There’s not much to disagree with here, but I downvoted this anyway because it feels uncomfortably close to in-group cheerleading.
Ian Turner
Karma: 1,272
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.
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?
Manifold market on whether or not this act (or similar legislation) passes: https://manifold.markets/patbl/will-the-end-kidney-deaths-act-or-s
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?”.
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.
I think the forum itself falls into this category.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Interesting, thanks for sharing. I see it is not very active, maybe it gets more activity around EA Global events? Unfortunately I am not on Facebook.
Personally I think it is an error (albeit a common one, both among EAs and among EA critics) to offer greater criticism to those who do something, than to those who do nothing. It is good and appropriate to suggest how we can all do better, but if you find yourself criticizing Bill Gates more than Jeff Bezos, I think you’re doing it wrong.
Thanks Michelle for sharing this. One thing I observe in the responses to this classic post is a desire to connect with other EA parents. I wonder if it’s worth establishing a Slack or Discord space for people to connect? For example I would love to discuss what people who attend an EA Global event do for childcare.
I dunno man. I think this piece suffers from a common channel of thought when discussing philanthropy generally, which is that if someone wants to spend their money on yachts, nobody complains, but as soon as somebody tries to do something altruistic, everyone feels like it’s okay to criticize and complain.
If your objection is that billionaire philanthropy gives too much power to billionaires… wouldn’t that apply to all billionaire spending? Really your objection is just that we shouldn’t have billionaires.
If your objection is that billionaire philanthropy could be more effective (it definitely could), I think this observation should be carefully framed so that we don’t penalize people for doing some good, even if they aren’t doing the most good. Those who spend their money on yachts should get more criticism than those who build opera houses.
My understanding is that GiveWell also emerged from a giving group at Bridgewater.
This post makes an argument that politics is important, but I don’t really see any argument that it is neglected or tractable?
According to GPTZero this post was 100% generated by AI.