All of SamiM's Comments + Replies

I still think it works for some causes. I met people who thought it wasn't just bad, but evil to do wild animal welfare stuff. I'm not sure why, maybe their introduction to the idea was about predator euthanasia or something.

lol, my bad. Thanks.

Hey Sean, happy Thanksgiving!

I was wondering why StrongerMinds focuses on women. Is it because women especially suffer from depression, or maybe helping women has better downstream effects? Another reason?

I'm guessing this was downvoted due to unclarity, maybe expand on what you mean?

I thought the parable was fine, but I greatly enjoyed the rest of the FAQ. Thanks for sharing.

Just a note, Michelle has a Ph.D. so in the formal message, "Dr." would be more appropriate than "Ms." People usually have their credentials on Linkedin, so that information might be easy to find.

I guess it depends on the reason they’re isolated. And the more “expensive” interventions in terms of inconvenience to regulars should be weighted by the excepted gain. A proxy for that might be the number of isolated EAs.
Examples of interventions would be diversifying meetup times/locations if it’s due to time/location conflicts. It might be easier to test this by adding online events and comparing the number of new attendees.

Marisa mentioned that 1-1’s (with the organizers or other members) would also be beneficial and would reduce the awkwardness of joi... (read more)

I think you're right. I guess I took Gwen's comment at face value and tried to figure out how development aid will look different due to the "huge implications", which was hard.

Hey, I thought this discussion could use some data. I also added some personal impressions.

These are the results of the 2020 SSC survey.

For the question "How would you describe your opinion of the [sic] the idea of "human biodiversity", eg the belief that races differ genetically in socially relevant ways?"

20.8% answered 4 and 8.7% answered 5.

Where 1 is Very unfavorable and 5 is Very favorable

The answers look similar for 2019

Taking that at face value, 30% of Scott’s readers think favorably of “HBD”.

(I guess you could look at it as "80% of SSC readers fail ... (read more)

Edited for clarity

I can imagine such a low number if we're talking about posthumous donations. According to this, only 3/1000 people die in such a way that their organs are useful. When you add that to the fact that deceased organs are less good than living ones,  you can get something as low as this.

For example, this says that the QALY's from a deceased kidney is 4.31. If only 3/1000 donors have such kidneys, you get 0.013 QALY's. It will probably get higher when you account for all other organs. I should also mention that it's not clear if all organ... (read more)

“Clark notes that while the evidence indicates there is, in general, a relative income effect, it's unclear how large it is and whether it functions differently for those in poverty, a topic which has not received much study.”

Hi Micheal, great post!
A tangential point I’m confused about.

I’m not sure if we should even account for negative community spillovers, especially if for example we had a taxonomy of different emotions that influence well-being, we wouldn’t count all those as part of our felicifc calculus if they are motivated by e.g. Jealousy. T... (read more)

I might want to add Martha Nussbaum to this list. She is quite systemic and analytical while also engaging with a wide variety of philosophers (e.g. Aristotle, Marx, Mackinnon). Maybe Sex and Social Justice or Frontiers of Justice. (although I  haven't read the latter yet).

Hey Max, there is no link to the McCloskey paper.

Maybe merge (do we have merging?) with Open Borders.

EDIT: Although, I can see how they would be different in their fully fleshed-out forms.

Hey!
Re #4, I found this, but I'm not sure if they're still active. If this doesn't work, you very welcome to join us at EA Anywhere.

Hi, Nice post. I found this article and it had some criticism of the effect of the radio broadcasts.

It will be interesting to estimate the effect of genocide on future outcomes, like economic growth or political stability. For example, Somaliland, where the Isaaqs were killed, is currently more stable than other parts of Somalia, but that could be due to factors completely orthogonal to the genocide.

EDIT: I tried to find studies on the effects of genocide on the economy and a brief glance makes it seem that it's very bad. I also found an interesting report... (read more)

Hey Marcus, good job on taking the initiative!

I think we should keep in mind that if someone (an athlete in this example) was donating 5% to an average charity, and then was prompted by the pledge to merely give  2%, the difference in impact between charities might be enough to offset that.
Edit: I also endorse the option of giving more than 10%, it doesn't seem to have many downsides, and the benefits were highlighted by Benjamin.

I came across this playlist about the end of the world, might be of interest.

Hi Akash, great post. 
The link to the Nanda post isn't working. (It links back to your post)

for more about the benefits of blogging, see this post by Neel Nanda



 

Yes, it's free.

I just googled your question.

Here are the top 3 links.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/malaria/diagnosis-treatment/drc-20351190

https://www.terminix.com/pest-control/mosquitoes/behavior/malaria-in-united-states/

https://www.who.int/malaria/areas/treatment/overview/en/

In Debiasing Decisions: Improved Decision Making With A Single Training Intervention they found that a 30-minute video reduced confirmation bias, fundamental attribution error, and bias blind spot, by 19%.
The video is super cheesy, and that makes me suspicious.
It should be noted that playing a 60-minute "debiasing" game debiased people more than the video. 

The rest of this short form is random thoughts about debiasing.

I tried finding tests for these biases so that I can do it myself, but I didn't find any. This made me worry ... (read more)

This is helpful, thanks.

The information is probably here somewhere, but is that the probability of getting tenure given you finish your Ph.D.? I.e. Does this account for dropping out?

Somewhat tangential, but I think accounting for the chance of working on AI safety (or something comparably effective) outside of academia will help. I think this is more common in Economics (e.g. World Bank). But I guess OpenAI or similar institutions hire CS PhDs and working there possibly has a similar impact to working in academia.

Hey Alex, excellent post.

Two caveats:

(1) You said

Tax Justice Network is a highly effective charity: consider donating.

And then

Tax Justice Network is laying the foundation for developing countries to become self-sufficient. Based on their work on tax havens alone, TJN is a highly-effective charity. Once we consider their role in curbing illicit financial flows, we may see TJN rise to a top charity for poverty alleviation and governance.

I think there is a part missing in the middle, because I couldn't find an argument why TJN is a good place to donat... (read more)

Oh, thanks, fixed it. Good catch. :)

Hey Ozzie,

The name is perhaps sup-optimal in communicating the purpose of the group, but it was better than the alternatives we considered.

I made this because there wasn’t a space for EAs who don’t t have access to local groups, not for all EAs. And if it gets too large, we could have subgroups.

The attendees will not be homogeneous, but I don’t think we will experience problems re differences in opinions and/or knowledge by a much greater degree than a local group might.

Thank you for taking the time to write this, any other considerations welcome.