Anki deck for “Some key numbers that (almost) every EA should know”
Here is the promised Anki deck for “Some key numbers that (almost) every EA should know”.
Due to time constraints, we were not able to include all of the numbers suggested in the original thread. These may be added in a future version. Please go to the deck’s GitHub repository for details on how to be notified when new versions are released.
Please report problems, or leave suggestions, below.
(Note: If you don’t use Anki, you can access the deck’s contents here.)
- What are some key numbers that (almost) every EA should know? by (18 Jun 2021 0:37 UTC; 105 points)
- Quantified Intuitions: An epistemics training website including a new EA-themed calibration app by (20 Sep 2022 22:25 UTC; 86 points)
- Some more projects I’d like to see by (25 Feb 2023 22:22 UTC; 67 points)
- What is life like at the median global income? by (30 Jun 2021 14:09 UTC; 51 points)
- Quantified Intuitions: An epistemics training website including a new EA-themed calibration app by (LessWrong; 20 Sep 2022 22:25 UTC; 28 points)
- 's comment on 300+ Flashcards to Tackle Pressing World Problems by (12 Jul 2022 11:08 UTC; 9 points)
- 's comment on Crowdsourcing Anki Decks by (21 Aug 2022 9:26 UTC; 4 points)
- 's comment on Open call for EAs with passion for meta-learning <3 by (28 Aug 2021 11:47 UTC; 2 points)
Thanks for turning this into a reality!
Minor note:
I recommend changing front from “current” to 2021, so that the flashcard would be useful for >6 months.
Done. This will be reflected when I release the next version, probably in a few weeks.
Thanks Pablo and Joseph!
If you’re a person who wants to learn this material, but doesn’t have an Anki habit, I’d recommend taking this as an opportunity to try things, and give it a go. Turn remembering things into a deliberate choice.
You can get started here.
I second JP’s recommendation. A couple of additional good resources are Michael Nielsen’s augmenting long-term memory and Gwern’s spaced repetition for efficient learning.
Neat! Is there any easy way to read the content without using the Anki software?
I imported them into RemNote where you can read all the cards. You can also quiz yourself on the questions using the queue functionality at the top. Or here’s a Google Doc.
If someone was interested in adding more facts to the deck, there are a bunch in these notes from The Precipice. (It’s fairly easy to export from RemNote to Anki and vice versa, though formatting is sometimes a little broken.)
Thanks, I’ll try to add these shorty.
Yes, you can read the contents here. This is the org mode file I use to generate the Anki deck (with the Anki editor package), so it will always reflect the most recent version.
(I’ve edited the original post to add this information.)
I’m also interested in this!
In case suggestions for new cards are still useful, just saw another useful number:
Q: What percentage of people across Europe think the world is getting better? [2015] A: +/- 5% Source: https://ourworldindata.org/optimism-pessimism
This is great! Thanks for sharing.
Spencer Greenberg informs me that he has published the deck on Thought Saver, a spaced-repetition app he developed. You can find the deck here (requires registration).
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My impression is that cage free campaigns have been very successful and there’s much less low-hanging fruit, such that I don’t think it’s reasonable to extrapolate those results to an ongoing basis.
I agree that’s one way in which the estimate may be misleading. The author lists this and other ways in a dedicated section. I revised the note to add a link to that section.
Note: The “Malaria killed ~50 bio. people ever” factoid is likely incorrect.
Thanks, I’ll remove it next time I update the deck.
Thanks for this deck.
I believe CrowdAnki will let users choose at each import which fields to overwrite. It would be nice to add an empty field “personal additions” to the existing three (front, back, source), thus giving users a field where they can ad further detail / images of their own.
Thanks for the suggestion. I’ve added it to my list of things to do.
Thank you! The most surprising (though maybe not most impactful) cards for me so far were the once on neurons:
Sure. Mammals make up the minority of neurons, but HOW ON EARTH are 90 Percent of those from humans?
Also, 30% from fish? I would have expected fish to be negligible.
My new Favorite: What share of total computation did pocket calculators account for in 1986?
41%
The content of those cards also represented the biggest update for me. I wouldn’t have guessed that the truth was roughly “two third of neurons are invertebrate neurons, one third of neurons are fish neurons”.
I cannot express how much I love this!!! Thanks so much!
Thanks!
+1 to that! Really cool, thanks for doing this. :)
Is there an updated version of this? E.g., GDP numbers have changed.
It’s on my TODO list. Feel free to leave another comment in a month if I don’t update it (and keep leaving comments until I do).
EDIT (3 June 2023): Done.
Hi Pablo,
maybe this could be a useful addition to the Anki deck:
Anki with Uncertainty: Turn any flashcard deck into a calibration training tool
That’s pretty cool—thanks for drawing this to my attention.
I thought of adding it to the EA numbers deck, but it looks like this will force users to install the add-on. Do you happen to know if there is a way of setting things up so that the deck works normally if the add-on isn’t installed but provides the extra functionality for users who do have it installed?
Hmm, I’m not aware of a way to do this (but there might be one). Maybe you could generate two versions of the deck from your orgmode file, one with the Anki with Uncertainty card types and the other with plain card types?
Unfortunately, the Emacs package that integrates org-mode with Anki is very poorly maintained and I’m no longer using it for that reason. Currently, my approach is to keep the normal deck but document how to use the add-on, both in the GitHub repository and in the EA Forum post announcing the release of the new version.
I set a reminder! Also, let me know if you do end up updating it.
I have now uploaded a new deck with the relevant figures updated. Would you mind checking it out and telling me if it’s working correctly? I might create a separate post to announce this new version, once I add a bunch of new cards people suggested, but feedback from early testers would be valuable.
I skimmed it, and it looks good to me. Thanks for the work! A separate post on this would be cool.