Quick takes

I've started a living literature review on the relationship between wealth and wellbeing. Things I've done some work on that I plan to publish more on that seem relevant to some EA conversations in global health and wellbeing : * Does each doubling have the same return to wellbeing? The convention (outside of time discounts) is to assume that going from $500 to $1000 is the same return on wellbeing as $500k to $1,000k. I think that's probably not true. This affects how we think about improving incomes in high versus low income countries. * How effective are cash transfers in high income countries? So far, it seems like cash transfers that improve annual income by 10-30% in the USA have pretty much no effect on wellbeing. Weird. Not sure why yet. Seems bearish for UBI, but I'm not quite sure what's a better idea yet. * Does economic growth make countries happier? Richer countries are happier, richer people are happier, and people getting richer are happier, but countries getting richer has reportedly been a more mixed blessing for people. I expect to find something like growth is probably good but less good than you would expect based on looking at country cross sections. However, it's possible there's some weird scale use stuff that'd make growth look growth look like a miracle for human wellbeing. * If not growth in incomes, then what? I'll look at what if any reliable predictors there are of increases to national wellbeing -- an area I feel like we know surprisingly little about. There's some work suggesting that increases to social capital and social spending are better predictors than economic growth. Something like social capital seems plausible but social spending seems likelier to be confounded by the requirement that you need to make money to spend money (on welfare systems). But there's some evidence that trust and social capital is increased in societies that experience high growth, so it's all a bit messy.  Some less relevant things I'll work on: w

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

Humans have actively worked against promoting the welfare of wild city rats throughout history. Aside from primates, they are some of the most closely related non-human animals to H. sapiens, yet we know very little about how they live outside of laboratory settings (i.e., often dystopian, prison-like conditions). In order to enhance their welfare in the wild and in laboratories, there is a huge need to develop and deploy technologies to study their behavior. Such studies would also benefit global human health and biosecurity efforts because rats can serve as vectors of disease, sources of infrastructural damage, and pose a threat to stored foods.  There are very few researchers working in this space across the globe, and I am one of the few (pre-PhD, looking for programs where I can complete my doctorate) who has the experience with + concern for rats and software/hardware/IoT development & design skills necessary to push this area of research further in a manner that embraces total harm-reduction (as opposed to eliminationist) thinking/strategies.  Am I in the right place for starting conversation(s) on this topic? Should I repost this some other way? Hopefully I'm posting this in the correct context + idea development status, it's my first post on the site. I found out about the potential for research funding opportunities last weekend while attending a conference at GWU Law School and figured it is worth a shot, given the sad state of affairs with research funding lately. 

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

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

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:

Update (January 28): Marco Rubio has now issued a temporary waiver for "humanitarian programs that provide life-saving medicine, medical services, food, shelter and subsistence assistance."[1] PEPFAR's funding was recently paused as a result of the recent executive order on foreign aid.[2] (It was previously reauthorized until March 25, 2025.[3]) If not exempted, this would pause PEPFAR's work for three months, effective immediately. Marco Rubio has issued waivers for some forms of aid, including emergency food aid, and has the authority to issue a similar waiver for PEPFAR, allowing it to resume work immediately.[4] Rubio has previously expressed (relatively generic) positive sentiments about PEPFAR on Twitter,[5] and I don't have specific reason to think he's opposed to PEPFAR, as opposed to simply not caring strongly enough to give it a waiver without anyone encouraging him to. I think it is worth considering calling your representatives to suggest that they encourage Rubio to give PEPFAR a waiver, similarly to the waiver he provided to programs giving emergency food aid. I have a lot of uncertainty here — in particular, I'm not sure whether this is likely to persuade Rubio — but I think it is fairly unlikely to make things actively worse. I think the argument in favor of calling is likely stronger for people who are represented by Republicans in Congress; I expect Rubio would care much more about pressure from his own party than about pressure from the Democrats.   1. ^ https://apnews.com/article/trump-foreign-assistance-freeze-684ff394662986eb38e0c84d3e73350b 2. ^ My primary source for this quick take is Kelsey Piper's Twitter thread, as well as the Tweets it quotes and the articles it and the quoted Tweet link to. For a brief discussion of what PEPFAR is, see my previous Quick Take. 3. ^ https://www.kff.org/policy-watch/pepfars-short-term-reauthorization-sets-an-uncertain-course-for-its-long-term-future/ 4. ^ htt

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.