Honestly, I think you did a great job and tried your best. But your environment did not provide the support you needed.

I understand that the Nigerian government doesn't provide much funding for universities and scientific research work. One plausible reason for this (apart from corruption, theft, waste, etc) is that the Nigerian government collects a very low percentage of its GDP as taxes, less than 14 percent^[1]. For comparison, the OECD average is 34 percent^[2]. If the government is able to increase tax collection and enforcement, this should hopefully increase the budget and free up more money to fund research. Getting to the OECD level could take decades, but Nigeria is at least making some progress, the tax collection rate has increased in recent years, which is a good sign (even though increased taxes probably are not fun to pay, no matter one's country!).

Yes, indoor tanning is worse for your health than outdoor tanning. Indoor tanning beds beam UV radiation that can be as much as 10 to 15 times stronger than what you get from the sun.^[1]

It is worth mentioning that people who use indoor tanning are also more likely to not use sun protection when outdoors^[2]. This means that we really would not want to ban indoor tanning if the result is people just spending more time outside in the sun and getting the same dose of exposure. I did not find any studies that have looked at to what extent this is what people do after indoor tanning is banned.

My guess, though, is that a ban would be significantly net positive, even after accounting for a potential increase in outdoor tanning.

Have you considered publishing an audiobook version as well?

Gavi's investment opportunity for 2026-2030 says they expect to save 8 to 9 million lives, for which they would require a budget of at least $11.9 billion^[1]. Unfortunately, Gavi only raised $9 billion, so they have to make some cuts to their plans^[2]. And you really can't reduce spending by $3 billion without making some life-or-death decisions.

Gavi's CEO has said that "for every $1.5 billion less, your ability to save 1.1 million lives is compromised"^[3]. This would equal a marginal cost of $1,607 per life saved, which seems a bit low to me. But I think there is a good chance Gavi's marginal cost per life saved is still cheap enough to clear GiveWell's cost-effectiveness bar. GiveWell hasn't made grants to Gavi, though. Why?

Indoor tanning is really bad for people's health; it significantly increases one's risk of getting skin cancer.^[1] Many countries already outlaw minors from visiting indoor tanning salons. However, surprisingly, there are only two countries, Australia and Brazil, that have banned indoor tanning for adults, too. I think that doing policy advocacy for a complete ban on indoor tanning in countries around the world has the potential to be a highly cost-effective global health intervention. Indoor tanning ban policy advocacy seems to check all three boxes of the ITN framework: it is highly neglected; it affects many people (indoor tanning is surprisingly popular: over 10 percent of adults around the world have tanned indoors^[2]), and thus has the potential to have a big impact; and also, I think it could be quite tractable (passing laws is never easy, but is should be doable, because the indoor tanning lobby appears to be much less powerful than, say, the tobacco or alcohol lobbies).

Regarding the average view duration %: I think it makes sense for longer videos to have somewhat lower percentages. Fewer people are willing to sit through a long video, compared to a short one, so it is logical to have more people fall off throughout the video. But if you measure the average view duration in terms of minutes, not percentages, your results are really impressive: AI 2027 and MechaHitler have AVDs of ca 10 minutes and 13.5 minutes, respectively.

There is no need to do public advocacy if you feel this is not something you would enjoy/be good at. If at a later stage you feel more comfortable talking about effective giving and veganism with others, that's great. But not mandatory.

If you can just keep donating a part of your income regularly to effective charities, do that. That is probably the most useful thing you can do right now, far more effective than arguing with people on Reddit.

Digging wells in Niger seems surprisingly cost-effective. Thanks for writing this analysis, really good work!

Some questions I had:

1. If we assume that each well serves an average of 1,200 people, does this mean that none of these 1,200 people had access to clean water before this well was dug? Or are there cases where an existing well was already supplying clean water, but it was located further away? In other words, can we attribute all of the credit for giving these 1,200 people access to clean water to this well and this well only?
2. How much water can one well supply per day/hour/minute? Let's say we want to provide at least 20 liters per person per day. That would be 24,000 liters per day to supply 1,200 people. Can the well handle such a level of demand?

FYI, the Institute of Economic Affairs, where Snowdon works, is known to have received funding from alcohol, tobacco, sugar, gambling, and oil industry lobbies.^[1] The UK's Charity Commission recently opened an investigation into IEA.^[2]

One can, indeed, make the argument that an outright ban on smoking would violate the rights of people who have been smoking for their entire lives.^[1]

But most citizens would probably agree that at least some level of government intervention is justified for tobacco, when you consider that smoking is responsible for the deaths of 7 million people every year.