Julia_Wise🔸
Bio
Participation1
I'm one of the contact people for the effective altruism community. I work at CEA as a community liaison, trying to support the EA community in addressing problems and being a healthy and welcoming community.
Please feel free to contact me at julia.wise@centreforeffectivealtruism.org.
Besides effective altruism, I'm interested in folk dance and trying to keep up with my three children.
Posts 72
Comments525
Topic contributions9
The relationship between liquor stores being open and crime rates is pretty clear. I don't know how much work has been done on changing hours when alcohol can be sold, but it seems worth exploring as a policy intervention.
Interrupted Time Series Analysis of Bar/Tavern Closing Hours and Violent Crime
Effectiveness of Policies Restricting Hours of Alcohol Sales in Preventing Excessive Alcohol Consumption and Related Harms
Alcohol availability and crime: Lessons from liberalized weekend sales restrictions
Ok, thanks, that does make it easier to follow the argument.
Whatever one's goals, I'd caution against taking quick micromort estimates literally. E.g. I think the "walking on public roads is bad for you" data only includes your risk of getting hit by a car, and doesn't include the health benefits of walking, nor that pedestrian deaths are disproportionately at night and the victims are often intoxicated. Daytime walking while sober is overall good for longevity.
I think this piece could be more effective if it more clearly spells out the relationship between human life expectancy, land use, and invertebrate welfare. E.g. when you say "I estimate it increases the welfare of humans, and soil nematodes, mites, and springtails by 10.5 k QALY/$" I'm having trouble understanding what the relationship is between humans eating a healthier diet and invertebrate welfare.
EAs are a relatively young population, with a lot of years before most will die naturally. From the EA Survey: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/z4Wxd2dnTqDmFZrej/ea-survey-2024-demographics#Age
Many EAs also believe that this may be "the most important century", and that many pivotal decisions (e.g. around AI) will happen within the next few years or decades rather than being just as influenceable in 2080 or so.
I loved meeting Nick at EAG! I knew he worked on public health in Uganda, but we also chatted about choices he and his wife have made to better fit in with their local community, like spending at a level comparable to the better-off of their Ugandan neighbors rather than more typical expat levels. His energy and positivity wowed me.
[I don't have knowledge of specific charities, sorry.] From a quick search, it seems most such charities focus on the US because the US is the only high income country where most boys are circumsised despite most parents not having a particular religious reason for it. In other countries where it's common, it's typically for religious or epidemiological reasons.
My guess is that change could come from medical angles (Claude thinks it's important that the American Academy of Pediatrics states the benefits outweigh the risks) and from norm-changing in hospitals. This might parallel the pro-breastfeeding initiatives in many hospitals, where they no longer offer formula unless you ask for it, etc. With breastfeeding I think it gets clumsily carried out at times, and sometimes results in excessive pressure on parents who have good reasons to prefer something different.
My understanding is that these general assemblies work by people literally coming to the same room to vote (even during covid). Willingness to spend a day on this is part of how you screen for who's invested. In a country the size of the US, the time and money costs of travel to any one location would be much greater.
This is such a hard question! Even the most dedicated altruists make some carveouts, and I don't know of any consistent way that people decide what/how big those carveouts should be.
Some past writing on this:
Friendship as a sacred value
You have more than one goal, and that's fine - as you can probably tell, I've mellowed some since my mid-twenties when I was interviewed in Strangers Drowning.