All of Sjlver's Comments + Replies

Thanks for the long reply!

These are good arguments. Some were new to me, many I was already aware of. For me, the overall effect of the arguments, benchmarks, and my own experience is to make me think that a lot of scenarios are plausible. There is a wide uncertainty range. It might well be that AGI takes a long time to happen, but I also see many trends that indicate it could arrive surprisingly quickly.

For you, the overall conclusion from all the arguments is to completely rule out near-term AGI. That still seems quite wildly overconfident, even if there is a decent case being made for long timelines.

I agree that whether or not we get AGI is a crux for this topic. Though it makes sense to update our cause priorities even if AI is merely transformational.

Your comment seems overconfident, however ("essentially no chance of AGI"). This seems to not take into account that many (most?) intellectual tasks see progress. For example ARC-AGI-2 had scores below 10% at the beginning of the year, and within just few months the best solution on https://arcprize.org/leaderboard scores 29%. Even publicly available models without custom scaffolding score >10% now.

O... (read more)

If you're interested in studies that evaluate the impact of LLMs on productivity, I can recommend the blog of Ethan Mollick. For example this post from September 2023: https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/centaurs-and-cyborgs-on-the-jagged

It found that consultants with AI access outperformed consultants without AI access, on most dimensions that were measured. Ethan has since participated in several other studies on the industry adoption of AI.

Thanks! This sounds like good advice

I have two related thoughts that I would love to hear your opinion on:

1. There seems to be quite a large opportunity cost. Instead of investing, you could spend the money on effective causes now. Or take a lower-paying job now rather than wait until you've reached some investment goal. Presumably, many effective organizations would benefit from getting money/talent earlier? If you want to maximize your life's impact, would that be a good strategy?

2. Depending on your AI timelines, money that is locked until retirement is

The economic data seems to depend on one's point of view. I'm no economist and I certainly can't prove to you that AI is having an economic impact. Its use grows quickly though: Statistics on AI market size

It's also important, I think, to distinguish between AI capabilities and AI use. The AI-2027 text argues that a selected few AI capabilities matter most, namely those related to software and AI engineering. These will drive the recursive improvements. Changes to other parts of the industry are downstream of that. Both our viewpoints seem to be consistent... (read more)

Why do you think that? Personally, I've lost several bets. For example, I've bet NO on "Will an AI win a gold medal on the IOI (competitive programming contest) before 2027?" and have already lost that 20 months before the start of 2027.

As a former IOI participant, that achievement feels amazing. As a software engineer, I absolutely find AI tools useful, practical, and economically valuable.

This was a valuable read for me. Thanks!

I share some of your skepticism. At the same time, I think the argument relies on reasons that are quite speculative, such as:

• it's highly unclear if rates of progress can be extrapolated
• benchmarks might not generalize to the full complexity of real tasks
• here's a list of cognitive processes that AI can't do yet; it might continue to fail at them for years to come

I can't shake off the feeling that this type of argument has often aged poorly when it comes to AI. I've certainly been baffled many times by AI solving... (read more)

Thanks for the response!

I understand that you are worried about chicken and fish consumption. I have no knowledge about why these charts are the way they are, or why people in the UK consume twice as much chicken as those in Germany. It's also difficult to guess the impact of Veganuary in these trends. Insofar, I find the charts a bit distracting.

What I intended to say with my comment is that Veganuary has clearly visible impacts around me: when I go shopping, when I see ads, when I eat out. This seems to correlate with a general trend of seeing more vegan... (read more)

It's great to try and analyze the cost-effectiveness of Veganuary. I'm thankful for this post and also for the responses by @Toni Vernelli and others.

While I appreciate the effort, I find it hard to agree with Vasco's conclusions. There are many discounts in the analysis that feel pretty arbitrary to me. Toni has answered to this much better than I could. I'd just like to share a few personal impressions. These are of course biased, but might explain why I'm suspicious about the many downward adjustments (and lack of upward adjustments) in Vasco's analysis... (read more)

EA charities can also combine education and global health, like https://healthlearn.org/blog/updated-impact-model

HealthLearn builds a mobile app for health workers (nurses, midwives, doctors, community health workers) in Nigeria und Uganda. Health workers use it to learn clinical best practices. This leads to better outcomes for patients.

I'm personally very excited by this. Health workers in developing countries often have few training resources available. There are several clinical practices that can improve patient outcomes while being easy to implement ... (read more)

Personally, I'm not using the forum as much as I could and as much as I used to, because it is a time-sink. I'm the kind of person who can easily get lost on the Internet; clicking a link here and opening another tab there, and... look where those two hours went. Because of this, I'm wary of spending too much time here.

I don't know whether my declining forum use is due to changes in my behavior or changes to the forum. Probably it's a combination. On the forum side, the home page feels a bit more cluttered than it used to be. The forum feels slightly more ... (read more)

OP here :) Thanks for the interesting discussion that the two of you have had!

Lukas_Gloor, I think we agree on most points. Your example of estimating a low probability of medical emergency is great! And I reckon that you are communicating appropriately about it. You're probably telling your doctor something like "we came because we couldn't rule out complication X" and not "we came because X has a probability of 2%" ;-)

You also seem to be well aware of the uncertainty. Your situation does not feel like one where you went to the ER 50 times, were sent home... (read more)

Richard Chappell writes something similar here, better than I could. Thanks Lizka for linking to that post!

Pascalian probabilities are instead (I propose) ones that lack robust epistemic support. They're more or less made up, and could easily be "off" by many, many orders of magnitude. Per Holden Karnofsky's argument in 'Why we can't take explicit expected value estimates literally', Bayesian adjustments would plausibly mandate massively discounting these non-robust initial estimates (roughly in proportion to their claims to massive impact), leading to

I agree that our different reactions come partly from having different intuitions about the boundaries of a thought experiment. Which factors should one include vs exclude when evaluating answers?

For me, I assumed that the question can't be just about expected values. This seemed too trivial. For simple questions like that, it would be clearer to ask the question directly (e.g., "Are you in favor of high-risk interventions with large expected rewards?") than to use a thought experiment. So I concluded that the thought experiment probably goes a bit further... (read more)

This is a great point.

Clearly you are right. That said, the examples that you give are the kind of frequentist probabilities for which one can actually measure rates. This is quite different from the probability given in the survey, which presumably comes from an imperfect Bayesian model with imprecise inputs.

I also don't want to belabor the point... but I'm pretty sure my probability of being stuck by lightning today is far from 0.001%. Given where I live and today's weather, it could be a few orders of magnitude lower. If I use your unadjusted probabilit... (read more)

Sorry for having been imprecise in my post -- I wrote the question from memory after having already submitted the survey. I'll change it to "avert".

There is some public information about this here: https://www.givewell.org/charities/amf#Registration

Details vary by country. It's often a process where enumerators go door-to-door and interview the head of household to determine how many people live in a household. There can be some incentives to over-report the number of people, to receive more bednets. However, there is a limit on the number of nets per household (usually 3 or 4), and some of the data is independently verified by a second team of enumerators.

For what it's worth, AMF has population data from distributing bednets to every household. As an organization that cares about being highly effective, AMF tries hard to get the number of nets right. The target is to have approximately one net per 1.8 people (a net covers two people usually, but then there are households with an odd number of people or with pregnant women).

AMF distributed nets in five Nigerian states in the last two years. You can see these distributions here: https://www.againstmalaria.com/Distributions.aspx?MapID=68

AMF reports the populat... (read more)

I've appreciated this response.

The biggest discrepancy seems to be around the number of nurses:

• Lee writes that 1,709 nurses emigrated from Nigeria to the UK in a year, and that the UK takes ~85% of the total.
• Nick cites a Guardian article claiming that 15,000 nurses emigrate per year, and says that less than 25% go to the UK

Any insight on these large differences?

There is now also a translation into Toki Pona.

For European people on a budget, here's a multivitamin at €0.07 per day: https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Multivitamins-Minerals-Multivitamin-Essential-Vitamins/dp/B08BX439HX They don't deliver to the US, though. And you might want to add in some omega 3 fatty acids (DHA/EPA) for a more complete supplementation

What you write is almost right, but not 100%... we are getting at the heart of the problem here. Thanks for making me re-think this and state it more clearly!

Edited to add: I've now also read the discussion that you've linked to in your comment. It is now clear to me that the team has thought through issues like this... so I wouldn't be angry if you prefer to use your time more wisely than for responding to my ramblings :)

Assume as an example that, without my vote, there is the following situation:

• candidate A received 933 points from other voters
• candida

Thanks for setting up this donation election!

Choosing voting methods is difficult, and no voting method is without flaw. Nevertheless, I am somewhat unhappy with the method proposed here, because it is very difficult for users to support multiple candidates. The problem arises because the method tried to do two things: (1) determine which candidates are in the top three, and (2) determine their relative popularity.

The problem: as a voter who likes two candidates A and B, I cannot support A without harming B, and vice versa. My rational behavior is to alloc... (read more)

This is very well written. Thanks! It's the kind of article that sparks (my) curiosity.

I looked for some information on Helvetas' website. Helvetas is a Swiss charity that has been running safe water interventions for about 50 years; they are funded by private donors, but also receive development aid money from the Swiss government.

Helvetas provides some ideas why water interventions might help, besides diarrhea:

• Disproportionally helps women and girls: Women and girls in poor communities often spend several hours a day fetching water => big opportunit

Thanks! I completely understand... putting these systems in place can be time-consuming, and the regulations differ for each country.

I hope you'll find great US/Canada candidates!

PS, but only tangentially related: I've recently documented the situation of someone working in Germany for an international organization, at https://blog.purpureus.net/posts/how-to-work-in-germany-for-a-foreign-organization/

This sounds interesting, thanks for posting!

I noted that the application is open to candidates in the US or Canada. Is that a strict requirement, or could you make exceptions?

Here are some reasons why I think that units of ~100 households are ideal. The post itself has more examples.

• It's best for detailed planning. There is a type of humanitarian/development work that tries to reach every household in a region. Think vitamin A supplementation, vaccination programs, bednet distributions, cash transfers, ... For these, one typically needs logistics per settlement, such as a contact person/agent/community health worker, some means of transportation, a specific amount of bednets/simcards/..., etc.

  Of course, the higher levels of

Thanks! This seems very relevant. I will try to contact the team.

Yes, I know about What Three Words. Thanks for the suggestion! It's a good opportunity to clarify the different aims of my project and W3W.

W3W is essentially the same as a GPS coordinate, except more memorable and easier to pronounce. A W3W place does not necessarily correspond to anything particular in the real world (like a settlement). Thus, W3W does not provide any added value for planning purposes.

There are some other downsides, such as W3W being proprietary and based on (IMO) bad design choices (e.g., hard to localize).

A better alternative to W3W is... (read more)

Prediction markets haven't moved all that much yet: https://manifold.markets/bcongdon/will-a-cell-cultured-meat-product-b

But I share your hopeful attitude :)

I find this an interesting discussion, and hope that it will continue.

My own knowledge of this domain is very limited. I'll just mention some points from World Without End (WWE)... not because I endorse them, but to keep the discussion going:

• Because of low energy density, wind and solar require 1-2 orders of magnitude more land use, metal, and concrete per kWh than nuclear power. EROEI (Energy returned on energy invested) is worse.
• If batteries are used, the numbers become even worse; also greenhouse has emissions go up. WWE claims nuclear electricity em

Thanks for the write-up, Michelle! You write about your "hope that other like-minded parents will share their lessons and suggestions", so I decided to contribute a few thoughts.

I'm currently working as a software engineer for the Against Malaria Foundation (50%) and caring for our one-year old (50%). My wife also has a 50%-job.

Work time: Compared to what Michelle and Abby wrote, I have reduced my work time more strongly after becoming a parent. It felt important to me to experience my child growing up and to personally care for it. I can have 30 more pro... (read more)

I really liked this... the post made me think, and will continue to do that for some time. It doesn't seem all that unrealistic to me 🤯

One little nit: you seem to write "century" when you mean "decade".

Thanks for the thoughts!

I think we are getting closer to the core of your question here: the relationship between cases of malaria (or severe malaria more specifically) and deaths. I think that it would indeed be good to know more about the circumstances under which children die from malaria, and how this is affected by various kinds of medical care.

The question might partially touch upon SMC. Besides preventing malaria cases, it could also have an effect on severity (I'm thinking of Covid vaccines as an analogy). That said, the case for SMC (as I understa... (read more)

Looks like I can confirm this. Relevant passages from Cissé et al (2006):

The study was designed to measure Malaria, not deaths:

The primary outcome measure was a comparison of the occurence of clinical malaria between children in the two study groups.

Children with positive malaria tests received treatment:

Malaria morbidity was monitored through home visits every week and by detection of study children who presented at one of three health centres in the study area. At each assessment, axillary temperature was measured, and if it was 37.5C or greater, o

I appreciate the thoughts! I'm going to think about this more thoroughly... but here's a quick guess about the low death numbers:

These trials involved measuring malaria prevalence in children. Presumably, children with a positive result would then get medication or be referred to a health center. Malaria is a curable disease, so this approach would save lives. Unfortunately, it's also quite likely that the child would not receive appropriate treatment in the absence of a diagnosis, due to lack of knowledge of the parents, distance to health facilities, etc.

Anyway, it's just a quick guess. Might be worth checking if the studies describe what happened to children with positive test results.

The Right-Fit Evidence group provides good resources related to this post. They publish guidance on what types of evidence implementers should collect to demonstrate and monitor the impact of their programs.

Notably, different types of evidence are ideal depending on the stage of a program. In the beginning, when there is lots of uncertainty about an intervention, a randomized controlled trial is great. At a later stage, when the program is scaling to many recipients, it is more important to monitor the program and ensure that the implementation is done wel... (read more)

That seems fair. I agree that my request for an estimate is a big, maybe even unreasonable, request.

I asked because I am wondering if there really is enough reason to doubt the results of existing SMC trials. If I understand your post correctly, your main worry is not about actual errors in the trials; we don't have concrete reasons to believe they are wrong. Indeed, the trials provide high-quality evidence that SMC reduces malaria cases, including severe cases.

Your worries seem to be that (1) studies are underpowered to quantify reduction in malaria deat... (read more)

Yes, absolutely.

As far as I can tell, that type of RCT indeed is not being done. I don't know much about research on SMC specifically, but Givewell reports the following quote of Christian Lengeler, author of Cochrane Review of insecticide-treated bed nets:

To the best of my knowledge there have been no more RCTs with treated nets. There is a very strong consensus that it would not be ethical to do any more. I don't think any committee in the world would grant permission to do such a trial.

Thanks for these thoughts!

A question: How large do you expect the effects of such a replication to be? Maybe you could estimate "a study of cost $x$ would lead to a change if effect size of $y$ with probability $z$" for some instances of $x,y,z$. That would help to estimate whether the study would, in expectation, be worth more than one life saved per 5000 dollars.

And an observation: I think it would be very difficult to get ethical approval for such a study. SMC is (according to current knowledge) an amazing intervention. Any controlled trial would require a cont... (read more)

Jonas here, AMF software engineer.

Thank you for your research! I would really like to publish more of AMF's PDM data to enable this kind of work. Unfortunately, we have to prioritize how we spend our time in the small AMF team, and this task hasn't made it to the top yet.

If you were interested in doing a more in-depth analysis (and have the time required for this) it might be good to let Rob (our CEO) know. This can help in prioritizing this type of task.

(disclaimer: I work for AMF, but this is my personal opinion)

Yes, we have to prioritize. No, life quality seems the wrong metric for prioritization.

A few practical responses to the challenge first: AMF funds bednets at the scale of countries or provinces, that is, a few million nets at a time. This allows for efficient distributions that leverage economies of scale. Prioritization takes a number of factors into account, such as malaria prevalence (which might have an effect on the bednet use rate). Life quality metrics are currently not a factor for priori... (read more)

Related job ad, but not by the forum team; feel free to remove if not appropriate

The Against Malaria Foundation is close to Finnish time zones and completely remote. It currently has employees in the UK, Germany, and South Africa. One employee is working part-time due to parenting. AMF is hiring for several roles.

Sleeping under a bednet or getting a malaria vaccine are optional activities; people are free to choose to do that or not. (This is not quite accurate for children, where the decision probably lies with their caretakers.)

In post-distribution surveys, AMF consistently finds that most nets are being used as intended. People know that the nets protect against malaria. They also know the sickness, probably had it before, probably know someone who died from it. So it's an informed choice.

Based on this kind of observation, it seems to me that most people want to... (read more)

People should be allowed to destroy the button (aka "x-risk reduction") ;-)

In my previous job, we used the technique described below to prioritize feature requests and estimate their relative value. Feel free to skip this comment if you're not interested in slightly related survey techniques.

• Show a random sample of five items to a survey participant
• Participant selects the most important and least important (leaving three items "somewhere in-between")
• Repeat

Each iteration creates six links between items (A > B, A > C, A > D, B > E, C > E, D > E) plus, transitively, A > E. After enough iterations, a prefer... (read more)

Hi, would you be interested in AMF's software engineer positions? We have Python-based data analysis tasks that you might find fun, and I bet you could pick up the rest of the tech stack quickly. I came to AMF from a similar background as you (Python/C++ @ Google) and found that many of the skills translated well into the new environment.

Maybe check out the Operations Manager positions at AMF?