K

Kirsten

11539 karmaJoined Jun 2017

Bio

UK Civil Servant and prolific tweeter (@EAheadlines)

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1341

This is entirely consistent with two other applications I know of from 2023, both of which were funded but experienced severe delays and poor/absent/straightforwardly unprofessional communication

Answer by KirstenMar 07, 202411
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If I'm truly stuck on a task - no matter how hard I try, my focus always slides off of it - I set a timer for 10 minutes. During those 10 minutes I give myself free licence to either work on that one task, or just sit in my chair. I often spend a few minutes noticing a variety of feelings. Eventually I often hit a thought like, "Well, I wish I could make progress on this, but I don't really even know what to do. How would I even start?" or "I want to do so much more but I'm just exhausted; I'm at my limit" or "I'm not sure this task is even that useful." That is generally the thought that gets me unstuck.

"When life gives you Lemiens"?

Okay, sorry for misreading, the poll makes much more sense now! I've edited the first part of my comment at it doesn't make much sense

As a government employee, I have a duty to speak candidly internally and not to share restricted information externally. I suspect most organisations have weaker but similar norms about the difference between how you speak to colleagues and externals.

Answer by KirstenFeb 05, 20244
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My first question would be: is the particular suicide hotline you're looking at currently turning people away/making people wait a long time because of lack of volunteers? If so, every extra person could be very valuable.

If not, you might be replacing a less skilled volunteer. The question then becomes, how often would you save a life when they wouldn't? That's a hard question and it's not easy for me to know the answer, but it's probably not every night. Lots of people call a hotline with their mind already made up one way or the other.

What’s more, in areas that use primarily observational data there’s a really big gap between fields in how often papers even try to use causal inference methods and how hard they work to show that their identifying assumptions hold.

Just highlighting this paragraph because I think it's extremely important. As a policymaker, the vast majority of research I see from think tanks etc include poorly justified assumptions. It's become one of the first things I look for now, in part because it's an easy prompt for me to spot a wide range of issues.

Thanks for sharing your story, and for your family's sacrifice for the sake of those who need it most

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