Great and well-researched post, thanks for writing!
Maybe someone should start an incubator program to help people start EA-aligned YouTube channels.
Mihkel Viires 🔹
Karma: 90
I wonder if this could be a potential intervention strategy to help quit addictions: we pay people to continue to do something they have so far been doing for free because they are addicted, and thus make it feel like work and less fun. Probably this would not work for everyone, but maybe for some people, as was the case with you, it could be an effective way to help them quit their addiction.
What do you think are the most important actions that could be taken to fight corruption in Nigeria right now? This is obviously a really big question, and I do not expect you to have a complete solution to this problem; I’m just curious to get your thoughts.
Is it about making the budget and how the government spends money more transparent, so people know exactly how much money is supposed to be going to any particular thing? Is it about better law enforcement to crack down on corruption (or is there also a problem that many of the people who are supposed to fight corruption are also likely to be corrupt themselves?)? Do we need more independent journalism to discover and highlight acts of corruption? Is there a problem that much of the illicit proceeds from corruption are channeled overseas, so we need governments in Europe, U.S., the Middle East, to help discover illegal flows and freeze these assets? Or something else?
My understanding is that for a country to successfully get rid of corruption, it really takes a mindset shift from the society at large: acknowledge the devastation that corruption causes and stop thinking of taking bribes or grifting public funds as something normal and acceptable. Getting to that point can take a long time, but one has to start somewhere.
Yeah, it looks like the impact is probably not that big, if compared to say lives that could be saved via alcohol or tobacco control policy advocacy.
Honestly, I think you did a great job and tried your best. But your environment did not provide the support you needed.
I understand that the Nigerian government doesn’t provide much funding for universities and scientific research work. One plausible reason for this (apart from corruption, theft, waste, etc) is that the Nigerian government collects a very low percentage of its GDP as taxes, less than 14 percent[1]. For comparison, the OECD average is 34 percent[2]. If the government is able to increase tax collection and enforcement, this should hopefully increase the budget and free up more money to fund research. Getting to the OECD level could take decades, but Nigeria is at least making some progress, the tax collection rate has increased in recent years, which is a good sign (even though increased taxes probably are not fun to pay, no matter one’s country!).
Yes, indoor tanning is worse for your health than outdoor tanning. Indoor tanning beds beam UV radiation that can be as much as 10 to 15 times stronger than what you get from the sun.[1]
It is worth mentioning that people who use indoor tanning are also more likely to not use sun protection when outdoors[2]. This means that we really would not want to ban indoor tanning if the result is people just spending more time outside in the sun and getting the same dose of exposure. I did not find any studies that have looked at to what extent this is what people do after indoor tanning is banned.
My guess, though, is that a ban would be significantly net positive, even after accounting for a potential increase in outdoor tanning.
Have you considered publishing an audiobook version as well?
Gavi’s investment opportunity for 2026-2030 says they expect to save 8 to 9 million lives, for which they would require a budget of at least $11.9 billion[1]. Unfortunately, Gavi only raised $9 billion, so they have to make some cuts to their plans[2]. And you really can’t reduce spending by $3 billion without making some life-or-death decisions.
Gavi’s CEO has said that “for every $1.5 billion less, your ability to save 1.1 million lives is compromised”[3]. This would equal a marginal cost of
$1,607$1,363 per life saved, which seems a bit low to me. But I think there is a good chance Gavi’s marginal cost per life saved is still cheap enough to clear GiveWell’s cost-effectiveness bar. GiveWell hasn’t made grants to Gavi, though. Why?
Indoor tanning is really bad for people’s health; it significantly increases one’s risk of getting skin cancer.[1] Many countries already outlaw minors from visiting indoor tanning salons. However, surprisingly, there are only two countries, Australia and Brazil, that have banned indoor tanning for adults, too. I think that doing policy advocacy for a complete ban on indoor tanning in countries around the world has the potential to be a highly cost-effective global health intervention. Indoor tanning ban policy advocacy seems to check all three boxes of the ITN framework: it is highly neglected; it affects many people (indoor tanning is surprisingly popular: over 10 percent of adults around the world have tanned indoors[2]), and thus has the potential to have a big impact; and also, I think it could be quite tractable (passing laws is never easy, but is should be doable, because the indoor tanning lobby appears to be much less powerful than, say, the tobacco or alcohol lobbies).
Mihkel Viires ’s Quick takes
Regarding the average view duration %: I think it makes sense for longer videos to have somewhat lower percentages. Fewer people are willing to sit through a long video, compared to a short one, so it is logical to have more people fall off throughout the video. But if you measure the average view duration in terms of minutes, not percentages, your results are really impressive: AI 2027 and MechaHitler have AVDs of ca 10 minutes and 13.5 minutes, respectively.
There is no need to do public advocacy if you feel this is not something you would enjoy/be good at. If at a later stage you feel more comfortable talking about effective giving and veganism with others, that’s great. But not mandatory.
If you can just keep donating a part of your income regularly to effective charities, do that. That is probably the most useful thing you can do right now, far more effective than arguing with people on Reddit.
Digging wells in Niger seems surprisingly cost-effective. Thanks for writing this analysis, really good work!
Some questions I had:
If we assume that each well serves an average of 1,200 people, does this mean that none of these 1,200 people had access to clean water before this well was dug? Or are there cases where an existing well was already supplying clean water, but it was located further away? In other words, can we attribute all of the credit for giving these 1,200 people access to clean water to this well and this well only?
How much water can one well supply per day/hour/minute? Let’s say we want to provide at least 20 liters per person per day. That would be 24,000 liters per day to supply 1,200 people. Can the well handle such a level of demand?
One can, indeed, make the argument that an outright ban on smoking would violate the rights of people who have been smoking for their entire lives.[1]
But most citizens would probably agree that at least some level of government intervention is justified for tobacco, when you consider that smoking is responsible for the deaths of 7 million people every year.
It does seem necessary to get governments to spend more of their own money on health, indeed. Do you think it would make sense to fund charities to try to convince governments to invest more in health (perhaps by also helping them increase their tax revenues, via increasing tax collection efficiency)?
Thanks for sharing this analysis, very interesting.
Haven’t yet decided whether I approve of this name change. But it is certainly good news for the Nigerian economy (and maybe also the Republic of Congo) :) I just snapped up the coefficientgivi.ng domain name (inspired by shortened URLs like spoti.fi and youtu.be). Let me know if you want it (for free of course)!
Given that you are American, it is quite logical to first focus on America. But this tax incentive looks like something that could also be implemented in other countries around the world. Maybe this is an idea that AIM’s Charity Entrepreneurship program could consider incubating?
This is probably not a great idea, but throwing it out here anyway: since Netflix now has ads, we could buy commercials that run before the start of each episode. We could use this to give viewers a very brief intro to what effective altruism really is.