Podcasts about hli

In this episode of “Life Matters”, Aoife is joined by Paul McGreggor, her coleague in HLI who gives his journey to faith and his work in HLI. L'articolo E80 | Life Matters – Dr. Aoife Collins – Paul McGreggor proviene da Radio Maria.

The ASX 200 rose 6 points to 7937 (0.1%) in quiet trade ahead of the Budget. Banks were firm with the Big Bank Basket at $242.34 (+1.5%). Tariff proof fenced perhaps. CBA up 1.4% and insurers better too, QBE up 0.3%. REITs were a little mixed, GMG down 0.6% and SCG rising 0.6%. RPL was smashed 14.8% on news from OPT that it had missed Phase III end point. RPL owns 32% of the biotech. In the industrials, WOW and COL both giving back some of the optimism from Friday's ACCC report. Tech stocks also under pressure, WTC down 2.9% and 360 falling 4.4%. The All-Tech Index down 0.5%. Retail weaker, PMV down 2.9% with NCK off 2.0% and MYR down 2.1%. WES rose as did JBH.Resources were a mixed bag of lollies. BHP fell 0.6% with FMG up 3.2% on some broker upgrades. Gold miners were mixed, VAU down 3.2% with NST off 1.3% and BGL dropping 12.8% on change in substantial holding. MIN bounced 6.9% as the haul road reopened. Oil and gas flat, coal eased, NHC down 4.4% and WHC off with uranium sellers back. BOE down 3.5% and DYL falling 1.8%. In corporate news, JHX announced a huge US merger and dropped 14.5% on the news. HLI fell 25.6% as CBA said it may not renew its contract. SM1 curdled 12.0% on unimpressive results.Nothing on the economic front. Asian markets flat. 10-year yields back up to 4.42%.Want to invest with Marcus Today? The Managed Strategy Portfolio is designed for investors seeking exposure to our strategy while we do the hard work for you. If you're looking for personal financial advice, our friends at Clime Investment Management can help. Their team of licensed advisers operates across most states, offering tailored financial planning services.  Why not sign up for a free trial? Gain access to expert insights, research, and analysis to become a better investor.

In this episode of “Life Matters”, Brian Brady of HLI joins Aoife.  Brian tells about his background and faith journey and a procession in Athlone. L'articolo E78 | Life Matters – Dr. Aoife Collins – Brian Brady proviene da Radio Maria.

 The ASX gave up another 56 points to 8252 (0.7%). Results and a negative US lead dominated. Some real shockers today, JLG, DMP and VEA in the frame. Banks and sellers return with CBA down 1.3% and NAB falling 1.4% as the Big Bank Basket fell to $250.25 (-1.1%). MQG slipped 1.0% and PNI retreated 3.3%. Insurers firmed and REITs did better after the sell off yesterday. GMG failed to inspire again though down another 1.4%. Industrials weakened, WES fell 3.4% with ALL off 2.8% and retail suffering again. JBH down 0.5% with DMP falling 10.5% on results and store closure costs. LOV dropped % on broker downgrades, GYG continued to fall, and WTC remained under pressure ahead of results tomorrow, off 2.8%. Tech generally eased with the All-Tech Index down 1.4%. Resources were weak too, BHP, RIO and FMG under pressure, MIN fell 4.6% and PRN rallied 8.6% on a rethink. gold miners found some buyers, NEM bucked that trend down 2.8%. WDS rose 2.8% on better-than-expected results, VEA collapsed 26.7% on challenging condition in the convenience space, uranium stocks were punished again today.  In corporate news, JLG fell 33.4% as it revised down guidance on lack of natural disasters.ZIP rose 13.9% on better results, HLI up 17.2% too on better numbers. QOR rose 4.3% on results and DRO fell 8.6% as numbers underwhelmed. In economic news, nothing locally, South Korea cut rates by 25bps. Asian markets fell, HK down 0.6%, China off 0.1% and Japan off 0.3%. 10-year yields slipped to 4.39%. Want to invest with Marcus Today? The Managed Strategy Portfolio is designed for investors seeking exposure to our strategy while we do the hard work for you. If you're looking for personal financial advice, our friends at Clime Investment Management can help. Their team of licensed advisers operates across most states, offering tailored financial planning services.  Why not sign up for a free trial? Gain access to expert insights, research, and analysis to become a better investor.

Miðvikudagur 19. febrúar Úkraína, reynsluboltar, spilling, ópera, uppskera og kvóti Tjörvi Schiöth doktorsnemi greinir breytta stöðu í Úkraínu og Evrópu eftir stefnubreytingu ríkisstjórnar Trump í samtali við Gunnar Smára. Karl Garðarsson, Guðmundur Þ. Ragnarsson og Steingerður Steinarsdóttir ræða málin við Sigurjón Magnúsi. Víða var komið við, í Úkraínu, hér og þar í Evrópu, í Hvíta húsi Trump, í borgarstjórn og ríkisstjórn. Þórður Snær Júlíusson er gestur Björns Þorlákssonar í umræðu um íslenska spillingu. Þórður er sérfræðingur íslensku efnahagslífi og ræðir það sem hann nefnir strokuspillingu. Þórunn Guðmundsdóttir samdi óperuna Hliðarspor til að framlengja söguna sem hófst í Rakaranum frá Sevilla og hélt áfram með Brúðkaupi Fígarós. Hún segir frá Gunnar Smára frá sýningunni með söngfólki: Hafsteinn Þórólfsson, Þórunn Guðmundsdóttir og Guðrún Brjánsdóttir. Uppskeruhátíð. Listakonurnar Kolbrún Dögg Kjartansdóttir og Margrét M. Norðdahl ræða við Oddnýju Eir um mikilvægi uppskeruhátíða í baráttu fyrir betra lífi. Björn Ólafsson, gamall sjómaður með meiru, ræðir fiskveiðiráðgjöf Hafró við nafna sinn Þorláksson með gagnrýnum hætti.

In this episode of Chatechesis, Deacon Don speaks with Luke McCann of HLI.  He speaks about an upcoming conference in Dublin and events around the country.  John Emmanuel describes how he wrote the song about Carlo Acutis.   L'articolo Chatechesis – Deacon Don – Luke McCann – John Emmanuel and his Carlo Acutis song proviene da Radio Maria.

Við hefjum þáttinn á því að hringja í nýbakaðan Grammy-verðlaunahafa, Víking Heiðar Ólafsson. Þær Kristín Sveinsdóttir söngkona og Þórunn Guðmundsdóttir verða einnig gestir okkar í dag. Kristín syngur í Hliðarspori, nýrri óperu Þórunnar sem fruflutt verður á fimmtudag, og í Brúðkaupi Fígarós, sem Kammeróperan sýnir nú í Borgarleikhúsinu. Báðar óperurnar, og reyndar Rakarinn í Sevilla sem Óður sýnir í Sjálfstæðishúsinu, eru byggðar á leikritum sama leikskálds og fjalla að miklu leyti um sömu persónurnar, en þó á ólíkum tímum. Við ræðum þessa óperuveislu í þætti dagsins. Soffía Auður Birgisdóttir rýnir í Strá fyrir straumi, bók Erlu Huldar Halldórsdóttur um ævi Sigríðar Pálsdóttur. Trausti Ólafsson rýnir í Árið án sumars, sem Marmarabörnin frumsýndu í Borgarleikhúsinu um helgina.

Við höfum fjallað talsvert um fjármál og heimilisbókhald undanfarið í Mannlega þættinum, t.d. með Fjármálunum á mannamáli á mánudögum. Þá kemur gjarnan upp hugtakið fjármálalæsi og hvort það sé til dæmis lögð nógu mikil áhersla á að kenna fjármálalæsi í skólum landsins. Kristín Lúðvíksdóttir, sem vinnur í fræðslu- og menntamálum hjá Samtökum fyrirtækja í fjármálaþjónustu, kom í þáttinn í dag og sagði okkur til dæmis frá Fjármálaleikunum, keppni grunnskólanna í fjármálalæsi, sem haldin hefur verið í nokkur ár á vegum Fjármálavits, sem er fræðsluvettvangur um fjármálalæsi ungmenna. Svo var það Katrín mikla, hún var þýsk en varð óvænt keisaraynja Rússlands 1762. Hún varð einvaldur í einu mesta feðraveldi Evrópu og gerði Rússland að stórveldi, reyndi að bæta hag almennings, en sýndi líka mikla hörku þegar svo bar undir. Illugi Jökulsson kom til okkar og sagði frá Katrínu miklu og áhrifum hennar allt til dagsins í dag, sem hann mun kenna á námskeiði hjá Endurmenntun HÍ. Eftir rúmar tvær vikur verður frumflutt ný íslensk ópera í Gamla bíói. Þetta er óperan Hliðarspor eftir Þórunni Guðmundsdóttur. Sýningin er hluti af svokölluðum Figaró-þríleik, en fyrri hlutar hans, Rakarinn í Sevilla og Brúðkaup Figarós, verða í sýningu á svipuðum tíma í flutningi Sviðslistahópsins Óðs og Kammeróperunnar. Allar þessar óperur byggja á leikritum franska leikskáldsins og athafnamannsins Pierre Beaumarchais. Síðasta leikritið er minnst þekkt, en Hliðarspor er byggt á því. Óperan gerist ca. 20 árum eftir að Brúðkaupi Figarós lýkur. Í helstu hlutverkum eru átta einsöngvarar og níu manna kammersveit sér um meðleikinn. Við töluðum við Þórunni höfund verksins og Hafstein Þórólfsson sem syngur eitt aðalhlutverkið og heyrðum áhugavert brot úr sýningunni. Tónlist í þættinum: Daglega fer mér fram / Mannakorn (Magnús Eiríksson) Ég fer í nótt / Vilhjálmur Vilhjálmsson (J. Allison, texti Ómar Ragnarsson) Vesturgata / Björgvin Halldórsson (Gunnar Þórðarson og Ólafur Haukur Símonarson) UMSJÓN GUÐRÚN GUNNARSDÓTTIR OG GUNNAR HANSSON

In episode 726 of QAV, Tony and Cameron pay tribute to the late Donald Sutherland, then shift to discussing fluctuations in the crude oil market, a deep dive into Ben Graham's investment principles and their relevance today, alongside a detailed analysis of TabCorp Holdings, the market's over-reaction to HLI news, and FND breaking the curse of the pulled pork.

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Posts from 2023 you thought were valuable (and underrated), published by Lizka on March 22, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum. I'm sharing: a list of posts that were marked as "most valuable" by the most people (who marked posts as "most valuable" in Forum Wrapped 2023), and a list of posts that were most underrated by karma relative to the number of "most valuable" votes. These lists are not objective or "true" collections of the most valuable and underrated posts from 2023. Relatively few people marked posts as "most valuable," and I imagine that those who did, didn't do it very carefully or comprehensively. And there are various factors that would bias the results (like the fact that we ordered posts by upvotes and karma on the "Wrapped" page, people probably remember more recent posts more, etc.). Consider commenting if there are other posts you would like to highlight! This post is almost identical to last year's post: Posts from 2022 you thought were valuable (or underrated). Which posts did the most Forum users think were "most valuable"? Note that we ordered posts in "Wrapped" by your own votes, followed by karma score, meaning higher-karma posts probably got more "most valuable" votes. "Most valuable" count Author(s)[1] Title 28 @Peter Wildeford EA is three radical ideas I want to protect 28 @Ariel Simnegar Open Phil Should Allocate Most Neartermist Funding to Animal Welfare 24 @AGB 10 years of Earning to Give 14 @Bob Fischer Rethink Priorities' Welfare Range Estimates 13 @Rockwell On Living Without Idols 12 @Nick Whitaker The EA community does not own its donors' money 11 @Jakub Stencel EA's success no one cares about 11 @tmychow, @basil.halperin , @J. Zachary Mazlish AGI and the EMH: markets are not expecting aligned or unaligned AI in the next 30 years 10 @Luke Freeman We can all help solve funding constraints. What stops us? 10 @zdgroff How Long Do Policy Changes Matter? New Paper 9 @kyle_fish Net global welfare may be negative and declining 9 @ConcernedEAs Doing EA Better 7 @Lucretia Why I Spoke to TIME Magazine, and My Experience as a Female AI Researcher in Silicon Valley 7 @Michelle_Hutchinson Why I love effective altruism 7 @JamesSnowden Why I don't agree with HLI's estimate of household spillovers from therapy 7 @Ren Ryba Reminding myself just how awful pain can get (plus, an experiment on myself) 7 @Amy Labenz EA is good, actually 7 @Ben_West Third Wave Effective Altruism 6 @Ben Pace Sharing Information About Nonlinear 6 @Zachary Robinson EV updates: FTX settlement and the future of EV 6 @NunoSempere My highly personal skepticism braindump on existential risk from artificial intelligence. 6 @leopold Nobody's on the ball on AGI alignment 6 @saulius Why I No Longer Prioritize Wild Animal Welfare 6 @Elika Advice on communicating in and around the biosecurity policy community 6 @Derek Shiller, @Bernardo Baron, @Chase Carter, @Agustín Covarrubias, @Marcus_A_Davis, @MichaelDickens, @Laura Duffy, @Peter Wildeford Rethink Priorities' Cross-Cause Cost-Effectiveness Model: Introduction and Overview 6 @Karthik Tadepalli What do we really know about growth in LMICs? (Part 1: sectoral transformation) 6 @Nora Belrose AI Pause Will Likely Backfire Which were most underrated by karma? I looked at the number of people who had marked something as "most valuable," and then divided by [karma score]^1.5. (This is what I did last year, too.[2]) We got more ratings this year, so my cutoff was at least three votes this year (vs. two last year). "Most valuable" count Author(s) Title 3 @RobBensinger er The basic reasons I expect AGI ruin 3 @Zach Stein-Perlman AI policy ideas: Reading list 3 @JoelMcGuire, @Samuel Dupret, @Ryan Dwyer, @MichaelPlant, @mklapow, @Happier Lives Institute Talking through depression: The cost-effectiveness of psychotherapy in LMICs, revised and...

ASX rose a modest 10 points to 7663 (+0.1%). Off early lows. Results the focal point again. Once again, the banks doing the heavy lifting with the Big Bank Basket up to $205.96 (+0.8%). CBA leading the charge up 1.0%. MQG up 0.8% and GQG up 1.4%. While NAB, WBC and ANZ hit 52-week highs. Insurers slid, with QBE up 0.4% and SUN down 1.9%. REITs falling, GMG down 0.6% and SGP off 1.1%, with MGR down 1.8%. Industrials going well, WES up 0.7% and WOW up 0.9% with COL shooting the lights out on results, up 5.5%. Telcos down led by TPG on broker reaction falling 4.3%. In resources, iron ore stocks shrugged off weaker prices, BHP up 0.2% and RIO up 0.5%. Lithium stocks mixed, IGO up 1.2% and MIN up 0.9%. Uranium pushed ahead with PDN getting some positive broker comments. Gold miners fell, with NST down 0.9% and NEM off 3.8%. Oil and gas mixed, WDS up 0.9% on results. In corporate news, CSR announced a binding agreement with the French up 5.0%, good results from REH, GEM and HLI, but the market didn't like JLG crashing 13.2% and TYR giving back recent gains despite better results, falling 10.0%. ZIP had a volatile day spurting ahead before a rethink, closing down 14.4%. PNV swung to a profit though falling 1.7%, and ABC announced the nod to CRH's bid. Nothing on the economic front. Japanese CPI only thing of note. Asian markets mixed, Japan flat. China up 0.5%, and HK down 0.4%. 10Y yields slightly higher at 4.15%. Dow Futures down 19 points. NASDAQ Futures down 25 points. Why not sign up for a free trial? Get access to expert market insights and manage your investments with confidence.Ready to invest in yourself? Join the Marcus Today community.

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: HLI's Giving Season 2023 Research Overview, published by Happier Lives Institute on November 28, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Summary At the Happier Lives Institute, we look for the most cost-effective interventions and organisations that improve subjective wellbeing, how people feel during and about their lives[1]. We quantify the impact in 'Wellbeing Adjusted Life-Years', or WELLBYs[2]. To learn more about our approach, see our key ideas page and our research methodology page. Last year, we published our first charity recommendations. We recommended StrongMinds, an NGO aiming to scale depression treatment in sub-saharan Africa, as our top funding opportunity, but noted the Against Malaria Foundation could be better under some assumptions. This year, we maintain our recommendation for StrongMinds, and we've added the Against Malaria Foundation as a second top charity. We have substantially updated our analysis of psychotherapy, undertaking a systematic review and a revised meta-analysis, after which our estimate for StrongMinds has declined from 8x to 3.7x as cost-effective as cash transfers, in WELLBYs, resulting in a larger overlap in the cost-effectiveness of StrongMinds and AMF[3]. The decline in cost-effectiveness is primarily due to lower estimated household spillovers, our new correction for publication bias, and the prediction that StrongMinds might have smaller than average effects. We've also started evaluating another mental health charity, Friendship Bench, an NGO that delivers problem-solving therapy in Zimbabwe. Our initial estimates suggest that the Friendship Bench may be 7x more cost-effective, in WELLBYs, than cash transfers. We think Friendship Bench is a promising cost-effective charity, but we have not yet investigated it as thoroughly, so our analysis is more preliminary, uncertain, and likely to change. As before, we don't recommend cash transfers or deworming: the former because it's likely psychotherapy is several times more cost-effective, the latter because it remains uncertain if deworming has a long-term effect on wellbeing. This year, we've also conducted shallow investigations into new cause areas. Based on our preliminary research, we think there are promising opportunities to improve wellbeing by preventing lead exposure, improving childhood nutrition, improving parenting (e.g., encouraging stimulating play, avoiding maltreatment), preventing violence against women and children, and providing pain relief in palliative care. In general, the evidence we've found on these topics is weaker, and our reports are shallower, but we highlight promising charities and research opportunities in these areas. We've also found a number of less promising causes, which we discuss briefly to inform others. In this report, we provide an overview of all our evaluations to date. We group them into two categories, In-depth and Speculative, based on our level of investigation. We discuss these in turn. In-depth evaluations: relatively late stage investigations that we consider moderate-to-high depth. Top charities: These are well-evidenced interventions that are cost-effective[4] and have been evaluated in medium-to-high depth. We think of these as the comparatively 'safer bets'. Promising charities: These are well-evidenced opportunities that are potentially more cost-effective than the top charities, but we have more uncertainty about. We want to investigate them more before recommending them as a top charity. Non-recommended charities: These are charities we've rigorously evaluated but the current evidence suggests are less cost-effective than our top charities. Speculative evaluations: early stage investigations that are shallow in depth. Promising bets: These are high-priority opportunities to research because we think they're potentially mor...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: A Thanksgiving gratitude post to EA, published by Joy Bittner on November 23, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Despite the complicated and imperfect origins of American Thanksgiving, what's worth preserving is the moment it offers for society to step back and count our blessings. And in this moment, I want to express my gratitude to the EA community. It's been a hard year for EA, and many of us have felt increasing levels of disillusionment. Still, a huge thank you to each of you for being part of this messy, but beautiful family. What I love about EA is that at our core, we are people who look around and see a world is world is messed up and kind of shitty. But also, when we see this mess, we deeply feel a moral responsibility to do something about it. And rather than falling into despair, we are optimistic enough to think we can actually do something about it. This more than anything else is what I think makes this a special community, a group of people who still think we can work together to build a better world. More than anything else, thank you for that. Transitioning from the general to the specific, I want to express gratitude to the EA community for enabling my work with Vida Plena, a mental health organization I founded in Ecuador. I am certain that without EA's support, Vida Plena would not exist. As a backstory, Vida Plena had been an idea bouncing around in my head for a few years. Finally, due to the pandemic, I decided to give it a try. My plan was to burn through all my personal savings, hoping it would be enough to get us off the ground and attract the attention of some traditional international development organizations for long-term funding. It was a significant long shot, but the best I had. Then came EA. In 2021 I started working operations for the Happier Lives Institute, which was my first real baptism into EA. I told HLI from the start that my priority was going to be Vida Plena, and they still hired me- even giving me significant amounts of flexibility. This would never happen in the highly competitive traditional nonprofit world. But as Micheal Plant generously told me then: EA is about seeking the greatest impact, so if that is Vida Plena, they would be there for me for it. Since then, the HLI team has continued to support me with research help, feedback, and much love (although to be clear, not money). Thank you especially to Samuel Dupret for countless hours on our predictive CEA and Barry Grimes for giving all the comms support. Peter, I so appreciate all our long walks and chats. Then the broader EA community stepped up and supported this project financially. When Vida Plena was still just an idea in my head, two exceptional individuals I met at EAG London 2021 stepped up and promised me the funding needed to run our pilot. This was the encouragement I needed to go from "I really think I want to do this" to "Well, now I have to do it." It's a very scary step to launch something new, but knowing that they believed in me enough to put their own money behind the idea was overwhelming. To these individuals, you know who you are - I can't express my gratitude enough. The fact that you trusted an almost stranger still deeply moves me. And with that, I need to say thank you to everyone who put in so much work to organize EAG, and all the people who financed it to bring so many people together. I would have never met these angel donors if it wasn't for the CEA team and volunteers. Next, I need to thank Joey Savoie and the whole Charity Entrepreneurship team. Although they rejected my application the first year (encouragement to keep trying for anyone else who's not made it), the next year they took a risk to include me and my co-founder, Anita Kaslin, in the Incubator Program with our outside-the-box idea. And you haven't stopped supportin...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: GWWC's evaluations of evaluators, published by Sjir Hoeijmakers on November 22, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. The Giving What We Can research team is excited to share the results of our first round of evaluations of charity evaluators and grantmakers! After announcing our plans for a new research direction last year, we have now completed five[1] evaluations that will inform our donation recommendations for this giving season. There are substantial limitations to these evaluations, but we nevertheless think that this is a significant improvement on the status quo, in which there were no independent evaluations of evaluators' work. We plan to continue to evaluate evaluators, extending the list beyond the five we've covered so far, improving our methodology, and regularly renewing our existing evaluations. In this post, we share the key takeaways from each of these evaluations, and link to the full reports. Our website will be updated to reflect the new fund and charity recommendations that came out of these evaluations (alongside many other updates) on Monday, the 27th. We are sharing these reports in advance of our website update so those interested have time to read them and can ask questions before our AMA next Monday and Tuesday. We're also sharing some context about why and how we evaluate evaluators, which will be included in our Monday website update as well. One other exciting (and related) announcement: we'll be launching our new GWWC cause area funds on Monday! These funds (which you'll see referenced in the reports) will make grants based on our latest evaluations of evaluators, advised by the evaluators we end up working with.[2] We are launching them to provide a strong and easy default donation option for donors, and one that will stay up-to-date over time (i.e., donors can set up a recurring donation to these funds knowing that it will always be allocated based on GWWC's latest research). donation platform as well. We look forward to your questions and comments, and in particular to engaging with you in our AMA! (Please note that we may not be able to reply to many comments until then, as we are finalising the website updates and some of us will be on leave.) Global health and wellbeing GiveWell (GW) Based on our evaluation, we've decided to continue to rely on GW's charity recommendations and to ask GW to advise our new GWWC Global Health and Wellbeing Fund. Some takeaways that inform this decision include: GW's overall processes for charity recommendations and grantmaking are generally very strong, reflecting a lot of best practices in finding and funding the most cost-effective opportunities. GW's cost-effectiveness analyses stood up to our quality checks. We thought its work was remarkably evenhanded (we never got the impression that the evaluations were exaggerated), and we generally found only minor issues in the substance of its reasoning, though we did find issues with how well this reasoning was presented and explained. We found it noteworthy how much subjective judgement plays a role in its work, especially with how GW compares different outcomes (like saving and improving lives), and also in some key parameters in its cost-effectiveness analyses supporting deworming. We think reasonable people could come to different conclusions than GW does in some cases, but we think GW's approach is sufficiently well justified overall for our purposes. For more, please see the evaluation report. Happier Lives Institute (HLI) We stopped this evaluation short of finishing it, because we thought the costs of finalising it outweighed the potential benefits at this stage. For more on this decision and on what we did learn about HLI, please see the evaluation report. Animal welfare EA Funds' Animal Welfare Fund (AWF) Based on our evaluation, we've decide...

What do you do when the church and your pastor fail you?  Pastors are supposed to be the shepherds of the church. One of their main jobs is to protect the flock and keep them focused and on the right path towards Christ.  Could you imagine if the pastor of your church had been sexually abusing the church's children?  The children that he is responsible for protecting.  Bridget Goodwin was just 13 years old when the pastor of her church began sexually abusing/assaulting her in his office at the church. The abusive control and complete mind manipulation lasted for fourteen long years.  She was consumed by guilt and shame and held the heavy burden of silence, afraid to come forward.  By the time she had gained the courage and gone to the church's elders, nothing had happened, and her hope and freedom from bondage were gone.  It wasn't until the pastor had passed that Briget was finally free from the man who caused so much psychological and sexual torment in her life. His death marked the end of captivity for her, and she felt set free for the first time in years.   Bridget went on to meet an amazing man and pastor, who she is still happily married to today.  The discovery of who God is, and what a pastor should be for God's church reshaped her beliefs and gave her immense peace and healing. The journey of recovery from the trauma led her into a passion for music. She knew God had given her a voice and a new song to sing.-a beautiful song of redemption and hope. She wants others to find their voice and refuse to be silenced by their abuse. Her and her husband founded the organization, I Have a Voice Ministries, to help set other victims free from the bondage of silence.  Connect with Bridget Goodwin E-mail:  bridget@hlionline.og www.HLI.online.org (701) 231-0698 Social Media Links: @ihaveavoice2023 Insta @harvestlabourers Insta/FB Harvest Laborer's International  

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Pilot Results: High-Impact Psychology/ Mental Health (HIPsy), published by Inga on September 8, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. This is a rough write-up of the results of all the HIPsy pilot activities, outcomes, and suggestions on what to do next. Below, you can find links to created resources for those involved in psychology or mental health who aim to maximize their impact. Additionally, there are results from events and surveys highlighting which (other) resources might be most beneficial for enhancing their impact. You can learn more about the initial project and plan in this EA forum post. Executive summary Within this EAIF- funded project, I ran three surveys to determine the demand for network activities, piloted 5 events at EAGx's, and collaborated with others on highly requested materials. Below, you can find the results of these activities. Main outcomes Importance/general Demand:Roughly twice as many people expressed interest in mental health as a cause area (N = 164) compared to those interested in resources for individuals with a background in psychology or how to make an impact with various psychology-related topics (N = 76/77) Neglectedness: The EA Psychology Research Initiative by Lucius Caviola, among others, appears to meet the infrastructural needs around general psychology-related impact regarding longtermist goals. Those infrastructural needs around helping people to have an impact in the mental health space do not yet seem to be covered, even though the work of the HLI paved the way for mental health as a cause area taken seriously within EA. Mental Health-related activities most requested:Among the mental health-related network activities, the most requested ones are mentoring, meetups, workshops, as well as materials related to topics on how to make an impact in the mental health space. The piloted events (talks and workshops/meetups) at EAGxs demonstrated significant interest, evinced by the high number of participants and high perceived impact ratings. Conclusions: More mental health-related infrastructure building seems impactful. The space would benefit from more organized, targeted resources that enable people to make a more substantial impact in a shorter period of time. I believe it would be a good idea to invest in follow-up funding based on the results of this initiative to establish cost-effective corresponding structures and to hire at least one project/community manager for a year. Based on the survey results, this person would build the pool of volunteers to offer and measure the impact of requested events, materials, and a mentoring service. How can you help? If you'd like to fund follow-up activities, feel free to reach out to me at inga@rethinkwellbeing.org.If you'd be interested in the project manager role, you can apply in

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Learning from our mistakes: how HLI plans to improve, published by PeterBrietbart on September 1, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Hi folks, in this post we'd like to describe our views as the Chair (Peter) and Director (Michael) of HLI in light of the recent conversations around HLI's work. The purpose of this post is to reflect on HLI's work and its role within the EA community in response to community member feedback, highlight what we're doing about it, and engage in further constructive dialogue on how HLI can improve moving forward. HLI hasn't always got things right. Indeed, we think there have been some noteworthy errors (quick note: our goal here isn't to delve into details but to highlight broad lessons learnt, so this isn't an exhaustive list): Most importantly, we were overconfident and defensive in communication, particularly around our 2022 giving season post. We described our recommendation for StrongMinds using language that was too strong: "We're now in a position to confidently recommend StrongMinds as the most effective way we know of to help other people with your money". We agree with feedback that this level of confidence was and is not commensurate with the strength of the evidence and the depth of our analysis. The post's original title was "Don't give well, give WELLBYs". Though this was intended in a playful manner, it was tone-deaf, and we apologise. We made mistakes in our analysis. We made a data entry error. In our meta-analysis, we recorded that Kemp et al. (2009) found a positive effect, but in fact it was a negative effect. This correction reduced our estimated 'spillover effect' for psychotherapy (the effect that someone receiving an intervention had on other people) from 53% to 38% and therefore reduced the total cost-effectiveness estimate from 9.5x cash transfers to 7.5x. We did not include standard diagnostic tests of publication bias. If we had done this, we would have decreased our confidence in the quality of the literature on psychotherapy that we were using. After receiving feedback about necessary corrections to our cost-effectiveness estimates for psychotherapy and StrongMinds, we failed to update our materials on our website in a timely manner. As a community, EA prides itself on its commitment to epistemic rigour, and we're both grateful and glad that folks will speak up to maintain high standards. We have heard these constructive critiques, and we are making changes in response. We'd like to give a short outline of what HLI is doing next and has done in order to improve its epistemic health and comms processes. We've added an "Our Blunders" page on the HLI website, which lists the errors and missteps we mentioned above. The goal of this page is to be transparent about our mistakes, and to keep us accountable to making improvements. We've added the following text to the places in our website where we discuss StrongMinds: "Our current estimation for StrongMinds is that a donation of $1,000 produces 62 WELLBYs (or 7.5 times GiveDirectly cash transfers). See our changelog. However, we have been working on an update to our analysis since July 2023 and expect to be ready by the end of 2023. This will include using new data and improving our methods. We expect our cost-effectiveness estimate will decrease by about 25% or more - although this is a prediction we are very uncertain about as the analysis is yet to be done. While we expect the cost-effectiveness of StrongMinds will decrease, we think it is unlikely that the cost-effectiveness will be lower than GiveDirectly. Donors may want to wait to make funding decisions until the updated report is finished." We have added more/higher quality controls to our work: Since the initial StrongMinds report, we've added Samuel Dupret (researcher) and Dr Ryan Dwyer (senior research...

Hi folks, in this post we'd like to describe our views as the Chair (Peter) and Director (Michael) of HLI in light of the recent conversations around HLI's work. The purpose of this post is to reflect on HLI's work and its role within the EA community in response to community member feedback, highlight what we're doing about it, and engage in further constructive dialogue on how HLI can improve moving forward. HLI hasn't always got things right. Indeed, we think there have been some noteworthy errors (quick note: our goal here isn't to delve into details but to highlight broad lessons learnt, so this isn't an exhaustive list):Most importantly, we were overconfident and defensive in communication, particularly around our 2022 giving season post. We described our recommendation for StrongMinds using language that was too strong: “We're now in a position to confidently recommend StrongMinds as the most effective way we [...] --- First published: September 1st, 2023 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/4edCygGHya4rGx6xa/learning-from-our-mistakes-how-hli-plans-to-improve --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This episode covers the July 27th House Oversight Committee within the Health Care and Financial Services Subcommittee titled “Hemp in the Modern World: The Yearslong Wait for FDA Action”. The group also discusses new data from analyzing Delta-8-THC products on the market. Our resident GMP and standards expert, David Vaillencourt, moderates this episode. We're also joined by special guest Gillian Schauer, PhD, who testified before the House Oversight Committee. Dr. Schauer is the Executive Director of the Cannabis Regulators Association (CANNRA), a non-partisan association of government agencies that regulate cannabis and hemp across 45 states and US territories. Prior to her leadership at CANNRA, she spent more than a decade working with federal agencies - including the CDC and NIH on cannabis related policy, research, and public health. As usual, HLI co-hosts Jahan Marcu, PhD and Nigam B. Arora, PhD round out the group discussion. If you are a new listener, Dr. Arora advises multistate and multinational cannabis companies as well as psychedelic manufacturers and venture capital firms on translating science into business decisions as the Co-Founder of Marcu & Arora. Dr. Jahan Marcu, the other half of the Marcu & Arora leadership team, has been applying his knowledge on the endocannabinoid system for over 20 years - advising regulatory bodies, providing expert witness services in complex cannabinoid related cases, and has published dozens of articles on cannabinoids and psychedelics. SponsorCloudLIMSGroupDavid Vaillencourt, MSc (moderator)Gillian Schauer, PhDJahan Marcu, PhDNigam B. Arora, PhDGame Segment (5:00)True or False - Cannabis News Headlines Regulatory News (20:40) July 27th House Oversight Committee - “Hemp in the Modern World: The Yearslong Wait for FDA Action”. Congress asks interested parties for information about cannabidiolRapid Fire Science (46:40) Isolation and Characterization of Impurities in Commercially Marketed Δ8-THC ProductsCredits:Cover art by Julia Boot. Podcast audio engineering by Joe Leonardo. Intro music by Buddha by Kontekst. Transition music by K. LOUK. Outro music by Bensounds.More at:howtolaunchanindustry.com

The third and final episode of our Live from Psychedelic Science series focuses on culture. Our team interviewed eight speakers and exhibitors from the conference hailing from various walks of life. The episode kicks off with a psychedelics comedian and rolls into discussion with an experienced energy worker. Next we hear from two non-profit leaders whose organizations champion indigenous reciprocity and fund research to combat the opioid epidemic respectively. From there we engage with two students pursuing advanced science degrees while simultaneously working in the space. Winding down the episode, we hear from a psychedelics attorney focused on the non-profit sector. To close it out, we have HLI day one David Vaillencourt interviewing Co-Host of the show Dr. Nigam B. Arora. InterviewersNigam B. Arora, PhDAmber Wise, PhDCallie HoffmanNeil Ritter, PhDDavid Vaillencourt, MScIntervieweesSara Rose Siskind - Comedian and founder of Hello SciCom (3:23) Taylor Bratches, MFA - Energy worker at Agne and Soma and performing work study at SoundMind Institute (16:55) Lorien Chavez - Development and Operations Officer at Chacruna Institute (26:12) Anna Symonds, MA - Executive Director of The Etheridge Foundation (34:14) Victor Acero - Co-founder of Intercollegiate Psychedelics Network & Penn Psychedelics Collaborative (42:55) Ben Cyrulnik - Graduate student in psychoactive pharmaceutical investigation program at University of Wisconsin Madison (51:20) Victoria Litman, JD - Principal at Litman Law and adjunct professor at Roger Williams School of Law (57:30) Nigam B. Arora, PhD - Co-host at How to Launch an Industry, CEO at Aromarc Therapeutics (1:02:33) Credits:Cover art by Julia Boot. Podcast audio engineering by Joe Leonardo. Intro music by Buddha by Kontekst. Transition music by K. LOUK. Outro music by Bensounds.More at:howtolaunchanindustry.com

GiveWell is one of the world's best-known charity evaluators, with the goal of "searching for the charities that save or improve lives the most per dollar." It mostly recommends projects that help the world's poorest people avoid easily prevented diseases, like intestinal worms or vitamin A deficiency.But should GiveWell, as some critics argue, take a totally different approach to its search, focusing instead on directly increasing subjective wellbeing, or alternatively, raising economic growth?Today's guest — cofounder and CEO of GiveWell, Elie Hassenfeld — is proud of how much GiveWell has grown in the last five years. Its 'money moved' has quadrupled to around $600 million a year.Its research team has also more than doubled, enabling them to investigate a far broader range of interventions that could plausibly help people an enormous amount for each dollar spent. That work has led GiveWell to support dozens of new organisations, such as Kangaroo Mother Care, MiracleFeet, and Dispensers for Safe Water.But some other researchers focused on figuring out the best ways to help the world's poorest people say GiveWell shouldn't just do more of the same thing, but rather ought to look at the problem differently.Links to learn more, summary and full transcript.Currently, GiveWell uses a range of metrics to track the impact of the organisations it considers recommending — such as 'lives saved,' 'household incomes doubled,' and for health improvements, the 'quality-adjusted life year.' The Happier Lives Institute (HLI) has argued that instead, GiveWell should try to cash out the impact of all interventions in terms of improvements in subjective wellbeing. This philosophy has led HLI to be more sceptical of interventions that have been demonstrated to improve health, but whose impact on wellbeing has not been measured, and to give a high priority to improving lives relative to extending them.An alternative high-level critique is that really all that matters in the long run is getting the economies of poor countries to grow. On this view, GiveWell should focus on figuring out what causes some countries to experience explosive economic growth while others fail to, or even go backwards. Even modest improvements in the chances of such a 'growth miracle' will likely offer a bigger bang-for-buck than funding the incremental delivery of deworming tablets or vitamin A supplements, or anything else.Elie sees where both of these critiques are coming from, and notes that they've influenced GiveWell's work in some ways. But as he explains, he thinks they underestimate the practical difficulty of successfully pulling off either approach and finding better opportunities than what GiveWell funds today. In today's in-depth conversation, Elie and host Rob Wiblin cover the above, as well as:Why GiveWell flipped from not recommending chlorine dispensers as an intervention for safe drinking water to spending tens of millions of dollars on themWhat transferable lessons GiveWell learned from investigating different kinds of interventionsWhy the best treatment for premature babies in low-resource settings may involve less rather than more medicine.Severe malnourishment among children and what can be done about it.How to deal with hidden and non-obvious costs of a programmeSome cheap early treatments that can prevent kids from developing lifelong disabilitiesThe various roles GiveWell is currently hiring for, and what's distinctive about their organisational cultureAnd much more.Get this episode by subscribing to our podcast on the world's most pressing problems and how to solve them: type ‘80,000 Hours' into your podcasting app. Or read the transcript below.Producer: Keiran HarrisAudio mastering: Simon Monsour and Ben CordellTranscriptions: Katy Moore

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Charity Entrepreneurship's research into large-scale global health interventions, published by CE on May 16, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. TL;DR: Description of our comprehensive research process, used to determine the most effective charity ideas within the large-scale global health cause area- our focus for the most recent research round. Starting with 300+ ideas, we used our iterative process to find four highly-scalable, cost-effective interventions to be launched from our Incubation Program. Every year at Charity Entrepreneurship, we try to find the best interventions to launch impact-focused charities through our Incubation Program. As a research-driven organization, we try to continuously improve our research methodology and process to ensure a robust and comprehensive analysis of the interventions under consideration. In our last research round (late 2022- early 2023), we focused on the area of large-scale global health. In this post we share with you our insights on the objectives, research framework, and selection criteria that have guided us in identifying and recommending the most impactful ideas in this space. Why “large-scale” global health? There is evidence to suggest that the larger a charity scales, the less cost-effective it becomes. This tradeoff likely applies to most cause areas, but it is most evident in the global health and development space. In this diagram from an Open Philanthropy talk, we can clearly see this correlation mapped out: Source: Open Philanthropy's Cause Prioritization Framework Talk (min. 22:12) The diagram shows GiveWell's top-recommended charities from 2020 clustered on the 10x cash line, each having the ability to spend approximately $100 million or more, annually. GiveDirectly is located on the 1x cash point, having the capacity to spend approximately $100 billion annually. This has lead us to two considerations:: Firstly, it suggests that those who prioritize evidence-based, impact-driven philanthropy may identify highly effective, yet challenging-to-scale interventions that surpass the efficacy of GiveWell's top recommendations. However, identifying such interventions may be challenging. Secondly, it means that Charity Entrepreneurship needs to determine how to balance cost-effectiveness and scalability when recommending potential high-impact interventions. During our 2020 and 2021 research round in the global health and development space, our primary focus was on maximizing cost-effectiveness. We honed in on policy charities in particular, which are likely to reside in the top left quadrant of the scalability versus cost-effectiveness graph; such organizations may be many times more effective than current top recommendations by GiveWell, but have limited capacity to absorb additional funds. For instance, HLI estimates here that LEEP, the longest-running policy charity incubated by Charity Entrepreneurship, is approximately 100 times more cost-effective than cash transfers. In 2022, we made the strategic decision to shift our focus from maximizing cost-effectiveness, to maximizing scalability.This decision was made given the apparent high level of funding available from organizations such as GiveWell. We challenged ourselves to seek out the most promising new charity ideas that could scale to absorb $5 million or more in funding within five years, while also maintaining the same level of cost-effectiveness as current top GiveWell recommendations (10x cash, ~$100/DALY). Our research process In late 2022 and early 2023, we conducted a six-month research round with a team of four staff members, as well as several research fellows, to identify the most promising new charity ideas. Our approach prioritized ideas that met the following criteria, in order of importance: Surpassed our benchmark of 10x cash, and could sc...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Floors and Ceilings, Frameworks and Feelings: SoGive's Impact Analysis Toolkit for Evaluating StrongMinds, published by ishaan on April 15, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Primary author: Ishaan Guptasarma, Principal Analyst at SoGive We recently announced that we will be performing an independent assessment of StrongMinds. This is the first in a series of posts which will culminate in that assessment. Executive Summary In order to conduct our review of StrongMinds, we needed to make decisions about how to measure the effectiveness of psychotherapy. The approaches that we considered were mainly: An approach used by Happier Lives Institute (HLI), which measures the cumulative effect size of therapy over time (SD-Years) by postulating an initial effect which exponentially decays over time, and integrating under the curve. An approach used by some academics, which reports remission rates and number needed to treat (NNT) associated with psychotherapy, and of relapse rates at various time points as reported in longitudinal follow-ups. We decided that the SD-Years approach used by HLI best captures what we're trying to capture, because remission, relapse, and NNT use cut-offs which are arbitrary and poorly standardised. The drawback of this method is that it's based on effect sizes, which can become inflated when ceiling and floor effects artificially reduce the standard deviation. Such artefacts are rarely ever accounted for in meta-analyses and literature that we have encountered. For each step in our methodology, we've created spreadsheet tools which others can use to quickly check and replicate our work and do further analysis. These tools can do: Meta-analysis, for calculating standardised mean differences and aggregating effect sizes across multiple studies to estimate the impact of a therapeutic intervention. Linear regressions and meta-regressions, to calculate the rate at which therapeutic effects decay over time. Conversion from remission rates and NNTs into effect sizes, and relapse rates into decay rates, and vice versa. Conversion of scores between different depression questionnaires. Calculation of "standard deviations of improvement" for a single patient, for building intuitions. About SoGive: SoGive does EA research and supports major donors. If you are a major donor seeking support with your donations, we'd be keen to work with you. Feel free to contact Sanjay on sanjay@sogive.org. 0 Introduction How should the EA community reason about interventions relating to subjective well being? We typically conceptualise the impact of donating to global health anti-malaria charities in terms of figures such as "£5,000 per child's life saved". While evaluating such estimates is difficult, the fundamental question arguably has a "yes or no" answer: was a child's death averted, or not? Measuring impact on subjective well being, which is continuous rather than discrete and is typically measured by self-report, requires a different framework. This post explains the dominant frameworks for thinking about this, explores some of the complications that they introduce, and introduces spreadsheet tools for deploying these frameworks. These tools and analytical considerations that will lay the groundwork for subsequent work. We recommend this post to anyone interested in doing analysis on mental health. It may also be useful to anyone doing impact evaluations on continuous phenomena which manifest as unimodal distributions, especially those which might be approximated as normal distributions. 1 The SD-year framework, and why we prefer it to the alternative Academic studies usually measure the impact of a mental health intervention by using questionnaires to ask how people feel before and after the intervention, and then comparing their scores to a control group which did ...

We get together for this episode to discuss everything from the legacy of the late Raphael Mechoulam, PhD, to the economics of THC and regulated cannabis. This episode features Joshua Hartsel, PhD and the show begins with a fun look at Dr. Mechoulam's massive impact on cannabis research. For the second segment, we discuss the issues regarding “THC inflation” - over estimations of potency and lab shopping that are plaguing the industry. This topic inspired the episode cover art which, in a first for HLI, was created using a generative AI tool (DALL·E 2). We end by discussing our interpretation of a recent publication about the economics of the 420 “holiday” and the impact of adult use regulations on medical cannabis operations. Special thanks to the sponsor of this episode - Queering Psychedelics II Conference by Chacruna Institute Episode's Group:Jahan Marcu, PhD (moderator) Joshua Hartsel, PhDDavid Vaillencourt, MScNigam B. Arora, PhDToday's Game (2:25): Mechoulam's Legacy - Inspired by an Interview with Ethan RussoNews and Popular Literature (20:00): Inflating THCRapid Fire Science (48:25):Economics of 420Credits:Cover art created using DALL·E 2, Podcast audio engineering by Joe Leonardo. Intro music by Buddha by Kontekst. Transition music by K. LOUK. Outro music by Bensounds.More at:howtolaunchanindustry.com

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Lead exposure: a shallow cause exploration, published by JoelMcGuire on April 11, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Summary This shallow cause area report explores the impact of lead exposure in childhood on subjective wellbeing (SWB) in adulthood. It was completed in two weeks. We performed non-systematic searches to estimate the impact of lead exposure on SWB and to find potential cost-effective interventions. We found studies investigating two correlational longitudinal cohorts (following children to adulthood) from New Zealand and Australia analysing the relationship between childhood blood lead levels (BLLs) and adult affective mental health (MHa). Based on this data, our best guess estimate is that an additional microgram of lead per deciliter of blood for each year for ten years of childhood, leads to a total lifelong (62 years) loss of 1.5 WELLBYs, and a larger overall 3.8 WELLBYs loss when we include some guesses about household spillovers. Hence, we estimate that a modest amount of lead exposure severely impacts on wellbeing across the lifespan. From several back of the envelope calculations, we tentatively conclude that lead-reducing interventions would be 1 to 107 times more cost-effective than cash transfers. Advocacy against lead in paint, food, cookware, and cosmetics seems particularly promising. The scarcity of causal and context relevant data means that we are very uncertain about the effect and cost-effectiveness of these interventions. But, given the potentially high cost-effectiveness, we think this is a promising area for additional research. We especially encourage further research into the causal relationship between lead exposure and SWB and the most common sources of lead exposure to reduce uncertainty about the cost-effectiveness of lead interventions. It's unclear if the top organisations working to reduce lead exposure, like Pure Earth or the Lead Exposure Elimination Project (LEEP), have sizable funding gaps. Therefore, we're unsure how much more work should be done to evaluate funding opportunities related to reducing lead exposure for philanthropists aiming to maximise their impact. Notes This report focuses on the impact of lead exposure in terms of WELLBYs. One WELLBY is a 1 life satisfaction point change for one year (or any equivalent combination of change in life satisfaction and time). In some cases, we convert results in standard deviations of SWB to WELLBYs using a 2 point standard deviation on 0-10 life satisfaction scales (i.e., 1 SD change is the equivalent of 2 point changes on a 0-10 life satisfaction scale). We consider the limitations of converting from affective mental health measures to WELLBYs in Appendix A4. This naive conversion is based on estimates from large scale data sets like the World Happiness Reports. See our post on the WELLBY method for more details. Our calculations and data extraction can be found in this Google Spreadsheet and this GitHub repository. The shallowness of this investigation means (1) we include more guesses and uncertainty in our models, (2) we couldn't always conduct the most detailed or complex analyses, (3) we might have missed some data, and (4) we take some findings at face value. Clare Donaldson was co-director of HLI before becoming the current co-director of the Lead Exposure Elimination Project. We do not think this influenced our choices or analysis. Outline In Section 1 we introduce the issue of lead exposure and define some key terms we will use throughout the rest of this report. In Section 2 we explain the mechanisms for how lead exposure could affect wellbeing. In Section 3 we model the harm of lead exposure on subjective wellbeing using studies of two datasets from New Zealand and Australia (n = 789) relating childhood lead exposure to their adult affective mental heal...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: EA & LW Forum Weekly Summary (20th - 26th March 2023), published by Zoe Williams on March 27, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA and LW forums - you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on purpose and methodology. Feedback, thoughts, and corrections are welcomed. If you'd like to receive these summaries via email, you can subscribe here. Podcast version: Subscribe on your favorite podcast app by searching for 'EA Forum Podcast (Summaries)'. A big thanks to Coleman Snell for producing these!Author's note: I'm currently travelling, which means:a) Today's newsletter is a shorter one - only 9 top posts are covered, though in more depth than usual.b) The next post will be on 17th April (three week gap), covering the prior three weeks at a higher karma bar.After that, we'll be back to the regular schedule. Object Level Interventions / Reviews by EJT, CarlShulman Linkpost for this paper, which uses standard cost-benefit analysis (CBA) with detrimental assumptions (eg. giving no value to future generations, only assessing benefits to Americans, and only assessing value from preventing existential threats) to show that even under those conditions governments should be spending much more on averting threats from nuclear war, engineered pandemics, and AI.Their analysis primarily relies on previously published estimates of risks, concluding US citizens alive today have a ~1% risk of dying from these causes in the next decade. They estimate $400B in interventions could reduce the risk by minimum 0.1 percentage points, and that using the lowest figure for the US Department of Transportation's value of a statistical life, this would result in ~$646B in value of American lives saved. They suggest longtermists in the political sphere should change their messaging to revolve around this standard CBA-driven catastrophe policy, which is more democratically acceptable than policies relying on the cost to future generations. They suggest it would also reduce risk almost as much as a strong longtermist policy (particularly if the CBA incorporates an argument for citizens ‘altruistic willingness to pay' ie. some level of addition for the benefit to future generations). by GiveWell The Happier Lives Institute (HLI) has argued that if Givewell used subjective well-being (SWB) measures in their moral weights, they'd find StrongMinds more cost-effective than marginal funding to their top charities. Givewell assessed this claim and estimated StrongMinds is ~25% (5%-80% pessimistic to optimistic CI) as effective as these marginal funding opportunities when using SWB - this equates to 2.3x the effectiveness of GiveDirectly. Key differences in analysis from HLI, by size of impact, include: GiveWell assumes lower spillover effects to household members of those receiving treatment. Givewell translates decreases in depression into increases in life satisfaction at a lower rate than HLI. Givewell expects lower effect in a scaled program, and lower durations of effects (not passing a year) due to the program being only 4-8 weeks. Givewell applies downward adjustments for social desirability bias and publication bias in studies of psychotherapy. These result in an ~83% discount in the effectiveness vs. HLI's analysis. For all points except the fourth, two upcoming RCTs from StrongMinds will provide better data than currently exists. HLI has posted a thorough response in the comments, noting which claims they agree / disagree with and why (5% agree, 45% sympathetic to some discount but unsure of magnitude, 35% unsympathetic but limited evidence, and 15% disagree on the basis of current evidence). Givewell also note for context that HLI's original estimates imply that a donor would pick offering StrongM...

We host Super Bowl XLVII (2013) winner Kelechi Osemele for a sports focused episode! HLI cast member Anna Symonds weighs in heavily having won both the USA Rugby Division I National Championship and Sydney Premiership Championship. The episode begins with a game reviewing shifting cannabis and psychedelics regulations around the world. Next the group discusses the relationship between elite athleticism and psychedelics, spurred by news that NFL quarterback Aarron Rodgers will speak on his personal experiences at Psychedelic Science 2023. The episode wraps up with analysis of a literature review about the therapeutic potential of cannabinoids through a sports medicine lens. Special thanks to the sponsor of this episode The GMP Collective. Episode's Group:Nigam B. Arora, PhD (moderator) Kelechi OsemeleAnna Symonds, MAHadas Alterman, JDToday's Game (2:48): Shifting RegulationsNews and Popular Literature (24:04): Elite Athletes Speak on Experiences with PsychedelicsRapid Fire Science (42:15):Therapeutic Potential for Cannabinoids in Sports Medicine: Current Literature Review Credits:Cover art by Julia Boot, Podcast audio engineering by Joe Leonardo. Intro music by Buddha by Kontekst. Transition music by K. LOUK. Outro music by Bensounds.More at:howtolaunchanindustry.com

I don't think the existing evidence justifies HLI's estimate of 50% household spillovers. My main disagreements are:Two of the three RCTs HLI relies on to estimate spillovers are on interventions specifically intended to benefit household members (unlike StrongMinds' program, which targets women and adolescents living with depression). Those RCTs only measure the wellbeing of a subset of household members most likely to benefit from the intervention.The results of the third RCT are inconsistent with HLI's estimate.Original article:https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/gr4epkwe5WoYJXF32/why-i-don-t-agree-with-hli-s-estimate-of-householdNarrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.Share feedback on this narration.

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Why I don't agree with HLI's estimate of household spillovers from therapy, published by JamesSnowden on February 24, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Summary In its cost-effectiveness estimate of StrongMinds, Happier Lives Institute (HLI) estimates that most of the benefits accrue not to the women who receive therapy, but to household members. According to HLI's estimates, each household member benefits from the intervention ~50% as much as the person receiving therapy. Because there are ~5 non-recipient household members per treated person, this estimate increases the cost-effectiveness estimate by ~250%. i.e. ~70-80% of the benefits of therapy accrue to household members, rather than the program participant. I don't think the existing evidence justifies HLI's estimate of 50% household spillovers. My main disagreements are: Two of the three RCTs HLI relies on to estimate spillovers are on interventions specifically intended to benefit household members (unlike StrongMinds' program, which targets women and adolescents living with depression). Those RCTs only measure the wellbeing of a subset of household members most likely to benefit from the intervention. The results of the third RCT are inconsistent with HLI's estimate. I'd guess the spillover benefit to other household members is more likely to be in the 5-25% range (though this is speculative). That reduces the estimated cost-effectiveness of StrongMinds from 9x to 3-6x cash transfers, which would be below GiveWell's funding bar of 10x. Caveat in footnote. I think I also disagree with other parts of HLI's analysis (including how worried to be about reporting bias; the costs of StrongMinds' program; and the point on a life satisfaction scale that's morally equivalent to death). I'd guess, though I'm not certain, that more careful consideration of each of these would reduce StrongMinds' cost-effectiveness estimate further relative to other opportunities. But I'm going to focus on spillovers in this post because I think it makes the most difference to the bottom line, represents the clearest issue to me, and has received relatively little attention in other critiques. For context: I wrote the first version of Founders Pledge's mental health report in 2017 and gave feedback on an early draft of HLI's report on household spillovers. I've spent 5-10 hours digging into the question of household spillovers from therapy specifically. I work at Open Philanthropy but wrote this post in a personal capacity. I'm reasonably confident the main critiques in this post are right, but much less confident in what the true magnitude of household spillovers is. I admire the work StrongMinds is doing and I'm grateful to HLI for their expansive literature reviews and analysis on this question. Thank you to Joel McGuire, Akhil Bansal, Isabel Arjmand, Alex Cohen, Sjir Hoeijmakers, Josh Rosenberg, and Matt Lerner for their insightful comments. They don't necessarily endorse the conclusions of this post. 0. How HLI estimates the household spillover rate of therapy HLI estimates household spillovers of therapy on the basis of the three RCTs on therapy which collected data on the subjective wellbeing of some of the household members of program participants: Mutamba et al. (2018), Swartz et al. (2008), Kemp et al. (2009). Combining those RCTs in a meta-analysis, HLI estimates household spillover rates of 53% (see the forest plot below; 53% comes from dividing the average household member effect (0.35) by the average recipient effect (0.66)). HLI assumes StrongMinds' intervention will have a similar effect on household members. But, I don't think these three RCTs can be used to generate a reliable estimate for the spillovers of StrongMinds' program for three reasons. 1. Two of the three RCTs HLI relies on to estimate spillovers are on in...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Evaluating StrongMinds: how strong is the evidence?, published by JoelMcGuire on January 19, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. A recent post by Simon_M argued that StrongMinds should not be a top recommended charity (yet), and many people seemed to agree. While I think Simon raised several useful points regarding StrongMinds, he didn't engage with the cost-effectiveness analysis of StrongMinds that I conducted for the Happier Lives Institute (HLI) in 2021 and justified this decision on the following grounds: “Whilst I think they have some of the deepest analysis of StrongMinds, I am still confused by some of their methodology, it's not clear to me what their relationship to StrongMinds is.”. By failing to discuss HLI's analysis, Simon's post presented an incomplete and potentially misleading picture of the evidence base for StrongMinds. In addition, some of the comments seemed to call into question the independence of HLI's research. I'm publishing this post to clarify the strength of the evidence for StrongMinds, HLI's independence, and to acknowledge what we've learned from this discussion. I raise concerns with several of Simon's specific points in a comment on the original post. In the rest of this post, I'll respond to four general questions raised by Simon's post that were too long to include in my comment. I briefly summarise the issues below and then discuss them in more detail in the rest of the post 1. Should StrongMinds be a top-rated charity? In my view, yes. Simon claims the conclusion is not warranted because StrongMinds' specific evidence is weak and implies implausibly large results. I agree these results are overly optimistic, so my analysis doesn't rely on StrongMind's evidence alone. Instead, the analysis is based mainly on evidence synthesised from 39 RCTs of primarily group psychotherapy deployed in low-income countries. 2. When should a charity be classed as “top-rated”? I think that a charity could be considered top-rated when there is strong general evidence OR charity-specific evidence that the intervention is more cost-effective than cash transfers. StrongMinds clears this bar, despite the uncertainties in the data. 3. Is HLI an independent research institute? Yes. HLI's mission is to find the most cost-effective giving opportunities to increase wellbeing. Our research has found that treating depression is very cost-effective, but we're not committed to it as a matter of principle. Our work has just begun, and we plan to publish reports on lead regulation, pain relief, and immigration reform in the coming months. Our giving recommendations will follow the evidence. 4. What can HLI do better in the future? Communicate better and update our analyses. We didn't explicitly discuss the implausibility of StrongMinds' data in our work. Nor did we push StrongMinds to make more reasonable claims when we could have done so. We acknowledge that we could have done better, and we will try to do better in the future. We also plan to revise and update our analysis of StrongMinds before Giving Season 2023. 1. Should StrongMinds be a top-rated charity? I agree that StrongMinds' claims of curing 90+% of depression are overly optimistic, and I don't rely on them in my analysis. This figure mainly comes from StrongMinds' pre-post data rather than a comparison between a treatment group and a control. These data will overstate the effect because depression scores tend to decline over time due to a natural recovery rate. If you monitored a group of depressed people and provided no treatment, some would recover anyway. My analysis of StrongMinds is based on a meta-analysis of 39 RCTS of group psychotherapy in low-income countries. I didn't rely solely on StrongMinds' own evidence alone, I incorporated the broader evidence base from other similar interventions t...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Moral Weights according to EA Orgs, published by Simon M on January 8, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. This post was motivated by SoGive's moral weights being (to a first check) quite different to Founders Pledge (FP) and Happier Lives Institute (HLI). Upon checking in more detail, this appears to be the largest discrepency across any organisation. (Although we are still waiting to find out many missing values in the grid as HLI's research is ongoing). Summary GiveWellFPHLISoGiveWELLBY-0.530.55-1 income doubling for 1 year111 11 year of severe depression~1.51 ()1.28 0.71-1.42 41 additional year of life2.301.95-2.8 to 2.91 ()-1 death under 5117.7123.2-1001 death over 583.683.7-100 Broadly all organisations (with the exception of SoGive's view on depression) are very much aligned. () means I expect the organisation would not endorse the figures used here. In the case of GiveWell my best guess is this is roughly inline with what they would use. For Happier Lives Institute it is an upper bound I expect they will be far below when they finish their research. Details Open Philanthropy Open Phil's summary of their moral weights is very clear and interesting, but: For now, in order to be more consistent in our practices, we're going to defer to GiveWell and start to use the number of DALYs that would be implied by extrapolating their moral weights. I have left them off here, as I would just be duplicating the GiveWell numbers. GiveWell GiveWell's weights are sourced from here. I have made a few small calculations to align these numbers with the other orgs. Founders Pledge Founders Pledge's moral weights are avaiable here. Happier Lives Institute Unfortunately, their moral weights are still in the process of being generated. You can determine the range of weights they will use in future in their article The elephant in the bednet. SoGive SoGive's weights can be found here. I have used them verbatim This is a calculation. A 100% increase in income/consumption is worth 1.27 / 0.69 = 1.86 WELLBYs (in HLI terms). (See inputs tab C25) We want this to be 1-unit, so we take 1/1.86 = 0.55 to be a WELLBY and other numbers are calculated from this. GiveWell has a strong aversion to disability weights used blindly, so take this number with a grain of salt. Founders Pledge don't explicitly include depression in their data. I have used the disability weights they used in their public CEA of StrongMinds. I am under the impression they are working to move towards HLI's model for this. This is also a calculation. HLI are inconsistent in how they calculate the impact of depression in WELLBYs. Here they say depression is worth 1.3 WELLBYs. (So 1.3 0.55 = 0.71) in units of income doubling. One potential explanation is that "depression" is less severe than "severe depression" so potentially this number could be doubled - they estimate the effect of StrongMinds to be ~1.8 WELLBYs) GiveWell uses a metric "Years lived with disease/disability" which as far as I can tell is equivalent to "value of averting 1 year of death". As mentioned above HLI are still in the process of deciding what their moral weights are. I am taking the upperbound of their deprevationist model, the highest number it could be. The highest number is a deprevationist model of losing 4.95 WELLBY. (4.95 - 0). The lowest number is the same model using a neutral point of 10. "would seem unintuitive to most, but relates to tranquilism and minimalist axiologies" (See inputs tab C18) I have taken the average of "death averted from malaria" and "death averted from vitamin A". The numbers are similar and I don't think material to the analysis here. Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org.

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Announcing Vida Plena: the first Latin American organization incubated by Charity Entrepreneurship, published by Joy Bittner on December 26, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Vida Plena (meaning ‘a flourishing life' in Spanish) is a new nonprofit organization based in Quito, Ecuador. Our mission is to build strong mental health in low-income and refugee communities, who otherwise would have no access to care. We provide evidence-based depression treatment which is highly cost-effective and scalable. In this post, we: Share how we got started Make the case for why you should care about mental health Demonstrate the evidence base for the solution we are using Hope to make you really excited about Vida Plena's goals and upcoming plans We are proud to highlight that Vida Plena completed the 2022 Charity Entrepreneurship (CE) Incubator program, making it the first CE-incubated organization to operate in Latin America. We (myself, Joy Bittner and my co-founder, Anita Kaslin) are exceptionally grateful for their on-going support and for the network of seed funders who are making this work possible. We are also excited to contribute to the EA community locally, as Vida Plena is one of the very first EA-aligned organizations implementing within Latin America. For the very effective altruist, a TLDR summary: The problem: The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 5% of people in Latin America have depression, however, a lack of prioritization means that more than 3 out of 4 people in Latin America go untreated. Ecuador, in particular, has some of the highest rates of depression in the region: causing 8.3% of the total years lived with disability (YLD). The solution: Vida Plena's intervention is based on an evidence-based therapy which is recommended by the WHO as a first-line treatment for depression in low-income settings (WHO, 2020). This program is highly cost-effective as it is delivered by non-specialist community members, which a systematic review of 27 studies found that non-specialists can effectively administer therapy. How you can know this will be impactful: We are replicating a proven program model. The nonprofit organization StrongMinds, operating in Uganda, has treated 150,000 people using the same model of therapy and 85% of people in their program saw significant reductions in their depression. This success has led StrongMinds to be recommended by Founders Pledge (Halstead, 2019) and is the Happier Lives Institute's top recommendation (HLI, 2022). Despite an extensive body of evidence demonstrating the effectiveness and impact, Vida Plena is the first to introduce this model to Latin America. Current status: we have certified 10 local community facilitators and are currently running a pilot program with 10 support groups. We're looking forward to sharing the results of the pilot early 2023, but we estimate when fully optional, it will cost $17 to improve a recipient's wellbeing by one wellbeing-adjusted life year (WELLBY). For a comparison, this is 8 times more cost-effective than GiveDirectly (see our full predictive CEA here). How you can help: Stay in touch and spread the word: generous introductions and people sharing time-sensitive information have made all this possible. sign-up to stay in touch here so we can send you news about what's happening and ways you can help Support us financially: we plan to treat almost 3,000 people in 2023, but have yet to secure the full funding to do so. We would be so grateful if you decide to donate or email us at joy@vidaplena.global Section 1: How Vida Plena got started True story - I started Vida Plena because I saw a Facebook post. Specifically, I saw a post about a new type of mental health program being run by local ‘grandmas' in Africa. And the more I read through the multiple published studies demonstr...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Vida Plena Predictive Cost-Effectiveness Analysis, published by Samuel Dupret on December 26, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Disclaimer: Samuel Dupret volunteered his time to develop the analysis. While Samuel is a current member of the research team of the Happier Lives Institute (HLI), this analysis is an independent project which is not part of HLI's body of research. Joy Bittner, as the founder of Vida Plena, contributed to the report and was previously the Operations Manager at HLI. This is not a recommendation by HLI. Summary Multiple experts have stated that mental health is one of the most neglected health issues and should urgently receive more global investment (Walker et al., 2021; WHO, 2022). According to the Global Burden of Disease (Ferrari et al., 2022), mental disorders are “the seventh leading cause” (p. 144) of health burden in the world in 2019. Of the mental health disorders, depression is the one with the highest health burden (Ferrari et al., 2022). Vida Plena (see this post for a presentation) will address the lack of treatment for depression by empowering local people to deliver a cost-effective model of psychotherapy. Community members are trained to treat depression through Group Interpersonal Therapy (g-IPT), which is recommended by the World Health Organization as a first-line treatment for depression in low-income settings (WHO, 2020). The aim of Vida Plena is to replicate in Ecuador the success of StrongMinds (which uses g-IPT in Uganda and Zambia). StrongMinds is recommended by Founders Pledge (Halstead, 2019) and is the Happier Lives Institute's top recommendation (HLI, 2022). Potential funders of Vida Plena are interested in how much good it can accomplish. Whilst data collection and a pilot study are planned, Vida Plena has only just started so it does not have its own cost-effectiveness data. However, we can give a predictive value by using previous cost-effectiveness analyses (CEA) of StrongMinds (Halstead et al., 2019; McGuire & Plant, 2021b; McGuire et al., 2022a) and converting their results to Vida Plena's context. We use Vida Plena's predicted costs, the Ecuadorian average household size for spillovers, and we apply two adjustments (one for the counterfactual treatment gap and one for the probability of success). Once data from Vida Plena itself is collected, we will update the CEA. We estimate it will cost $17 to improve a recipient's wellbeing by one wellbeing-adjusted life year (WELLBY). For a comparison, this is 8 times more cost-effective than GiveDirectly (a gold standard charity which delivers cash transfers in low- and middle-income countries). Additionally, to allow for comparisons with other health programs, we also produce a disability-adjusted life year (DALY) prediction. It is, however, our opinion that our WELLBY analysis is more robust because it includes a comprehensive evaluation beyond just physical health as well as the impact of household spillovers. Nevertheless, we estimate that it will cost Vida Plena $462 to avert one DALY. While we are not arguing that Vida Plena will be the most cost-effective endeavour, we do expect that it is potentially a very cost-effective charity that will improve human wellbeing in an neglected region - Ecuador and Latin America. No mental health organisations currently operate at scale in Latin America; hence, an important treatment gap exists (PAHO, 2018). This provides a counterfactual argument for creating a new mental health organisation specifically reaching people in the region. What's the problem and how will Vida Plena address it? Mental illness results in reduced quality of life Beyond any other metric used to describe it, the core badness of mental health problems, such as depression, is that the actual lived experience is exceptionally bad. Mental health is o...

Understanding the relationship between wellbeing and economic growth is a topic that is of key importance to Effective Altruism (e.g. see Hillebrandt and Hallstead, Clare and Goth). In particular, a key disagreement regards the Easterlin Paradox; the finding that happiness varies with income across countries and between individuals, but does not seem to vary significantly with a country's income as it changes over time. Michael Plant recently wrote an excellent post summarizing this research. He ends up mostly agreeing with Richard Easterlin's latest paper arguing that the Easterlin Paradox still holds; suggesting that we should look to approaches other than economic growth to boost happiness. I agree with Michael Plant that life satisfaction is a valid and reliable measure, that it should be a key goal of policy and philanthropy, and that boosting income does not increase it as much as we might naively expect. In fact, we at Founders Pledge highly value and regularly use Michael Plant's and Happier Lives Institute's (HLI) research; and we believe income is only a small part of what interventions should aim at. However, my interpretation of the practical implications of Easterlin's research differ from Easterlin's in three ways which I argue in this post.Original article:https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/coryFCkmcMKdJb7Pz/does-economic-growth-meaningfully-improve-well-being-anNarrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Don't give well, give WELLBYs: HLI's 2022 charity recommendation, published by MichaelPlant on November 24, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. This post sets out the Happier Lives Institute's charity recommendation for 2022, how we got here, and what's next. We provide a summary first, followed by a more detailed version. Summary HLI's charity recommendation for 2022 is StrongMinds, a non-profit that provides group psychotherapy for women in Uganda and Zambia who are struggling with depression. We compared StrongMinds to three interventions that have been recommended by GiveWell as being amongst the most cost-effective in the world: cash transfers, deworming pills, and anti-malarial bednets. We find that StrongMinds is more cost-effective (in almost all cases). HLI is pioneering a new and improved approach to evaluating charities. We focus directly on what really matters, how much they improve people's happiness, rather than on health or wealth. We measure effectiveness in WELLBYs (wellbeing-adjusted life years). We estimate that StrongMinds is ~10x more cost-effective than GiveDirectly, which provides cash transfers. StrongMinds' 8-10 week programme of group interpersonal therapy has a slightly larger effect than a $1,000 cash transfer but costs only $170 per person to deliver. For deworming, our forthcoming analysis finds it has a small but statistically non-significant effect on happiness. Even if we assume this effect is true, deworming is still half as cost-effective as StrongMinds. We expect to publish our full report in the coming days (sadly, it's been delayed due to a bereavement for one of the authors). In our new report, The Elephant in the Bednet, we show that the relative value of life-extending and life-improving interventions depends very heavily on the philosophical assumptions you make. This issue is usually glossed over and there is no simple answer. We conclude that the Against Malaria Foundation is less cost-effective than StrongMinds under almost all assumptions. We expect this conclusion will similarly apply to the other life-extending charities recommended by GiveWell. HLI's original mission, when we started three years ago, was to take what appeared to be the world's top charities - the ones GiveWell recommended - reevaluate them in terms of subjective wellbeing, and then try to find something better. We believe we've now accomplished that mission: treating depression at scale allows you to do even more good with your money. We're now moving to ‘Phase 2', analysing a wider range of interventions and charities in WELLBYs to find even better opportunities for donors. StrongMinds aims to raise $20 million over the next two years and there's over $800,000 of matching funds available for StrongMinds this giving season. Why does HLI exist? The Happier Lives Institute advises donors how to maximise the impact of their donations. Our distinctive approach is to focus directly on what really matters to people, improving their subjective wellbeing, how they feel during and about their lives. The idea that we should take happiness seriously is simple: Happiness matters. Although it's common to think about impact in terms of health and wealth, those are just a means, not an end in themselves. What's really important is that people enjoy their lives and are free from suffering. We can measure happiness by asking people how they feel. Lots of research has shown that subjective wellbeing surveys are scientifically valid (e.g. OECD, 2013; Kaiser & Oswald, 2022). A typical question is, “Overall, how satisfied are you with your life, nowadays?” (0 - not at all satisfied, 10 - completely satisfied). Our expectations about happiness are often wrong. When we try to guess what life would be like, for others or our future selves, we suffer from biases. When we put...

Átta hafa verið handteknir vegna hnífaárásar á skemmtistað í miðborg Reykjavíkur í gærkvöld. Hún markar ákveðin þáttaskil, segir Helgi Gunnlaugsson afbrotafræðingur. Þarna var gerð skipulögð aðför að mönnum á opinberum vettvangi; aðför sem ber keim af gengjastríðum. Sunna Karen Sigurþórsdóttir ræddi við Margeir Sveinsson aðstoðaryfirlögregluþjón og Anna Kristín Jónsdóttir talaði við Helga. Nokkrir hafa verið handteknir og farið hefur verið í húsleit á höfuðborgarsvæðinu í tengslum við rannsókn héraðssaksóknara á umfangsmesta sígarettu- og veipsmygli sem komið hefur upp hér á landi. Lagt hefur verið hald á eignir upp á hálfan milljarð í tengslum við rannsóknina. Freyr Gígja Gunnarsson sagði frá. Nokkrir fyrrverandi yfirmenn hjá Twitter spá því að miðillinn hrynji endanlega til grunna um helgina. Höfuðstöðvum fyrirtækisins hefur verið lokað til mánudags og starfsfólkinu meinaður aðgangur. Oddur Þórðarson sagði frá. Stórvirkar vinnuvélar voru í dag notaðar við að ryðja leið í gegnum aurskriðuna sem féll á Grenivíkurveg í gærmorgun. Vegurinn er þó enn lokaður og verður að minnsta kosti til morguns. Fjöldi fólks hefur undanfarna mánuði verið sakfelldur í Svíþjóð fyrir mótmælaaðgerðir sem beinast að aðgerðaleysi í loftslagsmálum. Dómarnir hafa verið skilorðsbundnir en talsmenn nýrrar ríkisstjórnar hafa talað fyrir hertum viðurlögum. Kári Gylfason sagði frá. Stjórnvöld ríkja í Austurlöndum fjær og víðar fordæma að Norður-Kóreumenn skutu í dag langdrægri eldflaug í átt að Japan. Hún lenti í sjónum innan efnahagslögsögu landsins. Lilja Alfreðsdóttir, menningar- og viðskiptaráðherra, tók í gær við 550 eintökum af heildarútgáfu Íslendingasagnanna sem gefin verða mennta-, menningar- og heilbrigðisstofnunum víða um land. Teitur Guðmundsson, forstjóri Heilsuverndar, kveðst vongóður um að úr leysist varðandi endurbætur á húsnæði dvalarheimilisins Hliðar á Akureyri. Mygla hefur greinst á Hlíð sem talin er hafa valdið veikindum hjá heimilisfólki þar. Ágúst Ólafsson sagði frá og ræddi við Teit. Enska úrvalsdeildarliðið Manchester United undirbýr málsókn á hendur Cristiano Ronaldo vegna ummæla sem hann lét falla um félagið í sjónvarpsviðtali. Félagið telur leikmanninn hafa rofið samning sinn við félagið og hann fær ekki að snúa aftur til þess þegar HM í Katar lýkur. Dönsk kona á fertugsaldri hefur verið dæmd í þriggja ára fangelsi fyrir stuðning við hryðjuverk.

Átta hafa verið handteknir vegna hnífaárásar á skemmtistað í miðborg Reykjavíkur í gærkvöld. Hún markar ákveðin þáttaskil, segir Helgi Gunnlaugsson afbrotafræðingur. Þarna var gerð skipulögð aðför að mönnum á opinberum vettvangi; aðför sem ber keim af gengjastríðum. Sunna Karen Sigurþórsdóttir ræddi við Margeir Sveinsson aðstoðaryfirlögregluþjón og Anna Kristín Jónsdóttir talaði við Helga. Nokkrir hafa verið handteknir og farið hefur verið í húsleit á höfuðborgarsvæðinu í tengslum við rannsókn héraðssaksóknara á umfangsmesta sígarettu- og veipsmygli sem komið hefur upp hér á landi. Lagt hefur verið hald á eignir upp á hálfan milljarð í tengslum við rannsóknina. Freyr Gígja Gunnarsson sagði frá. Nokkrir fyrrverandi yfirmenn hjá Twitter spá því að miðillinn hrynji endanlega til grunna um helgina. Höfuðstöðvum fyrirtækisins hefur verið lokað til mánudags og starfsfólkinu meinaður aðgangur. Oddur Þórðarson sagði frá. Stórvirkar vinnuvélar voru í dag notaðar við að ryðja leið í gegnum aurskriðuna sem féll á Grenivíkurveg í gærmorgun. Vegurinn er þó enn lokaður og verður að minnsta kosti til morguns. Fjöldi fólks hefur undanfarna mánuði verið sakfelldur í Svíþjóð fyrir mótmælaaðgerðir sem beinast að aðgerðaleysi í loftslagsmálum. Dómarnir hafa verið skilorðsbundnir en talsmenn nýrrar ríkisstjórnar hafa talað fyrir hertum viðurlögum. Kári Gylfason sagði frá. Stjórnvöld ríkja í Austurlöndum fjær og víðar fordæma að Norður-Kóreumenn skutu í dag langdrægri eldflaug í átt að Japan. Hún lenti í sjónum innan efnahagslögsögu landsins. Lilja Alfreðsdóttir, menningar- og viðskiptaráðherra, tók í gær við 550 eintökum af heildarútgáfu Íslendingasagnanna sem gefin verða mennta-, menningar- og heilbrigðisstofnunum víða um land. Teitur Guðmundsson, forstjóri Heilsuverndar, kveðst vongóður um að úr leysist varðandi endurbætur á húsnæði dvalarheimilisins Hliðar á Akureyri. Mygla hefur greinst á Hlíð sem talin er hafa valdið veikindum hjá heimilisfólki þar. Ágúst Ólafsson sagði frá og ræddi við Teit. Enska úrvalsdeildarliðið Manchester United undirbýr málsókn á hendur Cristiano Ronaldo vegna ummæla sem hann lét falla um félagið í sjónvarpsviðtali. Félagið telur leikmanninn hafa rofið samning sinn við félagið og hann fær ekki að snúa aftur til þess þegar HM í Katar lýkur. Dönsk kona á fertugsaldri hefur verið dæmd í þriggja ára fangelsi fyrir stuðning við hryðjuverk.

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: EAGxVirtual: A virtual venue, timings, and other updates, published by Alex Berezhnoi on October 13, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. EAGxVirtual is fast approaching. This post covers updates from the team, including demographics data, dates and times, content, venue, and unique features. Transcending Boundaries We have already received more than 600 applications from people representing over 60 countries, making our conference one of the most geographically diverse EA events ever. For many of them, it would be their first conference. If you are a highly-engaged EA, you can make a difference by being responsive to requests from first-time attendees. The map below shows the geographical distribution of the participants: Still, we would love to see more applications. If you know someone who you think should attend the conference, please encourage them to apply by sending them this link! The deadline for applications is 8:00 am UTC on Wednesday, 19 October. Dates and times The conference will be taking place from 5 pm UTC on Friday, October 21st, until 11:59 pm UTC on Sunday, October 23rd. Friday will feature group meetups and an opening session. On Saturday and Sunday, the sessions will start at 8 am UTC. We try to make the keynote sessions accessible to people from different time zones but the recordings will be available if you cannot make it. There will be a break in the program on Sunday between 3 am and 8 am UTC. Content: what to expect We are working hard on the program. Here are the types of content you might expect, beyond the usual talks and workshops: Career stories sessions Office Hours hosted by EA orgs Q&As and fireside chats Group meetups and icebreakers Lightning talks from the attendees Participant-driven meetups on Gather.Town We have confirmed speakers from Charity Entrepreneurship, GFI Asia, Manifold Markets, Spark Wave, CEA, GovAI, HLI, and other organizations. Some exciting confirmed speakers: Spencer Greenberg, Seth Baum, Varun Deshpande, Ben Garfinkel, David Manheim, and others! The tentative schedule will be available on the Swapcard app at the end of the week, but it is subject to slight changes in the leadup to the conference. Virtual venue Our main content and networking platform for the conference is the Swapcard. We will share access to the app with all the attendees a week before the conference and provide guidance on how to use it and get the most out of the conference. We also collaborate with EA Gather.Town to make an always-available virtual space for the attendees to spark more connections and unstructured discussions throughout the conference. There will be spots for private meetings and rooms you can book for group meetups: just like the real conference venue! There will be sessions led by EA Virtual Reality as well! Gather.Town and EA VR are optional but are exciting opportunities for those who want to experiment with formats beyond usual live streams and calls. Call for volunteers We think volunteering for such events can be a very fulfilling experience, and organizers depend on motivated people like you to support us and make the best out of this event. We are currently looking for volunteers to help in a wide range of positions, including chat management, moderators, emcees, and more. If you attending the conference, please consider becoming a volunteer. We are very excited about the event and hope to see you there! EAGxVirtual Team: Alex, Jordan, Dion, Amine, Marka, and Ollie Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org.

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Does Economic Growth Meaningfully Improve Well-being? An Optimistic Re-Analysis of Easterlin's Research: Founders Pledge, published by Vadim Albinsky on September 27, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Acknowledgments I would like to thank Michael Plant, Matt Lerner and Rosie Bettle for their helpful comments and advice. Summary Understanding the relationship between wellbeing and economic growth is a topic that is of key importance to Effective Altruism (e.g. see Hillebrandt and Hallstead, Clare and Goth). In particular, a key disagreement regards the Easterlin Paradox; the finding that happiness[1] varies with income across countries and between individuals, but does not seem to vary significantly with a country's income as it changes over time. Michael Plant recently wrote an excellent post summarizing this research. He ends up mostly agreeing with Richard Easterlin's latest paper arguing that the Easterlin Paradox still holds; suggesting that we should look to approaches other than economic growth to boost happiness. I agree with Michael Plant that life satisfaction is a valid and reliable measure, that it should be a key goal of policy and philanthropy, and that boosting income does not increase it as much as we might naively expect. In fact, we at Founders Pledge highly value and regularly use Michael Plant's and Happier Lives Institute's (HLI) research; and we believe income is only a small part of what interventions should aim at. However, my interpretation of the practical implications of Easterlin's research differ from Easterlin's in three ways which I argue in this post: Easterlin finds small coefficients in his preferred regressions of changes in countries' happiness on changes in GDP. He concludes that these coefficients have low “economic significance” and that increasing economic growth is not a good way to make people happier. However, even if we take these coefficients at face value, they still represent a very meaningful increase in wellbeing within the effective altruism framework, consistent with the impacts of unconditional cash transfers on individuals. The benefits become very large when aggregated across all the people in a country for many years. We also have reason to doubt Easterlin's results, in that they are highly sensitive to small changes in methodology. We perform two variations on his regression that fully accept his methodology of only including “full cycle” countries, but update it slightly, reversing the result. If we replicate his results counting one more country as a “transition” economy, the Easterlin paradox largely disappears. If we repeat his analysis with new data from 2020 instead of 2019, the paradox also seems to largely disappear. It may be difficult to find things we can influence whose change over time will have a higher correlation to a country's change in happiness than changes in GDP. Even if we accept that boosting GDP does not meaningfully increase happiness, other potential means of boosting national happiness may increase it even less. If we rerun Easterlin's analysis using three interventions Easterlin and Plant suggest (health, pollution, and a comprehensive welfare state), their implied impacts on national happiness are much smaller than the impacts for GDP or negative. However, I have low confidence in this conclusion, and think it is a very valuable project to identify the interventions that are most likely to have an impact on happiness. 1. Taking Easterlin's results at face value and estimating impact Easterlin and O'Connor (2022) rely on two regressions for their conclusions, both comparing annual changes in a country's happiness to annual changes in per capita GDP. The first measures happiness using a “life satisfaction” survey question on a smaller set of countries from 1981-2019 and the second u...

This week, Kathy is joined by John Di Leonardo, the founder and president of Humane Long Island. John's work with PETA, and now with HLI, is the embodiment of “think globally, act locally” approach to social change. During a very lively conversation, Kathy and John talk about:John's work to eliminate animal use in entertainment on Long Island, including direct protests to Ringling Brothers Circus and the horrific “Banana Derby”Humane Long Island's incredible victory to prevent an aquarium from being built in a local mallJohn's connection to water fowl and birds who face dumping and abandonment on Long Island, and how HLI hopes to create a “transitional sanctuary” to help these animals in needThe recent PETA protest at a Manhattan Starbucks, where John joined Oscar-nominated actor James Cromwell to urge for plant-based milk upcharges to be eliminatedHLI's teaming up with Horseracing Wrongs to protest the Belmont Stakes earlier this monthTo support Humane Long Island and stay updated on John's work, you can find them on social media:FacebookInstagramConnect with Kathy Stevens:Facebook: Kathy Stevens, Catskill Animal SanctuaryTwitter: @CASanctuaryBook: Where the Blind Horse SingsWebsite: CASanctuary.orgInstagram: @catskill_animal_sanctuaryYouTube: Catskill Animal SanctuaryTikTok: @CASanctuary

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: My Job: EA Office Manager, published by Jonathan Michel on May 2, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Summary I think being an Office Manager at an EA office can be a really impactful job, and I would like to share my experience and give some advice. Part of the reason I'm writing this is that I'm the new Head of Property at the CEA Operations Team, but my previous job was being the office manager, and I'm hiring someone to replace me. If you're interested, please apply here or get in touch with me if you have questions. How much you should trust me? I'm biased, but I'm trying to be honest and just share my experience. Why am I writing this? There has already been a bit of past discussion of ops on the forum. The reason I want to add to this pile of writing about operations is that I want to advocate/give context on the specific role of an EA Office Manager — one that oftentimes people underestimate in its importance. There has been some talk regarding EA Hubs and where we should start new ones. I think that EA Hubs can be very impactful and that a great office manager is a crucial component. An outstanding EA office which makes people more productive and happy needs an outstanding office manager. My Background Overall: I had a lot of experience with EA (I ran a local group for over four years, was well-read, and organised a bunch of events), and did a lot of volunteering through which I built operations skills. I did a lot of volunteer work for the German EA community such as organizing fellowships, talks and a retreat. I co-founded two NGOs (one focused on COVID relief and the other on cellular agriculture) I did a bunch of volunteering for GFI, ProVeg, and an internship for www.effektiv-spenden.org Day in the life Last year, I started as the Office Manager of the Oxford EA office, Trajan House. Trajan House currently accommodates the Centre for Effective Altruism, the Future of Humanity Institute, the Global Priorities Institute, the Forethought Foundation, the Centre for the Governance of AI, the Global Challenges Project, Our World in Data, and a number of people working at other EA organisations (such as Rethink Priorities, HLI, LEEP, and OpenPhil). At the moment, around 80 EA professionals work at Trajan House, and this number is growing. If you want to get a better sense of Trajan House (including some photos) you can see the office guide here. Until very recently, the office team consisted of me (as the office manager), and employees of Oxford University working in the reception area and in facilities management. One month ago two office assistants joined my team, so we now have two additional FTEs helping to run the office. As described above, I'm now transitioning out of the office manager role, but the below outlines my week in the position. How I spent my time: 40% - Expanding, changing and optimising the office set-up (including thinking about how we can further expand and improve the services we provide) 20% - Developing the culture and community aspects of the office (e.g. by planning events) 20% - Processing direct requests like “Can I get a MacBook charger, please?”, “Do we have spare copies of The Precipice?” 10% - managing the Office Assistants and liaising with the Facilities Management team 5% - Processing requests of individuals or organisations for office space For a more tangible sense of what I did, here are some specific things I did in the last couple of months: Changing the acoustics (the “soundscape”) of our cafeteria (getting different quotes done, thinking about the interior design of the space, liaising with the contractors implementing it) Finding a new caterer (researching different companies, work-trialling them, negotiating a contract in cooperation with our lawyers, having regular check-ins to ensure quality and improve their s...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Happier Lives Institute: 2021 Annual Review & AMA, published by BarryGrimes on April 14, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. We're pleased to share our 2021 Annual Review with you. This post also doubles as an AMA, so feel free to ask us about our work to date, our future plans, or anything else. Michael, Barry, and Joy will be at EA Global: London this weekend and we plan to respond to your questions before and after the conference. You can also meet us in person at the career fair on Friday (4 pm-8 pm) and during our office hours on Saturday (11 am-12 pm). Before we get to the Annual Review, we'd like to make two announcements : We're currently hiring for a Senior Researcher, a Grants Strategist, and an Operations Manager. If you want to get a better feel for what it's like working at HLI, we think you'll enjoy these blog posts on life as a researcher and an operations manager by members of our team. We've updated our cost-effectiveness comparison of psychotherapy and cash transfers to include an estimate of the effects on other household members. We now estimate that StrongMinds is 9 times more cost-effective than GiveDirectly (a slight reduction from 12 times in our previous analysis). 1. Director's foreword by Michael Plant In 2021, we took a significant step forward with the publication of our first substantial piece of empirical work comparing the cost-effectiveness of cash transfers and psychotherapy in terms of subjective wellbeing. We analysed data from more than 140,000 participants across 80 studies to show that providing group psychotherapy to people with depression in low- and middle-income countries is around 10 times more cost-effective than providing cash transfers to people living in extreme poverty. To the best of our knowledge, these are the first two meta-analyses assessing the cost-effectiveness of any intervention in terms of subjective wellbeing. This is a surprising and important result. We've demonstrated that it's possible to compare seemingly incomparable outcomes by measuring their effects in terms of subjective wellbeing. By doing so, we found a new and outstanding funding opportunity for philanthropists and policymakers. This provides further evidence that we shouldn't rely on our intuitions about what makes people happier and should prioritise further research on the best ways to measure and increase global wellbeing. The cost-effectiveness analyses of cash transfers, psychotherapy, and StrongMinds consumed most of our research capacity in 2021. However, we also published an updated research agenda and a new problem area report on mental health, to accompany our previous report on pain. We were featured in Vox, The New Statesman, The Times, BBC Radio 4, and the Clearer Thinking podcast and our work was discussed on social media by prominent thinkers including Alexander Berger, Chris Blattman, Tim Ferriss, Geoff Mulgan, Duncan Green, and Justin Sandefur. I was delighted to welcome three new members to the team: Samuel Dupret (research), Joy Bitter (operations), and Barry Grimes (communications). Dr Caspair Kaiser joined our Board of Trustees and we said a fond farewell to our COO, Clare Donaldson, who joined the Lead Exposure Elimination Project. And for the first time, we were joined by a talented team of summer research fellows who explored a variety of applied and theoretical topics from our research agenda. Our search for the best ways to measure and improve global wellbeing continues in earnest in 2022. We have a pipeline of promising ‘micro'-interventions to evaluate, including deworming, cataract surgery, and providing cement floors. We are tentatively expanding our scope to look for funding opportunities that can absorb over $20 million of philanthropic funding or be scaled up by policymakers. We also continue to interrogate k...

Í kvöld fer fram á Hofsósi í Skagafirði, útgáfuhóf fyrir tíunda og síðasta bindi byggðasögu Skagafjarðar sem Hjalti Pálsson hefur ritað og ritstýrt í tuttugu og sex ár. Hjalta reiknast til að um 55 starfsár hafi farið í verkið og sjálfur frestaði hann því í tíu ár að fara á eftirlaun til að klára verkið. Við heyrðum í Hjalta í upphafi þáttar. Á fimmtudag var frumsýnt í Þjóðleikhúsinu nýtt íslenskt verk, Hliðstætt fólk, eftir leikhópinn Huldufugl, sem gerist alfarið í sýndarveruleika. Áhorfendur eru semsagt þátttakendur í verkinu, sjá allt sem í því gerist með sýndarveruleikagleraugum og geta haft áhrif á útkomu verksins. Nanna Gunnars, leikkona og leikstjóri verksins kíkti til okkar og sagði okkur frá þessu sýndarveruleikaverki. Salan á Íslandsbanka hefur vakið hörð viðbrögð eftir að listi yfir þá fjárfesta sem fengu að taka þátt í útboðinu var birtur á miðvikudag. Í gærkvöldi sendi Íslandsdeild Transparency International frá sér ályktun þar sem salan var sögð skólabókardæmi um spillingu, aðstöðubrask, vanhæfni og óheilbrigða menningu. Við ræddum við Atla Þór Fanndal framkvæmdastjóra Transparency International á Íslandi. Við hófum í síðustu viku málefnaumræðu okkar um sveitarstjórnarkosningarnar sem framundan eru. Að þessu sinni beinum við sjónum okkar að leikskólamálum um land allt og fengum Sigurð Sigurjónsson, formann félags stjórnenda leikskóla, til að ræða stöðu mála með okkur. Félagar í Samtökum hernaðarandstæðinga keyrðu nú í morgunsárið upp í Hvalfjörð en þar stendur til að halda landgönguæfingu bandaríska hersins, sem félagsmenn hyggjast mótmæla. Við heyrðum í Guttormi Þorsteinssyni formanni Samtaka hernaðarandstæðinga um mótmælin og hvort enn sé útlit fyrir að af þessari landgönguæfingu hersins verði nú þegar hernaðarandstæðingar eru mættir á svæðið. Hljómsveitin Gus Gus hélt á dögunum langþráða afmælistónleika við mikinn fögnuð. Sveitin hefur starfað í rúma kvartöld í ýmsum myndum og þykir ein sú frumlegasta og athyglisverðasta í íslenskri listasenu. Nú stendur til að kortleggja feril sveitarinnar í heimildamynd. Stefán Árni kvikmyndagerðarmaður og stofnfélagi í Gus Gus leit við hjá okkur. Svo fórum við yfir íþróttafréttir helgarinnar með Einari Erni Jónssyni íþróttafréttamanni í lok þáttar. Tónlist: Stjórnin - Við eigum samleið. James Taylor - Carolina in my mind. Geirmundur Valtýsson - Nú er ég léttur. Birgir Steinn - Hold on. Harry Styles - As it was. Kylie Minogue - In your eyes. Gus Gus - Over. Miley Cyrus - Malibu.

Í kvöld fer fram á Hofsósi í Skagafirði, útgáfuhóf fyrir tíunda og síðasta bindi byggðasögu Skagafjarðar sem Hjalti Pálsson hefur ritað og ritstýrt í tuttugu og sex ár. Hjalta reiknast til að um 55 starfsár hafi farið í verkið og sjálfur frestaði hann því í tíu ár að fara á eftirlaun til að klára verkið. Við heyrðum í Hjalta í upphafi þáttar. Á fimmtudag var frumsýnt í Þjóðleikhúsinu nýtt íslenskt verk, Hliðstætt fólk, eftir leikhópinn Huldufugl, sem gerist alfarið í sýndarveruleika. Áhorfendur eru semsagt þátttakendur í verkinu, sjá allt sem í því gerist með sýndarveruleikagleraugum og geta haft áhrif á útkomu verksins. Nanna Gunnars, leikkona og leikstjóri verksins kíkti til okkar og sagði okkur frá þessu sýndarveruleikaverki. Salan á Íslandsbanka hefur vakið hörð viðbrögð eftir að listi yfir þá fjárfesta sem fengu að taka þátt í útboðinu var birtur á miðvikudag. Í gærkvöldi sendi Íslandsdeild Transparency International frá sér ályktun þar sem salan var sögð skólabókardæmi um spillingu, aðstöðubrask, vanhæfni og óheilbrigða menningu. Við ræddum við Atla Þór Fanndal framkvæmdastjóra Transparency International á Íslandi. Við hófum í síðustu viku málefnaumræðu okkar um sveitarstjórnarkosningarnar sem framundan eru. Að þessu sinni beinum við sjónum okkar að leikskólamálum um land allt og fengum Sigurð Sigurjónsson, formann félags stjórnenda leikskóla, til að ræða stöðu mála með okkur. Félagar í Samtökum hernaðarandstæðinga keyrðu nú í morgunsárið upp í Hvalfjörð en þar stendur til að halda landgönguæfingu bandaríska hersins, sem félagsmenn hyggjast mótmæla. Við heyrðum í Guttormi Þorsteinssyni formanni Samtaka hernaðarandstæðinga um mótmælin og hvort enn sé útlit fyrir að af þessari landgönguæfingu hersins verði nú þegar hernaðarandstæðingar eru mættir á svæðið. Hljómsveitin Gus Gus hélt á dögunum langþráða afmælistónleika við mikinn fögnuð. Sveitin hefur starfað í rúma kvartöld í ýmsum myndum og þykir ein sú frumlegasta og athyglisverðasta í íslenskri listasenu. Nú stendur til að kortleggja feril sveitarinnar í heimildamynd. Stefán Árni kvikmyndagerðarmaður og stofnfélagi í Gus Gus leit við hjá okkur. Svo fórum við yfir íþróttafréttir helgarinnar með Einari Erni Jónssyni íþróttafréttamanni í lok þáttar. Tónlist: Stjórnin - Við eigum samleið. James Taylor - Carolina in my mind. Geirmundur Valtýsson - Nú er ég léttur. Birgir Steinn - Hold on. Harry Styles - As it was. Kylie Minogue - In your eyes. Gus Gus - Over. Miley Cyrus - Malibu.

Í kvöld fer fram á Hofsósi í Skagafirði, útgáfuhóf fyrir tíunda og síðasta bindi byggðasögu Skagafjarðar sem Hjalti Pálsson hefur ritað og ritstýrt í tuttugu og sex ár. Hjalta reiknast til að um 55 starfsár hafi farið í verkið og sjálfur frestaði hann því í tíu ár að fara á eftirlaun til að klára verkið. Við heyrðum í Hjalta í upphafi þáttar. Á fimmtudag var frumsýnt í Þjóðleikhúsinu nýtt íslenskt verk, Hliðstætt fólk, eftir leikhópinn Huldufugl, sem gerist alfarið í sýndarveruleika. Áhorfendur eru semsagt þátttakendur í verkinu, sjá allt sem í því gerist með sýndarveruleikagleraugum og geta haft áhrif á útkomu verksins. Nanna Gunnars, leikkona og leikstjóri verksins kíkti til okkar og sagði okkur frá þessu sýndarveruleikaverki. Salan á Íslandsbanka hefur vakið hörð viðbrögð eftir að listi yfir þá fjárfesta sem fengu að taka þátt í útboðinu var birtur á miðvikudag. Í gærkvöldi sendi Íslandsdeild Transparency International frá sér ályktun þar sem salan var sögð skólabókardæmi um spillingu, aðstöðubrask, vanhæfni og óheilbrigða menningu. Við ræddum við Atla Þór Fanndal framkvæmdastjóra Transparency International á Íslandi. Við hófum í síðustu viku málefnaumræðu okkar um sveitarstjórnarkosningarnar sem framundan eru. Að þessu sinni beinum við sjónum okkar að leikskólamálum um land allt og fengum Sigurð Sigurjónsson, formann félags stjórnenda leikskóla, til að ræða stöðu mála með okkur. Félagar í Samtökum hernaðarandstæðinga keyrðu nú í morgunsárið upp í Hvalfjörð en þar stendur til að halda landgönguæfingu bandaríska hersins, sem félagsmenn hyggjast mótmæla. Við heyrðum í Guttormi Þorsteinssyni formanni Samtaka hernaðarandstæðinga um mótmælin og hvort enn sé útlit fyrir að af þessari landgönguæfingu hersins verði nú þegar hernaðarandstæðingar eru mættir á svæðið. Hljómsveitin Gus Gus hélt á dögunum langþráða afmælistónleika við mikinn fögnuð. Sveitin hefur starfað í rúma kvartöld í ýmsum myndum og þykir ein sú frumlegasta og athyglisverðasta í íslenskri listasenu. Nú stendur til að kortleggja feril sveitarinnar í heimildamynd. Stefán Árni kvikmyndagerðarmaður og stofnfélagi í Gus Gus leit við hjá okkur. Svo fórum við yfir íþróttafréttir helgarinnar með Einari Erni Jónssyni íþróttafréttamanni í lok þáttar. Tónlist: Stjórnin - Við eigum samleið. James Taylor - Carolina in my mind. Geirmundur Valtýsson - Nú er ég léttur. Birgir Steinn - Hold on. Harry Styles - As it was. Kylie Minogue - In your eyes. Gus Gus - Over. Miley Cyrus - Malibu.

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: The Bearable Brightness of Wellbeing: The life of an HLI researcher, published by JoelMcGuire on April 8, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. 0. What is this? This is a "write about your job" piece that has a secondary aim of giving potential hires a sense of what working at HLI as a researcher is like. 1. Who am I? I quit an economics PhD programme at a state school in the USA to join the Happier Lives Institute (HLI) as a researcher a little more than two years ago. It was one of the better decisions of my life. After joining HLI, I gained much-needed research experience by working on important questions; I began to engage deeply with effective altruism (EA) and quelled the fear of not finding a way to positively impact the world. I had a Master's degree before starting the PhD. But I'd rushed through both degrees in 3½ years. This left a blank space where practical research (or any work) experience would typically go. In my PhD, I had some vague hope of how I'd pivot my research into an EA-aligned area, but this was a hope, not a plan. I didn't know how I'd do research that mattered. Thankfully, HLI offered me an excellent opportunity to work on worthwhile topics. I escaped the PhD programme and my gnawing doubt by joining HLI as an empirical researcher (and their first employee!). If you're concerned about your lack of elite pedigree (like I was), then trying to start at a young EA organisation seems like a plausible path towards acquiring a much-coveted EA job. 2. Why do I do this job? I find it thrilling to work on the edge of a research field and potentially expand its borders. I love the intoxication of discovery, the flow of coding, and the challenge of designing a beautiful visualisation. But attempting pioneering research is tough. The fields I work in are riddled with methodological issues that have no established solutions. The way is undiscovered. The map is mostly blank. Studying wellbeing feels like chasing the holy grail. Wellbeing is good, and if we can measure it better, we can do good better. Plus, I get a dopamine hit every time someone asks me what I do, and I get to say I'm a happiness researcher. Never mind that they almost inevitably ask about how one acquires personal happiness (which I think is common sense) when I'm in the business of global happiness. HLI, even though it's growing, is still small. That means I have a sizeable say in setting the research agenda. This makes me feel like I have skin in the game. It can be a lot of pressure, but it's deeply fulfilling to feel like I'm doing the most good I can reasonably do. 3. Some details on how I divide my time Below is a chart that shows how I split my time between distinct tasks in my role as a researcher. As you can see, I spend almost 70% of my time doing research. I think this means something organizationally is working. Figure 1: The distribution of Joel's time across tasks Research About 75% of my research time is dedicated to my primary work of analysing the cost-effectiveness analyses (CEAs) of different interventions. I spend the rest doing general research tasks like reviewing studies or giving feedback on ideas. For my work on CEAs, I spend about 50% of the time writing or refining R scripts, 35% writing and revising reports, 15% adding data to spreadsheets, and 5% searching for and reading studies. Meetings and other tasks The nature of my work varies throughout the year. Last summer, I spent a lower bound of 29 hours organising, hiring and managing HLI's inaugural cohort of Summer Research Fellows. I was pretty involved in hiring the second HLI empirical researcher, the excellent Samuel Dupret. At the end of the calendar year/beginning of the new one, we typically spend more time reviewing and outlining our strategy. When reports are published, I spend some time replying to...

LENGJAN - THULE - DOMINOS - SJÓVÁ - SESSION CRAFT BAR Við erum enn að jafna okkur á því að hér varð hrun en í staðinn poppar upp a little fella called Eyjafjallajökul sem skilur Hásteinsvöll eftir í 2000cm öskufalli en Eyjamenn hugsa sér gott til glóðarinnar. Það var rifist alltof lengi um hvort hefði verið skemmtilegra á Karamba eða Oliver og við sviptum hulunni af því að hinn íslenski David Beckham er í raun og veru hinn íslenski Rory Delap. Fórum yfir hnefasamlokuna sem var matreidd fyrir Jóa og fengum play-by-play greiningu á seasoninu frá Prófessornum sem við stóðum með Hlið við Hlið og Keyrðumettígang ásamt því að við heyrðum samsæriskenningar og magnaðar sögur frá unglingi sem elti hypeið á Selfoss en endaði á að grípa í skottið á vonbrigðum. Svona var sumarið 2010.

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Writing about my job: Operations Manager, published by Joy Bittner on January 26, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. I'm fairly new to EA, and this is my first contribution to the forum, mostly because I didn't feel particularly expert enough on any EA topic to weigh in. However, I'm not new to the world of ‘operations' and have found that I've been approached by a variety of people who want a better understanding of what is meant by operations and help deciding if it would be a good career choice for them. There has already been a bit of past discussion of ops on the forum; EA Norway's posts do a great job of breaking down the skills needed, Eli_Nathan's post shares some thoughts on alignment and personal fit and finally, this AMA post gets a bit more into the weeds for those who are more interested in some of the specifics. Also, this 80,000 Hours podcast is quite inspiring. This post is intended to be a summary of the broad advice and suggestions I would say to someone considering operations. Why I am qualified to write this article I definitely don't claim to be an operations ‘expert;' these are more just the thoughts of someone who's been doing this for a while, in my case, going on about 14 years, specifically working in younger, small-sized orgs. I'm currently the Operations Manager for the Happier Lives Institute and also working on launching a separate mental health project (teaser- watch for a future post). How I got here I started out by going the formal studies route: first through a master's in social work with a concentration in social service administration (basically how to manage a nonprofit) where I took classes on topics such as grant-writing and HR. Then, I did a second masters/postgraduate degree in Nonprofit Management (Administración de las organizaciones sin fines de lucro, for my beloved Spanish speakers) from the Universidad de San Andrés in Buenos Aires (should anyone be interested) where we went even more in depth on topics like org charts (lots of Drucker), finances for NGOs, and marketing etc. Unless you want to specialize in a particular one area, you don't have to study formally for these sorts of roles, but like anything, it helps. What do operations people do? If you google ‘what does an operations manager do?' (which I just did) you'll find the descriptions extremely vague and will include terms like ‘design, maintain, and improve organization operations.' The reason for this is that operations will vary tremendously across industries and the size of the industry. When I worked for a handmade fair trade jewelry company, I thought a lot about details like “does this barcode sticker have the right size font to meet the corporate warehouse requirements?” “How can I create a color chart to ensure that every time a customer buys earrings in ruby red, they get ruby red and not crimson red?' Whereas, when I worked for a human rights org doing work in the Amazon, I would research what type of anti-venom the team should have in the first aid kit they took into the field. Working now with HLI, some of the most fun moments to date have been organizing and running our team retreat. We spent time hanging out and cooking together in a quirky condo while collaboratively defining the organization's big picture ‘moonshot' goals..and I also forced everyone to take a ‘team-building' hike off my personal bucket list (the sneaking secret advantage of being the one to set the agenda). In summary, my definition of operations is: keep the internal bits of the organization functioning smoothly. I've noticed in EA, as they tend to be fairly small / young ogs, the term operations manager is used to encompass all the random backend administration tasks that an org needs to do to keep operating. This will likely include some variety of: Human resources (HR):...

Join us for a great trip centered around regulatory and scientific decision making. The discussions focus on data vs opinion, in our exploration of the latest news and research. Our big story for this episode is about technology that allows researchers to develop psychedelic medicines, and we host two expert guests to speak on the topic. Dr. Jackie von Salm was recently featured in the Wall Street Journal utilizing a technology platform for psychedelic drug development and Dr. Franklin King who serves as Director of Education and Therapist Training at the Center for Neuroscience of Psychedelics at Massachusetts General Hospital. To close out the episode we're joined by Sarah Russo to play the game, “Guess that Herb”! Thank you to Apex Gaming for sponsoring the episode! Listen to the episode for a special discount code just for HLI listeners.Episode's Group:Jahan Marcu, PhD (moderator) Nigam B. Arora, PhDJackie von Salm, PhDFranklin King, MDDave Vaillencourt, MScSara Russo (game segment) News and Popular Literature Links: The Doctor Will Sue You Now - DEA psilocybin lawsuit (2:10)Hai! Japan to Ease Prohibition of Cannabis-containing Products (16:00)Is Your Compound Hallucinogenic? This sensor could tell you! (28:15)Rapid Fire Science Study Links:Psychedelic Psychiatry's Brave New World (47:30)Are Researchers Getting the Terms Used to Denote Different Types of Recreational Cannabis Right? - A user perspective (1:04:00)Today's Game: Sarah Russo, author of Herbs for the Apocalypse, joins the group to host the game, “Guess that Herb”. A 20 questions style game that tests your knowledge about herbs.Credits:Podcast editing by Joe Leonardo, Podcast mixing and mastering by Dylan Agajanian, Cover art by Ivan Artucovich, Intro music by Buddha by Kontekst, Transition music by K. LOUK. Outro music by Bensounds. Special thanks to Julian Amkraut for supporting this episode. More at: howtolaunchanindustry.com marcu-arora.com

Dr. Sara Jane Ward steps up to deliver one of the most unique episodes of HLI yet! Dr. Ward brings us two new and amazing members of the podcast crew, Dr. Deb Kimless and Dr. Del Potter. Dr. Kimless shares her experiences from working as a clinical cannabis researcher in the industry. Dr. Potter shares his views from his work in psychedelics drug R&D, informed by his extensive studies of psychedelics use among indigenous populations. Overall, a fun filled show exploring almost every aspect of the cannabis and psychedelics industries. A special thank you to the episode sponsor and friend of the show - Double Blind Magazine.Episode's Group:Sara Jane Ward, PhD (Moderator) Del Potter, PhDDeb Kimless, MDJahan Marcu, PhDNigam B. Arora, PhDNews Links: Exciting Landscapes in Cannabis Opportunities (2:35)Cannabis For ... Everything? 23 Industries Seizing The $32B Market Opportunity - CB Insights Research The Second Wave of Psychedelic Research in Europe (11:05)https://icpr2020.net/europes-psychedelic-science-renaissance/ Quitting the Caffeine? (17:30) Michael Pollan On Caffeine Addiction's Upside — And Ugly History : Shots - Health News : NPR Do industry investments in research institutions create a conflict? (27:00) https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/03/cash-from-cannabis-companies-creates-conflicted-researchers/ Rapid Fire Science Study Links:The Effects of Cannabidiol-Based Sublingual Tablets on Diabetic Neuropathic Pain (36:30)https://www.longdom.org/open-access/the-effects-of-cannabidiolbased-sublingual-tablets-on-diabetic-neuropathic-pain.pdf Psychedelics Meet Artificial Intelligence. From ‘Molecules of Life' To New Therapeutic Approaches, An Evolution Marked by the Advent of Artificial Intelligence: The cases of chronic pain and neuropathic disorders. (48:00) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1359644621000362?dgcid=rss_sd_all Today's Game (59:15): Two truths and a lie; Dr. Ward discusses three stories about how people have been creatively sharing cannabis products during the pandemic. Can you sniff out the stinker? Cannabis stash n' grabs? Gifting economies? Feeding edibles to Florida wildlife?Credits:Podcast production by Joe Leonardo, Cover art by Selina Lee, Intro music by Buddha by Kontekst, Transition Music by K. LOUK. Outro music by Bensounds. Special thanks to Julian Amkraut for supporting this episode. More at: howtolaunchanindustry.com marcu-arora.com