This is a link post.

This summer, I participated in a human challenge trial at the University of Maryland. I spent the days just prior to my 30th birthday sick with shigellosis.

What? Why?

Dysentery is an acute disease in which pathogens attack the intestine. It is most often caused by the bacteria Shigella. It spreads via the fecal-oral route. It requires an astonishingly low number of pathogens to make a person sick – so it spreads quickly, especially in bad hygienic conditions or anywhere water can get tainted with feces.

It kills about 70,000 people a year, 30,000 of whom are children under the age of 5. Almost all of these cases and deaths are among very poor people.

The primary mechanism by which dysentery kills people is dehydration. The person loses fluids to diarrhea and for whatever reason (lack of knowledge, energy, water, etc) cannot regain them sufficiently. [...]

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Outline:

(00:26) What? Why?

(01:29) The deal with human challenge trials

(02:56) Dysentery: it's a modern disease

(04:38) Getting ready

(07:35) Two days until challenge

(10:30) One day before challenge: the age of phage

(11:18) Bacteriophage therapy: sending a cat after mice

(14:24) Do they work?

(16:28) Day 1 of challenge

(17:19) The waiting game

(18:30) Let's learn about Shigella pathogenesis

(23:43) Let's really learn about Shigella pathogenesis

(27:12) Out the other side

(29:33) Aftermath

The original text contained 6 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

The original text contained 3 images which were described by AI.

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First published:

November 6th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/gjSCet5fyjdkyHSsw/i-got-dysentery-so-you-don-t-have-to

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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This is a link post.

The UK just announced plans to create a continuous metagenomic sequencing system for detecting respiratory pathogens. The system is based on point-of-care sequencing of patients showing up with severe respiratory infections, aiming for diagnosis within 6 hours and allowing the NHS to track emerging pathogens of both artificial or natural origin. The NHS plans to roll this out to 10-30 NHS sites, but no concrete timeline has been announced.

Patients suspected of having severe acute respiratory infections will be diagnosed within 6 hours, supporting the establishment of a new diagnostic system

(...)

It will be used in the expansion of NHS England's Respiratory Metagenomics programme, being led by Guy's and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. It uses samples from patients with severe respiratory infections and rapid genetic testing to match those patients with the right treatments within 6 hours.

(...)

Following an initial successful pilot [...]

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First published:

November 6th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/5bwpg9RF62gFqRpPS/uk-announces-early-warning-system-for-pandemics

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Crossposting notes

This funding memo was written by Nuño Sempere and Rai Sur, the cofounders of Sentinel; I (Saul) am crossposting to the Forum with their permission. I've made some minor changes in formatting to match the Forum, but all of the content is the same.

Note that I crossposted the memo on November 5, 2024, so by the time you're reading this, Sentinel's funding situation might've changed. See here for an archived version of their funding memo at the time of my crossposting, and here for an evergreen version.

Summary

Leadership

Nuño Sempere – Cofounder & Head of Foresight

Founder of Samotsvety, a forecasting team about which one of the widest-read rationalist bloggers, Scott Alexander, says:

‘Enter Samotsvety Forecasts. This is a team of some of the best superforecasters in the world. They won the CSET-Foretell forecasting competition by an absolutely obscene margin, “around twice [...]

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Outline:

(00:49) Summary

(00:52) Leadership

(00:58) Strategy

(02:54) Advisors

(03:17) Progress-to-Date

(04:19) Funding Ask

(04:59) Base Scenario

(05:52) Mid Scenario - everything in Base plus:

(06:16) High Scenario - everything in Mid plus:

(06:41) Black Swans, Brittle Institutions, and Situational Awareness

(08:49) Addressing the Problem with Forecasting and Emergency Response

(10:36) Founding Team

(10:42) The Foresight Team

(12:18) Foresight Team as of August 13, 2024

(12:36) The Emergency Response Team

(15:46) Inspirations

(17:29) How do these public health and humanitarian aid examples generalize to Sentinel?

(18:29) Speculative Scenario

(21:37) Emergency Response Team as of August 13, 2024

(21:55) Impact Estimate

(22:31) Progress-to-Date

(24:00) Funding Ask

(24:40) Base Scenario

(25:33) Mid Scenario - everything in Base plus:

(25:57) High Scenario - everything in Mid plus:

(26:22) Future Direction

(26:49) Appendix

(26:53) Inspiration Case Studies

(26:57) World Central Kitchen

(28:37) Lübeck Vaccine

The original text contained 1 image which was described by AI.

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First published:

November 6th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/SzuF29o9uQpLpYrqJ/sentinel-funding-memo-mitigating-gcrs-with-forecasting-and

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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• Disclaimer: This is a weak take — mostly based on anecdotes and vibes — but I thought it's worth sharing nonetheless, even if only as a means of soliciting better takes.
• Disclaimer #2: I am very appreciative of everyone who is working tirelessly to pursue farmed animal protection via policy, and I want nothing more than to see it succeed! I just suspect it's going to be a longer and more difficult journey than I anticipated a few years ago, and that this is worth having an open and public conversation about.

I fear the policy landscape for farmed animal protection work is looking more and more bleak.

The election results from last night have reinforced this fear, with animal-friendly measures failing across the ballot, a Republican trifecta set to rule for at least two years, RFK Jr. in line to act as appointed czar of HHS/FDA/USDA, etc. [...]

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Outline:

(01:06) Abolitionist ballot measures lost big in 2024.

(03:20) Incrementalist ballot measures — previously some of the movement's biggest wins — may simply be undone.

(04:54) We have opponents on the left and the right.

(06:34) Cultivated meat is under fire. The Trump admin wont make this any better.

(07:34) So what next?

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

The original text contained 2 images which were described by AI.

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First published:

November 6th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/rQgeBvPyBgqrej6zc/bad-omens-for-us-farmed-animal-policy-work

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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TL;DR: EAGxVirtual 2024 (15–17 November) is coming up in less than 2 weeks! This free, online conference is an opportunity to learn from and meet with EAs in 75+ different countries. Applications are open until 14 Nov – Apply now!

—

In our announcement post, we explained why we are hosting EAGxVirtual on 15–17 November – to connect the global EA community. We’ll do this by providing access to EA content, the ability to meet others through Swapcard 1-on-1s and cause area/affinity group meetups, giving visibility to high-impact opportunities, and other unique programming.

Updates on content and programs

The full schedule will be released soon to registrants. Here's a preview of the programming:

• Speaker sessions: We have a full lineup of speakers, of which some include:
  • James Snowden (Senior Program Officer at Open Philanthropy) on Working with governments to eliminate lead exposure
     
  • Hayley Batterbuck (Philosophy Researcher [...]
  
  

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Outline:

(00:56) Updates on content and programs

(03:40) Join the global EA community

(04:40) What to expect

(04:43) Timing

(05:22) Ways to connect

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First published:

November 6th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/BdpY5Htk6jX9Qsvh8/updates-for-eagxvirtual-2024-speakers-programs-etc

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Open Philanthropy (OP) is the largest grantmaker who is moving money to the

things I think are most valuable, including (disclosure!)

my work at the NAO. There's

been a lot of discussion in the effective altruism community about

where this leaves smaller donors, and where they might have a

comparative

advantage. For example:

announced that due to changes in Good

Ventures' (GV) strategy that they'd be recommending less funding

in several areas. This seems

to have included work on wild animal welfare, invertebrate

welfare, digital minds, and gene editing, though I'm not aware of a

public list. If you trust OP's prioritization more than GV's and/or

you think these are valuable neglected areas, you could help make up

for this shortfall.

other grantees. Many individuals are [...]

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First published:

November 6th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/oFcLqTETnC8rajxeg/advisors-for-smaller-major-donors

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Open Philanthropy (OP) is the largest grantmaker who is moving money to the

things I think are most valuable, including (disclosure!)

my work at the NAO. There's

been a lot of discussion in the effective altruism community about

where this leaves smaller donors, and where they might have a

comparative

advantage. For example:

announced that due to changes in Good

Ventures' (GV) strategy that they'd be recommending less funding

in several areas. This seems

to have included work on wild animal welfare, invertebrate

welfare, digital minds, and gene editing, though I'm not aware of a

public list. If you trust OP's prioritization more than GV's and/or

you think these are valuable neglected areas, you could help make up

for this shortfall.

other grantees. Many individuals are [...]

---

First published:

November 6th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/oFcLqTETnC8rajxeg/advisors-for-smaller-major-donors

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

TLDR: The shortest version of this argument is very simple: your expectations for an organization should be higher where their budget and staff size are higher. In other words, we should have different expectations for a 20-person organization with a $1.5 million budget than a 2-person $150,000 budget organization.

While this seems pretty clear in the abstract, I find that people tend not to update nearly enough on this when they should. For example, I often see people comparing the total research output of two organizations, yet when I ask about it, they will not know the yearly budget or staff size of either. This is a big problem. As a movement, we want to support efficient and effective organizations, not just organizations that are the biggest, most salient or currently the highest funded.

Budgets and staff

When considering how impressive an organization's output is, one [...]

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Outline:

(00:59) Budgets and staff

(02:47) Comparative size

(04:46) Why this matters

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First published:

November 6th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/5wXGLbqQ3cchjogB5/expectations-scale-with-scale-we-should-be-more-scope

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Hi! We're researchers from Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE), a 501(c)(3) non-profit that uses evidence and reason to help people help animals. We conduct charity evaluations to identify the organizations that will likely make the most significant difference for animals. We publish a list of recommended charities to promote organizations that can do the most good for animals with additional donations. We are transparent about our evaluation methods and processes and actively improve them each year.

On November 12, we will be releasing our 2024 charity recommendations and on November 19, we will be hosting an Ask Me Anything (AMA) Event on the FAST Forum between 8-10am PT.

The AMA is your chance to ask our Researchers about our new charity recommendations and the process behind our selections. We will prioritize responding to questions about our recommendations, but feel free to ask us (almost) anything.

Our team answering questions [...]

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First published:

November 5th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/6SMbErZjZWNCpEFmu/animal-charity-evaluators-is-hosting-a-live-ama

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Joseph Rotblat was born in Warsaw on November 4, 1908.

He is one of the advisors I’d like to have on my shoulder, so on his birthday, I want to share a bit about his life and reflect on it.

As a brief overview, Rotblat:

• Was the only scientist to leave the Manhattan Project on moral grounds
• Founded and led the Pugwash Conferences, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995
• Was the youngest of the 11 signatories of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto
• Spent decades advocating for peace and nuclear disarmament

(I'm provisionally viewing November 4th as “Rotblat Day”, but if someone wants to organize a different date and event, I’d probably be happy to join.)

Photo of Rotblat in his office. Source.

As with a similar post I wrote about Benjamin Lay, I want to flag that I’m not an expert; these notes come [...]

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Outline:

(01:14) Rotblat's life

(10:36) Some reflections

(10:44) Why was Rotblat the only scientist to leave the Manhattan Project (on moral grounds)?

(13:49) Quotes from Rotblat

The original text contained 15 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

November 5th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/MRkqBrokab8iqKnuH/remembering-joseph-rotblat-born-on-this-day-in-1908

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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