Quick takes

The recent pivot by 80 000 hours to focus on AI seems (potentially) justified, but the lack of transparency and input makes me feel wary. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/4ZE3pfwDKqRRNRggL/80-000-hours-is-shifting-its-strategic-approach-to-focus   TLDR; 80 000 hours, a once cause-agnostic broad scope introductory resource (with career guides, career coaching, online blogs, podcasts) has decided to focus on upskilling and producing content focused on AGI risk, AI alignment and an AI-transformed world. ---------------------------------------- According to their post, they will still host the backlog of content on non AGI causes, but may not promote or feature it. They also say a rough 80% of new podcasts and content will be AGI focused, and other cause areas such as Nuclear Risk and Biosecurity may have to be scoped by other organisations. Whilst I cannot claim to have in depth knowledge of robust norms in such shifts, or in AI specifically, I would set aside the actual claims for the shift, and instead focus on the potential friction in how the change was communicated. To my knowledge, (please correct me), no public information or consultation was made beforehand, and I had no prewarning of this change. Organisations such as 80 000 hours may not owe this amount of openness, but since it is a value heavily emphasises in EA, it seems slightly alienating. Furthermore, the actual change may not be so dramatic, but it has left me grappling with the thought that other mass organisations could just as quickly pivot. This isn't necessarily inherently bad, and has advantageous signalling of being 'with the times' and 'putting our money where our mouth is' in terms of cause area risks. However, in an evidence based framework, surely at least some heads up would go a long way in reducing short-term confusion or gaps.   Many introductory programs and fellowships utilise 80k resources, and sometimes as embeds rather than as standalone resources. Despite claimi

Striking paper by Anant Sudarshan and Eyal Frank (via Dylan Matthews at Vox Future Perfect) on the importance of vultures as a keystone species.  To quote the paper and newsletter — the basic story is that vultures are extraordinarily efficient scavengers, eating nearly all of a carcass less than an hour after finding it, and farmers in India historically relied on them to quickly remove livestock carcasses, so they functioned as a natural sanitation system in helping to control diseases that could otherwise be spread through the carcasses they consume. In 1994, farmers began using diclofenac to treat their livestock, due to the expiry of a patent long held by Novartis leading to the entry of cheap generic brands made by Indian companies. Diclofenac is a common painkiller, harmless to humans, but vultures develop kidney failure and die within weeks of digesting carrion with even small residues of it. Unfortunately this only came to light via research published a decade later in 2004, by which time the number of Indian vultures in the wild had tragically plummeted from tens of millions to just a few thousands today, the fastest for a bird species in recorded history and the largest in magnitude since the extinction of the passenger pigeon.  When the vultures died out, far more dead animals lay around rotting, transmitting pathogens to other scavengers like dogs and rats and entering the water supply. Dogs and rats are less efficient than vultures at fully eliminating flesh from carcasses, leading to a higher incidence of human contact with infected remains, and they're also more likely to transmit diseases like anthrax and rabies to people. Sudarshan and Frank estimate that this led to ~100,000(!) additional deaths each year from 2000-05 due to a +4.2%(!) increase in all-cause mortality among the 430 million people living in districts that once had a lot of vultures, which is staggering; this is e.g. more than the death toll in 2001 from HIV/AIDS (92,000), malaria

The Trump administration has indefinitely paused NIH grant review meetings, effectively halting US-government-funded biomedical research. There are good criticisms of the NIH, but we are kidding ourselves if we believe that this is to do with anything but vindictiveness over COVID-19, or at best, a loss of public trust in health institutions from a minority of the US public. But this action will not rectify that. Instead of one public health institution with valid flaws that a minority of the public distrust, we have none now. Clinical trials have been paused too, so it’s likely that people will die from this. I don’t have a great sense of what to do other than lament. Thankfully, there are good research funders globally—in my case, a lot of the research Kaya Guides relies on is funded by the WHO (😔) or the EU. We’re still waiting to see how the WHO withdrawal will affect us, but we’re lucky that there are other global leaders willing to pick up the slack. I hope that US philanthropic funding also doesn’t dry up over the coming years…

Quick Take: In most educational settings or even healthcare campaigns for the general public, the only mosquito-borne disease highlighted prominently in the UK tends to be malaria, and most mosquito-borne diseases may be non-domestic in countries we'd consider HICs and with healthcare infrastructure, and yet turns out quite a few are considered now natively established in regions such as Spain, France, US, Croatia. Currently doing a lit review on different methods of reducing populations, transmission or exposure to bites to control mosquito borne diseases, and that has more context, information and sources, but if anyone was considering doing some cause prio on types/vectors of disease we may want to work on/should consider, then here are some key mosquito-borne diseases that I feel get mentioned less. Working on a longer write up but if it helps anyone considering wrapping their head around mosquito borne diseases, here is a short list of the most prominent diseases in terms of the burden of morbidity and mortality from worldwide disease, with a mention of endemic to HICs diseases: Malaria * Protist Plasmodium spread by female Anopheles mosquitos * Spread directly during bites, minority spread through contaminated needles with infected blood and congenital in utero * Agnostic to most innate risk factors but sickle cell uni-recessive carriers appear to be immune, and external factors are mainly climatic region (living in endemic countries, near equator, international travel), malnutrition, working outdoors especially during evenings, working with animals * children or elderly are more susceptible * 90% of malarial deaths occur in Africa south of the Sahara and most are in children under 5 * Testing is recommended after suspected bites or during local outbreaks, through microscopic blood smears or RDTs (expensive but can detect small pieces of malarial parasites), or lab PCR testing (most accurate especially to determine species but highly rare, specialis

Trump recently said in an interview (https://time.com/6972973/biden-trump-bird-flu-covid/) that he would seek to disband the White House office for pandemic preparedness. Given that he usually doesn't give specifics on his policy positions, this seems like something he is particularly interested in. I know politics is discouraged on the EA forum, but I thought I would post this to say: EA should really be preparing for a Trump presidency. He's up in the polls and IMO has a >50% chance of winning the election. Right now politicians seem relatively receptive to EA ideas, this may change under a Trump administration.

Longtermist shower thought: what if we had a campaign to install Far-UVC in poultry farms? Seems like it could: 1. Reduce a bunch of diseases in the birds, which is good for: a. the birds’ welfare; b. the workers’ welfare; c. Therefore maybe the farmers’ bottom line?; d. Preventing/suppressing human pandemics (eg avian flu) 2. Would hopefully drive down the cost curve of Far-UVC 3. May also generate safety data in chickens, which could be helpful for derisking it for humans Insofar as one of the main obstacles is humans' concerns for health effects, this would at least only raise these for a small group of workers.

How much of EA comms is angled at funders/donors vs academics/researchers/peers ve general public. Which ones are most effective at bringing about 'change' in the broad sense, e.g. technical papers or more general for policy proposals in general governments? And does the rise of illiteracy mean shifting from say age 16-18 educated level to around age 10 (as suggested by the mean and median US reading level) for our assumed audience style?

FYI rolling applications are back on for the Biosecurity Forecasting Group! We have started the pilot and are very excited about our first cohort! Don't want to apply but have ideas for questions? Submit them here (anyone can submit!).