This was a great read, illuminating and well-paced. Thanks!

The WHO has some good rankings of disease burden. They have different rankings for DALYs, YLLs and YLD. For example, back and neck pain is globally the leading cause of years lived with disability, but neonatal conditions and ischaemic heart disease cause the most DALYs. I imagine you could combine this with some other table that quantifies research effort and another which quantifies investment in that particular cause area. 

Does anyone know of a good place to find them?

This is great. Was looking for stuff similar to Scott Alexander's 'Every Bay area house party'

Just adding my comment to +1 this one. Great articulation of an intuition I've had as well.

Hello Will very excited to read the book! My question however is about fire raves. How do you run them and what are your tips for making them the best experience they can be?

I’m one of the organising members of EA Dunedin in New Zealand and I’m planning on organising one for our group. I have a fair bit of experience organising bonfires/campfires but these tend to be the rather chill sort, maybe with a bluetooth speaker for some people to dance.

Bunch of questions: Feel free to just reply to whichever one you want and ignore the others :)

What are some key things to bring these to the next level? What’s an underrated aspect that people tend to forget about? What are the highlights of your night?

For example I’ve learned from organising house parties that it’s good to have the dancing area out of direct line of sight of the table with the food on it. So people dancing don’t get self-conscious about people just standing and eating and watching them. Any insight would be awesome (also welcome comments from others with fire-rave experience)!

This is an excellent project and an excellent post. Big kudos for making it happen. Also, thanks for introducing me to the term visual knowledge projects. I’d never heard of the specific term before and have always thought these sorts of visual maps are fantastic. 

I’ve been trying to think of any important topic areas which have been missed and the first one that springs to mind is one on rational and compassionate/altruistic interpersonal communication. I really enjoyed Nonviolent Communication but I’m not sure it’s our best bet due to a lack of randomised studies and some of the vibe. Maybe something on CBT like Feeling Good? Although this may now be drifting out of EA scope.

Secondly, for anyone who has enjoyed Factfulness by Hans Rosling or anything by Steven Pinker, I’d recommend this video essay for some strong counterpoints. I learned a lot and it’s made me more cautious regarding the global application of ‘new optimism’. 

Finally, here’s another of my favourite visual knowledge projects: The Map of Philosophy by Carneades.org