This is a special post for quick takes by Pat Myron. Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page.
Radar speed signs currently seem like one of the more cost effective traffic calming measures since they don't require roadwork, but they still surprisingly cost thousands of dollars.
Mass producing cheaper radar speed signs seems like a tractable public health initiative
Offput that 80k hours advises "if you find you aren’t interested in [The Precipice: Existential Risk], we probably aren’t the best people for you to get advice from". Hoped there was more general advising beyond just those interested in existential risk
This forum has many comments that essentially boil down to something like "thanks/you're welcome/+1/this/me too/same/agree/disagree" that dilute signal-to-noise
I imagine most of these commentators also upvoted their parent comment, and the comment itself doesn't add much more than noise beyond that
I think I agree with you in most cases, but every 1 in 5 or so I think, "Oh, it's interesting that [Person X in particular] thinks that," or "Aww, it's sweet that this person was so grateful for the parent comment that they felt they had throw in a comment on top of a strong upvote," or "Haha, lc you beat me to it."
There may be initial opportunities for extra impact by prioritizing monitoring and improving air quality in important decision-making buildings like government buildings, headquarters, etc
Radar speed signs currently seem like one of the more cost effective traffic calming measures since they don't require roadwork, but they still surprisingly cost thousands of dollars.
Mass producing cheaper radar speed signs seems like a tractable public health initiative
Starting more free https://www.parkrun.com/ 5k runs would be a great way to improve public health and connect people interested in improving health
(for local EA groups interested in volunteering ideas)
Surprised Animal Charity Evaluators Recommended Charity Fund gives equal amounts to around a dozen charities:
https://animalcharityevaluators.org/donation-advice/recommended-charity-fund/
Obviously uncertainty's involved, but a core tenant of EA and charity evaluators is that certain charities are more effective, so Givewell's Top Charities Fund giving different amounts to only a few charities per year makes more sense to me:
https://www.givewell.org/top-charities-fund
Offput that 80k hours advises "if you find you aren’t interested in [The Precipice: Existential Risk], we probably aren’t the best people for you to get advice from". Hoped there was more general advising beyond just those interested in existential risk
Some other career orgs:
And for what it's worth, 80,000 Hours has a bunch global health & animal related postings on their job board.
Perhaps also https://www.trainingforgood.com/ and the more niche https://bluedotimpact.org/
I've been lazily throwing job related links here https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/YCobjyMhaKHArjwQt/what-resources-should-job-seekers-know-about
This forum has many comments that essentially boil down to something like "thanks/you're welcome/+1/this/me too/same/agree/disagree" that dilute signal-to-noise
I imagine most of these commentators also upvoted their parent comment, and the comment itself doesn't add much more than noise beyond that
I agree
I imagine that forum norms might be influenced by this post.
I think I agree with you in most cases, but every 1 in 5 or so I think, "Oh, it's interesting that [Person X in particular] thinks that," or "Aww, it's sweet that this person was so grateful for the parent comment that they felt they had throw in a comment on top of a strong upvote," or "Haha, lc you beat me to it."
Surprised how concentrated shortform authorship is. So far in 2023:
EA Forum:
25/125 (20%) @Nathan Young
9/125 (7%) @Evan_Gaensbauer
Lesswrong:
26/252 (10%) @DragonGod
10/252 (4%) @lc
assuming my code's accurate enough:
grep -Eo 'CommentUserName-author">.+?<' shortform.div | sort | uniq -c | sort -nrAs evidence increases for cognitive effects of poor air quality:
https://patrickcollison.com/pollution
There may be initial opportunities for extra impact by prioritizing monitoring and improving air quality in important decision-making buildings like government buildings, headquarters, etc
Those papers don't look very convincing. Check out:
https://vincentbagilet.github.io/inference_pollution/
This paper looks to be the best:
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20180279
+1 for these forum logos to be added to FontAwesome:
https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome/issues/19536
Reminder AmazonSmile shuts down tomorrow if anyone else wants to shop more today and/or less going forward:
https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/amazon-closing-amazonsmile-to-focus-its-philanthropic-giving-to-programs-with-greater-impact
+1 to be able to check notifications, messages, and specific posts here without seeing newsfeeds:
https://github.com/jordwest/news-feed-eradicator/issues/253
https://github.com/ForumMagnum/ForumMagnum/issues/6640
Is it possible to re-collapse a shortform after expanding it on /allPosts? If so, how? If not, feature request :)