifestyle we can all be envious of. Hear all about his journey, ultra-racing, and some cool fishing stories. Check out how he has created an Ultra life, in my recent conversation with the co-founder of Altra Shoes, Brian Beckstead.

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Altra Running Shoes with Co-Founder Brian Beckstead

The Backpacking Experience

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 17, 2020 48:31

If you're not familiar with the history and story of Altra Running, then grab yourself a drink and kick back. Brian Beckstead, Co-Founder of Altra Running joins the podcast to talk about how Altra started and how it has become a giant in the footwear industry today. Brian and I have known each other for many years, and enjoyed a short trip down memory lane in this episode. We talk about his background, and his passion for fly fishing as well. Huge thank you to Brian for coming onto the podcast to share his story and the story of Altra! Follow Brian on Instagram, @ultrafishing Want to chat more about the podcast, or got questions? Email me, backcountryexposure@gmail.com, or follow and message me on Instagram, @backpackingexperiencepodcast This episode is sponsored Art Of The Trek. Check them out for custom trip planning guides and more. http://www.artofthetrek.com The Backpacking Experience Podcast is supported by the Backcountry Exposure YouTube channel. Subscribe to the channel for more backpacking and outdoor content. http://www.youtube.com/backcountryexposure --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thebackpackingexperience/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/thebackpackingexperience/support

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EPISODE 39 with Ali Beckstead

VERY COOL! with Tyler Q

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 15, 2020 67:50

THE. PODCAST. IS. BACK. That's all ya gotta know. We're back and we're bring the goddamn heat on this one. We got a full blown NURSE on this one. My friend Ali stops by and tells me about growing up in Provo (one of us), learning to become and expert hair stylist, having kids, working in the NICU, nursing, raising kids and a whole lot more. Easily one of my favorite chats I've had so far. So buckle up guys, the podcast is comin staight for the dome LET'S GOOOOOOO!

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AAA277 Why you Should tell Everyone you know About what it is you do - Adam Beckstead

Creative Real Estate Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 29, 2019 31:56

In this podcast, you will learn: How to analyze your business and decide when to sell How to make the transition from single-family to multifamily How to hire solid property managers How to determine if you should syndicate deals How to capitalize off of other peoples strengths in a syndication How to get the word out about what you do How to get in front of high net-worth individuals How to offer as much value as possible How to strengthen partnerships with investors You can connect with Adam Beckstead at: welkinequity.com And please go to iTunes to leave us a rating and write a review. Each review helps us reach a larger audience with your episode. Don't forget to check out our website RealBlueSpruce.com or follow Adam Triple A Adams on Facebook! Raising Money Summit use promo code "PODCAST" to save money on your ticket. Sponsor: Think Multifamily (https://thinkmultifamily.com/podcast)

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How to live a tax-deductible life with Barbara Beckstead Burnett (MLP034)

Mitchell Levy Presents AHA Moments

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 18, 2019 45:18

In this episode, Mitchell Levy and co-host Josh Jones interviewed Barbara Beckstead Burnett where she shared the important things you need to think about and act upon to achieve a tax-deductible life. Barbara Beckstead Burnett is the owner/CEO at Robinson Burnett and Assoc. Inc. which was established in 2008 in the greater Salt Lake area. The company consists of professionals who have technical expertise in the field of taxation (individual, business and trusts) as well as in QuickBooks, tax seminars, payroll and financial consultation, Offer In Compromise services and company set ups with small businesses. Many of their clients work with direct sales all over the United States and they offer them customized services and tools for their particular industry. Barbara is also an expert financial analyst who help individuals and companies make business decisions. Connect to Barbara Burnett Beckstead on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/barbara-beckstead-burnett-68659814. Josh Jones's door-to-door (D2D) career began with a 2 year service mission for the LDS church. Shortly thereafter, he spent 3 years selling alarms and smart home tech for Vivint Inc. For nearly 4 years after that he has been selling and managing a sales team for Vivint Solar. Josh has worked in CA, AZ and CT. He has personally installed nearly 3 MW. In 2017 Josh's team installed around 5MW. The crowning achievement of his career thus far is authoring two books on sales and achieving off-the-charts success. The titles are "$300K @ 26" and "Don't Knock it Till You Knock it". A fundamental belief Josh has is, as Zig Ziglar said, "You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want." Josh is always looking to surround himself with the most passionate people he can find because as John C. Maxwell said, "One person with passion is greater than 99 with only an interest. Passion gives you energy." Connect to Josh Jones on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/josh-jones-2b65a8b7 Mitchell Levy is the Global Credibility Expert at AHAthat, the first APA leadership (Thought Leadership) platform on the market for thought leaders, experts and companies to unleash their genius to the world. His passion is helping entrepreneurs, business owners and C-Suite Executives get known as thought leaders & become best-selling authors with the AHA platform. He is an accomplished entrepreneur who has created 20 businesses in Silicon Valley including four publishing companies that have published over 800 books. Mitchell is an international best selling author with 60 business books, has provided strategic consulting to over 100 companies, has advised over 500 CEOs on critical business issues, and has been chairman of the board of a NASDAQ-listed company. AHAthat.com/Author where you can also find a link to book a strategy call. Visit https://mitchelllevy.com/mitchelllevypresents/ for an archive of all the podcast episodes. Connect to Mitchell Levy on:LinkedIn: Linkedin.com/in/MitchellLevy Facebook: Facebook.com/HappyAbout Twitter: Twitter.com/HappyAbout Google+: Plus.Google.com/+MitchellLevy Pinterest: Pinterest.com/THiNKaha Instagram: Instagram.com/Mitchell.Levy/ AHAthat: AHAthat.com Speaking site: MitchellLevy.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#100: Researching alternative solutions for blackhead disease - Dr. Robert Beckstead

AgFuture podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 2, 2019 10:57

With a mortality rate of up to 30%, blackhead disease can be detrimental to the flock and to poultry producers. Dr. Robert Beckstead's team at North Carolina State University is conducting research on the disease on a molecular level. Are there alternative treatments and preventatives to consider? In this podcast, Dr. Beckstead shares why producers may reconsider their feeding strategy in the future.

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EAG 2018 SF: Fireside chat with Nick Beckstead

san francisco fireside chat eag beckstead rob wiblin

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 9, 2019 30:06

Did effective altruists take too long to start prioritizing the long-term future? When we disagree with others or the mainstream, how much should that affect our confidence? What is the “shape” of thinking in machine learning? In this lively fireside chat from Effective Altruism Global 2018: San Francisco, hosted by Rob Wiblin, Nick Beckstead discusses … Continue reading EAG 2018 SF: Fireside chat with Nick Beckstead

#10 Classic episode - Dr Nick Beckstead on spending billions of dollars preventing human extinction

80,000 Hours Podcast with Rob Wiblin

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 2, 2019 112:04

Rebroadcast: this episode was originally released in October 2017. What if you were in a position to give away billions of dollars to improve the world? What would you do with it? This is the problem facing Program Officers at the Open Philanthropy Project - people like Dr Nick Beckstead. Following a PhD in philosophy, Nick works to figure out where money can do the most good. He’s been involved in major grants in a wide range of areas, including ending factory farming through technological innovation, safeguarding the world from advances in biotechnology and artificial intelligence, and spreading rational compassion. Links to learn more, episode summary & full transcript These are the world’s highest impact career paths according to our research Why despite global progress, humanity is probably facing its most dangerous time ever This episode is a tour through some of the toughest questions ‘effective altruists’ face when figuring out how to best improve the world, including: * Should we mostly try to help people currently alive, or future generations? Nick studied this question for years in his PhD thesis, On the Overwhelming Importance of Shaping the Far Future. (The first 31 minutes of this episode is a snappier version of my conversation with Toby Ord.) * Is clean meat (aka *in vitro* meat) technologically feasible any time soon, or should we be looking for plant-based alternatives? * What are the greatest risks to human civilisation? * To stop malaria is it more cost-effective to use technology to eliminate mosquitos than to distribute bed nets? * Should people who want to improve the future work for changes that will be very useful in a specific scenario, or just generally try to improve how well humanity makes decisions? * What specific jobs should our listeners take in order for Nick to be able to spend more money in useful ways to improve the world? * Should we expect the future to be better if the economy grows more quickly - or more slowly? Get this episode by subscribing to our podcast on the world’s most pressing problems and how to solve them: type '80,000 Hours' into your podcasting app. The 80,000 Hours Podcast is produced by Keiran Harris.

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07 How Weston Beckstead Makes It Happen

Make It Happen Outdoors Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 29, 2018 118:36

Join us this week as we sit down with family and friends and listen to the story of how Weston Beckstead shot the bull elk of a lifetime. We laugh, we cry and get pretty personal as the story unfolds. It's a story that took many many years to come together. Weston sure knows how to Make It Happen in the Outdoors.

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David Beckstead – Dynamic Wedding – review

Episódios – Fotologia Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 1, 2018 6:49

Escrito por David Beckstead, o livro Dynamic Wedding foi lançado no Brasil pela editora Photos e se tornou bastante popular no meio dos fotógrafos, principalmente por Beckstead ter bastante influência. Então, vamos lá conhecer mais um pouco desse livro! 1 – Não é um...

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EAG 2017 SF: EA community building (Nick Beckstead)

80,000 Hours Podcast with Rob Wiblin

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 3, 2017 37:10

EA Community Building with Nick Beckstead, Program Officer at Open Philanthropy Project. Source: Effective Altruism Global (video).

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#10 - Dr Nick Beckstead on how to spend billions of dollars preventing human extinction

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 11, 2017 111:47

What if you were in a position to give away billions of dollars to improve the world? What would you do with it? This is the problem facing Program Officers at the Open Philanthropy Project - people like Dr Nick Beckstead. Following a PhD in philosophy, Nick works to figure out where money can do the most good. He’s been involved in major grants in a wide range of areas, including ending factory farming through technological innovation, safeguarding the world from advances in biotechnology and artificial intelligence, and spreading rational compassion. Full transcript, coaching application form, overview of the conversation, and links to resources discussed in the episode: This episode is a tour through some of the toughest questions ‘effective altruists’ face when figuring out how to best improve the world, including: * * Should we mostly try to help people currently alive, or future generations? Nick studied this question for years in his PhD thesis, On the Overwhelming Importance of Shaping the Far Future. (The first 31 minutes is a snappier version of my conversation with Toby Ord.) * Is clean meat (aka *in vitro* meat) technologically feasible any time soon, or should we be looking for plant-based alternatives? * What are the greatest risks to human civilisation? * To stop malaria is it more cost-effective to use technology to eliminate mosquitos than to distribute bed nets? * Should people who want to improve the future work for changes that will be very useful in a specific scenario, or just generally try to improve how well humanity makes decisions? * What specific jobs should our listeners take in order for Nick to be able to spend more money in useful ways to improve the world? * Should we expect the future to be better if the economy grows more quickly - or more slowly? Get free, one-on-one career advice We’ve helped dozens of people compare between their options, get introductions, and jobs important for the the long-run future. If you want to work on any of the problems discussed in this episode, find out if our coaching can help you.

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Finding money for your million dollar idea with Jeremy Howlett

Money Making Sense

Play Episode Listen Later May 17, 2017 28:08

The co-founder of Altra Running explains how baking shoes in a toaster oven led to a 25-million dollar company. Jeremy Howlett and his cousin, Golden Harper, became world-wide entrepreneurs by being passionate about their idea and using social media to connect with seed investors and capital venturists. www.altrarunning.com/ Howlett explains the different ways to find financial backing for your great idea, and why you shouldn't give up when you've been turned down by some of the biggest names in the industry. Altra Running is not resting on their laurels, they continue to be on the cutting edge by combining smart technology into their shoes. You need to keep the creative juices flowing if you want to continue to grow your business. https://www.facebook.com/MoneyMakingSense/?ref=bookmarks See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Brian Beckstead talks Altra teaming with Utah State University | #46

Sports Insight Extra

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 30, 2017 10:56

Six-year old Altra is teaming with Utah State University to develop outdoor design talent.

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SpEdEp 36 – Joseph’s Technicolor Dream-stone

Naked Mormonism Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 29, 2016 116:50

On this episode, we jump in to part 2 of the Cody Noconi discussion about entheogens. Part 1 established a brief world history of hallucinogen use throughout the 10,000 years we can speculate upon; part 2 focuses on just Joseph Smith and Mormon history, essentially compiling the theory that Jo used hallucinogens for himself and possibly drugged his parishioners to incite spiritual experiences. It may be controversial. It may strain credulity and raise red flags of skepticism. One may call bullshit at the very onset of the discussion, but this is a viable theory that needs to be discussed openly in the public square of Mormon history. If Jo’s use of entheogens helps to explain any aspect of his religion it needs to be a topic of open discourse. If any listeners have competing theories that provide more explanatory power than this, please get in touch with Cody or Bryce and we’ll further this conversation. Links: Luman Walters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luman_Walters Ethan Allen Hitchcock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethan_A._Hitchcock_(general) Cody Noconi contact information: psilly.rabbits@gmail.com Vogel, Dan. “The Locations of Joseph Smith's Early Treasure Quests.” In Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, p197-231. Heinrich, Clark. “Magic Mushrooms in Religion and Alchemy.” Park Street Press, 2002. Ott, Johnathon. “Pharmacotheon: Entheogenic drugs, their plant souces and history.” Kennewick, Washingtom: Natural Products Co, Second Edition Densified, 1996. McKenna, Terrance. “Food of The Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge.” Bantam; Reprint edition, January 1, 1993. Quinn, Michael. “Early Mormonism and the Magic World View.” Signature Books; 2nd Edition, December 1998. Rush, John. “The Mushroom in Christian Art: The Identity of Jesus in the Development of Christianity.” North Atlantic Books, 2011 Richard Schultes, Christian Ratsch, Albert Hoffman. “Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers.” Healing Arts Press; 2nd edition, 2001. Tanner, Jerald and Sandra. “Joseph Smith and Money Digging.” Salt Lake City Tribune, Issue no. October 1970. 2. Beckstead, Robert T. “Restoration and the Sacred Mushroom.” Presented at Sunstone Symposium August, 2007. Tanner, Jerald and Sandra. “Mormonism and Magic.” Salt Lake City Tribune, Issue no. 49. December 1982 Fair Mormon Responses - http://en.fairmormon.org/Joseph_Smith/Occultism_and_magic ; 19. Show Links: Scathing Atheist 1838 Mormon Missouri War episodes: https://audioboom.com/posts/5441522-scathingatheist-202-anchor-management-edition Website http://nakedmormonismpodcast.com Twitter @NakedMormonism Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pages/Naked-Mormonism/370003839816311 Patreon http://patreon.com/nakedmormonism Outro music by Jason Comeau http://aloststateofmind.com/ Show Artwork http://weirdmormonshit.com/ Voicemail Line (864)Nake-dMo (625-3366)

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