JMonty

Karma: 201

JMonty 5 Jan 2024 0:57 UTC
8 points
0 ∶ 0
on: My Experience Donating Blood Stem Cells, or: Why You Should Join a Bone Marrow Registry
Thanks for sharing this! I donated with Be The Match as well, in March of 2020, which was interesting timing. They actually had to send me to a sister organization called Gift of Life, whose staff was amazing as well. I had preciously started the process to donate a kidney and then let the ball drop and forgotten about it. The call from Be The Match was such a specific call to action:
”You’ve been identified as a possible marrow match for a 57-year-old Male in need of a transplant. The patient’s doctor is trying to determine treatment options as quickly as possible.” My reaction was basically “oh my god, of course!” versus the kidney donation which was more like “eh this is mildly annoying right now I’ll just not” since there was no single individual being called to my attention.
Interestingly enough, my experience donating stem cells was so rewarding that it reminded me of my previous attempt at kidney donation, and I restarted that process and donated my kidney later that year. I bet if you compared kidney donation rates between people in the bone marrow registry and people who have been matched and donated stem cells, you’d find a significant increase in the latter population.

JMonty 30 Nov 2023 15:50 UTC
22 points
2 ∶ 0
on: How I feel about my GWWC Pledge
As I was reading, I was nodding along, agreeing with this post. I also was first introduced to EA by that very same Sam Harris podcast. I in fact did join the military in part because of their very good ads (Marines run towards the sound of chaos was the campaign that got me). 99.etc% of the time, I don’t feel like much of anything related to my GWWC pledge- it’s just the obviously right thing to do, in many ways the bare minimum for me personally. I started right as I got a large pay increase, so I’ve never even had to adjust to less income. I feel more warm and fuzzies from helping someone reach a high box at the grocery store than I do from my automatic monthly payments.
So, imagine my surprise when I saw this:
> Given this, when I read about other GWWC members’ attitudes towards their giving I sometimes feel a bit sheepish, maybe even like a bit of an imposter.
Wait- that’s my article! I wrote that piece on the one year anniversary of my pledge. It was a conscious effort to reflect on the reasons for that decision, and to reflect on the good it did in the world, exactly because I don’t feel warm and fuzzies on a day to day basis. I’ve lately been trying to build my gratitude muscles, with a gratitude journal and a push to express gratitude to a specific real person when I feel it. That piece was in part a gratitude training for me, because I am immensely grateful to be able to donate 10% of my salary to amazingly effective charities- but I am only grateful when I am really thinking about it. So I wrote a post to make me think about it more.
I agree with everything you wrote, and I also want to really thank you for taking the pledge. You are making the world a better place, and doing so far and above what most people in our culture consider normal. You help me and others to do the same in your work at GWWC.
One thing I really admire about our community is that we have taken to heart that the correlation between warm and fuzzy feelings and actual good impact in the world is totally broken, and we donate and work where we can do the most good, not feel the most warm and fuzzies. But I also want to spread some warm and fuzzies! Personally, I’ve found that I can hack my own system a bit by being intentionally grateful for my opportunity to do something like take the GWWC pledge. It makes me want to keep doing it, and it makes me happier. On my one year GWWC anniversary, I told an EA friend and we went out to celebrate; since that celebration, he has taken the pledge, too.
Thanks for writing this! Thanks for speaking to the reality that doing really good things doesn’t always come with great rewards in emotions. Our experiences are very, very similar. I wholeheartedly endorse your last section.

JMonty 30 Nov 2023 1:36 UTC
1 point
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on: Are pasture-raised eggs real?
Thanks for asking this, I’m in basically the same boat and I am learning a lot from the answer you’ve gotten so far

JMonty 31 Aug 2023 0:42 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Gemma Paterson’s comment on: Paul Farmer’s Legacy
Thanks!

JMonty 22 Jul 2023 17:37 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Aaron Gertler’s comment on: U.S. Has Destroyed the Last of Its Once-Vast Chemical Weapons Arsenal
Procrastination was definitely a motivator for me too. Better than my procrastination strategy yesterday of watching 30 minutes of boating failures!

JMonty 3 May 2023 14:25 UTC
1 point
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on: Paul Farmer’s Legacy
Here’s an update video on the Maternal Center of Excellence

JMonty 17 Mar 2023 20:26 UTC
1 point
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on: Advice on communicating in and around the biosecurity policy community
Great post! This matches closely with the lessons I’ve learned and advice I’ve given after working with virologists and biosafety professionals. I’d also give a plug for the book Biosecurity Dilemmas for anyone who wants to do a deeper dive in the trade offs in this space.

JMonty 24 Jan 2023 4:49 UTC
4 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: JoshuaBlake’s comment on: Responses to pademic pathogens with differing behaviours...and are we in the clear of covid-19 yet?
Yeah, you bring up a really good point: most of the “bugs” circulating aren’t harmful, so if we have a surveillance system that’s completely pathogen agnostic we’ll be chasing beneficial gut bacteria or harmless phage. In my previous job in a wastewater testing lab, one of the positive controls we used was a virus that infects peppers- we’d find tons of it.

With regards to viruses, the virus needs to be able to enter human cells, take over the cellular machinery to replicate, and evade the human immune response. We know broadly what kinds of virus families can do this and what kinds can’t, so if we see a virus in a family that can infect humans that is increasing exponentially in our surveillance system, we know there is an outbreak/epidemic. We can then do some bench science to figure out what human cells it’s infecting, how it’s evading the immune system, etc. The viruses that we coexist with relatively well, such as human cytomegalovirus, have coevolved with humans over millennia. A novel virus that was increasing rapidly in a human population would be cause for concern even if there is no symptoms yet. Also, many times there are symptoms, but they are not connected to the novel pathogen because they look so much like other diseases- flu and COVID-19, for example.
With regards to bacteria, I’ll admit I’m not as knowledgeable there, but I’m also not as worried in the near term about GCBRs from bacteria.
You write:
...spreading but causes no ill effects (like the majority of microbes in our body).
The second part of your statement makes sense to me- the vast majority of microbes in our body cause no ill effects in people with a healthy immune system. However, I’m not so sure about the first statement: if it’s spreading, that means it’s either taking over human cells and turning them into virus factories, or it’s colonizing more and more human tissue. That means the balance between the immune system and this microbe is out of whack. “Harmless” bacteria or viruses that start spreading out of control kill immunocompromised people all the time- a big part of the “no ill effects” is actually that it’s not spreading, but that it’s in a stable equilibria with your body and immune system.

JMonty 21 Jan 2023 0:52 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Kinoshita Yoshikazu (pseudonym)’s comment on: Responses to pademic pathogens with differing behaviours...and are we in the clear of covid-19 yet?
Glad to find another Plague Inc fan. I think in the vast majority of cases, that winning strategy only works in the game, because symptoms are directly related to viral replication and the immune system’s response to viral replication.

You’re right that when we’re talking about engineered pandemics this is something to keep an eye out for, but luckily our immune systems are very good at keeping their eyes out

JMonty 19 Jan 2023 23:21 UTC
1 point
1 ∶ 0
on: Responses to pademic pathogens with differing behaviours...and are we in the clear of covid-19 yet?
1. The infectious period and the symptomatic period, and how they interact, is generally more important than how long a pathogen can lay “dormant”. However, HIV is an example of when a case can be infectious even during the dormant period- that is very concerning, it’s like asymptomatic transmission for COVID-19 but on a much larger scale. People are certainly concerned about a pathogen that has an infectious period that starts before the symptomatic period- it’s even bolded on the slidedeck from the presentation you linked to:
  “I have bolded this because in multiple modeling studies, and in experience...if a disease is contagious during the incubation period, when you’re not sick, then it’s very, very hard to control”.
2. There will certainly be some patients who die in the next few decades from some damage the SARS-CoV-2 infection did to an organ system or from immune system dysregulation from a SARS-CoV-2 infection. Novel pathogens that infect large swathes of the population often have longer term effects. Following the 1889 “Russian flu” pandemic there was even a noticeable increase in suicides among flu victims (https://macsphere.mcmaster.ca/handle/11375/14366; it was likely not a flu but in fact a novel coronavirus!). However, the magnitude is nowhere near the level needed to bring SARS-CoV-2 into GCBR status. While it is true that people can die of measles, EBV, or herpes after recovering from an acute infection, this is by no means likely. HIV is the outlier here, but it has meaningful differences from SARS-CoV-2: it has a much, much higher mutation rate, it uses reverse transcriptase to integrate its genome into the host cell’s genome, and it preferentially attacks immune cells (measles also attacks the immune system in a different way, by attacking memory cells). So yes, in my opinion, we are out of the woods with COVID-19 with regards to GCBRs.
3. The main countermeasure to pathogens that take a while to cause symptoms is good epidemiologic surveillance systems. This “starts the clock” faster on countermeasures. Ideally, you would want a pathogen agnostic system, like what is being worked on at the Nucleic Acid Observatory. There’s a game called Plague Inc that models this one aspect well- the sooner humanity realizes something is spreading, the sooner they slow the spread and create cures.

JMonty 15 Jan 2023 1:26 UTC
3 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Overview of the Pathogen Biosurveillance Landscape
This is a really great summary and reference document, thanks for writing this! I have two comments:
1. There is a difference between detectable levels of RNA/DNA/Antigen and an active, transmissible infection. While most of the time this is not important when thinking about a global surveillance system, it is good to keep in mind especially in PoP testing.
Edit: You address my point 1 in your Part 2
2. You write:
However, while we can use animal surveillance systems to regularly monitor animals’ health and collect samples, we lack the capability of characterizing the pathogens effectively so as to predict their virulence and transmissibility to humans. This is a serious problem as it is infeasible to analyze and monitor every single pathogen strain found in animals. Microbiologists are working on this problem, but until then, zoonotic surveillance may not be suitable as an early-warning system
Kevin Esvelt has convincingly argued that we should not do this, because this would publish what and where viruses or pathogens are that could cause a pandemic to bad actors. It seems related to your point on “Potential for Dual-Use by Bad Actors”. While the technology itself may not be used by bad actors, the information gathered would immediately be an information hazard which could be used by bad actors.

Again, thanks a lot for this overview of the topic!

JMonty 23 May 2022 21:01 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Puggy Knudson’s comment on: Puggy Knudson’s Shortform
I think seeing the attacks that he’s captured by crypto interests was useful, in that future EA political forays will know that attack is coming and be able to fend it off better. Worth $11 mil in itself, probably not, but the expected value was already pretty high (a decent probability of having someone in congress who can champion bills no one disagrees with but doesn’t want to spend time and effort on) so this information gained is helpful and might make either future campaigns more successful or alternatively dissuade future spending in this area. Definitely good to try once, we’ll see how it plays out in the long run. We didn’t know he’d lose until he lost!

JMonty 23 May 2022 20:54 UTC
1 point
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on: James Montavon’s Shortform
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/14/opinion/sunday/rich-happiness-big-data.html
This article from Seth Stephens-Davidowitz describes a paper (here) that examines who are the people in the top 0.1% of earners in the US, making at least $1.58 million per year. It was interesting to me in that many of those people were not high-status jobs, but rather owning unsexy businesses such as a car dealership or a beverage distribution operation. Obviously, this has implications for how we structure society, but it could also be a good thing to keep in mind for those interested in earning to give- owning a plumbing company might be a better route for some than trying to make it big on wall street.

JMonty 25 Apr 2022 22:55 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 1
on: Learning By Writing
I’ve found a benefit of learning by writing is figuring out what’s actually not important at all. I wrote some COVID updates, and often things I was mad about- public communication, policies, etc were just not important when it came to writing down stuff in a way that helped other people navigate the risk environment.

JMonty 5 Apr 2022 1:06 UTC
8 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Paul Farmer (1959 – 2022)
Thanks for writing this. PIH and Paul’s work were a big inspiration to me, and were one of my early exposures to two ideas that are essential to EA: one, that people matter just as much no matter where they are or how hidden their suffering is from me; and two, that my money earmarked for helping people will go so, so, so much farther investing in the health and wellbeing of the poorest of the poor than in causes that may be more visible to me.

I have a couple of lessons that I learned from PIH and Paul Farmer that I will attempt to apply to my life as a whole and my EA thinking and action. These lessons are meant for me, to solidify my thinking and write something I could remind myself with, but I thought I would share my takeaways with the community as well.

1) Sometimes, you have to change your level of perspective to truly understand what the most effective use of time, resources, etc is. When Paul and PIH were faced with multi drug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) in Peru, they were told by the WHO, the medical community, and the government over and over that it was too expensive- better to spend the money on lots of cheap drugs to treat lots of sick but curable patients than to spend it all on a few very sick patients. This math is important to do, and we must factor in the opportunity cost when using our resources; we owe it to the people whose suffering our money, time and energy could help to grapple with and make decisions about who and how to spend it to maximize the effectiveness. However, it is also true that sometimes, a proof of concept that you can indeed treat a disease, albeit at great cost, can lead to a mobilization to lower the cost. People get energized by a problem of degree, and get discouraged by a problem of impossibility. People who do the impossible at great cost are invaluable.
2) Listen, ask questions, and listen some more. When you feel like you’ve listened enough, that’s a good signal that you should listen some more. There are things you know; there are things you don’t know but can learn; and there are things which it’s just better to leverage someone else’s knowledge. Paul was a Harvard-trained MD and PhD, with extensive experience in poor, rural healthcare, who spoke fluent French and Creole. And yet, he still relied heavily on local knowledge and experts. This was not done to make his organization more diverse, or to cloak his ideas in the voice of the locals, but because that partnership made him more effective at treating the health of his patients. He listened so much that it was a superpower. This is a lesson that I have learned and relearned, and will have to learn again.
3) It takes all kinds. I am not religious, Paul was motivated explicitly by religious ideas. EA looks at cost per DALY and QALY (among other things, of course), PIH looked at each human life as worthy of the best medical care and support that money could buy. It is important to be true to your values, but it is also important to shun the narcissism of small differences. Find ways to make the world a better place, celebrate those who are, make making the world a better place something more people (with all sorts of different motivations) want to do, and make making the world a better place more and more effective.
4) Inspiring others can truly be a massive impact. The sheer number of my classmates who were inspired to pursue a career in public health because of Paul Farmer and PIH was truly amazing to me. Personally, however, I actively shut myself down from oversharing my own “good deeds”. In my younger days, I bragged, lied, and used my intelligence to bullshit. An essential part of growing up for me has been to develop an allergy to my own bragging, to be comfortable with who I am and let my actions speak for themselves. I think something I will have to continue to struggle with is when and how to share in a way that normalizes doing good, without it being about stroking my own ego or gaining praise and recognition. This is something I haven’t fully figured out yet, but I am working on it and getting better.
5) The best in anything have most of the impact. 80k’s conventional wisdom is not to go into medicine, or if you do, work in a rich country and donate your salary. And yet this man is one of the most successful people at improving the world in the past half century. People like Paul Farmer do not come around every day, and it is good to give advice that helps drastically improve the good an average life can do; 80k people will say this too, that their top cause areas may be good on average but specifically your best potential impact has a lot to do with you, what makes you tick, what you have an advantage in. That said, we can do more as a community and I can do more individually to take and encourage others to take the idea of being the best at whatever you’re the best at, and using that bestness to improve the world.

JMonty 4 Apr 2022 23:38 UTC
4 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: OldSchoolEA’s comment on: Paul Farmer (1959 – 2022)
I think his friends and Farmer himself would disagree with you- he loved what he did, felt like he could not do otherwise. He was also always smiling, laughing, and joking. His memorial service is on youtube, both of his cofounders talked about his sense of humor and his love for the work he was involved in. I think a life lived happy and in the service of improving the world is about the farthest possible from a tragedy, even if it is shorter than average

JMonty 5 Mar 2022 8:55 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: JMonty’s comment on: Open Thread: November 2021
Here’s some very well done podcast notes if you like text more than audio:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ORM6XjEQCycmzBrCt_D3nyl5O_fNPGwS3kYpAAy364c/edit?usp=sharing

JMonty 1 Mar 2022 3:48 UTC
16 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Open Thread: November 2021
Sam Harris and Rob Reid just put out this podcast that seems very relevant to this community:
[The After On Podcast] 58: Recipes for Future Plagues | Kevin Esvelt #theAfterOnPodcast
https://podcastaddict.com/episode/136135023 via @PodcastAddict
Basically, the US government is trying to find all the pandemic-capable viruses it can, and it will then POST THEIR FULL GENOMES ONLINE.
This is potentially a catastrophically stupid blunder that we intend to make but have not made yet. The recommended actions from Rob are to tell USAID directly at https://www.usaid.gov/contact-us, tweet at them, if you live in a state with a senator on the subcommittee on state department and USAID management (https://www.govtrack.us/congress/committees/SSFR/14) contact your senator, contact Washington State University if you have a relevant tie, and otherwise spread this, get attention, apply whatever leverage you have.

Twitter thread from Kevin Esvelt (professor at MIT, speaker at EA global on mitigating catastrophic biorisks):
https://twitter.com/kesvelt/status/1498409798903209996

JMonty 23 Jan 2021 20:49 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: James Montavon’s Shortform
National Year of Service for Free College as an EA Idea
This is mostly anecdotal and n of 1; interested to hear the community’s thoughts.
1. During high school, I went on mission trips through my church. One I credit with starting me thinking about EA type trade offs and values- we went to Guatemala, and spent the first week working with La Casa del Alfarero working with the absolute poorest of the poor, people living and working inside of the Guatemala City garbage dump. This organization did real research into what interventions they could do to most help these people, and we did things like build stoves with chimneys so that they wouldn’t inhale plastic fumes in their house and gave kids free healthy meals if they came to school. They also explicitly taught us that they took time out of their more effective work to babysit us rich white kids because some of us would be moved to donate and that would pay off in the end, and that what they really needed was more funding to hire local poor people who were better at these tasks anyways and then we would be helping someone with a job, too. The next week we spent with a missionary named Bob who lived in a beautiful villa overlooking a rainforest canyon and had really good food and people come play classical Spanish guitar and we also occasionally went to an orphanage and sang some songs and took lots of pictures. The contrast was so stark that it affected all of us, and we did not return to Bob’s in future years.
2. Currently, I am about to graduate from my undergrad degree and will enter graduate school for my MPH in Epidemiology in the fall. I am on the GI bill, and the VA is also paying for my grad school. This funding of my college means a) I can plan to work in a lower paying but more effective field like public health because I don’t have to worry about college debt and b) I have been able to take exactly the research positions and jobs that I want to help build career capital and test out certain jobs because I don’t need the money .
3. What are the community’s thoughts on ideas for free college contingent on a national year of service? I have heard it floated by politicians every now and then, and think it might actually be a really good policy from an EA perspective if it gets people exposed to the world of the global poor and also allows them to pursue higher education without worrying about loans. Recency bias towards their service experience and the tendency towards idealism in young people make me think that a relatively large number of young Americans could go on to study and work in altruistic careers, which is generally good, and some percentage of them would probably be influenced by EA ideas, which is even better. Another point in favor of NYoS plans is that they are potentially more politically feasible than just free college due to people’s aversions to “handouts”