All of Håkon Harnes's Comments + Replies

It's unclear to me why you think the procurement of tanks would demonstrate more of a closeness to the US than any other weapons system purchased from the US? It's a weird kind of trade-off indeed if they can choose between the US-made patriot launchers (as you suggest) or the US-made Abrams tanks, and they go for the tanks despite a clear military inferiority? I honestly don't follow the reasoning here.

Hi JKitson!

Thanks for posting this summary and analysis, I learned something new about the Taiwanese military today!

In the post you write this about the procurement of new tanks:

These units would be highly vulnerable and are of questionable use in a scenario where the enemy dominates the air. Ukraine has disabled thousands of Russian tanks and infantry fighting vehicles using drones, showing armoured vehicles vulnerability even in a situation where neither side has air superiority.

While it is true that drones, among many other factors, have made armoured v... (read more)

Thanks for the great work you guys in AMF are doing!

20 million cases of malaria averted is a staggering number. I'm Norwegian, and as a comparison point those 20 million cases are being averted for around half the cost of the new Oslo public library. Admittedly it's a very nice library, but I have a feeling we would not be building it if it meant every Norwegian citizen had to suffer through malaria 8 times over and something like 80 000 mostly young children died.

Let's keep pushing the global resource allocation in a slightly more sane and equitable direction. Thanks for an inspiring post, best wishes for 2024!

I liked the talk. I also loved the boots! Great job.

Ah, yes, the CORS policy would be an obstacle. It might be possible to contact them and ask to be added to the list.

This is a neat tool!

Just a little heads up for people in terms of privacy. If you use the built-in helper to place your bets, your API key is sent to the owner of the manifolo service. I've glanced over the source code, and it does not seem to be stored anywhere. It's mainly routed through the backend for easier integration with an SDK and some logging purposes (as far as I can tell). However, there aren't really any strong guarantees that the source code publicly available is in fact the source code running on the URL.

I have no reason to doubt this, but i... (read more)

Fantastic, thanks for the update Miranda!

I absolutely love that it infers resolving dates from the text! I was positively delighted when the field populated itself when I wrote "by the beginning of september". This is especially important on mobile.

Excited to see if this is a useful tool. Very polished, nice work!

Saving someone a google search hopefully:
XDRTB = Extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis
MDRTB = Multi drug-resistant tuberculosis

Seems like it's my week of learning a bit about tuberculosis! What's up with the acronyms in the tuberculosis-space anyways? TB isn't that much shorter than tuberculosis.

I did a little more digging, and through a WHO report referenced by the Gates Foundation in their article, I think I've found something that could be the source of the claims in the report I skimmed.

Portnoy, A., et al. (2022). The cost and cost-effectiveness of novel tuberculosis vaccines in low- and middle-income countries: a modelling study. medRxiv, 2022.05.04.22274654. doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.05.04.22274654

Interestingly, the baseline scenario assumes a vaccine price similar to you, around 5 USD per dose in a 2-dose regiment, which in my naive... (read more)

"In the report I've referenced they project around 12-14 billion USD for vaccinations from 2027 to and including 2030, summing to around 50 billion. And this is assuming the vaccine has been developed. They put another 10 billion on top for vaccine R&D." 

- Where did you get that from?" I couldn't find the 10 billion figure for R&D I thought that was part of their total.

Thanks for pointing out I forgot to mention where I got that from! It's from Table B. Resources needed to accelerate R&D of new TB tools, 2023–2030, page 15 in the rep... (read more)

Indeed, inspiring stuff!

I have no idea what's needed in terms of production costs, distribution costs etc. but it's an interesting back of the envelope calculation nevertheless. 

In the report I've referenced they project around 12-14 billion USD for vaccinations from 2027 to and including 2030, summing to around 50 billion. And this is assuming the vaccine has been developed. They put another 10 billion on top for vaccine R&D.

This is what they write in the report:

Adequate funding must be mobilized to support the manufacturing, procurement and dist

Talking from my time in EA NTNU, my experience was indeed the complete opposite. Funding and follow up from CEA was excellent, kind and thoughtful. There were virtually zero strings attached and at no point did I feel like they were controlling.

The feelings of other organisers might differ of course, but I've not heard about this from anyone personally, and I did talk to quite a lot of student group leaders around 2017-2019.

Again, this is just my experience.

Very cool! 

Seems like this is an investment related to the Global Plan to End TB, 2023-2030. Over the period they call for ~250 billion USD in funding^[1]. They state that in the status quo scenario we lose 234 million DALYs^[2] to TB. It's a little hard to get the exact number, but looks like they aim to reduce this by around 50% over the period as a whole (?). Around 2 000 USD per DALY on average, which is a fair bit higher than what GiveWell cites for their top charities. I should note that some of the costs are in R&D which will pay dividen... (read more)

I've been involved with Gi Effektivt for many years, which is the Norwegian version of what you are suggesting here. There are many effective giving orgs all over Europe, and more to come, which focus on this area exactly. In NL Doneer Effectief is probably the dutch version you are referring to?

We've been surprised to see how much people care about tax deductions, especially outside the core EA movement. I think I disagree that tax deduction are a large part of what makes a donation effective, as our main claim to effectiveness lies in the interventions t... (read more)

There is often quite a large gap between what these kinds of surveys seem to imply and actual voter behaviour. We see this in climate change all the time. Consider the recent survey that reported that over half of young people think humanity is doomed (with regards to climate change) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-58549373.

Yet we are not seeing a huge surge in support for european green parties.

I'm not sure what's going on with these surveys, but it's an interesting comparison.

To echo the general sentiment, I also want to express my gratitude and appreciation for this talk. I found it warm, inclusive and positive. Thanks!

The examples you provided are fine alternatives :+1:

Interesting, I have the exact opposite intuition! I think calling Eirik a co-founder of EA in Norway is simply a descriptive factually correct statement. He was one of two people that started the first EA group in Norway that subsequently grew into the community it is today.

On the other hand, I don't like to think that the movement has any leaders. It's a community of widely varying views and approaches, united by common values. Actually, EA Norway, which is  the closest you'll find to a formal organisation for EA in Norway, is a democratic membership... (read more)

I also generally found this podcast encouraging and Sam is an eloquent speaker.

I did however find his characterisation of conventional philanthropic organisations rather strange. He highlights perverse incentives in that organisations would not really want to solve the issue they are ostensibly working on, as it would put them out of business. Although perhaps true in a strict theoretical sense, and there may be some unconscious / systemic drivers of this type of behaviour as well, it seems a very odd thing to focus on. This isn't even what differentiates ... (read more)

We are working on all the strategies you mention in Norway. There was recently a report posted on the potential of CSR (which I imagine is what you mean by "workplace giving") in Norway (http://effective-altruism.com/ea/1js/project_report_on_the_potential_of_norwegian/).

There is also work being done in political action, both on improving the efficiency of our substantial foreign aid budget (~4.4 billion USD in 2017) and some preliminary work on prioritization of future generations.