NickLaing
Bio
Participation1
I'm a doctor working towards the dream that every human will have access to high quality healthcare. I'm a medic and director of OneDay Health, which has launched 53 simple but comprehensive nurse-led health centers in remote rural Ugandan Villages. A huge thanks to the EA Cambridge student community in 2018 for helping me realise that I could do more good by focusing on providing healthcare in remote places.
How I can help others
Understanding the NGO industrial complex, and how aid really works (or doesn't) in Northern Uganda
Global health knowledge
Posts 24
Comments1526
Thanks @mal_graham🔸 this is super helpful and makes more sense now. I think it would make your argument far more complete if you put something like your third and fourth paragraphs here in your main article.
And no I'm personally not worried about interventions being ecologically inert.
As a side note its interesting that you aren't putting much effort into making interventions happen yet - my loose advice would be to get started trying some things. I get that you're trying to build a field, but to have real-world proof of this tractability it might be better to try something sooner rather than later? Otherwise it will remain theory. I'm not too fussed about arguing whether an intervention will be difficult or not - in general I think we are likely to underestimate how difficult an intervention might be.
Show me a couple of relatively easy wins (even small-ish ones) an I'll be right on board :).
I think Athiests might be as diverse as religious folk (or more) in their underlying beliefs, but yes even those who do have altruism as a big part of those find it hard to back that up with action. Its pretty unusual for either athiests or religious folk to live out more than a little of what we claim to believe. The surrounding culture and norms usually beat out turning beliefs into action and integrating our minds with our lives. Unfortunately.
"It seems hard to find a better use of my money" hits hard for sure, and given this reality I would posit that most of us have big gaps in "irrational" spending - so I'm slow to judge others on this front.
You might me missing the positivity herd immunity effect on others, which is a factor even with the low 40%ish of the population that is immunised. But yes its debatable whether its worth it for someone your age to get the flu vaccines, which is why most governments don't fund it for young people.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(17)30004-X/fulltext
Year of AGI
First i have zero expertise here and am rubbish at prediction
I don't think LLMs will get there, but something else probably will after that but maybe not in the very near future. I have a strong (perhaps too strong) feeling that the complexities of the human brain in forward planning/ task stacking and truly creative thought might be further away than we think.
i also think there's likely to be a warning shot and then the kind of political backlash that could even slow things down 10 years or so.
I generally agree with this, and would like to reemphasize "I think this is a direction that it would be valuable for more people to move in, on the margin."
i think less people fall into the trap of trading inefficiency for frugality (although plenty do including me) than giving as much as they would actually like to if deeply considered.
EDIT: Basically answered here... https://aerolamp.net/pages/faq
Lazy question What big an area can one $500 UVC cover? Do those 4 in the dance room genuinely clean the whole area?
Surely to be actually mass-practical we need one that can just be a lightbulb and attach to a regular fitting? Obviously it must be harder than all that,,,,
Thanks for the update, and the reasons for the name change make s lot of sense
Instinctively i don't love the new name. The word "coefficient" sounds mathsy/nerdy/complicated, while most people don't know what the word coefficient actually means. The reasoning behind the name does resonate through and i can understand the appeal.
But my instincts are probably wrong though if you've been working with an agency and the team likes it too.
All the best for the future Coefficient Giving!