Reducing trauma seems good as something that improves human flourishing // reduces suffering, more than as something which “improves coordination”. But it doesn’t stand out to me as something that seems better than any of the major established cause areas.
EA cause areas aren’t just about the scale of an issue—to be plausible candidates, they require methods to address the issue that are proven or at least promising. Are you aware of any extremely efficient ways to reduce trauma? Is trauma something that can easily be measured (maybe secondarily through stress hormones)?
People interested in this topic may find value in Michael Plant’s look at mental illness, an area where we have some evidence for the existence of a reasonably cheap and effective treatment.
Are you aware of any extremely efficient ways to reduce trauma ?
There are several promising canidates that show high enough efficacy to do more research. Drugs therapies such as MDMA show promise, as do therepeutic techniques like RTM. (RTM is particularly promising because it appears to be quick, cheap, and highly effective).
Are you aware of any extremely efficient ways to reduce trauma? Is trauma something that can easily be measured (maybe secondarily through stress hormones)?
There are well-validated instruments for measuring post-traumatic stress disorder. MDMA therapy is proving highly effective at treating PTSD (see my answer for evidential support).
more than as something which “improves coordination”
What makes you say that? I have the sense that the less trauma people have, the easier they’ll find it, and the more desire they’ll have, to co-operate and coordinate.
What makes you think that this secondary effect, which requires trauma reduction in an enormous number of people (to generate network effects) or a tightly-knit group of people, would have a greater impact than the primary effect of “people have less trauma and feel better”?
Reducing trauma seems good as something that improves human flourishing
// reduces suffering, more than as something which “improves coordination”. But it doesn’t stand out to me as something that seems better than any of the major established cause areas.
EA cause areas aren’t just about the scale of an issue—to be plausible candidates, they require methods to address the issue that are proven or at least promising. Are you aware of any extremely efficient ways to reduce trauma? Is trauma something that can easily be measured (maybe secondarily through stress hormones)?
People interested in this topic may find value in Michael Plant’s look at mental illness, an area where we have some evidence for the existence of a reasonably cheap and effective treatment.
There are several promising canidates that show high enough efficacy to do more research. Drugs therapies such as MDMA show promise, as do therepeutic techniques like RTM. (RTM is particularly promising because it appears to be quick, cheap, and highly effective).
Of course. Like most established constructs in psychology, there are both diagnostic criteria for assesment by trained professionals and self-report indexes. Most of these tend to be fairly high on agreement between different measures as well as test-retest reliability.
There are well-validated instruments for measuring post-traumatic stress disorder. MDMA therapy is proving highly effective at treating PTSD (see my answer for evidential support).
What makes you say that? I have the sense that the less trauma people have, the easier they’ll find it, and the more desire they’ll have, to co-operate and coordinate.
What makes you think that this secondary effect, which requires trauma reduction in an enormous number of people (to generate network effects) or a tightly-knit group of people, would have a greater impact than the primary effect of “people have less trauma and feel better”?
Thanks for that question! Weakly held. Some sense that we’re under-invested in “improving coordination” (see: http://www.existential-risk.org/concept.pdf).
But it’s a good point that it would be hard! And I agree that tightly knit groups may be a better approach for this.
e.g. trauma reduction for a group of AI safety researchers to help them better coordinate, or something like that.
And I’m also very interested in the direct impact, too.