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All of Matthew_Brown's Comments + Replies

List of possible EA meta-charities and projects
Matthew_Brown5y2
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It is really helpful to have all these ideas listed in one place, thank you.

I am involved in running a scheme similar to Year Here (Think Ahead) and have occasionally wondered if a similar scheme for EA would be worthwhile. Programmes like ours and Teach for America, Teach First, Frontline, Police Now etc. have proven extremely effective at attracting talented people into particular career paths. I haven't devoted much time/thought into how one might design something like this for the very diffuse career path of "being an EA", but I would be... (read more)

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Cause profile: mental health
Matthew_Brown5y6
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I found this extremely interesting and useful, thanks.

I am likely to be biased in favour of working in mental health, as I work on this cause now and began working in the area before I discovered EA. But nevertheless I find your arguments fairly compelling.

Three points:

  • On the issue of where on a life satisfaction scale might be the neutral point / equivalent to not being alive, have you looked into whether there is any data on where on this scale people typically are when they are suicidal? This is not necessarily an appropriate answer to the question, bec
... (read more)
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MichaelPlant
5y
Hello Matthew and thanks for your points. I don't think it counts as bias if favour of X if you chose to do X because you thought X was best! On the first, I haven't looked, but I wouldn't consider that to be the right evidence. It seems pretty plausible people could below hedonic/satisfaction neutrality and not want to kill themselves; I'd expect our evolutionary insight is to keep living even in such circumstances - those who committed suicide easily would have their genes removed from the pool. On the second, I haven't, but I'd welcome someone doing that research. On the third, I am familiar with that stuff and am in regular communication with the economists who write the big reports, e.g. the World Happiness Report. However, I tend to think that, given there are people working on the policy problem, and I don't have much to add there, but there isn't really anyone thinking about the EA-type questions of what the best things for individuals to do with their time and money, I do more by contributing to this latter issue.
What’s the Use In Physics?
Matthew_Brown5y0
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Your comment, and the links, were very helpful and thought-provoking - thanks.

I've definitely reached the limit of my expertise - so take this with a pinch of salt - but I think the key thing for me is whether any of the interpretations lead to observable real-world differences.

I didn't fully understand the link you provided to the many worlds interpretation making testable predictions, but it appeared to be talking only of thought experiments that would require non-existent technology to carry out in practice.

I agree with you that some interpre... (read more)

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What’s the Use In Physics?
Matthew_Brown5y3
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Thank you for writing this. I think it serves an important purpose, because like you I think the most likely impression for a physicist to form from the highest-profile EA career advice is that they should take their highly valuable transferable skills and get out of physics (even if it's not explicitly stated). This may be the correct advice, but it's worth explicitly considering whether that is true.

I did (computational quantum) physics to PhD level before exiting to policy, initially in climate change, so I effectively followed this advice (al... (read more)

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Yannick_Muehlhaeuser
5y
Not an expert on the foundations of QM, but a few points on your question: * For some interpretations the mathematics does change somewhat (e.g. Bohmian Mechanics, Collapse Theories) * Some interpretations actually do make testable predictions (like the Many Wolds Interpretation), but they tend to be quite hard to test in practice * Some people have argued that some interpretations follow more naturally from the mathematics. It's pretty clear in my opinion that Bohmian Mechanics is postulating additional structure on top of the mathematics we have now, while many-worlds is not really doing that.