Gavriel Kleinwaks

Karma: 403

Gavriel Kleinwaks 20 Oct 2024 19:08 UTC
4 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: MatthewDahlhausen’s comment on: If far-UV is so great, why isn’t it everywhere?
I have colleagues in other organizations who are involved in ASHRAE; one contributed to the development of 241! 241 is great, and to be very clear, my job is not to promote far-UV, it is to promote indoor air cleaning. Far-UV gets a lot of attention in my social circles because it is exciting and new, and people have a lot of questions about that specifically—this post is meant for the very narrow case of answering questions I’ve directly gotten about far-UV.

If far-UV is so great, why isn’t it everywhere?

Austin19 Oct 2024 18:56 UTC

65 points

3 comments9 min readEA link

(strainhardening.substack.com)

Gavriel Kleinwaks 13 Jan 2024 22:33 UTC
4 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Are Far-UVC Interventions Overhyped? [Founders Pledge]
Great to see your thinking laid out this way, and of course thank you for your interest in our (1Day Sooner/Rethink Priorities) report!
It was useful to see the discussion of possible overhype from the funding side of the field, since I don’t have insight into funding decisions. On the other hand, there are reasons funders might want to focus attention on far-UV, without disregarding the usefulness of conventional-wavelength GUV: since far-UV requires more research than conventional-wavelength systems at this time, but might ultimately be easier to install, the far-UV research payoff could be very large for increasing adoption of GUV in general. I expect that conventional-wavelength systems would benefit from investment into R&D for easier installation, but that’s not obviously a place for philanthropic funding. The safety studies necessary for far-UV are too expensive for the current market size, so if far-UV research does not get more philanthropic funding than conventional-wavelength GUV, far-UV safety studies might not be performed in a rigorous way. However, I would agree that funders should be wavelength-agnostic if they are directly funding installations.
Because of the challenges facing comprehensive far-UV analysis, I was surprised that you didn’t think it would be very impactful for philanthropists to fund studies—broadly speaking, I agree about the lack of expertise, but this is a small enough field that the informed voices are fairly well-known within the field and I think interested philanthropic bodies would be able to consult those informed opinions. Again, I don’t have insight into the funding side of the process, so that may be optimistic. I am certainly biased, since 1Day Sooner does regularly apply/advocate for philanthropic funding for technical research! On the reverse side, personal experience has left me pessimistic about policy advocacy for GUV research, but your report has swayed me somewhat to at least consider the fact that there is not a concerted, heavyweight policy advocacy effort in this area.
I appreciated the argument on capturing the bulk of the risk by later deployment; it was a very helpful presentation of the case. I do think that there is a learning-by-doing element to GUV rollout (for either type of GUV), where rollout and analysis in select environments is necessary for better understanding broader GUV use cases. Identifying those environments is an element of the current 1Day Sooner IAQ project. I also would love to see the cost of GUV installation fall sooner rather than later in order to address endemic disease burden worldwide, e.g. via widespread installation in TB clinics. (I’m fully aware that this use case might remain impractical, but it’s nice to consider the potential to address global health! Of course if a funder is specifically trying to fight TB, I’d still recommend sinking their money into vaccine research or treatment.)
Finally, this report was extremely helpful for a current 1Day Sooner project! We’re working on a report to assess the potential for market shaping techniques to accelerate the adoption of indoor air cleaning technology. This post, and writing up this comment, really helped clarify some of my thinking about the possible directions we’d been tossing around, so a huge thank you for that!

Gavriel Kleinwaks 30 Dec 2023 23:56 UTC
9 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Where are you donating this year, and why? (Open thread)
I was originally not sure if I would donate this year, as my living expenses skyrocketed. I wound up donating to The Human League—the donation was much smaller than ones I’ve sent to charities in previous years, but THL was a new charity for me. I realized I have been underweighting animal welfare relative to my values, due to my discomfort thinking about it. I decided to donate to THL both because I was convinced by the cost-effectiveness argument, and as an expression of my ongoing effort to bring my actions more in line with my values. Here’s hoping that each new year finds me more ethical and compassionate than the last. :)

Gavriel Kleinwaks 18 Nov 2023 21:22 UTC
6 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: MatthewDahlhausen’s comment on: EA Organization Updates: November 2023
There is heavy geographic concentration, but the secondary concentrations include Boston, DC, and NYC in my vague sense of things. It looks like organizations are self-added to the newsletter, so these are just the ones that have volunteered to provide updates. I can say that we’re hiring for roles with a DC preference: 1daysooner.org/jobs.

Gavriel Kleinwaks 27 Sep 2023 19:37 UTC
6 points
0 ∶ 0
on: How have you become more hard-working?
I switched to a much more motivating job, and then later began taking ADHD medication, each of which was a major boost. The change in motivation (when I switched from an academic lab to a small nonprofit) has more interesting factors, so to break those out:
- I received more feedback and demonstrated interest from colleagues.
- My colleagues respected me more—the new workplace allowed for more specialization, and was less hierarchical...
- ...which made it much less intimidating to ask for in-depth explanations, so I probably learned a lot faster.
- Projects had much more clear-cut checkpoints and endpoints.
- Individual tasks didn’t have severe failure points, so if a detail was wrong, I didn’t have to start from scratch.

Gavriel Kleinwaks 16 Sep 2023 2:03 UTC
1 point
2 ∶ 0
on: Four productivity techniques if you love working with others but work alone
This is stellar advice! What’s wild is, I have accidentally stumbled on each of these techniques at various points and just never really consciously identified the technique, which meant it wasn’t repeatable at will. This post really crystallizes important options for me; definitely feeling some sheepish “shoulda figured that one out” combined with relief that you did it for me. THANK YOU.

Gavriel Kleinwaks 8 Sep 2023 17:18 UTC
5 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Career Conversations Week on the Forum (8-15 September)
Great theme idea. I’ll aim to post (working title) “Impostor syndrome can be valuable information.”

Gavriel Kleinwaks 7 Sep 2023 17:59 UTC
25 points
6 ∶ 0
in reply to: pseudonym’s comment on: Sharing Information About Nonlinear
Personally I have also been skeptical of Nonlinear’s work, BUT before anything else, I just want to say I have not carefully kept track of Nonlinear’s work and this is a pretty uninformed vague impression.
I’m not skeptical because of the prizes specifically, I just think they had ideas that sounded not particularly fruitful, or more costly than they were worth. I do think that there was a lot of theoretical discussion around that type of prize setup before Nonlinear tried it, and I respect the ethos of just try-it-and-see-what-happens for something like that, with minimal downside risk. (Notably, if nobody claims the prize, the money isn’t spent and can just be used for other work.) The best-sounding concepts in the world still have to be tested before we should build lots of infrastructure on them, so I see the prize stuff as a fairly inexpensive experiment, and I think often good coordinators are undervalued. My skepticism is more that despite Nonlinear’s high profile as coordinators, I have no evidence of Nonlinear’s impact, and I’m unconvinced that they’ve found good pressure points for coordination in general. I have also judged them more harshly for this than I otherwise would, due to what I perceive as a gimmicky and overconfident style to some of their written materials. This style unavoidably puts up my guard, but its influence on my assessment may be unfair of me!
What links here?
- pseudonym's comment on Sharing Information About Nonlinear by Ben Pace (9 Sep 2023 8:00 UTC; 10 points)

Gavriel Kleinwaks 16 Aug 2023 2:15 UTC
19 points
3 ∶ 0
on: Gavriel Kleinwaks’s Quick takes
Recently told a friend about one of the easiest-but-important things I did for personal professional development, and based on her reaction, thought maybe other people would benefit from it.
A few months ago, I noticed how much I appreciated a certain person in my professional community, and thought I should try to emulate his actions. That led me to making a short list of the professional acquaintances I look up to, and my reasons for looking up to them, so that I could be very concrete about the traits I want to emulate. This exercise was pretty low-effort, but also inspiring (it feels really good to reflect on the people you appreciate!) and very quickly actionable. Examples:
- Person A goes out of their way to introduce people, or to send notice of opportunities to people, which makes me feel valued and recognized. It generally doesn’t occur to me to make introductions—I should do that more often, and say good things about people’s work when I think of it!
- Person B is so welcoming toward my questions and I really appreciate how they make time to help other people understand their field. I should be very clear that I appreciate people’s interest when they ask questions about my work, and make plenty of time for them.
- Person C is a very direct speaker, and is very good at translating their field across different audiences with different levels of expertise. They have a good understanding of what details are interesting to different audiences, and I should carefully consider my audience’s priorities when I write or speak, not just the expected format.
- Person D is very expressive and shows a lot of interest in what each person is saying, which makes interlocutors feel really good. I could stand to work on demonstrating more attentiveness and less guardedness.
- Person E has extremely audacious ideas, and improves them by being unafraid to discuss them with people while they’re still half-baked. This quality is harder than the others for me to emulate, because that Big Idea™ chutzpah is really not me (and Person E has a much longer track record to draw on), but I can at least notice that it works for Person E to share their ideas liberally, and they’re not losing face, so maybe I should be less self-conscious about working through project ideas with others.
This exercise was especially useful for me because I don’t have long professional experience—since I don’t have detailed insight to lots of people’s work styles, I have to be more thoughtful about the work I have seen. It’s not common to have it explicitly pointed out, “This person is great to work with because of this habit or trait,” but once I started this exercise, it felt like an important piece of professional development snapped into focus for me.

Gavriel Kleinwaks’s Quick takes

Gavriel Kleinwaks16 Aug 2023 2:15 UTC

4 points

1 comment1 min readEA link

Gavriel Kleinwaks 9 May 2023 17:05 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Max Görlitz’s comment on: Air Safety to Combat Global Catastrophic Biorisks [REVISED]
Thanks so much for the kind feedback and comparison calculation! Your skepticism about the eACH estimates is warranted—I was unaware that coronaviruses were unusually susceptible (compared with other viruses, you mean?); the estimates we saw were all based on either SARS-CoV-2 or tuberculosis (also quite susceptible). It’s useful to know how other people are approaching this question, and ultimately the problem calls for much more extensive real-world observations.

Gavriel Kleinwaks 3 May 2023 19:35 UTC
4 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: MathiasKB🔸’s comment on: First clean water, now clean air
Great questions—my colleagues and I (at 1Day Sooner) have actually spoken to representatives from HERA and BARDA (which is under HHS) who are very interested in the potential of far-UVC. What we’ve seen is that policymakers are genuinely concerned about the effectiveness and safety of widespread far-UVC use, and want to see greater research in the field, without necessarily being able to guarantee that funding themselves. We, and other organizations, have been advocating for and trying to organize research and pilot programs. (I don’t have a good sense of the international advocacy field around pandemic prep, though; most of our partners are based in the US.) I think that generally advocacy has actually been fairly specific, or at least been targeted at understanding specific concerns from policymakers, but it’s not surprising that this doesn’t necessarily come across at a glance. The more detailed and specific the plan, the more technical it gets and the more it’s being communicated person-to-person or through gigantic reports. Our report does contain specific recommendations in the “Bottlenecks and Funding Opportunities” section if you’d like to check it out!

Gavriel Kleinwaks 3 May 2023 19:22 UTC
15 points
0 ∶ 0
on: First clean water, now clean air
Thanks so much for the kind words about our report! We actually published an updated version just an hour ago—you can see the new report here and the forum announcement with a summary here. (Small note on organizational affiliation: the report is a collaboration between 1Day Sooner and Rethink Priorities.)

Air Safety to Combat Global Catastrophic Biorisks [REVISED]

Gavriel Kleinwaks3 May 2023 18:25 UTC

60 points

3 comments6 min readEA link

(drive.google.com)

Gavriel Kleinwaks 26 Mar 2023 2:48 UTC
0 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: anotherEAonaburner’s comment on: Can anyone reassure me about EA work culture?
My typical week has 4-6 meetings. I usually have 3 standing meetings: staff meeting, a check-in with my boss, and a meeting with a project collaborator. Then each week I usually wind up having 1-3 extra one-off meetings related to projects, like a check-in with a contractor, an informational meeting with a researcher, or a brainstorming session with a colleague. Internal meetings tend to be 60-90 minutes whereas one-offs with external parties tend to be 30-40 minutes. If eg project schedules sync in a weird way, I might get up to 8 meetings, but that’s uncommon. (Some of my colleagues have much more meeting-heavy schedules; it depends on the project and what stage they’re on.)
In terms of booking: I find my existing meeting schedule very easy to handle, and place a high value on personally being helpful and accessible to others. So I’ve intentionally set up my Calendly to show slots at any time during my working hours and to be book-able on fairly short notice. But that’s totally self-motivated! (Due to working fully remotely, I actually legitimately like having a meeting to break up the day.)

Gavriel Kleinwaks 25 Mar 2023 7:09 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Can anyone reassure me about EA work culture?
Hi, sorry to hear about your experience! I work in a research/project management-type role. My workload fluctuates a huge amount by week, and I do typically work long hours, but even when I have a particularly heavy week, it hardly ever feels like I’m “on call.” Within a week, I can largely organize my work as I see fit and I believe this is mostly true for my colleagues in similar roles; the only time we behave as if we are on call is for major deadlines. I occasionally take meetings at weird times due to international partnerships, but always with plenty of advance notice.
And actually, when it comes to ops roles, our head of ops is very encouraging of people protecting their vacation time. I give her a ton of credit for being thoughtful and intentional about how to develop a healthy culture around working hours/protected time, especially given that we’re an international organization spread out across time zones. Of course it mattered that she’s one of the co-founders and could lay out reasonable expectations—ie, she wasn’t going to always be on call, and wouldn’t expect anyone else to.
I think unquestionably certain roles are more demanding in hours, responsiveness, or both, but that should be made clear in job descriptions or interviews, and hopefully allow you to make an informed decision—eg, one former colleague was hired for a comms role explicitly described as involving “rapid response,” so you can predict that would put you more on call than other roles at the same org.
So basically, my sense is that:
a) roles in ops & events management will have more “fires to put out” than other roles in the same organization, but also
b) ops will have more “fires” at some organizations than others, and
c) if someone at a high enough level cares, they can just lay out norms, and that will shape org culture.

Gavriel Kleinwaks 16 Mar 2023 18:58 UTC
10 points
6 ∶ 2
on: Time Article Discussion—“Effective Altruist Leaders Were Repeatedly Warned About Sam Bankman-Fried Years Before FTX Collapsed”
Although my feelings are broadly more optimistic about EA’s ability to improve its institutions and move forward than many stances I’ve seen, the entire trajectory of the FTX blowup has made me prefer the idea of a career that takes me farther away from insular EA bubbles, rather than a career that immerses me in EA bubbles. It’s not a huge change—I just used to think that I wouldn’t particularly care if I stayed in an EA bubble professionally, and now that seems unwise, making some career choices even more favorable than previously. This article specifically didn’t cause the change, but it’s something I’ve been mulling over for a while and I think this simply crystallized the thought for me.