I’m curating this post. It gave me a better sense of what’s really going on in the world and now exists as a very useful resource I can refer to. As the author puts it:
I think of this as a bit like a cheat sheet: some information to have in the back of my mind when reading whatever regular news stories are coming at me, to ground me in something that feels a bit closer to what’s actually going on.
The post also has a lot of other properties I admire. I’ve listed some below — the list isn’t exhaustive or ordered in any particular way. [Disclaimer: written quickly.]
For one thing, it notices a real gap (a scope-sensitive news provider) and fills it as well as possible to do in a “small amount of time.”
I think this has a similar energy to some of what Michael Aird has done, as he’s explained himself (my summary: “Michael is pointing out that he noticed a need that could be filled with a bit of effort, and went ahead and filled the need”). \
Relatedly, “What happens on the average day” is a great summary/collection.
The post is about the real world, not just effective altruism.
The post has a lot of useful numbers. That’s the whole point. The numbers are well picked; I think most of the metrics listed here track something important about reality and the state of life on Earth.
I want more of this on the Forum, and I’ll take this as an example for myself, too, and try to put more numbers in my posts in the future. (If you notice yourself saying words like “big” or “a lot” or “small” — consider trying to write that down as a number or as a specific comparison.)
Aside: there seems to be a large variance in how comfortable people are with numbers, but I think this is surmountable, and encourage people to go a little out of their comfort zone if they feel like numbers aren’t quite for them. With fermi estimates, for instance, I think the first few estimates are the hardest. I’d be excited to collect ways to make this sort of thing easier for people.
I love the fact that lots of Forum users came in and checked the numbers in this post, and that the author corrected them in the post in response.
there seems to be a large variance in how comfortable people are with numbers, but I think this is surmountable
Wanting to flag that my background is entirely qualitative, and I spent many years thinking this meant that I couldn’t do things with numbers. I now think this is false, they aren’t magic, and you don’t need to have deep aptitude for maths/technical training/a background in stats to be able to fiddle around with basic numbers in a way that helps you think about things.
I’m curating this post. It gave me a better sense of what’s really going on in the world and now exists as a very useful resource I can refer to. As the author puts it:
The post also has a lot of other properties I admire. I’ve listed some below — the list isn’t exhaustive or ordered in any particular way. [Disclaimer: written quickly.]
For one thing, it notices a real gap (a scope-sensitive news provider) and fills it as well as possible to do in a “small amount of time.”
I think this has a similar energy to some of what Michael Aird has done, as he’s explained himself (my summary: “Michael is pointing out that he noticed a need that could be filled with a bit of effort, and went ahead and filled the need”). \
Relatedly, “What happens on the average day” is a great summary/collection.
The post is about the real world, not just effective altruism.
The post has a lot of useful numbers. That’s the whole point. The numbers are well picked; I think most of the metrics listed here track something important about reality and the state of life on Earth.
I want more of this on the Forum, and I’ll take this as an example for myself, too, and try to put more numbers in my posts in the future. (If you notice yourself saying words like “big” or “a lot” or “small” — consider trying to write that down as a number or as a specific comparison.)
Aside: there seems to be a large variance in how comfortable people are with numbers, but I think this is surmountable, and encourage people to go a little out of their comfort zone if they feel like numbers aren’t quite for them. With fermi estimates, for instance, I think the first few estimates are the hardest. I’d be excited to collect ways to make this sort of thing easier for people.
I love the fact that lots of Forum users came in and checked the numbers in this post, and that the author corrected them in the post in response.
There are images and visualizations! I love images and Our World in Data graphs (as a reminder, you can embed them into your Forum posts) and think this is a great use of them.
Wanting to flag that my background is entirely qualitative, and I spent many years thinking this meant that I couldn’t do things with numbers. I now think this is false, they aren’t magic, and you don’t need to have deep aptitude for maths/technical training/a background in stats to be able to fiddle around with basic numbers in a way that helps you think about things.