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 24
Comments1513
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 :).
hey man. From my perspective I'm at least as impressed by small earners who give high percentages, although obviously there are good utility arguments against this being the most important that. I'll let a wiser person explain why ;)
"Sitting across from the offering box, he was observing how the crowd tossed money in for the collection. Many of the rich were making large contributions. One poor widow came up and put in two small coins—a measly two cents. Jesus called his disciples over and said, “The truth is that this poor widow gave more to the collection than all the others put together. All the others gave what they’ll never miss; she gave extravagantly what she couldn’t afford—she gave her all"
And i would count that 10k bet why not?
Just wanted to say here is at least one EA who agrees with "I don't think I'm just lucky to have what I have, I also think it's not rightfully mine, and I ought to try to correct those injustices by giving." In the EA GHD scene at least, I think similar sentiments aren't that rare, but perhaps you haven't met too many who think along those lines.
I love this sentiment and am happy to see it here on the forum. I will say though that (depending on our personality type) it can be unhelpful to dwell on this too much, or it can lead to guilt/paralysis which can stop us actually improve said injustice....
I work on a low salary and agree that can be a great way to go for periods of time. I do agree that 10% of a low salary can be tricky, but on the other hand 10% of a low salary ain't that much hahaha
thanks for this bold and important move to give as a student! If you can build habits now it will make it so much easy when the money starts flowing in. I always considered myself "cash strapped" as a student but really i would have been better off getting into the habit of donating monthly like you are. Amazing job!
I think giving circles like those that AIM run are a great option in this kind of case. They are a great way to build understanding around giving, while being well supported and also providing accountability
I also think lots of people will make statements along the lines of "EA is no longer the default option for smart people" as an excuse/copout for not giving at all, when really the issue is just value drift and greed catching up with them. If you don't want to give "EA style" that's great, as long as you've got another plan where to give it.
I think cross cause-area comparisons are great to consider, but cross cause-area rankings are a bit absurd given how big the error bars are around future stuff and animal welfare calculations. I don't mind someone making a ranking list as an interesting exercise that the odd person are going to defer to, but more realistically people are going to anchor on one cause area or another. At least have within-cause rankings before you start cross-cause ranking.
People within the field say they don't even want to do cost-effectiveness analysis within AI safety charities (I feel they could make a bit more of an effort). How on earth then will you do it cross-cause?
GiveWell and HLI basically rank global health/Dev charities. If you're that keen on rankings, why not start by making an animal welfare and AI safety rank list first, then if people take that seriously perhaps you can start cross-cause ranking with non-absurdity
what a wonderful reply...
"Because of this difference, it’s unclear to us whether a 1% income increase for 40 years should produce the same wellbeing benefit as a 40% increase for one year." for sure it's unclear, but I would on a 1 percent income increase over 40 years making a bigger difference to well-being than 40 percent over 1 year. very low confidence though it's just a hunch.
the problem is we're really unlikely to ever be able to determine that because we won't be able to statistically pick out any less than say a 5 percent yearly increase with most study sample sizes...
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!