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Reposted by Zach Freitas-Groff

Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) @animalcharityev.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

They’re here! 🎉 After months of rigorous evaluations, our 2025 Charity Recommendations are out! Learn more about the organizations that can do the most good for animals with additional donations at bit.ly/2025-charity-recs 🙌🐥 Together, we’re helping people help more animals. 💙

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Zach Freitas-Groff @zdgroff.bsky.social · 13/11/2025

I’m nearing the end of my second term in the @animalcharityev.bsky.social board and so proud of the team’s progress in identifying top giving opportunities for animals. The rigor and reasonableness has improved year on year. Check out this year’s picks: animalcharityevaluators.org/blog/announc...

animalcharityevaluators.org

Announcing our 2025 Charity Recommendations

Discover our 2025 charity recommendations — top animal welfare charities, impact analysis, and giving insights today!

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Zach Freitas-Groff @zdgroff.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

Most compelling rogue-AI story I’ve encountered. Goes faster at various points than I can readily believe, but perhaps that's to be expected. A useful illustration of some of the many things that could happen.

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Zach Freitas-Groff @zdgroff.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

Comments welcome! Paper: www.zachfreitasgroff.com/CooperatingP...

zachfreitasgroff.com

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Zach Freitas-Groff @zdgroff.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

This suggests that, at least in our experimental environment, generational reciprocity alone could boost future-oriented investments, without complex monitoring or detailed historical transparency.

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Zach Freitas-Groff @zdgroff.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

Thus, even the expectation that future generations might reciprocate—without direct observation of your own generosity—motivates investing forward.

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Zach Freitas-Groff @zdgroff.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

Remarkably, observing past actions doesn't matter. Players contribute more to future generations simply when the next generation can potentially give back—even if past generosity is hidden.

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Zach Freitas-Groff @zdgroff.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

To examine this, we randomly vary the info sets: Some see nothing about previous players. Some see past investments forward. Some see how much was passed back and forward. There are other treatments described in the paper and appendix.

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Zach Freitas-Groff @zdgroff.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

We vary treatments by changing the ability of future players to give back and the information available about what others did. Theory predicts a clear link: knowing past generosity should incentivize giving forward.

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Zach Freitas-Groff @zdgroff.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

Each player represents a "generation" and decides how much of their resources to pass forward to the next player and—crucially—how much to pass backward to the previous one.

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Zach Freitas-Groff @zdgroff.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

📢 Working paper w/ @benleoecon.bsky.social, Johannes Lohse, and Oliver Hauser! Some have proposed that you can get current generations to invest in the future by enabling future generations to give back. We test this in an experiment with sequential "generations" of players. 🧵 #EconTwitter

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Reposted by Zach Freitas-Groff

Ben Grodeck🔸 @benleoecon.bsky.social · 30/03/2025

Co-authored with the wonderful @zdgroff.bsky.social, Oliver Hauser, and Johannes Lohse.

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Zach Freitas-Groff @zdgroff.bsky.social · 01/03/2025

Talking to people in the Bay Area last week, I heard of more partial patches for AI alignment than I'd encountered before, such that I'd feel pretty optimistic if many of them were implemented. How much is the issue now *making sure the things we know are good actually happen*?

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Zach Freitas-Groff @zdgroff.bsky.social · 27/02/2025

Dean was a dear mentor to me as I approached economics PhD programs—deeply committed to evidence and efficiency in helping others. What a shame to no longer have him applying that lens to USAID.

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Reposted by Zach Freitas-Groff

Henry🔸 @henryjosephson.com · 21/12/2024

@evavivalt.bsky.social posted -> i texted it to the gc -> gc emails to tyler -> marginal revolution post!

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Zach Freitas-Groff @zdgroff.bsky.social · 21/12/2024

Here’s the full paper: evavivalt.com/wp-content/u...

evavivalt.com

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Zach Freitas-Groff @zdgroff.bsky.social · 21/12/2024

In short, cultured meat may have large direct effects on animals, but in our experiment, it does not prompt a social turn against animal agriculture.

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Zach Freitas-Groff @zdgroff.bsky.social · 21/12/2024

The backlash effect even extends to a stronger preference for meat relative to plant-based meat when people are exposed to cultured meat.

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Zach Freitas-Groff @zdgroff.bsky.social · 21/12/2024

These attitudes depend a lot on the social environment-exposure to strongly negative attitudes toward cultured meat can enhance this effect (while some positive messages we study do not succeed in counteracting this).

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Zach Freitas-Groff @zdgroff.bsky.social · 21/12/2024

Why? It looks like people react to a fear of cultured meat—perhaps thinking it will replace animal-based meat—by expressing protest views in a backlash or, in psych, "reactance" effect.

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Zach Freitas-Groff @zdgroff.bsky.social · 21/12/2024

Working paper out! Does cultured meat make people more open to animal welfare concerns with factory farming? Models of motivated beliefs (or cognitive dissonance) would generally predict yes (substitute = less attachment to meat). We find no!

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Reposted by Zach Freitas-Groff

Eva Vivalt @evavivalt.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

@zdgroff.bsky.social, Bobbie Macdonald and I consider the impacts of a different new technology: "cultured" meat, i.e., meat that is grown in a lab from cells. 3/

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Reposted by Zach Freitas-Groff

The AI Whistleblower Initiative - AIWI @aiwi-official.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

After 11 months of work, we proudly announce Third Opinion: A free of charge expert consultation service for frontier AI professionals. To help you clarify if what you're seeing is cause for concern. Anonymous, without sharing confidential information 🧵 Launch announcement: tinyurl.com/2-9unc19193

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Zach Freitas-Groff @zdgroff.bsky.social · 02/11/2023

See the Twitter thread here for a social-media-style summary: x.com/zdgroff/stat...

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Zach Freitas-Groff @zdgroff.bsky.social · 02/11/2023

📈Job market paper📉 Excited to finally share my JMP! I study whether and why policy choices are stubbornly persistent. Example: Oregon has an income tax, but not Washington—seemingly because of nearly century-old choices. Is this typical? Read the paper: www.zachfreitasgroff.com/FreitasGroff...

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Zach Freitas-Groff @zdgroff.bsky.social · 25/10/2023

Saw this on the list for the terrific Economics of LGBTQ+ Individuals Virtual Seminar Series: www.aeaweb.org/about-aea/co...

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Zach Freitas-Groff @zdgroff.bsky.social · 25/10/2023

Neat. Evidence that legal same-sex marriage decreased enrollment in priestly studies (because fewer gay men avoid coming out): digitalcommons.chapman.edu/cgi/viewcont...

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Zach Freitas-Groff @zdgroff.bsky.social · 20/10/2023

Bonkers. (See updated chart in comment thread.)

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Zach Freitas-Groff @zdgroff.bsky.social · 03/10/2023

Excited to share that I won a second prize in Open Philanthropy's 2023 AI Worldviews contest! www.openphilanthropy.org/research/ann...

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Reposted by Zach Freitas-Groff

Zach Weingarten @zachweingarten.bsky.social · 22/09/2023

Anyone have an NBER invite code?

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Zach Freitas-Groff @zdgroff.bsky.social · 20/09/2023

I'm glad to see this argument in @nytimes . The implications of this are complex, but the likelihood of the population plummeting seems way under-discussed. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

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Zach Freitas-Groff @zdgroff.bsky.social · 19/09/2023

Is there a word for a Nash equilibrium that is not subgame perfect (e.g., to distinguish it from a subgame perfect one)? What about something that's not perfect Bayesian? I don't think I've seen "subgame imperfect."

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