Julia_Wise(Julia Wise)

• Julia_Wise 24 Jun 2020 15:00 UTC

  8 points

  in reply to: Pablo_Stafforini’s comment on: Prob­lem ar­eas be­yond 80,000 Hours’ cur­rent pri­ori­ties

  I agree this is a broad and worth­while area to think about. The com­mu­nity health team at CEA (Sky May­hew, Ni­cole Ross, and I) do some work in this area, and I know of var­i­ous staff at other orgs who also think about risks to EA and in­cor­po­rate that think­ing into their work. That’s not to say I think we have this com­pletely cov­ered or that no risk re­mains.

• Julia_Wise 16 Jun 2020 20:29 UTC

  10 points

  on: How to Fix Pri­vate Pri­sons (and Im­mi­gra­tion)

  I’m very in­ter­ested in this topic, but found the fram­ing here difficult to fol­low. (I think in part, as Jo­hann pointed out, be­cause pos­i­tive and nega­tive im­pacts are com­bined into one graph.) As a per­son who hasn’t spent much time read­ing about math and re­lated fields, equa­tions like “ΠBob=MBob−Fund­ingBob−CrimesBob” don’t make a lot of sense to me and re­quire a bunch of scrol­ling around to re­mind my­self what “ΠBob” is.
  
  It might be eas­ier to un­der­stand if a plainer-lan­guage sum­mary were in­cluded un­der each equa­tion.

• Julia_Wise 12 Jun 2020 20:35 UTC

  6 points

  in reply to: Peter_Hurford’s comment on: Who should /​ is go­ing to win 2020 FLI award 2020?

  Wow, that’s as­ton­ish­ing. I imag­ine it’s more com­plex than a sin­gle per­son sin­gle-hand­edly de­vel­op­ing each vac­cine, but still.

• Julia_Wise 1 May 2020 14:27 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: Nicolas_Feil’s comment on: Prevent­ing pan­demics by not hunt­ing and farm­ing animals

  I would ex­pect the low-hang­ing fruit to be things like clos­ing cer­tain types of op­er­a­tions or out­law­ing cer­tain prac­tices, not end­ing an­i­mal con­sump­tion en­tirely.
  
  This in­dus­try wouldn’t just van­ish costlessly—it would have to be re­placed with some­thing else, in terms of liveli­hoods for peo­ple who cur­rently work in that sec­tor, eco­nomic re­al­ity for low-in­come peo­ple who raise and hunt an­i­mals, and food cul­ture. For ex­am­ple, I’m from Virginia where to­bacco used to be a ma­jor crop and still is to some de­gree (de­spite the frowns of pub­lic health ex­perts). When the gov­ern­ment de­cided to start dis­cour­ag­ing to­bacco use, those to­bacco farm­ers had to be tran­si­tioned to an­other liveli­hood. For ex­am­ple, in 2004 the fed­eral gov­ern­ment offered $10 billion in buy­outs to en­courage to­bacco farm­ers to switch to an­other crop.
  
  The study you point to on the “nu­tri­tion tran­si­tion in South Korea” in­cludes in its sum­mary “Ma­jor dietary changes in­cluded a large in­crease in the con­sump­tion of an­i­mal food prod­ucts and a fall in to­tal ce­real in­take.” Pro­vid­ing les­sons to peo­ple in prepar­ing tra­di­tional plant-based foods doesn’t mean that’s what peo­ple will ac­tu­ally do en masse.

• Julia_Wise 30 Apr 2020 15:13 UTC

  15 points

  on: Prevent­ing pan­demics by not hunt­ing and farm­ing animals

  I haven’t looked into this much, but my im­pres­sion is that main­stream pub­lic health ex­perts are wor­ried about overuse of an­tibiotics in fac­tory farm­ing, and maybe about spe­cific set­tings like wet mar­kets, but that calls for stop­ping meat con­sump­tion in gen­eral are com­ing from the an­i­mal ad­vo­cacy side more than the pub­lic health side. I’d be in­ter­ested in whether main­stream pub­lic health peo­ple think re­duc­tion in an­i­mal con­sump­tion is a tractable thing to push for. My guess is that this looks much more worth­while to work in if you fac­tor in an­i­mal welfare, but on pub­lic health grounds doesn’t seem to be all that tractable com­pared to other ways to re­duce pan­demic risk?
  
  From a so­ciolog­i­cal per­spec­tive, a tran­si­tion to “not hunt­ing and farm­ing an­i­mals” would mean big shifts in eco­nomics, food cul­ture, etc. Even if gov­ern­ments de­cided they wanted to do this, it’s a much harder step to take than a lot of other steps they could take to­ward re­duc­ing pan­demic risk. When you look at the efforts to re­duce poach­ing of cer­tain species it hasn’t been easy or fully suc­cess­ful, and mov­ing to pre­vent­ing all an­i­mal con­sump­tion would be many times harder.

• Julia_Wise 22 Apr 2020 13:46 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Matt_Lerner’s comment on: Matt_Lerner’s Shortform

  What does PR stand for?

• Julia_Wise 6 Apr 2020 22:10 UTC

  4 points

  on: Find­ing equil­ibrium in a difficult time

  An up­date af­ter about a month at home—I think I was overly op­ti­mistic about some of this! I’ve definitely spent less time than planned watch­ing con­certs and more time work­ing out how to pro­cure ice cream. If med­i­ta­tion and such is work­ing for you, great! But no shame if you’re like the rest of us and not ex­actly liv­ing up to your lock­down ideals.

• Julia_Wise 3 Apr 2020 16:26 UTC

  7 points

  on: What frac­tion of posts sub­mit­ted on the Effec­tive Altru­ism Face­book group gets ac­cepted by the ad­mins?

  (I’m one of the mod­er­a­tors of that group.) I don’t think we’ve tracked the ex­act num­bers, but I es­ti­mate that we ap­prove about half of posts. Some oth­ers we re­fer to other groups for spe­cific top­ics—for ex­am­ple we’re refer­ring most coro­n­avirus posts to the coro­n­avirus group right now. We re­ject some posts that aren’t rele­vant enough or that don’t meet the bar for what we think read­ers will find use­ful or in­ter­est­ing, which we rec­og­nize isn’t a firm cat­e­gory.
  
  Be­cause we have two mod­er­a­tors vote on each post, it can take us a few days to pro­cess a post—sorry for the de­lay.

• Julia_Wise 2 Apr 2020 14:40 UTC

  16 points

  in reply to: Peter_Hurford’s comment on: US Non-Profit? Get Free* Money From the Gov on 3 Apr!

  I think there’s a differ­ence be­tween “are you af­fected by eco­nomic un­cer­tainty”—which prob­a­bly ap­plies to all non­prof­its right now—and “are you about to lay off staff or not be able to pay them.” The fact that loan for­give­ness goes to or­ga­ni­za­tions that have not laid any­one off within 8 weeks im­plies to me that it’s in­tended for or­ga­ni­za­tions that would oth­er­wise lay off staff or be un­able to pay them within that timeframe, and I think most EA orgs have more than 8 weeks of run­way.
  
  The up­dated ver­sion of the post is clearer, though!

• Julia_Wise 27 Mar 2020 22:06 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Michelle_Hutchinson’s comment on: Find­ing equil­ibrium in a difficult time

  I mean, credit goes to Lewis, and to Harry Peto for link­ing to it in an­other EA dis­cus­sion group!

• Julia_Wise 21 Mar 2020 16:04 UTC

  9 points

  on: Ad­vice for get­ting the most out of one-on-ones

  The EA Global or­ga­niz­ers have been em­pha­siz­ing to more ex­pe­rienced par­ti­ci­pants (like staff at EA or­ga­ni­za­tions) that this is their chance to do some men­tor­ship and help newer peo­ple with their pro­jects and ca­reers. I’d hope that most ex­pe­rienced EAs at a con­fer­ence are there with that mind­set. I’m grate­ful to the peo­ple who gave me ad­vice and pointed me to re­sources when I was start­ing out, and I’m happy to have such meet­ings with other EAs if I can be use­ful to them.
  
  Per­son­ally, what I like to see in a meet­ing in­vite is a spe­cific topic or sev­eral top­ics the per­son wants to talk about, rather than a vague in­ter­est in talk­ing in gen­eral. Even if it’s sen­si­tive enough that they don’t spell out ex­actly what they want to talk about, I want to know that they do have some­thing spe­cific in mind.

Find­ing equil­ibrium in a difficult time

• Julia_Wise 7 Mar 2020 2:06 UTC

  42 points

  in reply to: queennat’s comment on: COVID-19 brief for friends and family

  I sec­ond the “wash your hands and stay home if you’re sick” mes­sage, but not the “this is other peo­ple’s prob­lem” vibe. The pop­u­la­tion most at risk, older and im­muno­com­pro­mised peo­ple, does in­clude some EAs, and definitely in­cludes friends and fam­ily of EAs. If the situ­a­tion swamps the ca­pac­ity of hos­pi­tals, then it will be a prob­lem for any­one who needs a hos­pi­tal. If schools and day­cares close, then it will be a prob­lem for chil­dren and any­one with chil­dren. If bor­ders close, it’s a prob­lem for any­one who needs to go some­where. If work­places close, it’s a prob­lem for peo­ple who need to work in per­son and won’t get paid.
  
  I agree that some forms of re­ac­tion aren’t helpful, but the epi­demic is in fact a prob­lem that af­fects an awful lot of peo­ple. It’s worth figur­ing out not just if we can re­duce harm to our­selves but also if we can pro­tect oth­ers we might in­fect, and if we can pre­vent the spread of an ill­ness that will in­ca­pac­i­tate a lot of sys­tems we all de­pend on.

• Julia_Wise 18 Feb 2020 17:34 UTC

  8 points

  on: Shoot Your Shot

  I try to keep this list of EA syl­labi up to date. Please do check out the ma­te­ri­als from other classes, and let me know if you have a read­ing list or similar you’d like me to add!

• Julia_Wise 13 Feb 2020 22:06 UTC

  18 points

  on: How do you feel about the main EA face­book group?

  The Face­book group has nearly 18,000 mem­bers, most of whom are new to EA. If you re­mem­ber it be­ing differ­ent in 2015, it was. But it also had a third as many peo­ple.
  

• Julia_Wise 12 Feb 2020 21:19 UTC

  5 points

  on: Who should give sperm/​eggs?

  I think dis­cus­sion of this typ­i­cally doesn’t ac­knowl­edge that it’s ac­tu­ally not an op­tion for most peo­ple. Your age, test scores, weight, height, at­trac­tive­ness, eth­nic­ity, and per­sonal and fam­ily med­i­cal and men­tal health his­tory all have to be what the agency wants. Most peo­ple I know who’ve con­sid­ered this op­tion have not made it past the screen­ing. Even if you’re donat­ing for a friend or fam­ily mem­ber, their clinic may not ap­prove you e.g. if you’ve ex­pe­rienced men­tal health prob­lems.

• Julia_Wise 7 Feb 2020 21:24 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: Daniela R. Waldhorn’s comment on: Snails used for hu­man con­sump­tion: The case of meat and slime

  Thanks!

• Julia_Wise 7 Feb 2020 1:44 UTC

  10 points

  on: Snails used for hu­man con­sump­tion: The case of meat and slime

  Maybe this has been ad­dressed some­where and I missed it, but is there re­search on how snails might ex­pe­rience pain? It seems like there’s par­tic­u­lar doubt about whether bi­valves ex­pe­rience sen­sa­tion. How close are snails to bi­valves in that way?

It’s OK to feed stray cats

• Julia_Wise 8 Jan 2020 17:58 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: ellenm’s comment on: More info on EA Global admissions

  Yes, we do take at­ten­dees’ travel costs into con­sid­er­a­tion. This is part of why we went back to hav­ing mul­ti­ple EA Global con­fer­ences af­ter try­ing out hav­ing only one in 2016, and why we have con­tinued to have EAGx events, so that more peo­ple have some­thing near them. We rec­og­nize that re­duced travel costs would be one benefit to hav­ing more events.