As we approach the end of the year, we’d like to take this opportunity to thank you for your ongoing support of CRS and our research.
It’s been a busy year, and we’ve achieved a lot, releasing new research, sharing our ideas and working to create a future with less suffering. Here are some highlights of what we achieved:
- Avoiding the Worst was professionally recorded and released as an audiobook. It is available on all audiobook stores and a captioned video is freely available on YouTube. It was also added to Giving What We Can Recommended Resources and 80,000 Hours S-Risks page
- Teo Ajantaival completed his series on minimalist theories of welfare. He now intends to compile the series into a book
- Magnus Vinding began writing his new book, with the working title Compassionate Purpose: Personal Inspiration for a Better World. A draft chapter – “Facing the Endeavor to Reduce Extreme Suffering in Healthy Ways” is available to read
- Magnus also shared writing on a variety of topics on his website, including essays about optimized futures, artificial sentience, moral motivations, and objective list theories of wellbeing.
- Simon Knutsson published his first essay for CRS: My moral view: Reducing suffering, ‘how to be’ as fundamental to morality, no positive value, cons of grand theory, and more
- We launched a newsletter to keep subscribers up-to-date with CRS research and opportunities, and a ‘Start Here’ page to provide an entry point to SFE and s-risks content and research
- Tobias appeared on podcasts including 21st Talks, the Future of Life Institute Podcast and the Sentientism podcast
- We conducted outreach activities and attended EAG London, EAG Boston and EAGx Virtual events
For a summary of 2023, please download our annual report PDF.
Plans for 2024
We’re excited for the new year, when we’ll be looking forward to the publication of new books from Magnus Vinding and Teo Ajantaival, as well as the launch of a new introductory video course on s-risks.
To help us continue our work to reduce suffering, we’re now aiming to raise $100,000 as part of our end-of-year fundraiser.
If you are able to, any support you can offer would be gratefully received, and used to fulfill our strategic priorities.
Donors are welcome to make general contributions, or we have a number of potential projects that donors are able to fund directly.
Our current funding situation
Our current funding situation is relatively stable. The reserves we currently have would cover roughly 9 months of expenses, but it would be better to have at least 12-18 months of runway.
Additional funding would provide us with the means to expand our research program, increase our output, and provide added financial security for CRS moving forward.
You can also view an overview of our 2022 budget.
Funding opportunities
With additional funding, we have the potential to ensure our operations run smoothly and effectively, bring more talented researchers on-board to work on our priorities, and fund more promising opportunities.
While general donations are, of course, gratefully received, we’re also offering the opportunity to fund specific projects. These projects may not come to fruition if we are unable to raise additional funds. Potential projects that we may require additional funding for:
- An intro video series on suffering-focused ethics
- A high quality PR campaign to promote Magnus Vinding’s new book widely
- Professional audiobook recordings for Reasoned Politics, and Magnus Vinding’s new book
As ever we’d also be very interested to hear from you if you have any thoughts or comments on our work. Please feel free to get in touch with us, or to make use of our anonymous feedback form.
Thank you once again, and all the best for 2024!