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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...
“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...
Summary
Back in November 2023 I posted here to launch Spiro and raise our first $198k. Two and a half years later this is an update and a fundraiser for the next step.
The short version: we've now reached over-5,900 people with TB preventive medicine, including over 3,000 children under five years old. Our early results have held up well an...
If we think we should all buy What We Owe The Future to ensure it gets lots of press, should we buy this book too?
I think the marginal value of a pre-order of What We Owe the Future is much higher than a pre-order of Gates's book, as Gates's book has a much higher baseline probability of ending up as a bestseller and receiving significant press coverage thanks to Gates's fame.
(Knowing almost nothing about this) I think a guess is that Gates is very worldly (even among his reference class of extremely wealthy businessmen) and already has a muscular press/PR team/persona.
This means his book already might be well publicized, and the returns to further input might be much lower than MacAskill's.
Not entirely related: I took a very brief Google search and found this article, which is opinionated, non-positive but also sort of a mainstream take by the left (the magazine is literally called Jacobin).
I guess the point of showing this article is that it illustrates the interactions and complexities involved when an individual, even 100% altruistically, executes complex public activity.
Oh, Dylan Matthews has written a piece on Jacobin.
This is sort of an interesting rabbit hole (with positive EV for some readers, maybe I guess?)
Damn, they go hard on design:
Without thinking much over it, I'd say yes. I'm not sure buying a book will get it more coverage in the news though.