All of Diego Oliveira's Comments + Replies

Agreed! Sounds too good to be true, but I do hope it is! Thanks SiebeRozendal for sharing this news!

Thanks a lot for this carefully compiled information! May all sentient beings benefit from the actions that you folks are organizing there!

Thank you, Ian, for asking the question that was in the back of my mind while I was reading this well-written and accessible post by ryancbriggs. I think it would be nice if the OP could add this caveat (that the evidence concerns a specific type of aid), since I assume some of the people reading this post in the EA forum will possibly update unjustly against aid recommended by, for instance, GiveWell. 

Thank you very, very much for your input, Lorenzo! Very helpful as always. Keep up the good work!

Hi! I have some basic questions that I believe there are well-documented resources I could be linked to. As far as I know, there are currently four EA-aligned meta-charities, i.e., charities that evaluate and recommend other charities based on EA's core values: GiveWell, Animal Charity Evaluators, Giving What We Can, and The Life You Can Save. I have the following questions:
       (1) Did I miss any other EA-aligned meta-charity?
       (2) What are the differences in their evaluation process? I get that GiveWell deal... (read more)

Hi, Lorenzo! Thank you, once again, for your kindness!

Hi! Does anybody know where the figure for cataract surgery ($1,000/severe visual impairment reversed) comes from? Is it one eye, or both eyes? I'm making a presentation and I'd like to be assured that the figures are as correct as possible.

For instance, this 2011 article (https://bmchealthservres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1472-6963-13-480) provides the following information:

"The average cost of cataract surgery [in Southern Ethiopia] in 2010 was US$141.6 (Range: US$37.6–312.6)".

Thanks for clarifying this! I really had interpreted it as a threat from funders.

I feel questions 1 and 2 are essentially the same, with the second having a more partitioned approach. Did I overlook some important difference between them?

Hi! Just want to point out a typo: "This chapter we’d like you (...)". Thanks! :-)

Hi! Just want to point out that the [Future Proof report] link is broken.

Thanks for your reply. The possibility of asymmetry suggests even more that we shouldn't predict in the whole [0%-100%] range, but rather stick to whatever half of the interval we feel more comfortable with. All we have to do is to get in the habit of flipping the "sign" of the question (i.e, taking the complement of the sample space) when needed, which usually amounts to adding the phrase "It's not the case that" in front of the prediction. This leads to roughly double the number of samples per bin, and therefore more precise estimates of our calibration.... (read more)

Thanks for sharing this! I've been forecasting myself for 5 months now (got 1005 resolved predictions so far), and I adopted a slightly different strategy to increase the number of samples: I only predict in the range [50%-100%]. After all, there doesn't seem to be any probabilistically or cognitively relevant difference between [predicting X will happen with 20% probability] and [not-X will happen with 80% probability]

What do you folks think about this?

I think Lorenzo is right: when there is a reply to a comment, I can't delete the comment. Here's a screenshot of what I see (it's the same thing when I click on the three dots in this comment I made (which starts with the words "Hmm, to my surprise")):

Anyway, that's no big deal! I'll leave the comment up. Thank you folks for your kindness!

Hmm, to my surprise, I just found out that I can't delete the comment, but only "retract" it (which amounts to striking the text through). Two questions:

1. Did I miss a way of really deleting the comment?
2. If there is no way to delete it, is there a better way to report the typos than pointing them out in the comments section?

Hi! I found a typo. I'll delete the comment once it gets fixed:

"and explore they are so neglected by society".

Thanks!

I think the principle I want us to abide by is something like ‘if something is an argument for caring more about entities who are widely regarded as not worthy of such care, then even if the argument sounds pretty absurd, I am supportive of some people doing research into it. And if they’re doing that research with the intent of increasing everyone’s well-being and flourishing as much as possible, then they’re part of our movement’.

That's just beautiful. Thanks for your insight!

It's not clear to me what it would mean to "treasure a non-living thing" in the same way that we should "treasure a living [I'd add 'sentient'] being". When I treasure a sentient being, what I mean by this is that:

(1) I recognize that sentient being's capacity to feel positive and negative states of mind;

(2) I recognize that that sentient being has interests of their own; and 

(3) I take the previous two facts into consideration in my decision-making so that I don't, unnecessarily, make that sentient being feel negative states of mind, or deprive them ... (read more)

The Moral Imperative toward Cost-Effectiveness in Global Health - Centre for Global Development  (20 mins.)

Hi! This link is broken. Could someone update it? Here's the new one: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/2X9rBEBwxBwxAo9Sd/the-moral-imperative-towards-cost-effectiveness

Thank you very much for such well-written introduction to your project. May all sentient beings be directly or indirectly benefited! :-)

Wow! Really? I haven't read that referred article, and my knowledge of Economics is almost zero. Since Max's claim here as I understand it (that in order to end poverty, a global redistribution of wealth is not sufficient) is very bold and has practical consequences, I'd like to ask if someone could evaluate gajosfajos' argument. Is Max Roser really making that unwarranted conclusion?

Thanks for this important comment! I also agree that it would make the text clearer if we added the fact that we're dealing with the logarithm of the GDP.

Your observations seem very to the point. Could you elaborate a little bit on what you mean by "implying power dependence on GDP"?

Does it make sense for me to point out the typos here so that they can be fixed? I believe such important texts convey their message better when written without typos. Let me know if there is a better place for me to point them out.

#1:  "compare the values any two health benefits".

#2: "which given rise to a number of subtly different versions"

#3: "is estimated to be 1,400 times as cost-effectiveness as the least good"

#4: "per year before eradication.8"

#5: "costeffectiveness" and "costeffective" appear around 5 times in the text in total

Thank you for taking your precious time to organize this handbook and make other effective altruists' lives easier! May all sentient beings be directly or indirectly benefited! 

Just trying to get myself comfortable with posting on the forum, since I'm new to it.

I'm from Brazil (Rio Grande do Sul), I consider myself deeply concerned about ethics, and I believe there are analytical methods that can get us closer not only to ethical truths (be they objective or not) but also to the methods whereby we may abide by those truths. 

I have a medical degree and I'm currently taking an online MicroMasters in Statistics and Data Science at MITx. I plan to take part in public health research, though I'm pretty much open to change gears if presented with sufficient evidence to do so.

Thank you all for supporting the EA community!