This was a really beautiful post to read Luke. You've done such incredible work in this role. I really admire what you've achieved here. Really looking forward to seeing what you'll be working on next!

LEEP is working to prevent childhood lead poisoning, worldwide. We’re hiring for multiple roles, and are going to be scaling fast over the next few years! We’re looking for dynamic, high initiative team members to help roll out our intervention in new countries, and help solve this problem.

We currently have open applications for the positions of: 
Head of Operations (application link here)
Programs Managers (multiple positions available, application link here) 

If you’re interested in learning more about either of these positions, or about LEEP you can find more information here!

Who are these positions for?

If you want to have a large, direct impact, have an EA mindset, and are excited about being involved in a fast moving, fast growing NGO/start-up, you’d be a great fit! We’re particularly looking for people who are resourceful, high-initiative and open to tackling a variety of tasks!

Apply here! 

LEEP is now live on everyorg.com too!  Thanks for alerting us to this @WilliamKiely

https://www.every.org/leadexposureeliminationproject 

Thanks Larks! Glad you enjoyed it!

This was a fantastic post Jenny. Very insightful. Thank you!

Interesting list! One important cause area that I think may have missed is preventing/avoiding stable longterm totalitarianism. 

Toby Ord and Bryan Caplan have both written on this - see  "the Precipice" for Ord's discussion and "The Totalitarian Threat" in Bostrom's "Global Catastrophic Risks" for Caplan's.

It may be worth adding these to the list as it seems that totalitarianism is fairly widely accepted as a cause candidate. Thanks for the post as well, lots of interesting ideas and links in here!

Thank you for these interesting answers. Do you think the creation of new fields is also subject to diminishing returns? e.g. are new fields harder to find as well? Or do you think that only technologies are subject to diminishing returns? 

On this note, do you think progress is likely to be open to us indefinitely, or would you expect that eventually we will reach a level of technological maturity where all meaningful low-hanging fruit (be they individual technologies or S curves) have been picked and there is little further technological progress? If so, why? If not, why not?

Thanks very much Pete!

Ah! I can definitely see how that might have been confusing, thanks for letting us know. I'll make sure that this is reworded to be as clear as possible. Good catch!

And that sounds fantastic. It's likely we'll seek to hire a dedicated operations staff member as we scale, perhaps in our second or third year. In case you'd like to keep an eye out for when such positions crop up, all future job postings for LEEP will be announced on our website, in our newsletter, and on the 80,000 Hours Jobs board.

The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph Tainter is fantastic. It tries to establish a general theory behind past civilisational collapses. It looks at economic factors which lead societies into decline and argues that diminishing returns are a predictor and cause of collapse.

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond is very good too. It focuses on case studies of societies which have collapsed for ecological reasons.