My actual name is Patrick. Locke is me playing on https://xkcd.com/635/
My dog's name is Scout. Yes that's a daily reminder to maintain a Scout rather than Soldier's mindset. A bit of backstory: Out of grad school, several friends and I launched a public data nonprofit, with seed funding from the Knight Foundation and a coalition of visionary water managers that believed in our vision of public data infrastructure. You can learn more about our water data work at theCaDC.org.
Welcome!
Any updates on this cause area in light of, uh, recent developments?
Edge Esmeralda seems like a great bottom up experiment in a nontrivially better way of living together: https://www.edgeesmeralda.com/
A marginal rather than transformative revolution if you will.
The religious iconography in this post tickles me :)
Yes in a purely rational world :P
I wonder with these types of meta-analyses of relatively squishy subjects like "happiness" whether all the studies are in fact truly measuring the same outcome variable, as well as the same inputs. Man is not a machine, least of all the "crooked timber" of the mind.
Is there an EA subgroup focused on philosophical pragmatism? EA has a strong utilitarian image. There's a lot more nuance though one problem with utilitarianism is that if the ends justify the means, then sufficiently impactful ends can justify any means -- even very problematic issues like the recent SBF revelations.
Philosophical pragmatism offers a lot of insight for the EA movement. That would see ends and the cost benefit calcs that are beloved around here as one important though not all encompassing factor in decision-making.
Anyone work at GiveWell? I was somewhat intrigued by the new senior researcher position though curious to learn more about the direction of the organization. Specifically, I'd be curious into how deep GiveWell is open to looking into state capacity issues. I saw the relatively recent jpal work and curious if they'd be open to doing more of that work.
https://www.givewell.org/about/jobs/senior-researcher
I'd be happy to help however I can :)
"In response to a comment that “multiple friends who applied to the Pareto Fellowship felt like it was quite unprofessionally run” CEA staff reiterated that an evaluation was “forthcoming”, but it was never published."
...