Larks

Karma: 16,846

Larks 13 May 2026 14:06 UTC
2 points
2 ∶ 0
in reply to: Seidenpuma’s comment on: The AIs seem like EAs — a quick look at two prompts
If you weren’t using a login, presumably you were using the lowest tier of models, which I don’t think is a very good test.

Larks 13 May 2026 4:41 UTC
22 points
2 ∶ 0
on: We don’t know why Malawi is poor — and what that means for AI-and-growth forecasts
You discuss institutions, but I don’t think you discuss the right kind of institutions. If I am comparing Malawi to some of the other nearby landlocked African countries you mention, the first thing that jumps out to me is their dramatically worse economic freedom. Malawi has one of the worst scores in the entire world, ranked ¹⁴⁷⁄₁₆₅, a level more typical of central or saharan african countries.
https://www.efotw.org/?geozone=world&page=map&year=2023&countries=MWI,ZMB,RWA,BWA,LSO#country-info
(You didn’t mention Eswatini or Burundi, but they also score very badly—unfortunately the map tool above will only let me display 5 countries so I focused on those named in the text plus Zambia as it is neighbouring).
This doesn’t resolve the infinite-regress style question of what causes some countries to have more capitalist institutions than others, but when it comes to which institutions to investigate, I think it is their economic institutions we should focus on.

Larks 6 May 2026 21:06 UTC
2 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Brandon Riggs’s comment on: Brandon Riggs’s Quick takes
It seems very unlikely to me that there are AI safety projects that are both worth doing but also not worth doing if they spent $10k on compute. The human capital cost is typically far in excess of that.

Larks 27 Apr 2026 0:12 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
on: What Research Commons Can Learn from UBI
If you don’t gate access to your research resources (grant funding, GPUs etc.), and you have a non-trivial amount to give away, then I would expect almost all of them will end up going to projects you would not approve of.
Note that UBI does gate access—it gates to a (small) finite quantity per person.

Larks 23 Apr 2026 0:58 UTC
6 points
1 ∶ 0
on: From Scarcity to Abundance: What the End Kidney Deaths Act Teaches Us About Spending at Scale
I realise I am arguing with ChatGPT here, but you are equivocating between EA and the US government. We (EA) are preparing for having more money, and this doesn’t in any way contradict the fact that we (USG) already have a lot and we (USG) have chosen absurd kidney market restrictions.

Larks 13 Apr 2026 4:25 UTC
10 points
4 ∶ 0
on: Menstrual Cups—A cost effective gem?
Thanks for this very interesting article.
One quick suggestion: assuming that 100% of distributed cups are used seems quite aggressive to me. Using a 7.5 year average life I think suggests you are implicitly selecting on very enthusiastic adopters; I would imagine a lot are distributed and then discarded.

Larks 5 Apr 2026 22:51 UTC
12 points
6 ∶ 0
on: This YouTuber called EA a Death Cult
To be honest it sounds like he doesn’t know what the phrase ‘death cult’ means.

Larks 1 Apr 2026 16:51 UTC
10 points
0 ∶ 0
on: An unexplained annual spike in false claims on the EA Forum
Thanks for sharing! Could we see the full time series on a daily frequency over the whole interval? This would help us see if the effect is a true annual heartbeat, or if there are smaller spikes on July 1st and October 1st as well.
My first guess: could this be related to regulatory balance sheet constraints for companies with a offset fiscal year?

Larks 29 Mar 2026 18:50 UTC
15 points
6 ∶ 0
in reply to: Matthew_Barnett’s comment on: Matthew_Barnett’s Shortform
Just as our ancestors experienced before us, we face the prospect of losing the world we know in exchange for material progress and prosperity.
Your ancestors who adopted agriculture did so because they thought that they and their children would get to eat the bread, not that they were sowing the seeds of their own destruction. If they had known that planting crops would lead to invasion and replacement they likely would not have done it. This rather large dis-analogy makes me think your use of the word ‘just’ is a bit of a stretch here.

Larks 20 Mar 2026 4:04 UTC
12 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Peter Thiel is actively convincing billionaires to abandon The Giving Pledge
The article described Thiel attempting to persuade people to leave the pledge, but not that he has actually succeeded.

Larks 28 Feb 2026 5:24 UTC
−3 points
0 ∶ 1
on: How To Safeguard Democracy
A lot of people seem to conflate ‘democracy’ with ‘status quo institutions and center-left parties’, but in many cases these are deeply illiberal and undemocratic. I think you would benefit from considering institutional / center-left threats to democracy, which quite glossed over in this essay.
When I think about threats to democracy, I think of things like:
None of these violations of individual rights or the ability of the people to affect policy through political change were enacted by populist or extremist parties—they were enacted by generally respected and left-wing incumbents.

Larks 24 Feb 2026 3:33 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Donation policy as tax policy
Thanks for writing this up, nice post. A few quick thoughts:
The motivation of praise seems quite weak. I think a lot of people would prefer no praise and no oversight over subjecting to any degree of audit. Though I guess if you are just checking with the charities that doesn’t require subjecting the donor to anything directly.
It’s strange to me that governments don’t do more to praise high tax payers. In general their relationship with the highest tax payers seems very adversarial… yes audits make sense, but why not also be publicly grateful, give honours, invite to special events and so on? If donating to a university will have them name a building after you, maybe the government should name some bridges after its top funders.

Larks 24 Feb 2026 3:16 UTC
10 points
5 ∶ 0
on: How much of a post are you comfortable for AI to write?
At least until people accept that “oh the AI wrote that bit, I don’t exactly mean that” is unacceptable. If you post it, you should stand behind every word.

Larks 17 Feb 2026 15:31 UTC
1 point
2 ∶ 0
in reply to: Ebenezer Dukakis’s comment on: 80,000 Hours says we need more people — so why do top candidates still struggle to land roles?
But after the first 50 customers, I run out of jackfruit, and the rest of the customers don’t get to try the tacos. How do you think those customers would feel about my restaurant?
Quite possibly they infer this must be the most exciting new product, feel FOMO, and arrive even earlier the next day? Restaurant behaviour is weird—see for example how long lines are seen as a sign of success rather than mispricing.

Larks 31 Jan 2026 21:13 UTC
20 points
3 ∶ 1
in reply to: Ben Stevenson’s comment on: Unfalsifiable stories of doom
The context of this quote, which you have removed, is discussion of the reasonableness of wages for specific people with specific skills. Since neither Nate nor Eliezer’s counterfactual is earning the median global wage, your statistic seems irrelevant.

Larks 27 Jan 2026 1:35 UTC
5 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Why I reject the longtermist argument against accelerating AI
Thanks for sharing this. Do you have a sense for how cruxy your perspective is that long run replacement of humanity by AI is not a bad thing for you conclusion?

Larks 21 Jan 2026 0:07 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Why Isn’t EA at the Table When $121 Billion Gets Allocated to Biodiversity Every Year?
Thanks for writing this up! Despite the title I found it very informative and interesting.

Larks 16 Jan 2026 16:44 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
on: From a fundraiser’s perspective—what do Effective Altruists want to see from ‘other’ charities?
It might be helpful if you could share what types of data you are able to collect, and your best-effort at producing a BOTEC for your cost-effectiveness so far.

Larks 15 Jan 2026 5:54 UTC
43 points
17 ∶ 2
on: EA is underfunding animal advocacy according to our own preferences
If the phenomena you are highlighting is that Animal Welfare gets a smaller share of funding than people would prefer, it seems very strange to ‘blame’ AI messaging, since AI risk also gets a smaller share of funding that the surveys suggest would be preferred. Based on your methodology, the phenomena to explain is why does global welfare get so much more.

Larks 28 Dec 2025 21:49 UTC
9 points
9 ∶ 5
in reply to: ClimateDoc’s comment on: Pagw’s Shortform
No-one in this thread is the target audience for the campaign. And you are clearly attacking another group’s effort right here!