Thanks for this great analysis, this matches my experience and I've often scratched my head about the potential cost-effectiveness of these kind of interventions - we even have a similar program here in Gulu Northern Uganda.

That might be true but have you not seen the movie "war of the worlds" ? Or read that book by the guy who wrote "the martian" about the light eating organisms?

In all seriousness that makes s lot of sense to me, but I thought there still might be a non -zero chance of a different kind of pathogen (perhaps that doesn't fit our earthly paradigms) that could just wipe us out.

Millions of "fission bugs" that enter you then explode, or a rapidly reproducing carbon eating parasite or a..

I know this example doesn't match because they still do have roughly the same environment, but introduced species can take over another more rapidly grab in their own where they are in equilibrium. What if we didn't have that one critical defense mechanism that every creature on Jupiter's moon uses routinely to keep it at bay?

IDK probably just being ridiculous here.

Those is cool! Not a big deal but wondering why you listed worst case scenario as only 7 out of 10 for alien microbes. Why could they not wipe us out?

Thanks that's a thorough report.

Quick note "postmortem" kind of sounds like something bad has happened which had triggered the report egg want the case, perhaps "review" or "roundup" or similar might be a bit more positive a word to use.

Thanks John. It's great that hey adjusted for confounders (and any similar study would). That such a lot of controlling for confounders needed to be done at all shows the major weakness in this kind of study design.

I'm not saying it's a bad study, just that it's not fit for analysis of causation.

I think you would struggle to find many (if any) researchers who would say this study provided any more than a decent correlation between drinking and increased happiness, rather than evidence of causation. Happy to be proved wrong here and others can feel free to weigh in!

Along those lines it was mainly this comment I disagreed with.

"Because the event data is so fine-grained and there are so many contiguous datapoints, it provides very good evidence of causation."

Thanks yes I get it now! I think it might be important (if the charity even allows) to have a mechanism to share only to that program rather than just the charity "in general" itself - much like Givewell does with Malaria Consortium's seasonal malaria prevention.

Otherwise a lot of money donated to that charity might go to less effective, unproven programs.

Such an interesting idea about saving up enough for a full life saved! Concreteness is important, maybe even kind of lame ideas like buying be a small piece of jewelry to remind us of a line saved, or hosting a "giving" celebration" can help some of us feel the good that is done a little more!

Thanks yeah that's a great graphic. Do they include government salaries and other NGO costs as part of their costs too?

Thanks Joel nice one!

I'm interested in where this figure Congress from "cost per person treated for StrongMinds hasadeclined to $63" - that's a big change.

I don't feel like they are pro Altman in general, but not sure. Maybe in the past they were when OpenPhil funded OpenAI not sure.