Scott Smith 🔸

• Scott Smith 🔸 27 Feb 2025 0:08 UTC

  5 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: We need a new Arte­sunate—the mir­a­cle drug fades

  Thank you Nick. A lot of interesting information for an accessible 5-minute read.

  As we speak, artesunate still cures over 99.9% of malaria cases—if a little slower than before. But we don’t know when that will become 99%, then only 90% at which point we’ll need alternatives.

  I’m trying to get my head around the meaning of these numbers. The questions below are largely academic (no goal in mind), surely difficult, and likely dumb, so please feel no pressure to devote valuable time :)

  (1) Are these cure rates in reference to the outcome of Therapeutic Efficacy Studies (TES) as described in this WHO document (Section 4.1) and where the outcome is an “adequate clinical and parasitological response (ACPR)” (p. 11 of that document)?

  If it is:

  (2) What is your best estimate for how often ACPR would be “achieved” without treatment?* I believe this would be difficult to answer. My estimate right now based off close to zero rationale: 4% (95% CI: 0.25% − 60%).

  (3) What would you estimate the effect on saving a child’s life would be in a drop from 100% to 90%?* Maybe can be quantified as (but you likely have a better way): For every 1000 children who come into a clinic for malaria treatment, how many would survive if (a) artesunate is administered versus if (b) no treatment was provided, given (i) 100% efficacy versus (ii) 90% efficacy.

  My suspicion is that the ratio of p(ACPR | artesunate) : p(ACPR | no treatment) underestimates the effect on mortality (and severe malaria) due to the binary outcome measure not capturing benefits from artesunate reducing without eliminating the degree of parasitaemia(?)

  Thanks again.

  *in high transmission areas where inclusion criteria is “patients with fever, aged 6–59 months, with an asexual parasitaemia ranging between 2000 and 200 000 parasites/​μL”

• Scott Smith 🔸 8 Feb 2025 4:04 UTC

  5 points

  3 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Martin Jacobson 🔸’s comment on: Health Challenges are a Ma­jor Cause of the High Dropout Rate amongst Vegans

  Strongly agree with Martin on the likely direction of SDB, for the reasons stated. Included within SDB of course (and probably making up most of it) is people “lying to themselves”.

  I also really like the original post and agree with the general sentiment. People can genuinely encounter health problems that they would not have on an omnivorous diet. It should be taken very seriously. Honest information and understanding is important.

  From personal experience, a proper transition was not a problem for health as I was super-conscious of getting everything I needed. The minor health problems I have had, that could potentially claim veganism as a cause, have come from slacking off.

  Regarding this potential, I think another problem is that imperfect health and deficiencies are common, and it is easy and convenient to attribute veganism as a cause. For someone on an omnivorous diet, the cause is attributed to something more specific, or cause attribution is ignored—they are just “naturally” deficient and should take certain supplements/​drugs.

  Taking myself as an example.

  • I’m often tired. Is it because I drink way too much coffee, have poor sleep, or am I iron deficient? I’ve never been the most energetic person, so maybe it is my imagination too. Or it might be mental health related.

  • I’ve been getting a lot of pain around my knees lately. Is that poor running or squat technique, or could it be a lack of Omega 3?

  • For both of the above, maybe I am just ageing? (this could be significant because it happens to everyone).

• Scott Smith 🔸 21 Jan 2025 6:33 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Is Musk still net-pos­i­tive for hu­man­ity?

  I don’t have much to add. For reasons already stated I believe he is currently having a negative impact. I am much less sure whether his life thus far has been net positive or negative.

  I am curious about the reasons for downvoting the post. I have a few suspicions but none seem that bad and I think it is an interesting question.

• Scott Smith 🔸 11 Dec 2024 20:25 UTC

  5 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Will Howard🔹’s comment on: Will Howard’s Shortform

  Thank you Will. Not the only person to point out the ineffectual title, so I have updated it to something a bit more clickbaity. I considered “chlorfenapyr DESTROYS malaria”, but decided to tone it back a little.

Effec­tive­ness of an­ti­malar­ial bed nets with chlorfenapyr

• Scott Smith 🔸 15 Oct 2024 7:52 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Effec­tive Altru­ism Read­ing List In­for­ma­tion De­sign Poster (2/​2)

  If anyone is interested in “The Methods of Ethics”, I have not read it, but I do recommend “The Point of View of the Universe: Sidgwick and Contemporary Ethics” co-authored by Katarzyna De Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer.

  If I recall correctly, they go through every (at least many) chapter of The Methods of Ethics. They break down Sidgwick’s arguments in clear ways, discuss objections including from many contemporary philosophers, and then typically defend Sidgwick. I suspect most people would find this a more useful read than the original text.

  I also believe Singer has stated that it was through work on this book that he changed from being a preference utilitarian to more of a classical utilitarian
  

• Scott Smith 🔸 8 Oct 2024 12:47 UTC

  3 points

  3 ∶ 1

  on: Dis­cus­sion thread: An­i­mal Welfare vs. Global Health De­bate Week

  I’m very unsure, but slightly lean towards animal welfare due to the heuristic that the further outside typical moral circles the more neglected are the opportunities

• Scott Smith 🔸 19 Dec 2023 21:56 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: PhD on Mo­ral Progress—Bibliog­ra­phy Review

  Thanks. This is excellent and it will affect my reading (at least by getting my hands on the Buchanan and Powell book).

  For some of the reviews (e.g. Moral Uncertainty, The Blank Slate) you note that you downgrade them for not closely addressing the “moral progress” topic. Would be good if you noted how you rate them for what they are trying to address.

• Scott Smith 🔸 20 Nov 2023 12:02 UTC

  29 points

  8 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Seth Ariel Green 🔸’s comment on: Open Phil Should Allo­cate Most Neart­er­mist Fund­ing to An­i­mal Welfare

  Also worry about the weirdness. Ariel said themselves:

  When I started as an EA, I found other EAs’ obsession with animal welfare rather strange. How could these people advocate for helping chickens over children in extreme poverty? I changed my mind for a few reasons.

  This might not be realistic for Ariel, but it would have been ironic if this obsession was even greater and enough to cause Ariel to shy away from EA, so that they never contributed to shifting priorities more to animal welfare.

  But I also agree this isn’t necessarily a reason to shy away. Being disingenuous about our personal priorities to seem more mainstream seems wrong—like a bait-and-switch or cult-like tactics of getting people in the door and introducing heavier stuff as they get more emotionally invested. I like the framing of being more humble/​agnostic, but maybe we (speaking as individuals) need to be careful that is genuine epistemological humility and not an act.

• Scott Smith 🔸 24 Sep 2023 7:31 UTC

  1 point

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Patrick Liu’s comment on: How WHO es­ti­mate malaria cases and mortality

  Hello Patrick.

  For WHO estimates of case incidence and deaths since 2000 (as of 2022 report), go here, click on “Annexes in Excel Format” and it is Annex 4-F.

  If you are want country numbers by estimate approach, I did that manually by combining Annex 4-F data and text from World Malaria Report 2022 (same link above), Annex for Table 3.1 (pp 132 − 136). This is it

  If you are after GBD data (regarding Appendix), this is the tool to use

  I hope that is helpful. Let me know of any questions.

Ca­reers in effec­tive al­tru­ism and EA-al­igned projects

• Scott Smith 🔸 5 Sep 2023 11:34 UTC

  3 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Scott Smith’s Quick takes

  Vegan advocacy groups should consider regularly donating blood as representatives of their groups. At my local blood donor centre (in Australia) there is a poster in the waiting area where companies/​orgs are listed in order of contributions. Having your group up there will likely help to dispel:

  • perceptions of vegans as dissident outgroup members (i.e. they can have more traditional and “common sense” values, norms and cares as well).

  • myths regarding poor health.

  • (getting even more speculative and not even sure this is a thing) myths that their moral position is based on being overly squeamish rather than rationality.

  On the second point, another reason is that myths regarding poor health are not entirely unfounded, and vegans are more likely to have low haemoglobin which is tested prior to donation. Once for me, it was slightly low and I was asked to get another official test before donating again (it was fine in the subsequent test, probably in part to me deliberately upping iron intake including a daily vitamin). They test for other things as well—infectious diseases as standard before transfusion, but I believe it could be tested for anything if the blood ends up being used for that purpose (in which case, you would be informed if there is anything to be concerned about, however I suspect this scenario playing out is quite rare)

Scott Smith’s Quick takes

How do I ac­tu­ally do good? Differ­ent ways to take ac­tion, now and through­out our lives

• Scott Smith 🔸 16 Jun 2023 3:47 UTC

  5 points

  2 ∶ 0

  on: Why value-based salaries might help Afri­can effec­tive al­tru­ists achieve more impact

  Nice one George. Some thoughts:

  • My naïve intuition is that it would be good for many EA orgs to decentralise further and/​or move bases out of expensive areas, due to lower operating costs and I think better optics leading to greater cost-effectiveness. But after considering that many smarter and more knowledgeable people think otherwise, I would be slightly surprised if this intuition was correct (having tried to comprehend everything in a GiveWell model, I can see the benefit in people regularly being in the same room).

  • Would you agree that location vs value-based is a false dichotomy and they represent two extreme ends of a spectrum? In reality, I understand the majority of companies benchmark using local competitive rates, but this does not have to be the case. My intuition leans towards a norm of using both location and value-based components in deciding salary. This would mean a worker based in San Francisco would be paid more than one in Nairobi, but less relative to local cost of living.

  • On #5, I think these salaries need to consider averages, not exceptions. Also, I believe it is greater job opportunities that lead to organisations needing to set higher wages.

  • The example of the Kenyan employee effectively redistributing their disposable income seems a bit idealistic to me. Offering high wages for the region would attract a greater proportion of less-altruistically minded people who would not necessarily redistribute generously and impartially. In addition, GiveDirectly (and other NGOs) have developed their own ideas on how these funds could effectively be used. Even with the individual’s advantage of being in the region, the NGO must view this as an expected cost to their broadly-defined goal of global development. There are likely overall benefits to the NGO in terms of image and employee morale, but (I think) not in the explicit benefits from philanthropic investments made by the individual.

  To repeat myself a little. Thanks for the post and perspective. My admittedly uniformed hunch is that it would be great to see more EA-aligned orgs hiring remote workers in less developed and expensive regions. I think ideal remuneration for the positions would involve location and value-based components.

Ex­is­ten­tial Bio-Risks: Clar­ify­ing Key Con­cepts w/​ Poker Chen (PhD)

What are the most press­ing world prob­lems?

• Scott Smith 🔸 5 Apr 2023 10:04 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Are you able to claim tax benefits from dona­tions to ICAN (or similar nu­clear abol­ish­ment or­gani­sa­tions)?

  I’ve been informed that in UK, MEDACT is a registered charity doing this work.

  They are an affiliate of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), which is registered charity in the USA.

  And NTI is also a registered charity in the USA.

  Thanks kind person.

  Edit: now see via GWWC that for donations to:

  • NTI

  • Council on Strategic Risks — Nuclear weapons policy work

  • Federation of American Scientists — Nuclear Information Project

  citizens of USA, UK and Netherlands can get tax benefits.

[Question] Are you able to claim tax benefits from dona­tions to ICAN (or similar nu­clear abol­ish­ment or­gani­sa­tions)?

• Scott Smith 🔸 4 Apr 2023 1:39 UTC

  6 points

  5 ∶ 0

  on: It’s “The EA-Ad­ja­cent Fo­rum” now

  On behalf of all fools, I really appreciate the “April Fools’ Day” tag.