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 23
Comments1502
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've really appreciated comments and reflections from @Yarrow Bouchard 🔸 and I think in his case at least this does feel a bit unfair. Its good to encourage new people on the forum, unless they are posting particularly egrarious thing which I don't think he has been.
Thanks @Duncan Sabien for this excellent explanation. Don't undersell yourself, I rate your communication here at least as good (if not better) than that of other senior MIRI people in recent years.
I'm super encouraged that you think a large amount of money will flow in to good causes from Anthropic employees. I really hope you are right, although I think there's likely to be moderate-heavy disappointment on the Anthropic/Giving front.
Maintaining radical generosity and the altruistic values you used to have on the path to riches is really difficult. Most people unfortunately will become far more selfish, and rationalise keeping money they previously intended to give away. Rare cases like Moskowitz have shown its possible, but there are surprisingly few cases of young people (under 40) giving away millions after a cash windfall, let alone tens of millions. I'm not blaming anyone here at all, just stating an observation.
On the other hand I'm encouraged by cases like @richard_ngo that do distribute good amounts of riches that come in. So its difficult but possible!
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!