NickLaing
Bio
Participation1
I'm a doctor working towards the dream that every human will have access to high quality healthcare. I'm a medic and director of OneDay Health, which has launched 53 simple but comprehensive nurse-led health centers in remote rural Ugandan Villages. A huge thanks to the EA Cambridge student community in 2018 for helping me realise that I could do more good by focusing on providing healthcare in remote places.
How I can help others
Understanding the NGO industrial complex, and how aid really works (or doesn't) in Northern Uganda
Global health knowledge
Posts 27
Comments1662
Thanks @mal_graham🔸 this is super helpful and makes more sense now. I think it would make your argument far more complete if you put something like your third and fourth paragraphs here in your main article.
And no I'm personally not worried about interventions being ecologically inert.
As a side note its interesting that you aren't putting much effort into making interventions happen yet - my loose advice would be to get started trying some things. I get that you're trying to build a field, but to have real-world proof of this tractability it might be better to try something sooner rather than later? Otherwise it will remain theory. I'm not too fussed about arguing whether an intervention will be difficult or not - in general I think we are likely to underestimate how difficult an intervention might be.
Show me a couple of relatively easy wins (even small-ish ones) an I'll be right on board :).
I agree with your assessment, but "oh yeah, we share the same principles, but we aren't actually part of that movement at all." still seems like a warm change since “I’m not the expert on effective altruism. I don’t identify with that terminology. My impression is that it’s a bit of an outdated term.”.
Not a huge change perhaps, but still different.
Hey James I love this post, and you seem like such a great guy, I'd love to meet up for coffee this week - my shout what do you say?
I'm about to go to Skoll conference, the biggest GHD NGO conference in the world, and boy do I feel for the funders there. A couple of people already recommended I have something like digital flashcard photos of the important funders so I can efficiently scan rooms then hunt them down :(. Along with everyone else in the room...
300% agree that NGOs need funder scrutiny as a key feedback mechanism. I'm a big fan of the Mulago/Kevin Starr approach here, and pretty dubious about 'trust-based philanthropy' which has become a big thing in the human charity world at least. I don't really want funders to trust us with their money, I want them to hold us accountable. As iron sharpens iron...
I hope though that there are funding opportunities for small scrappy organisations without much of a track record (although that might not be your job). To state the obvious, if there are no early stage funders there will be no new orgs coming through. This can be a space more for individual funders though rather than "funds" or "orgs". There needs to be more room for failure in small orgs. I sometimes think that EA funders can throw too much money at early stage orgs too early. There's something to be said for spending 1-2 years without much money figuring out the problem, your model and what really works before hiring a bunch of staff and spending a bunch of money.
Thanks I appreciate the response and the comment so much. I still think its best to write things ourselves and then let AI do some editing (even if extensive). That way we retain at least some of our own voice. But I know there's a wide range of views on this as I saw on my poll (was about 60/40 people not wanting AI writing most of posts).
I really like the ideas but I was turned off by the style. Bereft of human voice. The almost pseudointellectual phrasing like "external-facing touchpoints", the repetitive "it wasn't X it was Y" and sloppy metaphors. AI wrote this.
I'm continuing to highlight this issue because I'm scared of the forum becoming the next generic slopfest like Linkedin. the ideas in this post are fantastic, but I don't think its good for the forum or the community to have AI writing posts. Its a shame if great ideas and great posts to be flattened and mitigated by the hollow voice of AI
If they think its overhyped that's OK, they can just join us over here helping boring-old-right-now people in GHD, we can care about different things ;).
Love this @Molly Archer-Zeff , the kind of lowish effort highish impact comment which reassures people that the Humane League is on it (which I don't doubt). Nice one.
Thanks @SiobhanBall I've definitely learned a bunch too from the other perspectie. Was talking to a French Canadian today and he was telling me how he feels like he can now put a whole bunch of bullet points and ideas down, then AI can draft something that he knows is correct English. After that he modifies it to make sure it is actually making his arguments (because it often adds slightly different arguments) and to add some of his own voice. Makes a lot of sent.
He used to be too nervous because of English being his second language, but AI helped him overcome some of that fear.
Thanks for the update, and the reasons for the name change make s lot of sense
Instinctively i don't love the new name. The word "coefficient" sounds mathsy/nerdy/complicated, while most people don't know what the word coefficient actually means. The reasoning behind the name does resonate through and i can understand the appeal.
But my instincts are probably wrong though if you've been working with an agency and the team likes it too.
All the best for the future Coefficient Giving!