peter_janicki

• peter_janicki 5 Mar 2023 21:32 UTC

  1 point

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  on: Help GiveDirectly kill “teach a man to fish”

  Maybe simply add a question, like for a school essay:

  “Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime.” If this were true, how many decades ago do you think would extreme poverty ended worldwide?

• peter_janicki 4 Mar 2023 12:14 UTC

  3 points

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  on: Help GiveDirectly kill “teach a man to fish”

  It´s no direct “kill”, still:

  Dear Lord, I know some billion people are hard working yet still can´t afford enough food or water. Please, please, please: Let this be a problem, which can be easily solved by a good teacher. I don´t want poverty to be a money-problem. I mean, if that´d be the case, I would still keep my money, I wouldn´t change my behaviour, but I´d feel bad about it. So nothing would change, except me feeling bad. As you are a good lord, you sure don´t want that, right? - Oh, and please: These people are waiting for this good teacher for some decades now. Would you ask Santa if he could give him a lift?

• peter_janicki 27 Feb 2023 18:56 UTC

  3 points

  1 ∶ 1

  on: Help GiveDirectly kill “teach a man to fish”

  Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime—if he can afford a fishing rod.

• peter_janicki 15 Mar 2022 11:46 UTC

  3 points

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  on: Die­tary habits – Another po­ten­tial Cause Area?

  Hej, yeah, living healthy only a decade longer is no sexy longterminst inifinite-live cause ;-)

  Still. I recently stumbled over an small article in the New Scientist. As I had to make most calculations myself and ended saying, that humankind could increase their healthy lifespan by years, even by a decade—I´m happy to see, that others came to the same conclusions.

  Here is the Link: https://​​www.newscientist.com/​​article/​​2307510-cutting-down-meat-and-dairy-could-help-you-live-up-to-a-decade-longer/​​

  Best wishes and stay healthy!

• peter_janicki 4 Nov 2021 10:37 UTC

  4 points

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  on: What are your favourite ways to buy time?

  We have someone doing some of our household-work (cleaning, some ironing, folding clothes, etc) for us. It‘s only 6 hours a month for her. We „save“ rather 10 hours—she‘s faster. Even with less money, I would still love to pay her a good wage, because it really saves some time.

• peter_janicki 3 Nov 2021 21:19 UTC

  4 points

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  in reply to: Tsunayoshi’s comment on: Donat­ing money, buy­ing hap­piness: new meta-analy­ses com­par­ing the cost-effec­tive­ness of cash trans­fers and psy­chother­apy in terms of sub­jec­tive well-being

  Thx for commenting. I have to agree with you and disagree somewhat with my earlier comment. (#placebo). Actually placebo-effects are fine and if a placebo helps people: Great!

  And yes, getting a specific treatment effect + the placebo-effect is better (and more like in real life), than getting no treatment at all.

• peter_janicki 28 Oct 2021 16:50 UTC

  1 point

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  in reply to: peter_janicki’s comment on: Donat­ing money, buy­ing hap­piness: new meta-analy­ses com­par­ing the cost-effec­tive­ness of cash trans­fers and psy­chother­apy in terms of sub­jec­tive well-being

  Please don´t get me wrong. I do not like the research from strongminds for the above mentioned reasons (I am sure nobody got me wrong on this). And for some other reasons. But that does mean, that their therapy-work is bad or inefficient. Even if they overestimate their effects by a factor of 4 (it might be 20, it might be 2 - I just made those numbers up) it would still be very valuable work.

• peter_janicki 28 Oct 2021 8:13 UTC

  19 points

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  in reply to: Stephen Clare’s comment on: Donat­ing money, buy­ing hap­piness: new meta-analy­ses com­par­ing the cost-effec­tive­ness of cash trans­fers and psy­chother­apy in terms of sub­jec­tive well-being

  They did not have a placebo-receiving control group. For example some kind of unstructured talking-group etc. Ideally an intervention known as „useless“ but sounding plausible. So we do not know, which effects are due to regression to the middle, social desirable answers etc. This is basically enough to make their research rather useless. And proper control groups are common for quiete a while.

  No „real“ evaluation of the results. Only depending on what their patients said, but not checking, if this is correct (children going to school more often…). Not even for a subgroup.

  They had the impression, that patients answered in a social desirable way—and adressed that problem completely inadequate. Arguing social desirable answers would happen only at the end of the treatment, but not near the end of the treatment. ?! So they simply took near-end numbers for granted. ?!

  If their depression treatment is as good as they claim, then it is magnitudes better, than ALL common treatments in high-income countries. And much cheaper. And faster. And with less specialized instuctors… ?! And did they invent something new? Nope. They took an already existing treatment—and now it works SO much better? This seems implausible to me.

  As far as I know SoGive is reviewing strongminds research. They should be able to back (or reject) my comments here.

• peter_janicki 28 Oct 2021 7:54 UTC

  −1 points

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  on: Donat­ing money, buy­ing hap­piness: new meta-analy­ses com­par­ing the cost-effec­tive­ness of cash trans­fers and psy­chother­apy in terms of sub­jec­tive well-being

  I recently looked into strongminds „research“ and their findings. I was extremely dissapointed by the low standards. It seemed like they simply wanted to make up super-good numbers. Their results are extremely unrealistic. Are there new results from proper research?

Die­tary habits – Another po­ten­tial Cause Area?

• peter_janicki 31 Dec 2020 15:38 UTC

  1 point

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  on: Big List of Cause Candidates

  I am writing on a post about “better/​healthier diets” simply due to their effect on human health. I hope it will be out during the next weeks. - I have to wait for some feedback by experts on this topic.

• peter_janicki 3 Dec 2020 18:26 UTC

  2 points

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  on: Lot­ter­ies for ev­ery­thing?

  this page/​link below is in german, but we know, there are some german-speaking ea´s. it´s an article in an economic newspaper and it´s about the benefit of using lotteries for choosing supervisors/​superiors and there seem to be quiet some benefits in some cases. (google translate does a sufficient job here). https://​​www.wiwo.de/​​erfolg/​​management/​​aleatorische-verfahren-befoerderung-per-zufall-wir-wuerfeln-einen-chef/​​26621916.html

  my guess is: whether lotteries are great depends on the sample. if it´s tricky to make a good decision → lotteries may be great/​ better (than a complex decision scheme). if it´s easy to make a good decision: lotteries sure are a bad thing.

  example: as long as high skilled workers compete for a promotion: lotteries may be a good way to decide whom to promote. but after some years/​ decades of lotteries workers may realize that there is no need to excel at ones job, because promotion does not depend on it. or even low-skilled workers may aplly for a promotion. same might be true for apllying for research grants, etc.

  Thanks for writing this!

• peter_janicki 20 Sep 2020 18:59 UTC

  1 point

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  in reply to: Cullen’s comment on: might tar­get­ing malnu­tri­tion (not un­der­nour­ish­ment!) be an im­por­tant cause area?

  Sure. Malnutrition: eating the wrong things as a voluntary choice despite having alternatives. Undernourishment: one does not get enough food, f.e. because there is not enough/​because one can‘t afford it. malnutrition seems to be a big problem in middle and high income countries. In low-income countries undernourishment would be a big problem. My post is only about eating the wrong stuff on a „voluntary“ basis. One can afford fruits and veggies, but f.e. still eats red meat, salty chips etc. And those 250 million DALYs they only account for eating the wrong stuff (but not because of scarcity). At least if all those numbers are correct.

• peter_janicki 20 Sep 2020 17:17 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Kirsten’s comment on: might tar­get­ing malnu­tri­tion (not un­der­nour­ish­ment!) be an im­por­tant cause area?

  Thx for commenting. I am not sure, whether I got your point. If you are writing about nutrition-programs—do you mean getting people specific foods or informing them? As to my experience in germany there is no powerful organization or lobby -group trying to promote better nutrition because of the impressive health effects/​reduced costs etc.

[Question] might tar­get­ing malnu­tri­tion (not un­der­nour­ish­ment!) be an im­por­tant cause area?

• peter_janicki 16 Sep 2020 5:41 UTC

  2 points

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  on: Some thoughts on EA out­reach to high schoolers

  Mostly agreeing with this article. Thx. I‘d be hoping, that high schoolers (make better choices on what to study) will find the ea-groups at university faster, if they know about ea already. But even if that „fails“, it‘s not only about “becoming ea“ or not. It‘s not binary. If people don‘t get involved in ea-stuff… but agree to only one concept more (like cause neutrality /​animals are capable of suffering, so that should matter too /​ counterfactual thinking in making career choices /​ the fact, that donations can have different impacts etc. (maybe even spreading those ideas)) - then it might be worth the time. Thx for the article.

• peter_janicki 15 Jun 2020 21:07 UTC

  9 points

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  on: How to Fix Pri­vate Pri­sons (and Im­mi­gra­tion)

  Sorry, this is just a general comment. And it is only an opinion. I don‘t like the idea of profit-orientated prisons. The aim of a reform might be „good prisons“, „good treatment“, but that‘s not where the money is/​get‘s generated? Low reoffending rates, espacially for crimes like murder, sexual assault, etc. are „producing“ the profit. I am afraid, people will find cheaper (but not necessarily better ways) to make the profit. For example: if some of my clients ever stands in court again: I will pay them a really good lawyer: I loose money, if they get convicted… /​ I will make a really good group-therapy, on how not to get caught and how to act with the police. I‘d have an incentive to work (bribe) the police/​ the jury … I‘d have an incentive to kill my high-risk-people shortly after releasing them, espacially, if their situation worsens… („incentive“ might easily mean millions).

  I‘m sure one could get past some of those objections… but not past all of them.

  I‘d rather like a public prison system, good statistics and a competition for being a good prison, without going to those extremes. That would mean less competition, sure.

  Still, thx for your post, I am extremely interested to more comments and your replies.

• peter_janicki 15 Jun 2020 20:31 UTC

  2 points

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  in reply to: JohannWolfgang’s comment on: How to Fix Pri­vate Pri­sons (and Im­mi­gra­tion)

  There is a lot of research done in forensic psychology/​psychiatry as to which offenders have which rates of reoffending (and how that rate can be reduced). There are instruments like the HCR20, the Psychopathy Checklist, the SVR20, etc. In Germany there are nice statistics about which released groups do commit the same/​different crimes with which rates of recidivism. I am pretty sure, other countries have comparable stats. The rates are well below 50%, but we only have some 80 persons out of a hundred thousand behind bars, in the united states that number is nearly ten times higher, so people get faster into those (mostly private?/​ profit orientated?) prisons. My guess would be: get fewer people into prisons (than in the united states), get them therapy if needed (for example reasoning and rehabilitation aka r&r) and most important: give them good aftercare (possibilities).

• peter_janicki 3 May 2020 11:34 UTC

  6 points

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  on: Re­duc­ing long-term risks from malev­olent actors

  applause. thx for this highly interesting (and important) article.

  while reading i thought about a lot of commenting, but you already considered most of these things…

  still some minor comments:

  as to narcissism (maybe (?) the least important “dark tetrad trait”): as for narcistic personality disorder, there is a reason why (some) of these people are trying to gain power. a huge lack of self-esteem etc. and some narcistic people are trying to fill this lack with a successful career etc., still it does not gets filled this way, so (some of them) are trying to become even more successful… a vicious circle. but maybe even more important for narcissism usually has it´s origin in childhood/​ growing up. i don´t believe, that genetic (epigenetic?) factors attribute a lot to this trait. (I only found that one here, and I don’t know, whether it is good or representative: https://​​www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/​​pmc/​​articles/​​PMC3973692/​​ - still, it seems, that those twins grew up with the same parents …).

  as for scanning for dark tetrad-traits: smart malevolent people might deceive tests/​scanning procedures, once they are smart enough, once they know what they want. they usually don´t do so, when still in kindergarten, in elementary school. And it is sure (unprecise) to scan for example for those kids, who torture animals (or peers) etc. i am not saying: “let´s do this”, only saying: “looking at kids might makes sense”.

  as for proposing to cut f. e. only the 1% with the highest polygenetic score for dark tetrad-traits: it be interesting, if this would include persons like hitler, stalin, mao, … they sure had some luck with timing, being at the right place, living in instable times, … maybe they would only be in the top 10th percentile? still, it sure be a bad idea, to make big cuts without more reasoning and knowledge.

  and: actually, even though (or because) i just read some things about dictators and sadism… i am not convinced. most journalists argue, that being responsible for the deaths of millions makes one a sadist. or because one makes up some torture-routines. but from my understanding, sadism is to gain direct benefit through direct torturing, humuliating (and seeing/​getting feedback on their reaction) of humans (or animals). if someone lets millions of people getting killed or tortured—i guess this is for other reasons (economic profit, consolidating power—even if through terror or because someone simply does not care). having a lack of empathy, it might easily sound like a reasonable idea to send millions to deaths, if there are other things to gain. actually my understanding of sadism is not important. but if those dictators haven´t been sadists, then it might be a good idea, to exclude sadism out of this topic.

  still: up until now in this comment, there are 3 lines of praise for this article, and some other 20 lines… It should be the other way round. thx again.

• peter_janicki 30 Mar 2020 19:53 UTC

  1 point

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  on: Coron­avirus Re­search Ideas for EAs

  as for question 21 (reduced donations due to recession):

  i guess, we are all pretty sure: donations will go down. many people are loosing their jobs/​ their income, some will get huge medical bills, … other people lost money in the stock market, others see their real estate or their pension savings loosing worth… i guess, that many people will “save” some money via donating less.

  that might affect many valuable organizations/​ employees of those organizations. their work might/​will be disrupted.

  i think it is a good idea to have a security net for cases like this, some kind of insurance. my best idea (beside having billionairs-pledges to increase donations in recession-times): put- options in the stock market. those gain in value as markets fall. and I don´t think of inidviduals buying a small amount of put-options (that would be pretty expensive, as I expect some costs per trade per person). i think of one or more ea-associated organizations which bundle some money to invest in put-options. this money would be lost in booming times, but it would multiply in bad ones. to be clear: all in all: it would mean loosing some money (the put-options sellers want to make some money too). let´s say “we” loose 2% of the money. but what could we gain? i guess, that having a smooth(er) running of ea- organizations might be of higher worth, than those organizations running constantly on 98%-funding. i guess, that having all those costs which usually come along with shrinking donations (f. e. loosing valuable employees -maybe forever… in better times: costs of time needed to find new fitting employees, to incorporate them… loosing connections, closing organizations, and so on) is higher.

  i am not saying, that individual ea-organizations should spent money on a security net (in the stock market). it might seem weird to the broader public, if altruistic organizations would invest money in the stock market. but It would be nice, if those organization would know: there is a back-up, some kind of security for bad times. if one or two organizations would do so, that might be great. they could call themselves: “anticyclical donating” or something like this.

  imagine you (=ea) want to drive as far as you can get with a limited amount of energy (=doing the most good with limited ressources). one option might be simply going full throttle (=like us now?). another one might be, to invest some energy in levelling your track (=like investing in a security net for the “bumbs” of a recession?).

  actually, I hope that his post is not of worth, because there are no such described downfalls, or because other people already had the same idea. but as i´ve never heard of it. here it is (see above) ;-)