The Mountains, the Sea, and the Rivers.

This post is about emotions and the strange disconnect between something which seems obviously bad yet people can't see it. Don't think this response is relevant to this post.

A lot of PHD students do get funded in the US and Europe, but its not as much of a "standard" part of the process as New Zealand I don't think.

This is one of the first times I have seen lead poisoning make front page news! 

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy4n7wn8l58o

Could this be an opportunity for the new lead alliance, or even just one of the lead orgs to help China do better on lead? Maybe there will be a window where they are more open to external help? It seems China has new "maximum" lead levels regulations in paint from 2020 but there are obviously still issues...

Could well still not be worth it though if there are other "lower hanging fruit" on the lead front.

Ha I love this!

I'm interested that your cluelessness places you heavily on the "It's OK side". I think if I felt "clueless" here my vote might be slightly on the "Not OK" side, because I would would worry that eating honey could still be really bad. 

Thanks for posting  - I think it's pretty brave of you here to make this your first post where I imagine most will disagree.

Im drawn to your moral burden for the poor argument. I would be especially interested to hear people's arguments here against the creation of an inequitable moral landscape, which I think can often be the case. When I was studying in England I was shocked how many educated people took the moral high ground and derided poor brexit voters, even though many of them thought they were voting for what was best for them, same as the liberal elite were. I was really uncomfortable with the decision.

One argument against I can think of is that people who donate might not actually morally claim to be better than their who can't afford it. Perhaps our moral status is partly tied to our privelege and wealth "to whom much is given, much is expected". Maybe donating to offset with our riches doesn't put us "above" poorer people who can't afford to.

 But the perception and signals could be bad regardless.

Also yes, as a straightforward point sacrifice and moral offsetting aren't exclusive - sometimes arguments here on the forum might seem to make it seem that way, but I dont think it's people's intention most of the time.

Apologies for breaching forum norms. Corrected and please don't ban me.

Nice one! Read it as you will sir :D - perhaps I should have been more specific, but there are trade-offs to specificity on polls like this too.

Thanks @Bob Fischer those are all good points.

I agree its very difficult and probably impossible to "get right" with a small team of researchers, but I still think (as many people have commented) that there would be great value in truly independent work on this. I think there is too much upside to independent work here to continue with only collaboration, even if reductoin in quality might be a downside. 

If work continued with only collaboration, I think the Gravity Well effect mentioned by would be hard to avoid, credibility would be reduced, and that new researchers might find it hard to flesh out new methodology and ideas and in some cases be adversarial if RP's team was involved from the beginning of any new research.

Of course then collaboration and conversation would come later.

POLL: Is it OK to eat honey^[1]?

I've appreciated the Honey wars. We've seen the kind of earnest inquiry that makes EA pretty great. 

I'm interested to see where the community stands here. I have so much uncertainty that I'm close to the neutral point, but I've been updated towards it maybe not being OK - I previously slurped the honey without a thought. What do you think^[2]?
 

It's OK to eat honey

disagree

agree

1. ^{^}

   This is a non-specific question. "OK" could mean a number of things (you choose). It could mean you think eating net honey is "net positive" (My pleasure/health > small chance of bee suffering), or could mean "does no harm at all", or even "Morally acceptable" - which might mean you think it does harm but you can offset it, or that the harm isn't bad enough for you to stop or anything along those lines. 

2. ^{^}

   @Toby Tremlett🔹 said it was inappropriate for a poll not to have 2 footnotes so here it is...