Dollar Cost Averaging reduces volatility
Investing as a lump sum supposedly beats DCA even when adjusting for risk, via the Bogleheads forum, referencing a Vanguard study
Rasool
Karma: 862
There is also this (publicly listed) talk from 2022:
In addition, Chuck Feeney, Zell Kravinsky, and from antiquity, Diogenes
Note that the old[1] o3-high that was tested on ARC-AGI-1:
Was 10x more expensive than initially estimated, taking it over the $10,000 limit, so is no longer included on the leaderboard
I subscribe to new posts from someone, and I got this in the notification dropdown
In the email notification it did have the full title in the subject
Though in the email notification, I would have liked it to have some context like “New post by a user you subscribe to: ”, it just had the full post title as the subject, no other information
The Center for Global Development has a blog post from December talking about the vaccine rollout which I have been meaning to post on the EA forum with a summary and thoughts but in the meantime here is an AI-assisted overview:
Key Takeaways:
The Opportunity: Two new malaria vaccines (RTS,S and R21) are a major scientific breakthrough. Gavi currently plans to vaccinate 52 million children by 2030, potentially saving 180,000 lives.
The Gap: However, under current slow rollout plans, ~2.5 million children will still die from malaria unvaccinated by 2030. Faster, broader deployment of these vaccines could prevent an additional ~800,000 child deaths by then.
Cost-Effectiveness: The R21 vaccine appears highly cost-effective, estimated at ~$4,200 per life saved (including rollout costs). This rivals top global health interventions. It’s significantly cheaper ($3.90/dose) and has much higher production capacity (~100M doses/year) than RTS,S ($9.80/dose, ~8M doses/year), with similar reported efficacy.
Bottlenecks to Scale:
Funding: A major funding gap exists for both vaccine procurement (~$1.1B-$1.7B needed beyond current plans for full infant coverage) and crucially, for rollout/delivery (~$500M-$1B+, based on pilot costs).
Vaccine Choice: Prioritizing the more expensive, supply-constrained RTS,S over the cheaper, readily available R21 limits the number of lives saved per dollar spent.
Eligibility Rules: Nigeria (1/3 of global malaria deaths) and Angola are largely ineligible for Gavi support due to income thresholds, massively hindering impact in high-burden areas.
Rollout Strategy: Current plans focus on gradual infant rollouts. A faster “catch-up” campaign including older children (up to 5 years, as WHO guidance allows) could save significantly more lives sooner, but requires more upfront funding and logistical capacity.
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) Global Burden of Disease (GBD) often has higher estimates for Malaria deaths than the WHO.
For instance in 2021, the WHO estimated 619,000 deaths globally from Malaria, whereas IHME had 748,000
There is a comparison (and much more other interesting data) on the Our World in Data Malaria page
It seems like the same co-author can be added several times to one post:
It’s in the linked-to Google doc, but there is a proper podcast feed for this now:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rob-wiblins-top-recommended-econtalk-episodes-v0-2-feb-2020/id1538606917
Just discovered he was on the ever-excellent Rationally Speaking podcast:
And my bo(tec)
Great write-up!
About the Vestergaard PFAS story, GiveWell did make a comment here
This question has troubled me as well, plus the idea that once you get a high-impact job, if it turns out not to be a perfect fit, there are transaction costs to the organisastion replacing you with a better candidate
UK to cut its international aid budget 40% from 2027
Kurzgesagt video on factory farming
I don’t think it’s necessary for EA to denounce Musk on the basis that apart from a vague endorsement of a book a few years back and some general comments on AI safety which run in the opposite direction to his actual actions, he doesn’t seem to be associated with EA at all
I think you are downplaying Musk’s (historic) association with EA, he was a speaker at EA Global 2015, and donated at least $10m to FLI’s AI safety research grants (both mentioned at this link)
This section from Tu Youyou’s Wikipedia page is incredible:
As Tu also presented at the project seminar, its preparation was described in a recipe from a 1,600-year-old traditional Chinese herbal medicine text titled Emergency Prescriptions Kept Up One’s Sleeve. At first, it was ineffective because they extracted it with traditional boiling water. Tu discovered that a low-temperature extraction process could be used to isolate an effective antimalarial substance from the plant; Tu says she was influenced by the source, written in 340 by Ge Hong, which states that this herb should be steeped in cold water. This book instructed the reader to immerse a handful of qinghao in water, wring out the juice, and drink it all. Since hot water damages the active ingredient in the plant, she proposed a method using low temperature ether to extract the effective compound instead.
Two notification-related suggestions:
I would like to be able to “middle click” on individual notifications to open them in new tabs. At the moment I believe you can only single click on them to open them in the current tab. This middle click behaviour does exist on LessWrong
Related to this:
Click on a new comment notification (it opens in your current tab)
Scroll around on the page as you normally would
Click on the bell notification icon
As you hover over the notification that you originally clicked on, it shifts the focus of the page to that comment
Is that the intended behaviour? I find it quite jarring
What is the difference between this post and your previous one?
The UK Health Secretary in 2021, Matt Hancock, ordered 100m vaccines, rather than 30m, because of the film Contagion
https://x.com/LBC/status/1356882697222836226