Ian Turner

Karma: 1,288

Ian Turner 6 Feb 2026 16:44 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Yarrow Bouchard 🔸’s comment on: Unfalsifiable stories of doom
Personally I don’t think Sam Altman is motivated by money. He just wants to be the one to build it.

I sense that Elon Musk and Dorio Amodei’s motivations are more complex than “motivated by money”, but I can imagine that the actual dollar amounts are more important to them than to Sma.

Ian Turner 6 Feb 2026 16:17 UTC
4 points
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in reply to: TylerMaule’s comment on: TylerMaule’s Quick takes
TBH my sense is that GiveWell is just being polite.

A perhaps more realistic motivation is that admitting animal suffering into GiveWell’s models would implicitly force them to specify moral weights for animals (versus humans), and there is no way to do that without inviting huge controversy leaving at least some groups very upset. Much easier to say “sorry, not our wheelhouse” and effectively set animal weights to zero.

FWIW I agree with this decision (of GiveWell’s).

Ian Turner 26 Dec 2025 16:54 UTC
5 points
2 ∶ 1
in reply to: NickLaing’s comment on: Offering higher salaries than social-sector peers
The numbers are definitely high in absolute terms, though I would guess they are low in comparison to what these people could earn in the private sector. The founder-CEO of an investment firm the size of GiveWell would expect to have compensation in the millions.

I think we should be careful not to forget Dan Palotta’s advice. One of the appealing things about earning to give is that nobody will hassle you for making too much money.

Ian Turner 12 Dec 2025 0:18 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Yarrow Bouchard 🔸’s comment on: Donation Election 2025 Winners
Who is to say that Rob Mather doesn’t enjoy a shrimp cocktail now and then?

Ian Turner 11 Dec 2025 23:48 UTC
10 points
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on: ‘Why I Donate’ Thread
Serving my fellow man has always been a major source of personal meaning for me. I guess that makes me a do-gooder. From late childhood I had already committed myself to giving 10% of my income after taxes, but at a certain point I realized point that actually money is probably one of the greatest things I had to offer was money (and probably the greatest thing I have to offer strangers). I have the luck and privilege of having more money to offer than most, and its decreasing marginal utility means I can help others without making a big sacrifice myself.

I still donate blood, and might donate a kidney someday, but I suspect that when I look back on my life I’ll count my cash donations among my proudest accomplishments.

Ian Turner 11 Dec 2025 15:12 UTC
2 points
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Ian Turner 10 Dec 2025 16:00 UTC
2 points
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on: The “Compound Interest of Kindness”: Fixing Philanthropic Market Failure via Behavioral Engineering
According to GPTZero this post was 100% generated by AI.

Ian Turner 1 Dec 2025 20:08 UTC
4 points
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on: Vaccine Obstructionism Kills
There’s not much to disagree with here, but I downvoted this anyway because it feels uncomfortably close to in-group cheerleading.

Ian Turner 25 Nov 2025 21:43 UTC
6 points
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on: One woman is killed every 11 minutes. Is EA paying attention?

Over 100 experimental and quasi-experimental studies have now assessed prevention programmes, with interventions like SASA! and IMAGE in South Africa showing sustained declines in violence (Pronyk et al., 2006)[18]. Yet these successes are rarely translated into EA-style impact evaluations or funding models.

Isn’t it just that these programs are simply not cost effective? Forum posts in 2022 and 2023 looked at this and the (very generous) cost estimates there were still way higher than other interventions with similar quality evidence.

Ian Turner 18 Nov 2025 3:30 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: Yarrow Bouchard 🔸’s comment on: Yarrow Bouchard’s Quick takes
LeCun is also probably one of the top people to have worsened the AI safety outlook this decade, and from that perspective perhaps his departure is a good thing for the survival of the world, and thus also Meta’s shareholders?

Ian Turner 10 Nov 2025 22:01 UTC
2 points
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on: One-Minute Ask: Help Pass the End Kidney Deaths Act to Save Lives and Reduce Kidney Deaths in the U.S.
Manifold market on whether or not this act (or similar legislation) passes: https://manifold.markets/patbl/will-the-end-kidney-deaths-act-or-s

Ian Turner 6 Nov 2025 1:27 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: huw’s comment on: huw’s Quick takes
In my experience, you get better advice anyway if you frame the question as though you are a professional. So instead of, “here is a picture of my rash, what do you think?”, you say, “A patient has provided this picture of a rash, what is your diagnosis?”.

Ian Turner 6 Nov 2025 1:21 UTC
5 points
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on: The Last Stop on the Crazy Train
I think this sounds nice but seems to presuppose that we know what to do to make the long-term go well. The situation with AI should inform us that it’s actually quite possible to go in with good intentions and instead of making things better, actually make them worse.

Ian Turner 20 Oct 2025 20:44 UTC
7 points
1 ∶ 1
on: Entertainment for EAs
I think the forum itself falls into this category.

Ian Turner 15 Oct 2025 15:17 UTC
4 points
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on: You should probably track your time (and it just got easier)
I use https://dailytimetracking.com/ and find it to be fairly unburdensome, though it might not be great for those with more porous work-life boundaries.

Ian Turner 10 Oct 2025 23:40 UTC
4 points
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in reply to: Nithin Ravi🔸’s comment on: You Should Get a Reusable Mask
3M lists dealers on their website, those are probably fine to buy from? Though Amazon is on the list, so perhaps 3M is not concerned about fakes on Amazon. Or maybe you just have to make sure the seller is Amazon itself.

Ian Turner 8 Oct 2025 17:31 UTC
6 points
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in reply to: Jeff Kaufman 🔸’s comment on: You Should Get a Reusable Mask
Amazon has a pretty significant problem with counterfeit merchandise. It’s essentially a flea market. Personally I wouldn’t buy anything there where safety is an important consideration.

Ian Turner 8 Oct 2025 17:28 UTC
5 points
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in reply to: Jeff Kaufman 🔸’s comment on: You Should Get a Reusable Mask

You can get extra filters cheaply.

I would note that during the 2020 pandemic, it was not easy to get replacement filters. I recall that in April 2020 replacement filters were hard to get on less than a 2-3 month lead time.

Ian Turner 8 Oct 2025 17:22 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Kestrel🔸’s comment on: Kestrel’s Quick takes
Open Philanthropy made a grant to PATH for malaria vaccine implementation, maybe you would want to consider that program? There were also malaria vaccine research grants to WHO, Imperial College London, University of Georgia, University of Oxford, Yale University, Hospital for Sick Children, and probably others, however I feel like these grants may not correspond to “programs” per se, especially something that individual donors could give to.

Another one to consider is Target Malaria, which is working on gene drives for mosquito control.

Ian Turner 5 Oct 2025 14:54 UTC
6 points
4 ∶ 1
on: We’ve automated x-risk-pilling people
To be honest, I’m a bit concerned about this.

Is this the kind of thing that depends on being right? Or is this something that one could do for any belief, including false ones? Could one automate persuasion about the dangers of vaccines?