Quick takes

USAID took down its archive of evaluation reports, but a high school student happened to have downloaded them for a ML project, and they are now available online again: https://www.aiddata.org/blog/before-reimagining-development-data-remember-what-weve-learned

As someone who hires people (I am hiring right now, see bottom of the post), I often get emails asking whether someone should apply for a role I've listed. If you're considering contacting a hiring manager to ask if you're a good fit for the role, you should just apply. Why? * Job descriptions are wish lists. Everyone wants someone who checks all the boxes. If the dream candidate applies, you'll probably get rejected. In reality, everyone has weaknesses, and an 80% match candidate is highly competitive. * Self-skepticism correlates with candidate quality. Applicant pools are filled with people who can't do the job but don't understand their abilities well enough to realize it. Conversely, many highly competent professionals self-select out. If you are humble and self-reflective enough to consider your chances honestly, you are probably more competitive than you think. * You probably won't get a response. Hiring is always a busy time, and hiring managers don't have time to review every email. Often, you'll receive nothing, leaving you with wasted effort. I try to reply as much as I can, but there's only so much that can be done. * Any response you get is biased toward yes. If an org has a good filtering process, the biggest determinant in hire quality is whether good candidates apply. More "bad fit" candidates pose little strain, while one more "great fit" candidate could double the success of the hiring round. The incentive is always to get more people to apply. It's unclear whether a seeming good fit is a great fit who is overly worried about their weaknesses or a bad fit exaggerating their strengths, but it doesn't matter. Hiring managers are better off if both apply so they encourage them to do so. As a result, you spend some time writing an email, the hiring manager spends some time reviewing your email, they take time to send a response, and you receive the answer that you probably should apply, so all that effort led to nothing. Skipping t

Looking for medical reviewers (paid) and translators (volunteers) for ClusterInfo.org A couple of months ago, my team launched ClusterInfo.org, a website hosting high-quality guides on how to treat cluster headaches. We're hoping to help thousands of patients around the world find treatments (and get a diagnosis) as quickly and easily as possible. I'm looking for medical doctors willing to appear as medical reviewers for any of the guides (similar to here). Reviewers would be paid $300 per guide. Also, the website is available in 8 languages: English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, and Finnish. Some of the guides still need to be reviewed by native speakers. Get in touch if you'd be excited to volunteer for this task, and help us reach more patients. You can contact me via email. Thank you!

Abi Olvera's Golden rice delay dashboard, includes BOTEC calculations and sources, supplement to her Substack article A blocked GMO rice could have saved 100,000 children. The same tech makes pineapples pink:

An excerpt about the creation of PEPFAR, from "Days of Fire" by Peter Baker. I found this moving.

Mental health is one of the most widespread, impactable, yet neglected global health issues of our time. Even knowing mental health conditions are generally under-reported and/ or misrepresented, evidence still shows widespread effects of mental wellbeing on physical health, life satisfaction, and productivity, however it has still not taken off as a major cause area in many EA organizations I have talked to. Why is this? 

It is common in EA circles to compare deaths counts from some systemic problem to deaths from war. The implication is often that "actually war isn't that bad if you just look at the numbers". The latest being Bentham's Bulldog in an otherwise good article on Nestlé's harmful practices with baby formula (he doesn't say anything about war not being that bad though). I wish that this would stop because deaths aren't the only thing that matters. Below follow a number of claims that are based on my personal impression, not actual sources.  Injury and disability. Generally much more common than death, and the ratio of injury:deaths varies a lot per problem. (Admittedly, baby formula in poor countries seems to have a high disability burden) Trauma and grief. All deaths are grieved. But violent deaths tend to create a lot of trauma in the people around them, including from fleeing/displacement and separation of families and social ties. Economic harm. This is the big one. It sounds cold, but I think the emotional response people have to war footage is actually quite appropriate because of the economic harm. War creates enormous economic harm through the destruction of infrastructure, the displacement of people, and the prevention of (foreign) investment and productive activity. People lose their jobs, become refugees, don't build productive skills, stop education, businesses don't get started, etc etc.  Cultural effects & institutions. I suspect that war reduces the likelihood of tolerant, liberal democratic cultural norms and institutions developing. Instead, I'd expect vengeful, and extractive systems to become more likely. Overall, I don't think deaths are a good proxy for the total harm of war when compared to other causes.

Mox Movie Nights watched Slumdog Millionaire today and it reminded me of the why behind the work. We're not here to EV-max, to gain impact points, to count utils. We're here because the world is unfair, suffering is prolific, and need to find a way through it.