Cool. Thanks for sharing and good luck!
alamo 2914
GiveWell and Similar Orgs Should *Really* Research Family Planning as a Potential Intervention
What Is the Total Global Capability for Suffering and Joy? A Call for a Collaborative EA Project
Hi, as other commenters said, I think that from a purely EA perspective, there might be better ideas to cover. But it’s really good that you published the draft here, as it is likely to help increase your positive impact and quality of production in general (they’re already top notch though). With the size of your channel it’s probably cost-effective for other EAs to help you anyway (it’s not common to leverage exposure to >100k people). Also not every idea you cover needs to be 100% EA, it’s very important to just do interesting stuff every now and then.
As for my suggestion, maybe you could have charter cities in the broader context of evidence based policy & desicion making- as charter cities being one extreme & interesting example of policy research. Taking about evidence based policy could also raise the question of effectiveness and intuition (obviously of value for EA), as social programs are near impossible to assess intuitively, and most don’t really work—https://80000hours.org/articles/effective-social-program/.
There are other good resources on evidence based policy, for example -
Social Programs That Work—https://evidencebasedprograms.org/
The Campbell Collaboration—https://www.campbellcollaboration.org
I agree that charter cities are very interesting and a likely good way to get people interested in policy in general. Although I don’t think this video 100% aligns with EA, it still seems of extreme potential and value, so good luck!
P.S. - y’all are doing a great job with the channel. You are really interesting and explain complicated subjects concisely and elegantly. Keep it on :)
That’s neat. May I ask why have you published this script, but not the script for the GiveDirectly episode?
That’s great, thank you. It might be valuable to also write on MCII—mental contrasting & implementation intention. A meta-analysis showed it is quite effective[1] (g = 0.336), and it mentioned 2 papers that found it to be more effective than its components—either implementation intention or mental contrasting alone[2] [3]
- ^
Wang G, Wang Y and Gai X (2021) A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Mental Contrasting With Implementation Intentions on Goal Attainment. Front. Psychol. 12:565202. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.565202
- ^
Adriaanse, M. A., Oettingen, G., Gollwitzer, P. M., Hennes, E. P., De Ridder, D. T. D., and De Wit, J. B. F. (2010). When planning is not enough: fighting unhealthy snacking habits by mental contrasting with implementation intentions (MCII). Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 40, 1277–1293. doi: 10.1002/ejsp.730
- ^
Kirk, D., Oettingen, G., and Gollwitzer, P. M. (2013). Promoting integrative bargaining: mental contrasting with implementation intentions. Int. J. Conflict Manage. 24, 148–165. doi: 10.1108/10444061311316771
- ^
I agree, it seems like a very good idea to post it here. I assume it’s seen by dozen times more people than in your team. Also, the EA forum is definitely less biased about any thing than organizations that work for that thing. Just the way humans work.
Thanks, that proposal is indeed very interesting!
It’s an interesting point, but they’re just reviewing the evidence…
A better exercise to not fall into self-deception is ‘mental contrasting’, in which you first think about achieving your goals, and then about the obstacles that stand in your way and how to overcome them. It might also help in goal achievement, especially in combination with a technique called ‘implementation intention’.[1]
- ^
Wang G, Wang Y and Gai X (2021) A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Mental Contrasting With Implementation Intentions on Goal Attainment. Front. Psychol. 12:565202. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.565202
- ^
Replicato: Building a Website to Find Research Replications & Retractions
[Question] What’s the Limit for Cost-Effectiveness?
Copenhagen Consensus Center’s newest research on global poverty—we should be talking about this
It’s true that he never identified as an EA. I mean EA in the sense of using reason and evidence to perform cost-effectiveness among different causes, and choosing the best, regardless of what comes up. These are IMO the core characteristics of an EA, everything else is a bonus.
Also, the first occurrences of something will usually be different than what it will develop to be. Was Hippocrates a licensed MD? Did he rely on evidence-based medicine? Did Galileo ever do a PhD in physics?
I would rate him decently on truth-seeking. He used the world’s best economists in his think-tank, multiple times over. It would surely have been easier to invite less esteemed economists. You might think he did that only to raise the status of the CCC (and by extension himself), but that’s too cynical in my opinion.
I agree with your points about R&D and E-procurement, (and some are mentioned in the report), thanks for your input.
It’s really cool that your wife works in land tenure! The philosophical framework I have in mind for land tenure reminds me of the one for other estimates. As Scott Alexander put it—IF IT’S WORTH DOING, IT’S WORTH DOING WITH MADE-UP STATISTICS. Essentially, it’s better to at least have some information in your land registration system, even if not very accurate, than none. What do you think about this?
As for education, I don’t know.
I agree with the 2 commenters below. I wouldn’t trust him very much on climate change, but the CCC’s work on GHD is of a different nature. The CCC has many researchers, of whom Bjørn is only one. I would also like to add—if he can get Nobel Prize winning economists Vernon Smith, Tom Schelling, Finn Kydland and Douglass North to work with him, multiple times each, that’s a good indicator that the CCC’s research is good.
Interesting. I’m sorry to hear that the system is so fucked up. I really hope you’ll be able to improve it.
As a secular Jew, I loved it :) (and was also frightened by the memories of my Jewish legacy lessons in middle school).
Also now that I have a small chance for Scott’s attention, I recommend you take a look at table 2 in this study. It’s about physical and mental diseases caused by mismatch from our current environments to the ones we primarily developed in, highly interesting IMO (return to caves—new cause area?).
Thanks, I see it’s very hard to think of something that hasn’t been already thought of by EAs. By coincidence, I’ve just seen a post by ‘Rethink Priorities’ on the subject.