Excuse the naïve question, but could far-UVC also reduce the cost of running high-level labs? If so, this could have transformational effects on medical development and cultured meat also

Perhaps this is a bit tangential, but I wanted to ask since the 80k team seem to be reading this post. How have 80k historically approached the mental health effects of exposing younger (i.e. likely to be a bit more neurotic) people to existential risks? I’m thinking in the vein of Here’s the exit. Do you/could you recommend alternate paths or career advice sites for people who might not be able to contribute to existential risk reduction due to, for lack of a better word, their temperament? (Perhaps a similar thing for factory farming, too?)

For example, I think I might make a decent enough AI Safety person and generally agree it could be a good idea, but I’ve explicitly chosen not to pursue it because (among other reasons) I’m pretty sure it would totally fry my nerves. The popularity of that LessWrong post suggests that I’m not alone, and also raises the interesting possibility that such people might end up actively detracting from the efforts of others, rather than just neutrally crashing out.

Here’s a much less intellectual podcast on the Rationalists, Zizians, and EA from TrueAnon, more on the dirtbag left side of things (for those who’re interested in how others see EA)

Would also be interested to hear from the realists: Do they believe they have discovered any of these moral truths themselves, or just that these truths are out there somewhere?

Here is their plot over time, from the Chapter 2 Appendix. I think these are the raw per-year scores, not the averages.

I find this really baffling. It’s probably not political; the Modi government took power in 2014 and only lost absolute majority in late 2024. The effects of COVID seem to be varied; India did relatively well in 2020 but got obliterated by the Delta variant in 2021. Equally, GDP per capita steadily increased over this time, barring a dip in 2020. Population has steadily increased, and growth has steadily decreased.

India have long had a larger residual value than others in the WHR’s happiness model; they’re much less happy than their model might predict.

Without access to the raw data, it’s hard to say if Gallup’s methodology has changed over this time; India is a huge and varied country, and it’s hard to tell if Gallup maintained a similar sample over time.

AIM seems to be doing this quite well in the GHW/AW spaces, but lacks the literal openness of the EA community-as-idea (for better or worse)

The World Happiness Report 2025 is out!

Finland leads the world in happiness for the eighth year in a row, with Finns reporting an average score of 7.736 (out of 10) when asked to evaluate their lives.

Costa Rica (6th) and Mexico (10th) both enter the top 10 for the first time, while continued upward trends for countries such as Lithuania (16th), Slovenia (19th) and Czechia (20th) underline the convergence of happiness levels between Eastern, Central and Western Europe.

The United States (24th) falls to its lowest-ever position, with the United Kingdom (23rd) reporting its lowest average life evaluation since the 2017 report.

I bang this drum a lot, but it does genuinely appear that once a country reaches the upper-middle income bracket, GDP doesn’t seem to matter much more.

Also featuring is a chapter from the Happier Lives Institute, where they compare the cost-effectiveness of improving wellbeing across multiple charities. They find that the top charities (including Pure Earth and Tamaika) might be 100x as cost-effective as others, especially those in high-income countries.

Reposting this from Daniel Eth:

On the one hand, this seems like not much (shouldn’t AGIs be able to hit ‘escape velocity’ and operate autonomously forever?), but on the other, being able to do a month’s worth of work coherently would surely get us close to recursive self-improvement.

Some general thoughts about India specifically:

• The EA community is slowly developing, but the biggest obstacle is the lack of a clear hub city. Government is in Delhi, tech is in Bengaluru, many orgs are also in Pune or Mumbai (such as my own).
• The philanthropic sector isn’t tuned to EA ideas just yet, but we think it might get more feasible to find local funding. Anecdotally, this seems to be easier in mental health, which is well-understood by the traditional philanthropic sector. Further development of EGIs and the local community will help here.
• Anecdotally at EAGxIndia 2024, most younger attendees were interested in AI work, and far fewer into GHW/AW. There’s probably some bias here, since it was hosted in Bengaluru, which is heavier on tech. That is to say, I’m not convinced the talent pipeline for an India-based AIM-like org is quite there yet, although AIM could be nudged to incubate more often there.
• On the other hand, legally operating in India is more complex than almost any other country AIM incubates into, and having India-specific expertise and operational support, while expensive, would pay dividends

Just wait until you see the PRs I wanna submit to the forum software 😛