tuukkasarvi

Karma: 31

tuukkasarvi 6 Mar 2020 4:55 UTC
3 points
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on: Potential High-Leverage and Inexpensive Mitigations (which are still feasible) for Pandemics
Thanks for the article. I had an idea related to your category number 2 Triage and manage medical care remotely which I also posted to another forum article as a comment [Please delete this comment in either of the articles if it is unnecessary in two places] :
If it were possible to make a home test kit for COVID, I think that would be helpful. By home test kit I mean an arrangement where people could order these tests by phone or from Internet and they would be mailed to them. Then the person would proceed to take a test sample according to the instructions in the kit and mail it back to the laboratory. The laboratory would test the sample and give the person the results via phone or web.
This kind of arrangement would allow people suspecting that they might have COVID to self-quarantine until they have a certainty (or near certainty since no test is perfect) whether they have the disease or not. Thus, it would lead to less people being exposed to potential early-stage COVID carriers and hinder the disease from spreading. Importantly, it would also protect the health care workers as they would have to come to contact with so many potential COVID carriers.

tuukkasarvi 6 Mar 2020 4:48 UTC
3 points
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on: Are there good EA projects for helping with COVID-19?
If it were possible to make a home test kit for COVID, I think that would be helpful. By home test kit I mean an arrangement where people could order these tests by phone or from Internet and they would be mailed to them. Then the person would proceed to take a test sample according to the instructions in the kit and mail it back to the laboratory. The laboratory would test the sample and give the person the results via phone or web.
This kind of arrangement would allow people suspecting that they might have COVID to self-quarantine until they have a certainty (or near certainty since no test is perfect) whether they have the disease or not. Thus, it would lead to less people being exposed to potential early-stage COVID carriers and hinder the disease from spreading. Importantly, it would also protect the health care workers as they would have to come to contact with so many potential COVID carriers.

tuukkasarvi 29 Feb 2020 17:23 UTC
12 points
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on: Harsanyi’s simple “proof” of utilitarianism
I am not an expert in this topic but I believe this recent paper is relevant and may derive a result that is more general than Harsanyi-style utilitarianism https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304406820300045

tuukkasarvi 19 Nov 2018 18:11 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: John G. Halstead’s comment on: Insomnia: a promising cure
Agreed. In Why We Sleep, there is also discussion about the lark-night owl -spectrum. The author even suggests that currently society is actively discriminating against night owls because office hours 8-16 are assumed almost everywhere, and thus the population of night owls have poorer health and productivity than other groups.

tuukkasarvi 18 Nov 2018 10:40 UTC
5 points
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on: Insomnia: a promising cure
I am currently listening to an awesome popular science book on sleep called Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker
I highly recommend this book which summarizes the current state of sleep research and its practical implications to most people since most are spending about a third of their time sleeping. If you care about your learning ability, social skills, recovery, creativity or memory, I think it is likely you will find this book valuable.

tuukkasarvi 23 Mar 2018 14:06 UTC
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in reply to: KrisMartens’s comment on: A rough estimate of social impact of a psychotherapist in QALYs added
Yes, I agree: probably much of the therapy given is not given according to the protocol and that means the average effectiveness is likely lower than the numbers in the studies indicate. In many cases, I think this might not be due to the psychotherapists or therapists themselves but the organization which they work in, e.g. crowded outpatient clinics where the policy is to meet each client in every 3 weeks or in order to not to make the queues to treatment appear so long.

I think think there might be potential for big impact for somebody with clinical background who is willing to advocate long-term for systemic change within mental health care and psychotherapy: optimal treatment protocols (best value per therapy-hour or so), triage, adherance to protocols etc.

tuukkasarvi 21 Mar 2018 13:06 UTC
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in reply to: MichaelPlant’s comment on: A definition of effective altruism
Good point. The choice of moral stance (ie. totalist, person-affecting, “moral uncertanitist” etc) is the biggest factor behind any preference ordering for allocation of resources and courses of action. Thus, it is possible that further rigorous study of ethics, if lesser uncertainty between the competing views or greater agreement among scholars is achieved, could bring very high returns in terms of impact

tuukkasarvi 21 Mar 2018 10:07 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: JasperGo’s comment on: A rough estimate of social impact of a psychotherapist in QALYs added
Thanks. Yes, many therapists work with people who have mental health problems with weaker treatment response to psychotherapy such as bipolar disorder, psychotic disorders and various personality disorders. This lowers the average impact or effectiveness of psychotherapy over the whole population treated

I haven’t tried to make explicit estimate of replaceability. My baseline estimate would be the same number as used for doctors (0.6 in 80000 hours article) because both occupations are highly skilled.

I think the replaceability is dependent on the specific country system and conditions, ie. the educational system that enables a person to become a psychotherapist and the labour market. In Finland, where I live, anybody who is a licensed psychotherapist can set up their own therapist office (by this I mean a private practice). Considering Finland, my (considerably uncertain) hunch is that number of licensed psychotherapists is most limited by the number of high quality applicants (you need a relevant masters degree and several years of clinical experience to apply) to the psychotherapy training programs. But even if you add a psychotherapist to the pool of people willing and able to work as a psychotherapist, you will not very likely be adding a one full-time therapist worth of therapist-hours to the pool of therapy given because some people (likely those less skilled and/or those who have graduated from less popular schools of psychotherapy) will probably be working less.

tuukkasarvi 16 Mar 2018 18:42 UTC
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in reply to: MichaelPlant’s comment on: How to get a new cause into EA
The people at 80kh etc. probably have their hands full. Therefore, even though your post making the case for mental health was laudable, I can well imagine it might not result in action in the short term on their part because of heavy prioritization.

If one wants to make substantive case and roadmap for possible actions for MH, it might make sense to take the initiative and do it oneself or together with a group of interested people. Given there is enough credence for the case, this effort might lead to formation of a new EA-aligned MH organization. I for one, might be interested in helping out with making the case for MH

tuukkasarvi 6 Mar 2018 15:08 UTC
1 point
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on: Why not to rush to translate effective altruism into other languages
Great points!

I like the book Doing Good Better a lot: it is the single most important source that introduced me to EA and convinced me that it is a remarkable and very exciting idea and movement.

Does having “doing good better” available at stores do more good than bad? —In my estimation it does more good. It is one of the vehicles of spreading the word about EA.

How much less viable vehicle of spreading word a translation of the book would be given that the translation is distributed in a similar cultural environment as the original book (eg. parts of Europe—Sweden, Norway, Finland, France etc) ? —If additionally given that translation is done professionally by or commissioned by EA-minded locals, in my estimation he difference to the effect of the original language book would be small. Thus, this option is worth considering in my opinion.

I think a translation of short career guide (a book) summarizing the key content in 80kh could be even more interesting to people. 80kh does a superb job of examining at careers from the perspective of having as much impact as possible. I am not aware of any other career guide that take this perspective rigorously.

tuukkasarvi 18 Oct 2017 18:42 UTC
3 points
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on: Anti-tribalism and positive mental health as high-value cause areas
Thanks for the post Kaj. I agree that this is a high priority area.

“By tribalism, I basically mean the phenomenon where arguments and actions are primarily evaluated based on who makes them and which group they seem to support, not anything else. ”

I think tribalism could be described as a class of (largely biased) decision and judgement heuristics. It might be helpful to investigate why a person chooses to use such heuristics.

At least, as a heuristic it is much less cognitively taxing than the alternative of trying to figure things out by oneself, or looking for expert opinions. Also, it is uncomfortable for many people to challenge one’s beliefs or belonginess to a group. These underlying factors suggest possible avenues for interventions and preventions.

tuukkasarvi 10 Oct 2017 13:01 UTC
0 points
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in reply to: WillPearson’s comment on: Capitalism and Selfishness
Hi! Apologies for response delay.

“True, but to if I put myself in the perfect altruist company owner shoes I would really want to delegate the allocation of the my charitable giving, because I am too busy running my company to have much good information about who to donate to.”

I agree with that usually it is not efficient for same person to take care and optimize 1) (for-profit private) company operations 2) allocation of charitable giving. So person doing 1) would do well to delegate 2) to someone who she trusts.

In any case, I reiterate my previous point: I don’t think having “benevolent” companies would be something I support (benevolent in the sense that the company commits to donate all profits) because: Firstly, it would decrease the possible investor base because only strictly altruistic investors would be interested and thus it would not likely able to raise as much funding as a “non-benevolent” company (altruistic investors are also interested in “non-benevolent” companies because they can freely donate any profits they make). Secondly, there is disagreement among altruists of how to best donate. Thus, if profits are given to investors, each altruist can choose personally how to donate. So even altruistic investors might be hesitant to invest in a “benevolent” company I outlined here.

As far as I am tell, it’s best to have a for-profit company optimizing production and maximizing profits which are distributed to investors some of which can be efficient altruists who in turn donate them as they see fit. Charitable givers can delegate their giving to a fund of charities of which I think OpenPhil is an example of.

tuukkasarvi 21 Sep 2017 17:20 UTC
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in reply to: WillPearson’s comment on: Capitalism and Selfishness
I think I have now a better understanding of what you meant.

I think there are at least three optimization problems here: 1) what to produce? (investment decision) 2) how to produce? (organization of operations) and 3) how to use the returns , for EA-minded, how to donate?

Company traditionally optimizes 2) and 1) in a more restricted manner (within their field of business or local opportunities)

I think there might be some problems with a hypothetical “benevolent” company that also commits to donate all the profits to an charity or portfolio of charities. Firstly, it would decrease the possible investor base because only strictly altruistic investors would be interested and thus it would not likely able to raise as much funding as a “non-benevolent” company (altruistic investors are also interested in “non-benevolent” companies because they can freely donate any profits they make). Secondly, there is disagreement among altruists of how to best donate. Thus, if profits are given to investors, each altruist can choose personally how to donate. So even altruistic investors might be hesitant to invest in a “benevolent” company I outlined here.

“So I was trying to break down the concept of ownership some more and arguing that in a benevolent world private ownership might only mean keeping control over operations.”

There is still disagreement about how to best donate (to do most good) among individuals which gives support to the argument that profits should be paid out even among altruistic investor base

tuukkasarvi 18 Sep 2017 14:48 UTC
0 points
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in reply to: WillPearson’s comment on: Capitalism and Selfishness
“So why wouldn’t the benevolent individual give their share of the company to whatever collective system that determined the needs of the world? They could still be ceo, so that they could manage the company better (as they have good data about that). It seems like the capitalist system would morph into either socialism or charity-sector owned means of production, if everyone were benevolent.”

I don’t understand this. Do you suggest that all companies should be trying to fulfill (all) the needs of some collective. It is very useful for companies to specialize.

I think charityism and capitalism can work well together. The question of how to best produce something (1) is separate from what to produce (2), and these are in turn separate from the question how to best donate (3).

Basically, in a market economy, investors (capital owners) are making bets on how to answer the first two questions. Consumers (which includes also capital owners) are collectively affecting and largely determining (2) and also (3) (to the extent they decide to donate). If you are a large investor (own a lot of capital) you can donate all your returns if you wish, EA-style.

“So why wouldn’t the benevolent individual give their share of the company to whatever collective system that determined the needs of the world?”

My short answer: because they are experts in organizing how to best produce a valued good or service X. While doing this they can still donate all the returns EA-style (e.g to maximize social impact)

tuukkasarvi 18 Sep 2017 14:33 UTC
0 points
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on: Capitalism and Selfishness
In general, I like the conceptual distinction you make here. Few comments:

“Capitalism = The private ownership of the means of production. Socialism = The collective ownership of the means of production.” I find this still a bit problematic. One could argue companies and other possible legal entities are collective means of ownership. Alternative definition that socialism = State ownership of the means of production?

I like the the way you phrase the relationship between system of ownership and ethos of selfishness/benevolence as an empirical question. My question is though: what is the relevance of ethos of selfishness—isn’t that a process goal? Should we focus on individual well-being instead which is a outcome goal (i.e. ethos of benevolence is valuable because it is seen to cause well-being).