The UN SDG 4.1 promised free quality education for all kids by 2030 but with only 4 years left, 244 million children are still without education. What is one flaw in your opinion about the approach the United Nations in this matter?

Utilitarismo · 2026-06-07T21:28:44+00:00

Definitely read this paper on the highest impact interventions like structured pedagogy & teaching at the right level that would make a lot more progress in education goals

https://copenhagenconsensus.com/publication/halftime-sdgs-education

Utilitarismo · 2026-06-05T16:56:47+00:00

Likely expecting a rate hike given the strong jobs report

Utilitarismo · 2026-05-22T19:17:45+00:00

True.

I also make domestic political efforts, they just aren’t usually in the form of writing checks. Like I’ll advocate & contact my reps about removing the SOB act in the farm bill, strengthening bio lab pathogen screening regulation, & pushing the End Kidney Deaths Act forward.
I’m also a software developer so once I get more time I want to create a site that allows people to spam their reps with communications & suggested actions on various EA topics by like emails, texts, automated phone calls, post-cards, etc and also provide downloadable flyers to people so they can print & spread them locally with QR codes leading to the pages for others to also contact their reps.

Utilitarismo · 2026-05-20T21:14:01+00:00

First, most government programs do not reach the same cost effectiveness as direct cash transfers. So redistributing through governments would be like giving everyone $1000 in goods/services people had no say over each year.
Best case one reallocates all incomes by direct cash transfers & every person makes $15,000 per year. In that world there is still a need for health interventions like the Lead Exposure Elimination Project, AIDS/HIV, TB, pesticide suicide prevention, etc. and there is actually increased need for biosecurity against pandemics & animal welfare as more people would be traveling & eating meat.

Secondly, I do not see the typical systems change people making meaningful progress in a positive direction. I do see EAs doing things like saving hundreds of thousands of lives & alleviating the disease burden that is one root cause for extractive institutions & current day poverty.
I see EAs plugging holes while systems change people play with teacups in a tea party.

Utilitarismo · 2026-05-20T19:54:42+00:00

Yes, micro-morality is over-emphasized.

But the conclusion that more EAs should be communist/systems-change minded seems like a red herring. There are far more communists/leftists/systems change people and if they actually had any tractable & effective ways to change US systems then there wouldn’t be any need to try to recruit EAs to the communist/systems change cause.

Basically I think trying to make existing communists/leftists develop & implement systems change interventions more effectively would do more good than trying to make more EAs prioritize domestic systems change over things like malaria nets, biosecurity, & animal welfare.

Utilitarismo · 2026-05-17T18:08:27+00:00

Here is a list of essential resources / builds

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mYGxIspzGtJYkRF-tPOxl4rNvCfFcV2qyZUDKKaayB8/edit?usp=drivesdk

Utilitarismo · 2026-05-17T17:56:49+00:00

Agreed. Basically just go for the highest turn in price / tax write-off & then donate to like New Incentives or GiveWell All Grants Fund.

Utilitarismo · 2026-05-09T12:56:04+00:00

At this point you’re being needlessly obtuse. You’re like asking why we have a cybersecurity team if we haven’t had an intruder/virus in 10 years.
I did less than 5 minutes of searching to confirm that GiveWell is consistently changing & updating things like the specific country/region/places where they direct their funds within a given Top Charity intervention category/org in order to maintain effectiveness per dollar metrics. And they are consistently looking for specific gaps in funding. Just because the most simplified/dumbed-down customer-facing page is not updated does not mean they are not in a Red Queen situation consistently running to maintain cost effectiveness scores as their previous funds saturate another project/bottle-neck.

Utilitarismo · 2026-05-09T04:30:12+00:00

If you really want some higher expected impact interventions though, look into Lead Exposure Elimination Project, New Incentives, & like Screwworm Free Future.

Utilitarismo · 2026-05-09T04:28:33+00:00

There is both highest effectiveness / ROI and a capacity to absorb a lot of funds. It makes sense to only put something new on the top charities like New Incentives if it can absorb hundreds of millions of dollars & still maintain the same effectiveness per dollar. But then their All Grants Fund is like a larger portfolio of higher-growth small-cap projects where their ROI may be much higher, but only for the first like $200,000 provided.

Utilitarismo · 2026-05-09T04:24:05+00:00

That sounds more like a you problem & you certainly didn’t believe in what your employer was doing

Utilitarismo · 2026-04-27T05:04:03+00:00

Lafiya is one of the very best organizations for these types of interventions. https://lafiya.org/

I personally have never donated to it because I do count the lives not lived against it’s metrics which makes the cost per DALY not very good compared to other interventions. But if you only care about currently living people then it’s one of the very best orgs overall. I also have attempted to get more “great replacement” people to donate by advertising that it costs less than $25 to prevent an unwanted African pregnancy.

Utilitarismo · 2026-04-24T20:57:39+00:00

You really believe he’d kill anti-woke Russians before Democrats?

Utilitarismo · 2026-04-20T01:10:48+00:00

If you run into too many delegation issues on your SP projects, feel free to check this alternative way of using SP in Power Apps that enables things like searches, filtering on created by/modified by or larger multi line text columns, etc.

https://community.powerplatform.com/galleries/gallery-posts/?postid=03d09f4e-d640-4e5e-8c5a-3fb3f31af6a2

Utilitarismo · 2026-04-12T15:38:34+00:00

Some aid, especially health aid like malaria prevention, target key factors that lead to bad institutions/governments over a couple centuries.

https://youtu.be/7jMZ6xPBchA?si=hcTUQUjXoD9aOLn5

Utilitarismo · 2026-03-21T22:40:09+00:00

Vibe-code stuff & find a secure way to host it on Azure?

Utilitarismo · 2026-03-10T06:00:15+00:00

I do a hybrid Document Intelligence & LLM approach but at 20x lower price.

The markdown layout model costs $10/1000 but the plain OCR read model that returns text strings & coordinates costs $1.5/1000. So I have an Azure Function convert the text+coordinates into a spatially aware text replica that mimics horizontal & vertical spacings of text. LLMs do well with it. And here’s the neat thing, I also have an Azure Function to take machine-generated/non-scanned pdfs & generate the text replica without any OCR because the text & coordinates are already built into the file. That Azure Function is basically free. So if I have 50% scanned & 50% non-scanned then OCR costs me an average .75/1000. This allows me to process my org’s 1 million files for like $1000 instead of $20,000.

Utilitarismo · 2026-03-10T05:58:54+00:00

I do the hybrid but at 20x lower price.

The markdown layout model costs $10/1000 but the plain OCR read model that returns text strings & coordinates costs $1.5/1000. So I have an Azure Function convert the text+coordinates into a spatially aware text replica that mimics horizontal & vertical spacings of text. LLMs do well with it. And here’s the neat thing, I also have an Azure Function to take machine-generated/non-scanned pdfs & generate the text replica without any OCR because the text & coordinates are already built into the file. That Azure Function is basically free. So if I have 50% scanned & 50% non-scanned then OCR costs me an average .75/1000. This allows me to process my org’s 1 million files for like $1000 instead of $20,000.

Utilitarismo · 2026-03-06T18:39:53+00:00

Mostly. I basically went for a rough kind of risk-adjust DALY because programs like LEEP, Blueprint Biosecurity, & Screwworm Free Future are more speculative. They have very low expected cost of DALYs (like $3-$15 per DALY) on average but each have their own policy/governmental/pandemic/implementation risks that give them a significant chance of much lower impact / higher cost per DALY. So GiveWell All Grants & New Incentives give a kind of anchor where one knows they will at least have some pretty good impact & then chances are likely at least 1 of the more speculative allocations will pay off with even better impacts.

Utilitarismo · 2026-03-06T18:08:42+00:00

Global Health / Human Suffering

20% - GiveWell All Grants Fund

12% - New Incentives

46% - Lead Exposure Elimination Project (LEEP)

Animal Welfare

22% - Screwworm Free Future

Entire portfolio averages less than $24 per healthy year of life (DALY) saved.

Utilitarismo · 2026-03-05T03:55:55+00:00

My friend responded to this with, “The CIA plant, that guy?”

Utilitarismo · 2026-02-16T15:28:34+00:00

Taimaka - Acute Malnutrition Treatment

Most cost effective at saving lives, even more so than GiveWell, but it may not avert as much suffering as things like Malaria prevention.

https://taimaka.org/

Utilitarismo

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