Hello! This is my pseudonymous account… Why?
1) I’m serious considering a public-facing career, and am worried about something random I write on here coming back and biting me.
2) Two facts: I know a lot of people in EA. I care too much about other people’s opinions of me.
2a) I’m not a confident writer. I want to feel more confident about my writing before I let people knowingly read it.
2b) I’ve noticed cleverness-related imposter syndrome make hesitate to voice disagreement with conventional EA ideas. At the same time, another part of me thinks my ideas might have value and self-censorship can be really dangerous. Using a pseudonymous account makes me feel more free to say countercultural things.
Finally, I love and support the EA movement! I remember when I was new, and I went on a walk with two EAs for the first time in person. I wanted to enthuse about EA but they mainly moaned about it. This made small Marzhin feel a little disappointed, and I don’t want that to happen to other people. Because this is my anonymous account it’s a little criticism-focused, but I want to make clear that the movement has my support overall :D
Thanks for the post Rachel! I admire you looking into the topic.
However, one to add is that AMF monitors net usage uniquely stringently and this likely leads to far fewer people using the nets for fishing. (or at least they did until 2015)
From a 2015 article:
However, AMF takes a number of steps to stop misuse. We believe that each of them has contributed to the success of our distributions.
Malaria education is key. We work closely with local health officials, the front line health teams and the village and community leaders, to ensure the community is fully aware of the connection between sleeping under intact nets and preventing malaria.
AMF uses extremely rigorous pre-distribution surveys to determine precise net needs, followed by independent checks when the nets are given out to ensure no nets are diverted away from households that need them.
AMF conducts post-distribution check-ups to ensure nets are being used as intended every 6-months during the 3 years following a distribution. People are informed that these checks will be made by random selection, and via unnannounced visits. This gives us a data-driven view of where the nets are and whether they are being used properly. We publish all the data we collect: example here. This type of follow up work is currently unique to AMF, although we hope the practice will become more widespread where it is feasible.
At AMF, the extensive data we have collected verifies that the number of nets we have distributed that are used for fishing is immaterial.
https://www.againstmalaria.com/NewsItem.aspx?newsitem=Net-use-and-the-importance-of-data-driven-distributions-and-monitoring
Given that AMF is the main bednet distributor that EAs give to (Malaria Consortium distributes medicine), I think the negative impact of EA-influenced bednet distribution is lower than one might assume from your post!