This should have way more attention than it's currently receiving

Or: people care about relative income because: a) it entails more wealth (as capital gains accumulate faster than returns on work) which entails more power, like the possibility of funding intellectuals to say that inequality doesn't matter; and b) it signals status, or it is used to buy status-goods, such as buying a nice house in a rich neighborhood without fearing your neighbors wanting to sack it (since they might care about relative income, even if you don't)

Btw I just realized I can totally bite this bullet: I have lived in 4 cities in the last decade, and I  prefer to live in the cheap one not only because of the low cost of living (like many online workers have been doing), but also because I never feel poor in relation to others...Which results in mixed feelings, though, as I don't want to feel much wealthier than the surroundings - it makes me wonder of I should be paying more for services and taxes etc.

At least in this case, common sense might save thou a lot of time

Imagine someone receives a string of 95% of 111111... which is coming from a messenger funded by pro-Unity Inc., and when you point out that it might be biased because of its funding source, you hear the reply "oh but I only care about the message, and it's a sound string of 1's"

Don't you think a similar objection would apply to Caplan's "proof" that people don't move to poorer neighborhoods because something something externalities?

(Moreover, I just realized thata "realists say that people only care about relative wealth" is a remarkable strawman, and it's refutation does not entail that people barely care about relative income - and this is the first time I see an Economics professor mixing claims about wealth and income in the same argument)

Caplan says that Schooling is Mostly Signaling - Econlib
If I told him "since education in US is just about signaling, an American should move to a place where their degree + alma mater would be regarded as more valuable - e.g., a developing country, or a poorly educated area, etc.", d'you think he'd agree?

It reminded me this: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Wishes
 

Tbh, I barely care about what economists in Koch's pockets claim (something Caplan apparently doesn't consider worth denying)

Nuka zaria: research if Chatgpt is quoting from a parallel universe
 

(Well, it's already the cruelest month in UK, right?)

My conjecture is that you cannot fully separate MA and AI safety / alignment - or worse, solve AI safety first and then ask AI to solve values for you. We should solve them together, as some sets of values will be incompatible w some approaches to safety, and some AI development pathways will make some sets of values inaccessible (e.g., I don't think that an egalitarian world for our descendants is a likely outcome w the current trend)

Great post, thanks.
Did your search for a new intervention include control / eradication of NWS (C. hominivorax)? It's an endemic parasite in French Guayane (actually, I suspect that's where Coquerel first identified it in XIX century), affecting wild and farmed animals alike (and killing at the very least 100 humans/year), any large scale policy would eventually depend on / benefit from French (and perhaps EU) support, and almost no one is working on that from a animal welfare / rights POV (except for Screwworm Free Future is hiring for a Director — EA Forum).