All of peter_janicki's Comments + Replies

Maybe simply add a question, like for a school essay:

“Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime.” If this were true, how many decades ago do you think would extreme poverty ended worldwide?

It´s no direct "kill", still:

Dear Lord, I know some billion people are hard working yet still can´t afford enough food or water. Please, please, please: Let this be a problem, which can be easily solved by a good teacher. I don´t want poverty to be a money-problem. I mean, if that´d be the case, I would still keep my money, I wouldn´t change my behaviour, but I´d feel bad about it. So nothing would change, except me feeling bad. As you are a good lord, you sure don´t want that, right? - Oh, and please: These people are waiting for this good teacher for some decades now. Would you ask Santa if he could give him a lift? 

Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime - if he can afford a fishing rod.

Hej, yeah, living healthy only a decade longer is no sexy longterminst inifinite-live cause ;-) 

Still. I recently stumbled over an small article in the New Scientist. As I had to make most calculations myself and ended saying, that humankind could increase their healthy lifespan by years, even by a decade - I´m happy to see, that others came to the same conclusions. 

Here is the Link: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2307510-cutting-down-meat-and-dairy-could-help-you-live-up-to-a-decade-longer/

Best wishes and stay healthy! 

We have someone doing some of our household-work (cleaning, some ironing, folding clothes, etc) for us. It‘s only 6 hours a month for her. We „save“ rather 10 hours - she‘s faster. Even with less money, I would still love to pay her a good wage, because it really saves some time.

Thx for commenting. I have to agree with you and disagree somewhat with my earlier comment. (#placebo). Actually placebo-effects are fine and if a placebo helps people: Great! 

And yes, getting a specific treatment effect + the placebo-effect is better (and more like in real life), than getting no treatment at all. 

Please don´t get me wrong. I do not like the research from strongminds for the above mentioned reasons (I am sure nobody got me wrong on this). And for some other reasons. But that does mean, that their therapy-work is bad or inefficient. Even if they overestimate their effects by a factor of 4 (it might be 20, it might be 2 - I just made those numbers up) it would still be very valuable work.

They did not have a placebo-receiving control group. For example some kind of unstructured talking-group etc. Ideally an intervention known as „useless“ but sounding plausible. So we do not know, which effects are due to regression to the middle, social desirable answers etc. This is basically enough to make their research rather useless. And proper control groups are common for quiete a while.

No „real“ evaluation of the results. Only depending on what their patients said, but not checking, if this is correct (children going to school more often…). Not eve... (read more)

I recently looked into strongminds „research“ and their findings. I was extremely dissapointed by the low standards. It seemed like they simply wanted to make up super-good numbers. Their results are extremely unrealistic. Are there new results from proper research?

I am writing on a post about "better/healthier diets" simply due to their effect on human health. I hope it will be out during the next weeks.  - I have to wait for some feedback by experts on this topic.  

Sure. Malnutrition: eating the wrong things as a voluntary choice despite having alternatives. Undernourishment: one does not get enough food, f.e. because there is not enough/because one can‘t afford it. malnutrition seems to be a big problem in middle and high income countries. In low-income countries undernourishment would be a big problem. My post is only about eating the wrong stuff on a „voluntary“ basis. One can afford fruits and veggies, but f.e. still eats red meat, salty chips etc. And those 250 million DALYs they only account for eating the wrong stuff (but not because of scarcity). At least if all those numbers are correct.

Thx for commenting. I am not sure, whether I got your point. If you are writing about nutrition-programs - do you mean getting people specific foods or informing them? As to my experience in germany there is no powerful organization or lobby -group trying to promote better nutrition because of the impressive health effects/reduced costs etc.

Mostly agreeing with this article. Thx. I‘d be hoping, that high schoolers (make better choices on what to study) will find the ea-groups at university faster, if they know about ea already. But even if that „fails“, it‘s not only about “becoming ea“ or not. It‘s not binary. If people don‘t get involved in ea-stuff... but agree to only one concept more (like cause neutrality /animals are capable of suffering, so that should matter too / counterfactual thinking in making career choices / the fact, that donations can have different impacts etc. (maybe even spreading those ideas)) - then it might be worth the time. Thx for the article.

Sorry, this is just a general comment. And it is only an opinion. I don‘t like the idea of profit-orientated prisons. The aim of a reform might be „good prisons“, „good treatment“, but that‘s not where the money is/get‘s generated? Low reoffending rates, espacially for crimes like murder, sexual assault, etc. are „producing“ the profit. I am afraid, people will find cheaper (but not necessarily better ways) to make the profit. For example: if some of my clients ever stands in court again: I will pay them a really good lawyer: I loose money, if they get con

There is a lot of research done in forensic psychology/psychiatry as to which offenders have which rates of reoffending (and how that rate can be reduced). There are instruments like the HCR20, the Psychopathy Checklist, the SVR20, etc. In Germany there are nice statistics about which released groups do commit the same/different crimes with which rates of recidivism. I am pretty sure, other countries have comparable stats. The rates are well below 50%, but we only have some 80 persons out of a hundred thousand behind bars, in the united states that number

applause. thx for this highly interesting (and important) article.

while reading i thought about a lot of commenting, but you already considered most of these things…

still some minor comments:

as to narcissism (maybe (?) the least important "dark tetrad trait"): as for narcistic personality disorder, there is a reason why (some) of these people are trying to gain power. a huge lack of self-esteem etc. and some narcistic people are trying to fill this lack with a successful career etc., still it does not gets filled this way, so (some of th... (read more)

as for question 21 (reduced donations due to recession):

i guess, we are all pretty sure: donations will go down. many people are loosing their jobs/ their income, some will get huge medical bills, … other people lost money in the stock market, others see their real estate or their pension savings loosing worth… i guess, that many people will “save” some money via donating less.

that might affect many valuable organizations/ employees of those organizations. their work might/will be disrupted.

i think it is a good idea to have a ... (read more)

hey there,

it seems to me, that there is a lot of confusion about anxiety as a (recurrent) short-symptom (which your app is targeting) and anxiety as a mental health disorder (coded via icd-10 or dsm-v). you are citing papers about anxiety as health disorders to proof that there is a huge need for targeting anxiety symptoms. sure there is an overlap, but still: that does not fit. (or am i wrong?) i am not even sure, if it´s a good way to use this tool against anxiety symptoms. taking a pain pill against each small short-term feeling of pain would (in the l... (read more)