Hzn
Bio
I've done ~16 years of academic research work, mostly quantitative or theoretical biology. Philosophically I'm not particularly aligned with EA. But I tend to have similar concerns in practice. My interests include 1) affective wellbeing, 2) AI consciousness & welfare, 3) possible economic & social fallout from AI. Lasted edited 2024-12-17.
Posts 2
Comments4
Thanks.
It seems like there are 4 studies with extended follow up -- Binka et al https://doi.org/10.1016/S0035-9203(02)90321-4 , Diallo et al https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2585912/ , Lindblade et al https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.291.21.2571 , Louis et al https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-3156.2012.02990.x -- but not of the type that would be directly informative.
As Binka et al say “The original trials ran for only 1-2 years each. At the end of these periods, the efficacy of the intervention was considered proven and the control groups were provided with nets or curtains, thus these trials could not be used to demonstrate the effects of long-term transmission control.”.
How strong is the evidence for bednets being effective?
A priori there is a not unsurprising mistake the researchers could have made in reaching this conclusion & they would have an incentive to make such a mistake.
A priori bednets being very effective is a bit surprising.
What is the strongest study that supports this conclusion?
I would question some of this basically along 2 lines.
1. I agree that a distinction can be made between personal benefit, personal connection & impartiality in the context of charity. But the examples given seem a bit problematic. From the perspective of an orthodox Christian or Muslim, funding those religions especially in missionary capacity probably is about big impact on the greater good. (As an interesting aside -- Muhammad claimed to have converted jins to Islam). Actually to some extent giving any examples in this manner is conflating the donor's beliefs regarding the charity with specific types of charity.
2. The conflating of effectiveness & impartiality. In a simple model perhaps increasing impartiality never decreases effectiveness. But adding complexities (eg bounded rationality) can break this relationship. For example it's generally accepted that investing in yourself may be effective for a number of reasons including increasing future earnings. But doesn't this same logic apply, to some extent, to a sibling most obviously in the case of identical twins? A person could extended this argument to cover a much larger group of people similar to themself.
I am inclined to agree with the post in its main points. But I think the categories ought to be refined.
I think sociological analyses are valuable in their own right (irrespective of the inherent goodness of an idea). But they tend to be overly critical & overly influenced by certain leftist inclinations. This 1 seems not too bad based on the short description.
The problem with longtermism is that it's either scammy or it's trivial {more good is better} thinking. There is some good faith but {people tend to believe what they want to believe} + {very high ignorance} = probably scammy BS. P(‘waste’ of money)>95%, P(actual harm)≈25%.