Pat Myron's Quick takes

The latter: practical conditions rather than theoretical ideal environments, especially for installation site modifications where ventilation, tooling, and oversight is more limited

Pat Myron 🔸

8mo*

Policy

Effective giving

As one of the largest single donations ever, Michael and Susan Dell pledged $6.25B to provide 25M American children new investment accounts:
https://apnews.com/article/michael-dell-susan-trump-accounts-stock-market-poverty-inequality-7e2615d50a3fc0563109ed0eeb4c41e1

Radar speed signs seem like one of the more cost effective traffic calming measures since they don't require roadwork, but they still surprisingly cost thousands of USD.

Mass producing cheaper radar speed signs seems like a tractable public health initiative

Surprised Animal Charity Evaluators Recommended Charity Fund gives equal amounts to around a dozen charities:
https://animalcharityevaluators.org/donation-advice/recommended-charity-fund/
Uncertainty's involved, but a core tenant of EA and charity evaluators is that certain charities are more effective, so Givewell's Top Charities Fund giving different amounts to only a few charities per year makes more sense:
https://www.givewell.org/top-charities-fund

USA has ~85k annual mowing injury ER visits:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29395756/
~44% of which are fractures and amputation:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30067452/
Lawncare's also ~5% of USA pollution:
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-05-21/lawn-mowers-are-the-next-electric-frontier
https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-09/documents/banks.pdf

Autonomous mowing robots eliminate most of mowing's danger, pollution, labor cost/time, and noise

Joseph Lemien

Nice job bringing up an interesting idea. Having not read any of the research, here are some naïve ideas and musings:

It would be interesting to a see a quick-and-dirty cost-benefit analysis: what would it cost to replace 99% of "traditional" lawnmowers with autonomous mowing robots? How much money (or QALYs) would be gained/saved? What price would a robot mower have to be for a person with a one acre lot to justify buying it. Or maybe alternative models exist, in which I rent the robotic mower for two hours rather than purchasing it.
We could make a clear argument that people simply shouldn't spend money/time/effort moving their lawns, as the risks/costs aren't worth it. But many people (in the USA at least) would continue to do so because they place social value on the appearance of a well-kept home.
If there are about 82 million homes in the USA (this is from quick Google search, so I trust the number about as much as I ought to for having not looked at the sources), that implies 85,000/82,000,000 that about 0.1% of homeowners go to the ER each year for mowing injuries. This is of course completely ignoring non-home mowing, such as sports fields, corporate/office landscape, etc. This is also ignoring all the people that get injured but don't end up in an ER visit.
Safety features have presumably improved in movers during the past few decades. I wonder what the distribution is of the injuries in relation to how safe/new the mower is. Maybe a majority of the injuries are caused by half-broken mowers, or mowers from the 1980s, or from mowers that don't have an dead man's switch.
I wonder if there are other, more important causal factors. Maybe most of those 85,000 involved people mowing the lawn while drunk, or elderly men insisting they they are still "man enough" to take care of the yard, or teenagers goofing around. To the extent that is accurate, the narrative might change from 'mowers are dangerous and should be replaced' to 'drunk people operating machinery are dangerous.' The parallels to cars are petty obvious: cars don't cause accidents, people cause accidents. But that doesn't deny the fact that a robotic car can avoid many of the accidents.
I'm guessing (again, I want to emphasize that this is a naïve guess rather than a well-informed guess) that a majority of the injuries occur in situations that a robotic mower wouldn't be very suitable for. I'm mainly thinking of small lots and areas with steep angles, such as the picture below. There are strong parallels to Roomba-style vacuums: they are great for houses with particular layouts, but many homes exist that are simply not practical/feasible for that type of robot vacuum.

Pat Myron 🔸

Robots cost ~$2k/acre (similar to annual landscaper hiring costs), so they're cheaper than riding mowers or landscapers. Additional costs are for push mowers who don't value avoiding mowing time. Adjacent neighbors without fences/walls/etc. could seamlessly share a robot

Many entities require mowing; rules must change before certain individuals can mow less

Injuries have been relatively steady for decades, are often male, residential, and involve riding mowers

While injuries are mostly residential, landscaping (and pollution and labor cost/time) mostly isn't. Municipalities, parks, schools/colleges, sports complexes, golf courses, cemeteries, and farms regularly mow hundreds of acres each

Certain robotic mowers handle surprisingly steep angles (45°)

Pat Myron 🔸

Forecasting

Effective giving

Last month unlimited Manifold Markets currency redemptions for donations are assured: https://manifoldmarkets.notion.site/The-New-Deal-for-Manifold-s-Charity-Program-1527421b89224370a30dc1c7820c23ec

Recommend redeeming donations this month since there are orders of magnitude more currency outstanding than can be donated in future months

Offput that 80k hours advises "if you find you aren’t interested in [The Precipice: Existential Risk], we probably aren’t the best people for you to get advice from". Hoped there was more general advising beyond just those interested in existential risk

Kevin Ulug

Some other career orgs:

And for what it's worth, 80,000 Hours has a bunch global health & animal related postings on their job board.

Kevin Ulug

Perhaps also https://www.trainingforgood.com/ and the more niche https://bluedotimpact.org/

I've been lazily throwing job related links here https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/YCobjyMhaKHArjwQt/what-resources-should-job-seekers-know-about

Vasco Grilo🔸

Hi Pat,

Thanks, Pat! You and other readers may be interested in Probably Good's list of impact-focused job boards.

Pat Myron 🔸

This forum has many comments that boil down to something like "thanks/you're welcome/+1/this/me too/same/agree/disagree/great/etc" that dilute signal-to-noise

Most probably voted/reacted on their parent content, and the comment itself doesn't add much more than noise beyond that

JoelMcGuire

I disagree because I think writing text to indicate a sentiment is a stronger signal than pressing a button. So while it’s somewhat redundant, it adds new information IMO.

As a writer, I pay attention to these signals when processing feedback.

Isaac King

Isn't that what the strong upvote is for?

Peter Slattery 🔸

Thanks. A sympathetic disagree from me. I think that knowing what specific people think is signal not noise. Who thinks what is often some of the most important information to communicate.

If you know I generally agree with you and support you you are much more likely to talk to me or to collaborate on projects etc. The converse is true if you know I disagree with you about many things. You don't get that information from my votes.

I agree

Sanjay

I imagine that forum norms might be influenced by this post.

[anonymous]

I think I agree with you in most cases, but every 1 in 5 or so I think, "Oh, it's interesting that [Person X in particular] thinks that," or "Aww, it's sweet that this person was so grateful for the parent comment that they felt they had throw in a comment on top of a strong upvote," or "Haha, lc you beat me to it."

Pat Myron 🔸

Community

Surprised how concentrated shortform authorship is. So far in 2023:

EA Forum:
25/125 (20%) @Nathan Young
9/125 (7%) @Evan_Gaensbauer

Lesswrong:
26/252 (10%) @DragonGod
10/252 (4%) @lc

assuming my code's accurate enough:
grep -Eo 'CommentUserName-author">.+?<' shortform.div | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr # outdated

grep -Eo 'UsersNameDisplay-noColor" href=".+?">.+?<' shortform.div | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr # updated

As evidence increases for cognitive effects of poor air quality:
https://patrickcollison.com/pollution

Initial opportunities for extra impact may be prioritizing monitoring and improving air quality in important decision-making buildings like government buildings, headquarters, etc

Michael_Wiebe

Those papers don't look very convincing. Check out:
https://vincentbagilet.github.io/inference_pollution/

This paper looks to be the best:
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20180279

Pat Myron 🔸

Animal welfare

Biosecurity & pandemics

Policy

Global health

Millions of people contract pork tapeworm infections annually, which causes ~30% of the ~50 million global active epilepsy cases:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(14)61353-2/fulltext

Perhaps cultural pork consumption restrictions are onto something:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_restrictions_on_the_consumption_of_pork

https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/ is a great American nonprofit resource:

New Incentives in particular seems poised to spend much more after large ~Givewell cash grants

Also, the largest private university endowments don't seem as restricted as many think:

Pat Myron 🔸

Biosecurity & pandemics

Ranked cost-effective public health interventions:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7142580/ (high income-country policies: food, tobacco, alcohol, etc.)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5552255/ (LMIC policies: medicine, condoms, food, etc.)

Diet advice since food policy tops both lists:
https://cidev.uky.edu/kentuckyhealthnews/2022/02/14/a-healthier-diet-could-add-years-to-your-life-study-says-more-than-a-decade-in-your-20s-and-eight-or-nine-years-even-at-age-60/

Pat Myron 🔸

Biosecurity & pandemics

Global health

Vaccines saved 150M+ lives over the past 50 years, including 100M+ infants and nearly 100M lives from Measles alone:
https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/new-data-shows-vaccines-have-saved-154-million-lives-past-50-years
https://www.who.int/news/item/24-04-2024-global-immunization-efforts-have-saved-at-least-154-million-lives-over-the-past-50-years

Pat Myron 🔸

Animal welfare

Biosecurity & pandemics

Policy

Global health

Cause prioritization

>100k fishers die annually:
https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/about/news-room/press-releases-and-statements/2022/11/03/more-than-100000-people-die-annually-across-global-fishing-sector-new-research-shows
https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-briefs/2022/11/more-than-100000-fishing-related-deaths-occur-each-year-study-finds
even despite wild fishing plateauing for decades in favor of fish farming:
https://ourworldindata.org/rise-of-aquaculture

Most https://funds.effectivealtruism.org/ confuse me since they're predated by Animal Charity Evaluators, Givewell, etc, and the confusion delayed me donating at all

EA funds' website only seems to mention they might grant riskier/earlier-stage, but ACE and Givewell have earlier-stage funds too

AnonymousTurtle

The EA Funds Animal Welfare Fund is independent from Animal Charity Evaluators (they have different grant-makers and often donate to different projects).

The EA Funds Global Health and Development Fund seems basically the same as Givewell's funds, it might be a marketing / brand diversification thing.

Free local initiatives to improve public wellbeing and connect people:
https://parkrun.com
https://littlefreelibrary.org
https://buynothingproject.org
(for local EA groups interested in volunteering)

Pat Myron 🔸

Animal welfare

Biosecurity & pandemics

In America, dining services influence far more meals than vegans' personal consumption

Aramark, Compass Group, etc. each serve billions of meals annually, and even the largest individual correctional facilities, hospital campuses, school districts, public universities, baseball stadiums, etc. each serve millions of meals annually to largely captive audiences

Michael St Jules 🔸

Various animal groups target these dining services to switch to cage-free eggs and add more plant-based options. Some also push for meatless days.

0.55% voting for a recent shareholder proposal (Microsoft) alerted me that shareholder proposal ownership requirements are lower than I imagined:
https://www.sec.gov/divisions/corpfin/rule-14a-8.pdf
Even a couple thousand dollars invested for a few years suffices

Pat Myron 🔸

Community

Building EA

Many libraries solicit book suggestions at URLs like:
https://<LOCAL>.bibliocommons.com/suggested_purchases
which seems like a solid opportunity to ensure more impactful books are available:
https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/effective-altruism

Pat Myron 🔸

Effective giving

AmazonSmile shuts down tomorrow if anyone wants to shop more today and/or less going forward:

https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/amazon-closing-amazonsmile-to-focus-its-philanthropic-giving-to-programs-with-greater-impact

Pat Myron 🔸

+1 to be able to check notifications, messages, and specific posts here without seeing newsfeeds:
https://github.com/jordwest/news-feed-eradicator/issues/253
https://github.com/ForumMagnum/ForumMagnum/issues/6640

Pat Myron 🔸

Is it possible to re-collapse a shortform after expanding it on /allPosts? If so, how? If not, feature request :)

Pat Myron 🔸

+1 for these forum logos to be added to FontAwesome:
https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome/issues/19536

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Joseph Lemien

Nice job bringing up an interesting idea. Having not read any of the research, here are some naïve ideas and musings:

It would be interesting to a see a quick-and-dirty cost-benefit analysis: what would it cost to replace 99% of "traditional" lawnmowers with autonomous mowing robots? How much money (or QALYs) would be gained/saved? What price would a robot mower have to be for a person with a one acre lot to justify buying it. Or maybe alternative models exist, in which I rent the robotic mower for two hours rather than purchasing it.
We could make a clear argument that people simply shouldn't spend money/time/effort moving their lawns, as the risks/costs aren't worth it. But many people (in the USA at least) would continue to do so because they place social value on the appearance of a well-kept home.
If there are about 82 million homes in the USA (this is from quick Google search, so I trust the number about as much as I ought to for having not looked at the sources), that implies 85,000/82,000,000 that about 0.1% of homeowners go to the ER each year for mowing injuries. This is of course completely ignoring non-home mowing, such as sports fields, corporate/office landscape, etc. This is also ignoring all the people that get injured but don't end up in an ER visit.
Safety features have presumably improved in movers during the past few decades. I wonder what the distribution is of the injuries in relation to how safe/new the mower is. Maybe a majority of the injuries are caused by half-broken mowers, or mowers from the 1980s, or from mowers that don't have an dead man's switch.
I wonder if there are other, more important causal factors. Maybe most of those 85,000 involved people mowing the lawn while drunk, or elderly men insisting they they are still "man enough" to take care of the yard, or teenagers goofing around. To the extent that is accurate, the narrative might change from 'mowers are dangerous and should be replaced' to 'drunk people operating machinery are dangerous.' The parallels to cars are petty obvious: cars don't cause accidents, people cause accidents. But that doesn't deny the fact that a robotic car can avoid many of the accidents.
I'm guessing (again, I want to emphasize that this is a naïve guess rather than a well-informed guess) that a majority of the injuries occur in situations that a robotic mower wouldn't be very suitable for. I'm mainly thinking of small lots and areas with steep angles, such as the picture below. There are strong parallels to Roomba-style vacuums: they are great for houses with particular layouts, but many homes exist that are simply not practical/feasible for that type of robot vacuum.