WHAT: A book like "Strangers Drowning", but focused on the "E" of EA rather than the "A" of EA.
WHY: narrative can be such a tremendous force in changing people's lives. It's often more powerful than argument (even for brainy people).
There's already a lot of world literature and newspaper stories on people who have been tremendously altruistic. There is much less literature about people who have been tremendously altruistic and -- this is key -- have been motivated by their altruism to care about effectiveness and listen to the evidence.
I'd love to have a book with biographies or stories that traces -- in narrative rather than argument -- people whose love for others has pushed them to care about effectiveness, care about evidence, and generally care about a results-oriented outlook that focuses on what 'really works at the end of the day'. (Note that the book should not generally be about people who care about effectiveness and evidence -- but only about people who have deliberately chosen to do so out of altruism (rather than, say, out nerdiness)).
Possible biographies could include: Florence Nightingale, Ignaz Semmelweis, Deng Xiaoping, figures from EA and utilitarianism, some theologians in the 2nd world war who pragmatically looked towards ending the killing (Bonhoeffer, Barth, etc?), etc. Not vouching for this list of examples at all -- it's more to give an idea.
By the way, creating such a book could be a project for EAs with a different skillset than the cliché EAs.
Coronavirus: Should I go to work?
UPDATE: An EA project I'm part of might do this
summary: have an app that helps people decide whether they shouldn't go to work
context: in the last 12 hours I spent maybe about 2 hours 'empowering' someone I know by giving them more information to help them decide whether they should take sick days
problem: knowing what's the probability one's infected (by the coronavirus) helps informing them about whether they should avoid going to work. the probability beyond which you should stay home is not the same for each type of job. at what point should one not go to work?
the 2 main sub questions are:
for example: Someone told me: my partner was coughing, had a sore throat, and had X fever during the whole day, but is now feeling better; yesterday ze was okay, and we slept together, but I haven't seen zir since then. ze wasn't outside the country recently, and hasn't met anyone infected as far as ze knows. ze lives in city Y which has Z cases.
there could also be intermediary recommendations (maybe?): go to work, but take the following precautions:
addendum: in countries that don't have a monetary incentives for people to self-quarantine, there will be a negative externality not captured. but the tool should still improve decision making.