1) Crucial consideration: nuclear warfare existential risk. Is it that if all nuclear warheads were piled up and detonated at once, the global temperature would decrease by a few degrees centigrade for a few years? Did much larger volcano explosions before the Year without summer cause an 8x increase in oats prices in the US (still, crops grew)?

Added: temperature change: FHI cited paper, general impact: A Model for the Impacts of Nuclear War (also cited by FHI) (GCR Institute authors) (also cites Robock) - does not quantify

2) Fallout shelter training cost-effectiveness (e. g. implementing this into a curriculum) - how does it compare to the cost-effectiveness of other nuclear risk mitigation programs? Is it that training (especially jointly developed and ran by nuclear weapons states' civil actors) would reduce the thrill of using nuclear weapons that less considerate leaders could otherwise experience and normalize the 'shamefulness' of proliferation (especially if this is another aspect of the 'class training')?

Added: difficult to find academic paper on fallout shelter training by using existing buildings (literature (1, 2) on building special shelters which may be highly cost-ineffective compared to the training)

3) Is the Fistula Foundation recommended by The Life You Can Save cost-ineffective compared to prevention? Something similar to antiretroviral therapy vs. educating high-risk groups in terms of cost-effectiveness (I estimate 35x). Should EAs maybe provide funding for one of the radio for healthy behavior charities develop and run the show?

Added: Obstetric Fistula: A Preventable Tragedy - does not compare cost-effectiveness of various prevention and treatment interventions but specifies the options of which costs can be estimated

4) GiveWell keeps giving grants to the organization that prevents pesticide suicide by banning pesticides, which may lead to lower yields of some farmers, who may then be depressed because their families go hungry - this is hinted on the NGO website. Can someone look into this so that GiveWell does not advance suffering (this can be intense suffering considering that in a Kenyan slum, more than a quarter of respondents seek to live 0 additional years while no one is committing a suicide)?

Added: difficult to find literature on the impacts of pesticide restriction on willingness to suicide/subjective wellbeing but relatively ample literature studies the impact of bans on suicide rates. Maybe EA India can provide expert insight?

5) Can we do global systemic change by giving every 12th person no new net (maybe they can repair or share)? This also concerns curricula but in emerging economies - if students are taught how to be healthy happy and share this by developing useful skills and professionalism (limited emotional appeal due to the perception of scarcity and inability to increase efficiencies) - rather than how to serve elites of formerly colonial governments, this can make a large part of the world much better (while the alternative is much worse, considering the poor meat eater problem and the possible impact of aggressive advertising on trust-based societies). Should malaria funders purchase some percentage less nets but inform people about various health, work, family, safety, and other tips that were developed by persons with satisfied basic needs and cooperative (with others close to them) norms?

Added: I have not seen an organization that works in this area - there is TaRL that enables students to catch up with the post-colonial curricula and some organizations that focus on informing people about a single or a few aspects of the intended virtuous cycle (example, 2, 3, 4), some perspectives on improving curricula for better industrial competitiveness, some self-help resources perhaps mostly relevant to highly affluent individuals, but nothing on enabling poor persons to improve their wellbeing through gaining the information they need - testing pamphlets under bednet packaging, comprehensive radio show series, etc.

6) Some people in Africa who came across EA were not stoked to join because of the price of RCTs. Getting a 99% discount shout be aspirational but not unachievable. Can there be some organization that would run these studies, ideally also making sure that smart locally-informed solutions to any complex problems that impact various sub-systems so that societies' wellbeing is improved are developed, for example through summarizing the $1/hour enumerator insights?

Added: Here is an example of an RCT cost - you can speak with Cameron King or other EAs with experience in emerging economies regarding the possible enumeration and data management/categorization costs and Kaleem Ahmid or anyone from J-PAL/IPA regarding the non-enumeration costs and the possibility of their reduction (making a semi-automated form, such as this sample size calculator, training professors in emerging economies, ...).

7) Is it that if you give extremely poor people money, nothing changes for them in the medium-term, maybe they get a corrugated metal roof, some food, livestock which keeps suffering (or I think one study found 56% of transfers spent on 'social' - throw a larger wedding party which means maybe kill three more goats?), pay school fees early, but spousal cooperation does not improve, spending on education after transfer increases by $1/month, people do not start aspiring to upskill to take great care of their families and be a great joy to be with. Furthermore, because of relatively poor institutions in extremely poor areas, people can steal, bully, or attack without consequences. A few risky persons can depress the mood of entire village. And, GiveDirectly so far served only 0.06% of the globally poor (the remaining 99.94% of extremely poor, such as persons without income, are getting funding from other sources, such as family or neighbors). So, GiveDirectly is not solving problems. However, this funding could be used cost-effectively if it was given to at-risk groups (who could otherwise harm their communities) to run thriving programs for their communities - then, entire village would enjoy some support rather than living in fear for a fraction of the cost, maybe instead of 1,000 people funding 5 (200x lower) - then, 12% of extremely poor communities could have already achieved some basic wellbeing). Is this accurate (further detail)?

Added: this is about interpreting cash transfers research (e. g. in GiveDirectly website) against local preferences and wellbeing impact on stakeholders across species and times and its counterfactuals. Possibly, there cannot be a model so complex so human brain or a system of these needs to be employed. Feel free to ask Joe Huston of GiveDirectly who I have some of the research from as well as beneficiaries (communicate e. g. with EA Nairobi).

8) Founders Pledge knows that it is hurting animals and is doing nothing about it. It recommends Bandhan's Targeting the Hardcore Poor program that can transfer either non-sentient assets or livestock (the non-sentient assets even perform better in poverty alleviation) alongside with training to widows in India to graduate their families out of poverty. Is this accurate?

Added: this paper pp. 9-10 regarding the relative impact of non-sentient and livestock transfers.

9) The reason why deworming is so cost-effective is because GlaxoSmithKline is providing the pills for free. But, deworming seems not to work quite so well, which has been known by GiveWell since 2013. Can it be that manufacturers in nations where worm infections can occur gain investments and training to make these drugs, manufacture other medication for profit or global health reasons, and GSK is free to research solutions to the other 19/20 neglected tropical diseases? Should donors be informed of the reasons for worm infections treatment cost-effectiveness (and its limitations), including the counterfactuals, such as GSK research?

Added: feel free to contact Dr. Harrison of the SCI Foundation regarding the understanding of the complex stakeholder relationships or papers on neglected tropical disease research cost-effectiveness estimates. Caroline Fiennes critiques the programs. The Cochrane study regarding limited impact of deworming may be central.

10) The pneumococcus vaccine saves a life for $1-20? Can someone review this opportunity?

Added: The Disease Control Priorities research (Figure 17.2, page 323).

11) Restoring eyesight at no cost is possible and a better alternative to the Fred Hollows Foundation recommended by The Life You Can Save?

Added: Aravind Eye Care uses sliding scheme (p. 51).to treat about a half of its patients for free and operates only in 5 locations in 2 states in India. Fred Hollows does not operate in India so it is not targeting patients not captured by the market. I am not sure about any free government clinics in India and what the government would have spent their funding on if it did not have to subsidize eye operations or about any Aravind Competitors and their pricing scheme and coverage.

12) OpenAI is not actually safe, more like helping the most privileged companies sell their products by highly skillfully intrusive advertising, which makes humans suffer a desired dystopia (they do not want the product but they get it while feeling shameful/fearful/other negative emotions - but narrate positive emotions - it is the skill of the ad). Is this true?

13) How is it with the ethics at DeepMind?

14) Can someone look into the impact of Holden Karnofsky's writing - does it limit people's critical thinking ability and make them act impulsively based on negative emotion, which can be suboptimal in EA?

Added: Cold Takes - emotional analysis of someone uninfluenced by the normalization of negative-emotions advertisement impulsive behavior may be needed

15) Institutional change and longtermism: can it be that when sound institutions based on trying to get great experiences for others and having fun with similarly skilled individuals are developed then there is little risk and wellbeing increases? This can somewhat unite everyone in EA: some care (prioritize in specialization) about humanity's survival, some work on implementing animal welfare, and some aspire to increase human welfare.

Added: FHI research areas - nothing on improving institutions to be generally competently caring. This is another example of a critique of an omission.

16) Do people really buy bednets after they get the first one or not really (it seems that AMF keeps buying bednets). Also, does about 75% of recipients use the nets? Would it be possible to increase this, for example by implementing the importance of buying and using a net as a part of a school curriculum?

Added: the linked Summary of AMF PDM results and methods [2020] (public)

17) Crucial consideration: Will EA cause a biocatastrophe because it is sharing material about how stoked people should be about biorisk - so much harm potential, becoming extremely affordable fast, and no one is prepared! Are there any ways to keep investing into preparedness programs (e. g. as a part of defense budget), reduce accidental leaks possibility without notifying underresourced rebel groups in stressful relatively unempathetic globally poor environments about opportunities of developing weapons (e. g. we have some very boring investments into global health and healthcare equipment which we are sharing alongside with bandages and solar fridges that we particularly think are awesome), keep hiring and upskilling great people (e. g. through military academies), sign agreements almost as a formality (this can be more challenging but should be a no-brainer), not involving the general public that may be like whoa I'm going to research something in a garage get a pandemic potential pathogen become the boss through the threat potential, so that defenses and prevention frameworks are developed without or before selfish actors learn about these issues? Should the EA biosecurity Instagram that Max Dalton seems to be enthusiastic about be taken down? Should EA stop mentioning biorisk, at least in relation to wow super stoked normalizing that threat is imminent and anyone can basically do it?

Added: I think The Precipice mentioned something on increased enthusiasm regarding biorisk risk but I have not seen any study on this, especially from the context of underresourced terrorist groups. For illustration, feel free to review this article on limited consideration and concrete demands of fighters in northeastern Nigeria and speak with someone from EA in similar poor or extremely poor context including in Africa or the Middle East regarding risks and effective mitigation strategies and with Jason Matheny or John Fogle regarding the possibilities of state military influence toward biological proliferation and non-state actors increase of interest in own research in the context of the US.

 18) Is StrongMinds inappropriate and causing dystopias one cannot escape from? It may be that in industrialized nations, persons who suffer from limited competitiveness in terms of establishing dominance through attracting attention of persons who are not interested in interacting in comparison with ads benefit from speaking about their issues in groups (reduced loneliness - one with ads - and increased human interaction in an environment no one really needs anything besides emotional support). In globally poor contexts, however, persons may be suffering from abuse and inability to fulfill their and their close ones' basic needs and seeing no realistic way to escape this cycle, even with other generations: talking about these concerns with others in a similar situation - can contribute to the feeling of hatred and betrayal - others are not helping and have been pretending to be ok but are actually suffering and not doing anything - this is depressing - metrics can be set up in a way that finds mental health improvement but that can be experimenter bias of persons not interested in thinking about their wellbeing and not indicative of people's subjective experiences. Can some impartial local critical thinker or a focus group be in-depth interviewed about the impact of the program and alternative solutions? Also, would it make sense to treat the causes rather than symptoms (e. g. improving spousal cooperation and reducing hunger, e. g. by improved farming practices)?

Added: here is a summary on StrongMinds website, here is the possibly most recent report regarding their impact evaluation. This is a metrics interpretation and appropriateness study - do people think 'depression free' as in 'we do what the group facilitators tell us' but they do not connect with their subjective feeling in either case because of the possibly highly inconsiderate environment where children are unwanted? Is it more appropriate to measure willingness to be born if can choose or subjective wellbeing in a way that motivates people to actually connect with their feelings during their usual activities?

19) Would we want to outdate ITN and work with Bayesian/expert intuition updating of the average impact cost with optimal spending (considering funded and unfunded unit impact cost developments - funded can be research of a global health vaccine and unfunded can be a window of opportunity during a political campaign animal welfare momentum) of resources over all impact areas? (See Institutional impact for more detail.)

Added: This post talks about momentary cost-effectiveness while my post seeks to visualize the average cost-effectiveness considering its development over one area and states that all areas should be considered but does not mention the possibility of external changes of cost-effectiveness but mentions updating.

20) Does the Introductory EA Program carry the legacy let's convince hedge funders to give money to poor people because there is also data? Should it rather presume that people already care about solving important problems so do not need to be convinced to start thinking about it but jumping to what to do is more appropriate?

Added: I have not seen this specific critique in EA regarding how to focus on solving problems but people talk about elitism (counterargument) and diversity (maybe people who know how to solve problems are excluded). Maybe ask someone from outside of EA regarding if EA comes across as people stoked about solving problems or more like outdebating you in theoretical impact, for example the person who wrote this critique on The Precipice, because if you ask someone in EA and the problem is present you do not advance much unless your questions are very concrete, based on understanding of the problem.

The link to "Unjournal" is broken, it goes to https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/kftzYdmZf4nj2ExN7/bit.ly/eaunjournal instead of bit.ly/eaunjournal.

• Air pollution literature, relevant to OpenPhil.
• literature on psychotherapy (vs cash transfers)

EDIT: Contrary to the text below, the study is not an RCT. Instead there is a GiveWell funded study collecting and exploring trend data for LLIN (malaria nets). https://www.givewell.org/research/incubation-grants/Malaria-Consortium-monitoring-Ondo-July-2021#Risks_and_reservations

An important upcoming study that I read about is a robustness study or RCT on the effectiveness of AMF or distributions of malaria nets.

(I think I read about this study in a post here. I am typing in mobile and can’t immediately find/post a link).

This RCT or result would be really important to EAs and maybe EA in general. Many people have donated a lot to AMF. The act of donating, the belief in AMF, as well as the method and process used, is part of EA identity.

Maybe EAs should not be worried about finding the underlying truth as a result of the study, but maybe there should be worry or attention to clunky or simplistic presentation or socialization of the results.

For example, there are many reasons to see superficially negative results (that suggest cost inefficiency or ineffectiveness of nets) but that doesn’t reflect a reality that that undermines AMF. For example, just unmeasured rainfall, or noise from any number of sources, could cause an issue in seeing an effect (issues with statistical inference or identification)

I think explaining causal inference beforehand (as opposed to after) might be useful.

A reasonable guess is that an RCT might only be 50% reliable (including claiming to be reliable but having a hidden defect). The chance of some negative event from this study (other than the consequence of showing the truth) might be ~5-15%.

FYI, the bounty resolves in 3 days.

Submit ~today or tomorrow for your last chance to suggest research & be eligible for participation/piloted suggestion prizes.

Submit suggestions at bit.ly/pp_unjournal

A quick response that I may build on later. I only scanned your write up of plan so sorry if I missed something there.

I think that inviting submissions from research in preprints or written up in EA forum posts is a good idea. 

A submission would simply be giving you permission to publish/host the original document and reviews in the unjournal. Post review, authors could have the option to provide a link to their revised output, or to add a comment.

As you know, newsletters such as the EA Behavioral Science Newsletter (https://preview.mailerlite.com/m9i6r0j7h9) curate some options, so this could be an easy place to start.

I know this is your idea so maybe you win your own bounty if you like it!?

Would RP not have many research outputs that could be included? READI might also have some upcoming work on institutional decision-making or moral circle expansion that could be considered (though I'd need to talk with the team, etc).

Aside from those, reviewing relevant old but influential reports and top forum posts, could also be valuable. 

One that comes to mind now is How valuable is movement growth?

At least for me, The Awareness/Inclination Model (AIM) in this seemed, for a while, to be a popular theory influencing how EA people thought about movement building. 

A review of it this would help with understanding how confident we should be (or have been) in the empirical data presented for these arguments made, and might also throw up some ideas to build on it or test it. 

Finally, I think that treating the first few rounds of doing this as being an experiment is probably a good idea. It might be the case that only a certain type of paper/output works, or that reviews are more useful than you imagined even for relatively low level research. Probably hard to tell until you do a few rounds of the process.
 

Working on an approach here ... for some more context and ideas

I think I should put a bounty on this question. Any suggestions for how to best implement this?

Note, I linked a form if you prefer to respond in that way, on a form.

The form asks

The most pivotal empirical pieces of research ... you would like to see red-teamed/assessed?

Give a quick name for this research, this finding, or the title of the paper/project

A URL where we can find the research, if possible

What is the finding/research and why is it important? How is it relevant to important decisionmaking? Why do you think it needs further assessment or red-teaming?

You can identify yourself and/or your background/expertise/experience if you want, but its not necessary

How confident are you that this research is worth assessing or red-teaming?