Cognitive Science graduate from UC Berkeley, founder of Dognosis, partnership lead Pratibha Poshak. Emergent Ventures India grantee.
Substack—https://runsandtumbles.substack.com
Dognosis—https://dognosis.tech
Pratibha Poshak—https://pratibhaposhak.in
Pretty cool to see this! I’ll try and provide a response with some substantive thoughts in a couple weeks, though I’m unlikely to have capacity to do the deep dive that the complexity of the topic requires. Really hoping the issue of ‘external validity ’ especially w.r.t to Global South populations gets more discourse bandwidth. Big plus one to Ulrik’s comment, this seems to extend beyond iron and anemia.
If anyone is interested in further research in anemia and adolescent cognitive development in India specifically, please do reach out. My father Shashikant Kulgod, a gastroenterologist and founder of the non-profit Rajlakshmi Children Foundation, and I are interested in working with a growing dataset we have of public school students from multiple districts in North Karnataka. We have lacked the expertise/capacity to do much with the data already collected (pre/post COVID) but likely have the ability to collect data from thousands of students (health and cognitive data points). My email is akashkulgod@berkeley.edu
Thanks for this Robert, gives me more context on some of the EA flavours. I have a sense that even OP hits-based giving isn’t fully aligned with the point Shruti is making (after all EA is not EV—Emergent Ventures) but I wouldn’t be sure how to articulate the difference. Think it could be a great conversation for your podcast to host :))
[disclaimer that I’m not Shruti so can only offer my interpretation of the argument she makes]
I think this paragraph from her piece does a good job of distilling the challenge of air pollution -
“It takes decades, maybe centuries to develop high state capacity that can tackle commons problems, mitigate pollution and create a world-class clean public transportation system. And this requires increases in economic growth and government revenue as well as well aligned political incentives. The problem is there is no simple solution that can be easily implemented. Unlike malaria, the impact of air pollution cannot be avoided by handing out air purifiers. They they don’t even make a dent in lowering the hazardous AQI in Delhi. The problem can only be solved though better governance mechanisms and innovation. Innovation can take the form of better construction technology that doesn’t contribute as much to particulate matter pollution. Or by developing cleaner fuel for vehicles. Or through better carbon capture and particulate matter capture technology. But none of this is legible or predictable.”
I think the last sentence is the crux, solutions to air pollution are neither legible or predictable. I’d claim that legibility and predictability are pretty central to EA based giving, at least GiveWell flavour EA, because they bear on how measures of tractability and impact are calculated.
On predictability, I’d be interested to know why you’d associate EA with high-risk hits based giving. From reading GiveWell cost-effectiveness reports (on say Iron Fortification for instance), I recall there being discounts based on how uncertain members evaluating the grant thought the evidence was. I thought this was fairly standard practice across such grants.
On legibility, I think Shruti is making the point that it would be really difficult to know the precise interventions needed to make sure Delhi’s air pollution problem never got as bad as it did and it still isn’t totally clear what the best ones are. What we do seem to know is that improving state capacity (strongly linked to economic growth), and driving technological innovation (funding carbon capture startups for instance) are likely the best approaches to tackling air pollution in India. And neither of those two options seem particularly EA-aligned.
How would he respond to Shruti Rajagopalan’s core argument against EA solutions being effective in the case of India (specifically Delhi’s) air pollution causes—https://srajagopalan.substack.com/p/altruism-and-development-its-complicated
Reading this made me realize how the view that all suffering matters is quite well-represented in Jainsm—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahimsa_in_Jainism.
Really can’t say, totally recommend reaching out to them via email, they responded within hours.
The biodefense market opportunities dovetails nicely with the recently announced market shaping accelerator by UChicago—https://marketshaping.uchicago.edu/challenge/
Just a note, that the Chicago folks are not using biosecurity as exclusively x-risk pandemic prevention, but more general infection containment (confirmed with them via email)
FYI I was intrigued by this post/concept but am thrown off that the vision is application based. I don’t think this is the optimal way to get this going but I could be wrong
Just found about this today — seems amazing and I hope it’s on most EA’s radars!
Chiming in with an elaboration/downstream to points you make and are perhaps specific for people who are first-timers to an EAG/new to EA. I came into the conference ‘knowing’ a few people but not having friends that I could just hang out with, or as another EA attendee put it, be comfortable asking to sit in silence for 20mins. The high stakes busy frantic vibes + not having chill hangs = always being on and getting super tired. Thankfully, my non-EAG partner was with me and we hung out together in the evenings and this really helped me, but I know other people didn’t have the same affordance.
Insightful, thanks!
Super interesting stuff. I’m curious about the dogs vs cats usual dichotomy here, would you say focusing on vegan cats is more effective than vegan dogs?
Thanks for writing this. I’ve been wondering whether it’s ethical for me to have a ChatGPT plus subscription and it’s useful to see other folks thinking along similar lines + providing ‘solutions’.
I’ve come across advice similar to this (David Perell for instance) and something that comes to mind is—What if Proust followed this advice? Or William James. Erik Davis. Or hell even Haruki Marukami. They’re a whole bunch of authors whose writing I love that go pretty hard against—”Streamline your message. Be as clear, simple, and easy to understand as you possibly can.”
Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the general thrust of this post and clear writing is usually great and something to aspire to. I also like the quote on non-fiction as fiction. I think the main problem I have with any ‘rules’ on how to write is that to me, the best authors break the language.
Thanks for the video, I found it very helpful. If you don’t mind me asking, what does the ‘psychedelic’ in your description point towards? I don’t think you mention it in the video and I’m curious as I was part of some “psychedelic communities” and wonder what dynamics I may not have been paying attention to.
No concrete useful feedback, just a note that I thought both posts were artfully tailored to your purpose and medium, nicely done!
Glad someone posted this, it’s an excellent read and I highly recommend it.
An interesting points that isn’t highlighted above—Delhi’s air quality is worse than what population/economic factors should lead to and can be traced back to a major blunder by the Supreme Court over-regulating buses + low-state capacity that resulted in a massive shortage of buses + perverse incentives for politicians to prioritise building roads over improving public transit.
I always thought stubble burning + some industrialisation was the main culprit so this was a useful prior update.
Thanks for writing this. Do you already have an idea(s) for such a startup? I’d be happy to forward the doc to friends who fit what you’re looking for but it might go farther if you included potential ideas you’re deliberating on.
FWIW, I see a huge potential for AI startups to do a lot of good + make money in India. The amount of inefficiencies + market size bc of population + increasing exposure to the digital + Indian-specific things like the need to translate b/w 30+ languages = equals tons of opportunity. Ofc a lot of ppl are working on capitalizing on such (ik ppl working on applications of AI in law, education, healthcare) but there’s still a lot of low-middle hanging fruit.
Hm what would you expect/hope people discuss about it here? As far as I remember, people didn’t talk much about the Ukraine-Russia war either. Probably because there’s not much that most EAs (or people in general) can do about it (not tractable) + not something that people aren’t discussing enough (not neglected).