While this is very detailed, and looks like a good political newsletter, I’m not sure it’s a good fit for the forum. The constant newsflow of partisan topics can consume a lot of attention without adding much value, and relatively few of the topics covered here seem like plausible EA topic areas.
I also worry that in your attempt to cover a lot of area some of these summaries are quite misleading. This is probably inevitable, because it takes a lot of time to become informed about an issue, but it means that in many cases I think that someone reading this might end up coming to conclusions quite at odds to reality.
For example, consider this summary, of the CDC/FDA’s decision to ban and then re-allow the JnJ vaccine:
Speaking of, the J&J pause was lifted, after 10 days. Much ink has been spilled describing the situation, but I think there were basically no good options here. Polls do seem to show that it hasn’t increased vaccine hesitancy.
You suggest that there were no good options, and link to a Mother Jones article on the subject. I would have expected this article to supply evidence for your claim by enumerating the possible options and showing that all of them had major problems. Indeed, the article does discuss two options:
The CDC/FDA could have hidden the data about the blot clots, hoped no-one noticed, and continued the rollout. But this risks undermining public trust if/when the truth gets out.
The CDC/FDA could ban distribution of the the vaccine and investigate the issue.
However, the article does not consider what I and many other people consider to be obviously the best strategy:
Disclose the blood clots to the public, but continue to allow its distribution.
It is possible that this is not in fact the best strategy. But “Tell people the truth, then let them make up their own minds” is normally the best strategy. At the very least an article arguing that there were no good options needs to at least consider this third option.
Secondly, you suggest that this pause has not damaged vaccine takeup. I do not think this view is supported by the evidence:
The temporary suspensions of the AstraZeneca vaccine dramatically reduced public trust in the EU, especially when compared to the UK which had not done a similar suspension.
Many people in America would have preferred the J&J vaccine, because it only requires one shot, and is not ‘new, unsafe’ technology.
Even if no lasting damage has been done to vaccine willingness, around 50 people will have died of covid who would otherwise have been saved by the J&J vaccine. In exchange, around 2 probably non-fatal blood clots were averted.
Given the above as well as my wider reading around the issue, I actually think a fairer summary would have been:
Speaking of, the J&J pause was lifted, after 10 days. While initially establishment public health experts were supportive of the decision, political scientists and well informed amateurs were sharply critical, arguing that this pause was unnecessary given the extremely low incidence of blood clots and importance of ending the pandemic. Subsequent data suggests that the fear generated by this decision has significantly undermined the US vaccination program.
Unfortunately gathering the data to illustrate this point is quite time consuming. Despite being already well versed in the subject, the above section took me over an hour to put together in response to a single bullet point, and I count 38 similar news bullet points in the post. I provide it as an illustration of the difficulties involved in this project; I think many of your other bullet points contain similar inaccuracies and misleading statements, but it is simply too time consuming to go into them.
If you do continue, I would strongly encourage you to consider getting a Republican to review your writeups. Many of the sections have a distinct pro-administration bias, and I think checking this would be the easiest way to significantly improve the overall accuracy.
The claim that the newsletter has a “pro-administration bias” strikes me as odd, because the newsletter has been largely critical of the Biden administration’s foreign policy and global vaccine distribution strategy. Rather, the newsletter overall seems to have a far-left viewpoint (i.e. more like Bernie than Biden). There are pros and cons to this. On the one hand, I’m personally glad to see more political diversity within the EA movement. A plurality of EAs identify as “center-left”, including me, and I don’t think that political affiliation should be a barrier to participation in EA (although I draw the line at authoritarianism and bigotry: fascists, tankies, and the like). On the other hand, I agree that a more politically diverse group of people writing or reviewing the newsletter would make fewer errors in expectation.
I also think that covering a narrow range of topics, but in more depth, would improve the newsletter’s accuracy.
I downvoted your comment despite agreeing with a lot of your critiques because I very, very strongly disagree that posts like this aren’t a good fit for the forum (and my best guess is that discouraging this sort of post does significantly more harm than good). If someone who has a good understanding of what effective altruism is has an idea they think is plausibly a high impact use of time (or other resources), the forum is exactly where that sort of idea belongs! This post clearly reaches this standard. Once the idea is on the forum, open discussion can happen about whether it is a high impact idea, or even net positive.
If people only ever post ideas to the forum that they are already quite sure the effective altruism community will agree are high impact, it will be much harder for the effective altruism community to not be an echo chamber of only the “approved” ideas. I think the author has improved the forum by making this post for two reasons. The first reason is that the post created an interesting discussion on whether this idea is good one and how it could be improved (the critiques in your comment were an important contribution to this!). Secondly, more importantly, their post nudged the culture of the forum in a direction I liked; making it more normal to post ideas for plausibly* high impact projects that aren’t as obviously connected to one of the standard EA ideas that come up in every EA intro talk. Despite me not being sure that this idea is even net positive, it still seems almost absurd to me that this post isn’t a good fit for the EA forum (especially if people like you make compelling critiques and suggestions in the comments, ensuring the discussion isn’t too one-sided and maybe also allowing plausibly good ideas to iterate into better ideas)!
*To me, sufficiently plausible to be a good fit for a forum post, as I said above, is an author who understands what EA is who thinks the idea might be high impact. I actually think this author went well beyond and above what I think a good minimum bar is for such ideas; it sounds like this author put in a great deal of thought into this project, has put quite a bit of work already into getting this idea off the ground and also got feedback from multiple people in the EA community!
To be clear, I think this specific post was a reasonable fit for the forum, insomuch as it is a proposal for a newsletter, for the reasons you outlined. I agree the forum should accept ideas that are merely plausibly promising, so they can be refined, create useful discussion, and give people the opportunity for growth. And indeed I did not downvote this post.
The issue I was responding to was the question of whether every instalment of the newsletter should be shared on the forum:
It would be helpful to know if people think I should post each issue on the Forum. I know other newsletters, like EA London, do this but I don’t want to clutter the Forum with posts every 2 weeks if people think it’s too off-topic!
Given that the post explicitly raised the question I think it is perfectly legitimate to answer it in the negative.
Sorry if this was not clear. It actually did not even occur to me that this individual post might be inappropriate, so I made no attempt in my comment to distinguish this from my view.
FWIW I had a similar initial reaction to Sophia, though reading more carefully I totally agree that it’s more reasonable to interpret your comment as a reaction to the newsletter rather than to the proposal. I’d maybe add an edit to your high-level comment just to make sure people don’t get confused?
While this is very detailed, and looks like a good political newsletter, I’m not sure it’s a good fit for the forum. The constant newsflow of partisan topics can consume a lot of attention without adding much value, and relatively few of the topics covered here seem like plausible EA topic areas.
I also worry that in your attempt to cover a lot of area some of these summaries are quite misleading. This is probably inevitable, because it takes a lot of time to become informed about an issue, but it means that in many cases I think that someone reading this might end up coming to conclusions quite at odds to reality.
For example, consider this summary, of the CDC/FDA’s decision to ban and then re-allow the JnJ vaccine:
You suggest that there were no good options, and link to a Mother Jones article on the subject. I would have expected this article to supply evidence for your claim by enumerating the possible options and showing that all of them had major problems. Indeed, the article does discuss two options:
The CDC/FDA could have hidden the data about the blot clots, hoped no-one noticed, and continued the rollout. But this risks undermining public trust if/when the truth gets out.
The CDC/FDA could ban distribution of the the vaccine and investigate the issue.
However, the article does not consider what I and many other people consider to be obviously the best strategy:
Disclose the blood clots to the public, but continue to allow its distribution.
It is possible that this is not in fact the best strategy. But “Tell people the truth, then let them make up their own minds” is normally the best strategy. At the very least an article arguing that there were no good options needs to at least consider this third option.
Secondly, you suggest that this pause has not damaged vaccine takeup. I do not think this view is supported by the evidence:
The temporary suspensions of the AstraZeneca vaccine dramatically reduced public trust in the EU, especially when compared to the UK which had not done a similar suspension.
The percentage of people who thought the JnJ vaccine was safe fell by about 15 percentage points.
Vaccination rates for every age group dropped dramatically when the FDA banned the JnJ vaccine, regardless of vaccine penetration.
Even after the ban was lifted, almost no-one wants to get the J&J vaccine now. Takeup rates for the other vaccines have not risen to compensate; they have actually fallen.
Many people in America would have preferred the J&J vaccine, because it only requires one shot, and is not ‘new, unsafe’ technology.
Even if no lasting damage has been done to vaccine willingness, around 50 people will have died of covid who would otherwise have been saved by the J&J vaccine. In exchange, around 2 probably non-fatal blood clots were averted.
Given the above as well as my wider reading around the issue, I actually think a fairer summary would have been:
Unfortunately gathering the data to illustrate this point is quite time consuming. Despite being already well versed in the subject, the above section took me over an hour to put together in response to a single bullet point, and I count 38 similar news bullet points in the post. I provide it as an illustration of the difficulties involved in this project; I think many of your other bullet points contain similar inaccuracies and misleading statements, but it is simply too time consuming to go into them.
If you do continue, I would strongly encourage you to consider getting a Republican to review your writeups. Many of the sections have a distinct pro-administration bias, and I think checking this would be the easiest way to significantly improve the overall accuracy.
The claim that the newsletter has a “pro-administration bias” strikes me as odd, because the newsletter has been largely critical of the Biden administration’s foreign policy and global vaccine distribution strategy. Rather, the newsletter overall seems to have a far-left viewpoint (i.e. more like Bernie than Biden). There are pros and cons to this. On the one hand, I’m personally glad to see more political diversity within the EA movement. A plurality of EAs identify as “center-left”, including me, and I don’t think that political affiliation should be a barrier to participation in EA (although I draw the line at authoritarianism and bigotry: fascists, tankies, and the like). On the other hand, I agree that a more politically diverse group of people writing or reviewing the newsletter would make fewer errors in expectation.
I also think that covering a narrow range of topics, but in more depth, would improve the newsletter’s accuracy.
I downvoted your comment despite agreeing with a lot of your critiques because I very, very strongly disagree that posts like this aren’t a good fit for the forum (and my best guess is that discouraging this sort of post does significantly more harm than good). If someone who has a good understanding of what effective altruism is has an idea they think is plausibly a high impact use of time (or other resources), the forum is exactly where that sort of idea belongs! This post clearly reaches this standard. Once the idea is on the forum, open discussion can happen about whether it is a high impact idea, or even net positive.
If people only ever post ideas to the forum that they are already quite sure the effective altruism community will agree are high impact, it will be much harder for the effective altruism community to not be an echo chamber of only the “approved” ideas. I think the author has improved the forum by making this post for two reasons. The first reason is that the post created an interesting discussion on whether this idea is good one and how it could be improved (the critiques in your comment were an important contribution to this!). Secondly, more importantly, their post nudged the culture of the forum in a direction I liked; making it more normal to post ideas for plausibly* high impact projects that aren’t as obviously connected to one of the standard EA ideas that come up in every EA intro talk. Despite me not being sure that this idea is even net positive, it still seems almost absurd to me that this post isn’t a good fit for the EA forum (especially if people like you make compelling critiques and suggestions in the comments, ensuring the discussion isn’t too one-sided and maybe also allowing plausibly good ideas to iterate into better ideas)!
*To me, sufficiently plausible to be a good fit for a forum post, as I said above, is an author who understands what EA is who thinks the idea might be high impact. I actually think this author went well beyond and above what I think a good minimum bar is for such ideas; it sounds like this author put in a great deal of thought into this project, has put quite a bit of work already into getting this idea off the ground and also got feedback from multiple people in the EA community!
To be clear, I think this specific post was a reasonable fit for the forum, insomuch as it is a proposal for a newsletter, for the reasons you outlined. I agree the forum should accept ideas that are merely plausibly promising, so they can be refined, create useful discussion, and give people the opportunity for growth. And indeed I did not downvote this post.
The issue I was responding to was the question of whether every instalment of the newsletter should be shared on the forum:
Given that the post explicitly raised the question I think it is perfectly legitimate to answer it in the negative.
Sorry if this was not clear. It actually did not even occur to me that this individual post might be inappropriate, so I made no attempt in my comment to distinguish this from my view.
FWIW I had a similar initial reaction to Sophia, though reading more carefully I totally agree that it’s more reasonable to interpret your comment as a reaction to the newsletter rather than to the proposal. I’d maybe add an edit to your high-level comment just to make sure people don’t get confused?
That makes sense! My mistake.