Thoughts on far-UVC after working in the field for 8 months
This post was written for the EA forum; you can comment there. Views expressed in this article are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer SecureBio. Summary Introduction Far-UVC (200-235 nm) has received quite a bit of attention in EA-adjacent biosecurity circles as a technology to reduce indoor airborne disease spread and is often discussed in…
Map of maps of interesting fields
I love seeing cool visualizations (maps) of interesting intellectual fields. I’m also a big fan of making lists! Accordingly, I compiled a bunch of maps of fields that I thought were interesting. Please comment if you know of more such maps, and I’ll include them. Scott Alexander’s map of Effective Altruism (2020) mariekedev’s mindmap of EA…
TIL You can make a frog’s entire leg regrow after cutting it off
Today I learned that you can make an adult frog’s entire leg grow back after cutting it off. I was pretty surprised that the science of limb regeneration has come this far. It took the frog 18 months to regrow the leg, but the treatment only lasted for 24 hours (!) immediately after cutting off the leg.…
Book review: Outlive by Peter Attia and Bill Gifford
Here are my key takeaways of what you should do to live a long & healthy life according to the book: The book is characterized by the typical productivity-ish writing formula (think: Atomic Habits). Every chapter starts with an anecdote about one specific person, often Peter Attia himself or one of his friends. This makes…
How much would billionaire philanthropists need to scale up their giving to meet the Giving Pledge in their lifetime?
The idea of creating a billionaire impact list has been floating around for years. Some people might already be working on it, but I haven’t heard anything recently. Here is another feature that could be added to such a list: IIRC, there was a post by @Benjamin_Todd where they estimated the annual donation amount of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the…
My favorite resources on meditation
This post is a collection of resources on meditation practice that I have found especially useful. I might update it from time to time when I learn about new resources. Books Teachers Apps Personal blogs and other websites
Proxies for egoism
Until I was ~16, I used to believe that there was no altruism and that everything anybody does is always for purely egoistical reasons. As far as I can remember, I grew confident of this after hearing an important childhood mentor talk about it. I had also read about the ideas of Max Stirner and had a…
All moral decisions in life are on a heavy-tailed distribution
(epistemic status: Written in the spirit of “strong opinions, weakly held” and in a way that is accessible for people who are new to effective altruism. Also, I am pretty sure this idea isn’t original, but I haven’t seen it written up. So please point me there in case I missed something.) Heavy tails explained…
Meditations on caring
[epistemic status: very experimental] The idea Many people I encounter are onboard with the “Effective” part of EA. If you’re going to do something about all the suffering in the world, then do it in the most effective way possible, duh. Some of those people have told me they struggle much more with the “Altruism”…
A simple change in framing to make metta meditation easier
If you have silently recited phrases like: “May you be well, may you be healthy, free from suffering and may you be happy” before, chances are you did a metta meditation. Metta is a term from the ancient language Pali and often translated as loving-kindness. It is a form of concentration practice where you picture…
Writing
