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Effective Thesis has some suggested topics within political science.
Curated and popular this week
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This is a crosspost from the new Animal Welfare Alignment Newsletter by Anima International. You can subscribe on Substack if you are interested in following these efforts. Audio reading also available on Substack.
The goals of this post are to:
1. Raise a question I see as crucially important to the goal of aligning AI to animal welfare...
“How long have you been v*g*n?”
This is one of the most common icebreakers at animal protection events. It’s a baseline assumption, and it mostly holds true: if you’re out advocating for animals not to be tortured or abused, realistically these days you are v**n, or close. And it makes for good conversation. It seems fairly safe to assume when you meet strangers.
But this assumption is hurting the movement in a way which we don’t always notice: someone new comes into the sp...
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AI Use Note: Main body text entirely human written. Claude (Opus 4.8) helped develop models of animal life histories in the appendix.
Cross-posted from Good Structures.
Executive Summary
* Animal advocates sometimes make claims like “there are X of this animal...
I think that the complexity of political systems mean that you can't work out a dinky formula for the best expected utility. You might enjoy this post on global development, and also this list which includes some important topics.
I'm currently particularly interested in authoritarianism and safeguarding democracy.
And also, if you're a young political scientist, with these skills, then you don't need to defer to others - what do you think they are yourself?
I am currently working on posts outlining just those questions, but wanted to check for past work. I hope to use H&H's tools, that post is so clear and compelling.
My intuition says that the juiciest QALYs are in scalable nation-wide interventions in developing countries, think poor economics for governance. I also expect the juiciest QALY's in poor authoritarian governments.
That said Eva Vivalt's work might have higher expected returns just due to the sheer neglectedness of the field. Its stunning how few people are applying Kahneman-style bias research to political decision-makers. My main concern with following her agenda is that it might not be rewarded in the PoliSci journals and hiring committees.