TL;DR
* GOAL 3 is a social enterprise that created IMPALA, a patient monitoring and digital platform system for low-resource settings. There is also a GOAL 3 foundation that raises funds to ensure underserved communities will be reached.
* A recently completed report from Rethink Priorities calculated IMPALA to have a cost per DALY averted of $7–17 in paediatr...
This month effective altruism has gotten lots of attention, including a cover story in The Economist. It feels pretty surreal to be on the receiving end of it. But I feel grateful these ideas have caught on, and even more grateful for the drive, earnestness, and compassion of so many people who took strange but well-argued ideas seriously and then actually acted on them....
Note: This post was crossposted from the Coefficient Giving Farm Animal Welfare Research Newsletter by the Forum team, with the author's permission. The author may not see or respond to comments on this post.
Subtitle: On vegan advocacy, effective altruism, and FIFA
I turn 40 today. Here are some hot takes.
On factory farming
1. Our biggest challenge is salience. If factory farming led the evening news, it wouldn’t last lo...
What is EA's stance on Gain-of-Function Research? (OC)
I recently interviewed a Columbia University parasitologist on GOF research. I picked him, in part, because he was strongly in favor of conducting GOF. According to him, the risks are minimal, and the benefits far outweigh them.
I'm not a scientist (obviously), but I can't say I agree with the entirety of his argument on the risks. Smallpox has been released from the lab 3 times, so we know that human error has allowed a deadly virus to escape from a lab and kill people.
It's pretty obvious that GOF has a lot of upsides though. Many scientists studying it are conducting this research explicitly to prevent pandemics in the future.
It doesn't seem obvious to me which route will produce the least risk.
Maybe we should send all scientists doing this kind of research into a quarantine bubble, and have them do 6 weeks on/6 weeks off shifts. Other than that, I'm out of ideas.
Clip of the interview if you're interested: