3,654 karma · joined May 27, 2014
"In some countries, Visa enhances card transaction data and uses it to generate anonymised and aggregated consumer spending and marketing reports and other data products that enable companies to improve their marketing efforts. These solutions help companies identify consumers that they can target."
But one thing we learned in the process was that seriously successful people doing their thing feel pretty gagged.
It's not worth it for them to write even things that seem uncontroversial to you or me, because someone out there might hate it, or misinterpret it, and start creating problems for them.
43% wind, 38% hydro, 10% solar.
I think you'll find that the content we are currently working on, such as our podcast, are more concrete: https://80000hours.org/podcast/
Thanks for your feedback. If you look around you'll see it's almost all written by a handful of full-time staff - this piece from an anonymous contributor is almost unique.
Most articles we write at this point are less high-level than this one, though pages that focus on general advice which is applicable to a wide range of people naturally attract the most traffic.
"This trial claimed to show a 4 and 5-day work week are equally productive. It didn’t."
I have a real job and don't need an extra $7 a year in kickbacks for selling crank radios.
This is a common misconception. While public companies have some duties to shareholders they are not required to maximise profits as such: https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co...
It's important to be aware of this so that corporations cannot use this excuse to get off the hook for otherwise immoral behaviour.
The way that we look at it is instant runoff voting has been passed as a ballot initiative in a number of cities, but we see approval voting as producing better outcomes, and having better political dynamics compared to instant runoff voting. Approval voting is also so much easier, and it avoids a lot of the problems.
If instant runoff voting can win, then surely, a simpler voting method that produces good outcomes and has good dynamics should also be able to do it."
http://news.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/SJL-2-40...
"the argument of "increased social cohesion" against a foreign enemy is not applicable to a civil war"
You'd get increased social cohesion among each of the ethnic groups which is in conflict with the other.
In any case this focus on the Sri Lankan civil war specifically isn't that interesting - I posted a review article above which includes controls and studies a wide range of cases across different countries, and concludes pesticide control has large effects.
FINDINGS: We identified 27 studies undertaken in 16 countries-five low-income or middle-income countries (Bangladesh, Colombia, India, Jordan and Sri Lanka), and 11 high-income countries (Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, UK, and USA). Assessments largely focused on national bans of specific pesticides (12 studies of bans in six countries-Jordan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Greece [Crete], South Korea, and Taiwan) or sales restrictions (eight studies of restrictions in five countries- India, Denmark, Ireland, the UK and the USA). Only five studies used optimum analytical methods. National bans on commonly ingested pesticides in five of the six countries studied, including four studies using optimum analytical methods, were followed by reductions in pesticide suicides and, in three of these countries, falls in overall suicide mortality. Greece was the only country studied that did not show a decrease in pesticide suicide following a ban. There were no high-quality studies of restricting sales to people for occupational uses; four of the seven studies (in three of the five countries studied-India, Denmark, and the USA) showed sales restrictions were followed by decreases in pesticide suicides; one of the two studies investigating trends in overall suicide mortality reported a fall in deaths in Denmark, but there were also decreases in suicide deaths from other methods.
INTERPRETATION: National bans on highly hazardous pesticides, which are commonly ingested in acts of self-poisoning, seem to be effective in reducing pesticide-specific and overall suicide rates. Evidence is less consistent for sales restrictions. A worldwide ban on the use of highly hazardous pesticides is likely to prevent tens of thousands of deaths every year."
"Suicide rates are thought to fall during wartime. Durkheim [1] suggested this was due to increased social cohesion, while others have suggested that competing outcomes may be important, with individuals who might otherwise have died by suicide being more likely to die of other causes [2]. Neeleman [3] cites this as an example of contextual effect modification, with suicide risk modified by the likelihood of dying of other causes.
Examples of reductions in suicide rates in times of war have been described for several time periods and cultures [4-9]. Marshall [10] argued that the reduction in suicide rates reflected a reduction in unemployment, a recognised risk factor for suicide [11], rather than a direct effect of war, an argument offered some support by Lester and Yang [12]. Stack [13] suggested that the suicide rate decreased as the proportion of the population employed in military roles increased."
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2008/05/listen_to_the_c....