Akhil

• AkhilMar 1, 2022, 3:18 AM

  23 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: The Fu­ture Fund’s Pro­ject Ideas Competition

  Teaching secondary school students about the most pressing issues for humanity’s long-term future

  Values and Reflective Processes, Effective Altruism

  Secondary education focuses mostly on the past and present, and tends not to address the most pressing issues for humanity’s long-term future. I would like to see textbooks, courses, and/​or curriculum reform that promote evidence-based and thoughtful discourse about the major threats facing the long-term future of humanity. Secondary school students are a promising group for such outreach and education because they have their whole careers ahead of them, and numerous studies have shown that they care about the future. This may serve a significant benefit in making more young people care about these issues and support them with either their time or money

• AkhilMar 1, 2022, 3:05 AM

  5 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: The Fu­ture Fund’s Pro­ject Ideas Competition

  Risk modelling and preparedness for climate-induced risks

  Research That Will Help Us Improve

  Climate change is a risk factor for several threats to the long-term future of humanity. It increases the likelihood of infectious diseases, including novel pathogens. As well as this, it is correlated with increased fragility of states and greater propensity for conflict. Therefore an organisation that models the climate resilience of social, health and political systems, and subsequently seeks to strengthen and improve their preparedness, may reduce the likelihood of significant threats to humanity’s long-term future

• AkhilFeb 5, 2022, 5:44 PM

  7 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Air pol­lu­tion is re­ally bad—Let’s in­vest in bet­ter un­der­stand­ing its im­pact and sav­ing lives.

  Hey, a great write-up!

  Completely agree that:

  • Air pollution causes a massive amount of morbidity and mortality.

  • Air pollution is something outside of the individual control (unlike, say, alcohol or tobacco consumption), and therefore policy work seems to a particularly important and tractable approach.

  What I am unsure about:

  • I wonder whether a lack of information about the levels of pollution and its causes is a significant barrier to policy change. Intuitively to me, it seems like we know the things that cause air pollution and areas where air pollution is worse, and additional data on this is unlikely to make a massive difference to the likelihood of policy change. I’m not too confident about this, however, and would love to hear your thoughts otherwise.

  Improved air quality monitoring seems like it could be really useful for:

  • Holding governments with already existing policies for air quality accountable e.g. if a government has a policy to keep the level of air pollution below a certain level, having a lot of monitors would make it a lot easier to check whether this was the case, and hopefully drive up compliance

  This is a fairly neglected area imo, and it is great to see more people thinking about it :)

• AkhilFeb 1, 2022, 7:40 AM

  8 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Zach Stein-Perlman’s comment on: Equity should be a part of effec­tive­ness eval­u­a­tions

  “But translating into utility or QALYs already accounts for this; it’s generally easier to increase the utility/​health of someone with less.”

  I think there are certainly cases where this is true, and the premise of this argument is that there are cases where this might not be the case. If we take the burden of mental health or chronic illnesses, I think there are many possible and actual examples where it may be”easier” to increase the utility of those living in a HIC as opposed to a LMIC

  I am also interested as to how you make the distinction between a marginal dollar and a marginal QALY if we recognise there is a significant gap in both income and health outcomes between say, Nigeria and the UK

• AkhilFeb 1, 2022, 7:38 AM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Zach Stein-Perlman’s comment on: Equity should be a part of effec­tive­ness eval­u­a­tions

  Thank you for spotting that!

Equity should be a part of effec­tive­ness eval­u­a­tions

• AkhilJan 30, 2022, 9:48 PM

  10 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Manag­ing ‘Im­posters’

  Great suggestions, and agree with all the points made- I especially think the value of a weekly/​fortnightly catch-up is under-appreciated. I recently started a new job, and my boss and I did a 13 question get-to-know you style exercise, to understand more about the motivations, working style and personality of one another. It took about an hour, but I think it is a seriously good investment. I think we both came away with it understanding each a lot more, which is a great start to a working relationship. The questions were:

  #1: Where on the spectrum of introvert to extrovert would you place yourself?

  #2: What’s your preferred way to receive feedback, in terms of speed? (E.g., right away). What’s your preferred format?

  #3: What’s your orientation toward conflict?

  #4: How would you describe your communication style?

  #5: What motivates you the most, in your work life?

  #6: What’s your favourite way to decompress after work?

  #7: Who’s been the best coworker or team you’ve worked with? Why?

  #8: Who’s the best boss or mentor you’ve ever had? Why?

  #9: When have you worked with someone and noticed it not going well? What happened, and what was that person doing?

  #10: What do you tend to have a longer learning curve around, compared to others?

  #11: What do you tend to pick up very quickly, compared to others?

  #12: What’s your biggest work-related pet peeves (i.e., that thing that other people do that totally annoys you when you work with them)?

  #13: What does “work-life balance” mean to you?