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: Call for action for German university groups!, published by Arne on February 2, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum.

Are you part of the German community? Read it and leave your feedback!

Are you a community builder? I would love to hear your thoughts.

And for everyone, I'd welcome every feedback on my first forum post.

TL;DR

There are no big local student groups (30+ active members) in Germany. I want them to grow, because student groups and friends are among the most important factors for the growth of the EA community. Reasons why no large local student groups have appeared might include cultural differences to the US and UK, as well as the status quo of the German EA community. That's why,

I call for coordination and a spirit of optimism.

Here is a short plan for the coming semester:

First Week of the semester: Advertisement

Second Week: Intro talk + social

Third Week on the Weekend: Impact workshop

Fourth Week: 1-1s and social

Fifth Week: German-wide fellowship starts as well as a career planning fellowship

Throughout the semester: Socials as well as lunch breaks in the uni café

Halfway through the fellowships and the semester: ((f)un)conferences

After the semester: another ((f)un)conference

Plus EAGx Berlin in autumn ^^

What's the problem?

State of EA groups in Germany

There are currently 22 German local groups listed on effektiveraltruismus.de and 25 groups on eahub. More than half of the local groups are student groups. And even though the German community is the third-largest EA community, the typical German local group is in a tough spot. The core of a typical group is at best a strong group of friends of max. 4-5 people. The average to me looks more like 2.5 organizers per student group. Dying student groups are not uncommon.

In addition to the local chapters, NEAD (Netzwerk für Effektiven Altruismus Deutschland) exists as the Germany-wide head organization and runs their own fellowship (now for the third time in a row), writes a newsletter and provides some group support.

Just recently, the German community hired it’s second paid community builder (part-time), welcome, Christiane Ranke. Until then, it was just Manuel Allgaier, who also was responsible mostly for EA Berlin.

Furthermore, there has been less funding requested for German groups than for their counterparts in the US, UK, and probably France, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. Last but not least there are very few senior EAs working from and/or in Germany.

State of EA groups outside Germany

Student groups outside Germany are hitting membership numbers far beyond everything that we are dreaming of.

I am remembering thousands of newsletter subscriptions in Yale and the board alone of EA Oxfords student group consists of 18 people according to their website. PISE in Rotterdam has an executive board of six and six additional committees. Look how they celebrated their giving pledges. Some local groups even have an (un)official EA house, office hours, or one of the craziest things I’ve heard was an EA (dance) ball. Another big step would be to hire campus specialists for German universities, or to be present with workshops and/or a booth at job fairs.

Non-EA groups in Germany

Outside the EA realm, large student groups and initiatives do exist. Student parliament and university political organizations attract a lot of new students (often close to political parties RCDS, JULIS, JUSOS, SDS, Campusgrün). Similarly, Antifa (loose network of very different types of smaller and bigger groups), Green peace (100 groups, ~50 people per group (unsure)), Amnesty (650 groups) and Enactus (1700 students in 35 German cities, average of 48 students per group) are among the biggest student networks/initiatives I can think of from the top of my head. Some of these networks have adopted grassroots democracies (Basisdem...

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: High schoolers were given over $8,000 to donate to charity. Here's what they chose., published by lukefreeman on February 1, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum.

This post was originally authored by Greg Gianopoulos , Maggie Muth , Lucia Willkomm & Kevin Dahle.

Giving What We Can is happy to announce that we sponsored six schools who applied to run a Charity Election in 2021! This post contains basic information about the program, including data from 2021 events and the perspectives of participating students and teachers.

"It has given me an opportunity to think of my impact on the world and what I can do every day to make the world a better place." — a student who participated in the 2021 NHS Charity Election.

A Charity Election is a school-wide event in which high schoolers vote among three charities to decide which will receive up to $2,000 in sponsored funds. The mission of the program is to inspire young people to make a positive impact in the world, and in doing so cultivate a culture of giving and giving effectively. As a student-led program, Charity Elections are organised by student leaders, and each vote results in an additional $2 donation from Giving What We Can.

The program was implemented at six schools in 2021, with nearly 2,000 students participating and $8,762 donated to highly effective charities, including Project Healthy Children, The Humane League, and the GiveWell Maximum Impact Fund. The $3,348 gift to Project Healthy Children, for instance, can provide ~6,500 people with food-based micronutrient fortification for one year.

Charity Election Data: 2021 Events

At both schools implementing a comprehensive event with ~700 students and pre/post surveys, students showed an increase in all four measured outcomes:

Being compassionate is important to me

Thinking critically is important to me

Thinking creatively is important to me

Making the world a better place is important to me

At three of the six schools, 100% of participating students indicated they voted for a cause they believe in. At the remaining three schools, 98%, 97%, and 95% of students indicated they voted for a cause they believe in. 28 student leaders earned Service Leadership Certificates, and students consistently indicated they “thought critically about what makes a charity effective” and “felt a sense of purpose or meaning.” Selected quotes from students participating in the 2021 Northfield High School Charity Election are listed below.

Anonymous Testimonials: Northfield High School

"It’s made me realize I can make a difference, and that the wishes I have in my head can actually lead to something that will help make the world a better place."

"The knowledge that an organization like GiveWell exists gives me optimism about the system of charity and giving in the world."

"It really makes you think about what we can do as a community. If everyone in a group had the spare money to donate even just two dollars that’s a significant amount that can go towards so many different charities that support amazing causes. When we group together we become very powerful and can do great things."

"It opened my eyes more to the struggles outside of our world and how many people struggle and we don’t see it. So being compassionate and caring goes a long way."

"It shows these worldwide issues more in depth and it makes me think more deeply about how affected people are around the globe by these issues. I am so lucky to have a great family and house and food so why wouldn’t I give to people in need."

"I get excited for the Charity Election every year at our school. It’s something that I’m always happy with in the end. A goal of mine is to give back as much as I possibly can, because I know that I had and have a good life. I have running water, proper food nutrition, and family and friends who love me. I ...

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: [Intro to brain-like-AGI safety] 2. “Learning from scratch” in the brain, published by Steve Byrnes on February 2, 2022 on The AI Alignment Forum.

2.1 Post summary / Table of contents

Part of the “Intro to brain-like-AGI safety” post series.

Having introduced the “brain-like-AGI safety” problem in the previous post, the next 5 posts (#2–#6) are primarily about neuroscience, building up to a more nuts-and-bolts understanding of what a brain-like AGI might look like (at least, in its safety-relevant aspects).

This post focuses on a concept that I call “learning from scratch”, and I will offer a hypothesized breakdown in which 96% of the human brain (including the neocortex) “learns from scratch”, and the other 4% (including the brainstem) doesn’t. This hypothesis is central to how I think the brain works, and hence will be a key prerequisite for the whole rest of the series.

In Section 2.2, I’ll define the concept of “learning from scratch”. As an example, if I assert that the neocortex “learns from scratch”, then I’m claiming that the neocortex starts out totally useless to the organism—outputting fitness-improving signals no more often than chance—until it starts learning things (within the individual's lifetime). Here are a couple everyday examples of things that “learn from scratch”:

In most deep learning papers, the trained model “learns from scratch”—the model is initialized from random weights, and hence the model outputs are random garbage at first. But during training, the weights are updated, and the model outputs eventually become very useful.

A blank hard disk drive also “learns from scratch”—you can't pull useful information out of it until after you’ve written information into it.

In Section 2.3, I will clarify some frequent confusions:

“Learning from scratch” is different from “blank slate”, because there is an innate learning algorithm, innate neural architecture, innate hyperparameters, etc.

“Learning from scratch” is different from “nurture-not-nature”, because (1) only some parts of the brain learn from scratch, while other parts don’t, and (2) the learning algorithms are not necessarily learning about the external environment—they could also be learning e.g. how to control one’s own body.

“Learning from scratch” is different from (and more specific than) “brain plasticity”, because the latter can also include (for example) a genetically-hardwired circuit with just one specific adjustable parameter, and that parameter changes semi-permanently under specific conditions.

In Section 2.4, I’ll propose my hypothesis that two major parts of the brain exist solely to run learning-from-scratch algorithms—namely, the telencephalon (neocortex, hippocampus, amygdala, most of the basal ganglia, etc.) and cerebellum. Together these comprise 96% of the volume of the human brain.

In Section 2.5, I’ll touch on four different lines of evidence concerning my hypothesis that the telencephalon and cerebellum learn from scratch: (1) big-picture thinking about how the brain works, (2) neonatal data, (3) the somewhat-related hypothesis of “cortical uniformity” and similar ideas, and (4) the possibility that a certain brain preprocessing motif—so-called “pattern separation”—involves randomization in a way that forces downstream algorithms to learn from scratch.

In Section 2.6, I’ll talk briefly about whether my hypothesis is mainstream vs idiosyncratic. (Answer: I’m not really sure.)

In Section 2.7, I’ll offer a little teaser of why learning-from-scratch is important for AGI safety—we wind up with a situation where the thing we want the AGI to be trying to do (e.g. cure Alzheimer's) is a concept buried inside a big hard-to-interpret learned-from-scratch data structure. Thus, it is not straightforward for the programmer to write motivation-related code that refers to this co...

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: Apply to CLR as a researcher or summer research fellow!, published by Chi on February 1, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum.

We, the Center on Long-Term Risk, are looking for researchers to explore strategies for reducing suffering in the long-term future (s-risk). We are currently offering temporary and permanent roles:

Summer Research Fellows: For nine weeks, you will be part of our team while working on your own research project. During this time, you will be in regular contact with our researchers and other fellows. One of our researchers will serve as your guide and mentor.

Researchers: As a researcher, you will become a permanent member of our team. You will be able to pursue high-impact research questions autonomously and without distractions.

Your contributions to our research program will have a positive impact through their influence on our strategic direction, grantmaking, communications, events, and other activities. You will work autonomously on challenging research questions relevant to reducing suffering. You will become part of our team of intellectually curious, hard-working, and caring people, all of whom share a profound drive to make the biggest difference they can.

We are worried that some people might not apply because they wrongly believe they are not a good fit for working with us. While such a belief is sometimes true, it is often the result of underconfidence rather than an accurate assessment. We would therefore love to see your application even if you are not sure if you are qualified or otherwise competent enough for the positions listed. We explicitly have no minimum requirements in terms of formal qualifications and many of the past summer research fellows have had no or little prior research experience. Being rejected this year will not reduce your chances of being accepted in future hiring rounds. If you have any doubts, please don’t hesitate to reach out (see “Application process” > “Inquiries” below).

Roles

Summer Research Fellow

Purpose of the fellowship

The purpose of the fellowship varies from fellow to fellow. In the past, have we often had the following types of people take part in the fellowship:

People very early in their careers, e.g. in their undergraduate degree or even high school, who have a strong focus on s-risk and would like to learn more about research and test their fit.

People seriously considering changing their career to s-risk research, who want to test their fit or seek employment at CLR.

People with a strong focus on s-risk who aim for a research or research-adjacent career outside of CLR and who would like to gain a strong understanding of s-risk macrostrategy beforehand.

People with a fair amount of research experience, e.g. from a partly- or fully completed PhD, whose research interests significantly overlap with CLR’s and who want to work on their research project in collaboration with CLR researchers for a few months. This includes people who do not strongly prioritize s-risk themselves.

There might be many other good reasons for completing the fellowship. We encourage you to apply if you think you would benefit from the program, even if your reason is not listed above. In all cases, we will work with you to make the fellowship as valuable as possible given your strengths and needs. In many cases, this will mean focusing on learning and testing your fit for s-risk research, more than seeking to produce immediately valuable research output.

Responsibilities

Carrying out a research project related to one of our priority areas below or otherwise targeted at reducing s-risks. You will determine this project in collaboration with your supervisor at CLR, who will meet with you every week and provide feedback on your work.

Attending team meetings, including giving occasional presentations on the state of your...

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 the Reducetarian Fellowship!, published by Sofia Fogel on February 1, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum.

Applications are now open for the Reducetarian Foundation’s newest initiative, the Reducetarian Fellowship. This program is supported in part by a grant from Open Philanthropy.

Overview

The Reducetarian Fellowship is designed to foster a more diverse, sustainable, and impactful movement by empowering bright, passionate, and ambitious young advocates and innovators to transform our food system.

This exciting new program is for exceptional New York City-area undergraduate students who are eager to create a more sustainable, healthy, and compassionate world. The one-year experience is designed to equip and encourage students to pursue a career focused on combating industrial animal agriculture. Each fellow receives a $7,500 stipend to support their participation in the program, and one-on-one mentorship from the Fellowship Director (me!) throughout the year.

For the inaugural cohort we will be selecting approximately 15 fellows.

Program components

The first component of the Fellowship runs from September to May. The curriculum offers students the opportunity to explore foundational ideas and cutting-edge strategies through seminars with scholars, activists, and other leaders in the field. It also allows students to develop their professional skills and network through workshops with specialized experts.

The second component of the Fellowship runs from June to August, when Fellows will put their learning to direct use in an 8-10 week summer residency at a partner organization. The residency is an immersive learning experience that will give Fellows first-hand experience with some of the most impactful work in food system reform and innovation.

Partner organizations

The fellowship partners are a diverse set of high-impact public- and private-sector entities connected to the Reducetarian Foundation’s mission of reducing societal consumption of animal products. They include nonprofits with missions related to environmental issues, animal welfare, or human health; companies focused on plant-based, fermented, and cell-cultured alternatives to conventional animal products; philanthropic institutions; and venture capital firms.

Each fellow will do their summer residency at the partner organization that best fits their skills and interests, so the participating organizations will vary each summer in accordance with the profiles of that year’s cohort.

Eligibility requirements and selection criteria

All applicants must be:

A U.S. citizen or permanent resident

Enrolled at a university in the New York City area (this includes some universities in New Jersey)

Able to physically attend twice-monthly events in Manhattan

A sophomore, junior, or senior during the Fellowship year (so students must apply during the spring semester of their freshman, sophomore, or junior year)

We are looking for students who are self-motivated and eager to make an impact, and who believe they would benefit from this program. Qualities sought include (but are not limited to):

Robust interest in creating a more sustainable, healthy, and humane food system

Interest in the Reducetarian philosophy and/or effective altruism

Ability to receive constructive feedback and implement changes in response

Growth mindset (the belief that new skills can be developed through hard work, good strategies, and high-quality input from others)

Ambition, openness, humility, and integrity

Apply now

You can apply to be a part of the Reducetarian Foundation’s inaugural cohort here!

Questions

We have an FAQ page on our website. If your question is not listed there, please email me at [email protected].

If you are a student who is unsure whether this opportunity would be the right fit for you, I strongly encourage...

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: Impossibility results for unbounded utilities, published by paulfchristiano on February 2, 2022 on LessWrong.

Some people think that they have unbounded utility functions. This isn't necessarily crazy, but it presents serious challenges to conventional decision theory. I think it probably leads to abandoning probability itself as a representation of uncertainty (or at least any hope of basing decision theory on such probabilities). This may seem like a drastic response, but we are talking about some pretty drastic inconsistencies.

This result is closely related to standard impossibility results in infinite ethics. I assume it has appeared in the philosophy literature, but I couldn't find it in the SEP entry on the St. Petersburg paradox so I'm posting it here. (Even if it's well known, I want something simple to link to.)

Weak version

We'll think of preferences as relations < over probability distributions over some implicit space of outcomes Ω. We'll show that there is no relation < which satisfies three properties: Antisymmetry, Unbounded Utilities, and Dominance.

Note that we assume nothing about the existence of an underlying utility function. We don't even assume that the preference relation is complete or transitive.

The properties

Antisymmetry: It's never the case that both AB and B>A.

Symmetric Unbounded Utilities. There is an infinite sequence of outcomes X1,X−2,X4,X−8,. each of which is "more than twice as impor...

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: Before Colour TV, People Dreamed in Black and White, published by Sam Enright on February 1, 2022 on LessWrong.

On an episode of Julia Galef’s podcast, the philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel said the following:

For [dreams], there was actually a literature that's very interesting where people in the '50 in the United States and the '40s thought that dreams just generally were black and white. I don't think that they thought it was just dreams in the United States, as influenced by media. I think they just thought dreams are a black and white kind of thing. Most people thought that in the 1950s. It's related to the presence of media in the culture, so if you look pre-20th century, very few people will say that dreams are black and white. If you look 21st century, very few people will say that dreams are black and white. You look at the arc of it and it relates to the dominance of black and white film media in the culture.

And we got some cross-cultural evidence for this. This guy emailed me and said, "We should try this in China," because this was about the year 2000. He said, "Well, in rural China, most people are exposed to black and white media, their TVs are black and white, whereas in urban China, most people -- especially the wealthier people -- are exposed to mostly colour media." So we asked about their dreams and we found rural people in China in the early 2000s tended to say that their dreams were black and white, and urban people tended to say their dreams were coloured.

That became the paper Schwitzgebel, Huang and Zhou 2006. If true, this is one of the most bonkers things I have ever learned.

The thing is, it’s extremely unlikely that black and white TV actually changed the contents of people’s dreams. There’s no plausible way that the small proportion of time people spent watching visual media could radically change dreams about things we see in colour every day. Rather, people don’t know whether they dream in colour. Dreams may not even have associated colours one way or the other! Indeed, when I asked a few friends and family whether they dreamed in colour, a surprising number of them answered “I don’t know”. When the dominant culture has a reference of visual media in black and white, you think you dream in black and white. And when your culture has a reference of visual media in colour, you think you dream in colour.

This relates to a generally underappreciated aspect of consciousness: vagueness. Your conscious experience of the world is vague. You don’t typically know what you’re feeling, or dreaming, and look to cultural cues to figure it out. This explains the stylised fact that anxiety and excitement are almost neurologically indistinguishable; the difference is in the surrounding interpretation. More speculatively, it also may explain the cross-cultural differences in mental illnesses. The associated brain states of mental illnesses may well be the same everywhere, caused by a few failure modes. But different cultures prime people to think of mental illnesses in different ways.

You may be sceptical if you are aware of how the psychological research on priming has not replicated well. But my colloquial usage of the term ‘prime’ is different from its technical meaning in psychology. It is not quite the placebo effect either: since all experiences are influenced by beliefs and expectations, that would commit us to say that everything is a placebo, which doesn’t seem right. It’s more similar to the Popperian case against empiricism that I outlined in my review of The Beginning of Infinity.

I was thinking out loud with a friend recently about how the purpose of meditation may be to eliminate this mental vagueness. To better understand sensation, unmediated by concepts. I heard Sam Harris say that experienced meditators even practice mindfulness in 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: I want to be replaced, published by mariushobbhahn on February 1, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum.

People often cling to their current identity as if the status quo was the best possible version of themselves. For example, they think they are “a person that is just bad at math” but don’t intend to change that since they have formed an identity around it. This even goes even further. When people are offered the hypothetical to gain 50 IQ with no strings attached some reject it because “they wouldn’t be the same”. Whenever I realize something like that in myself, I feel caught red-handed and ashamed. Rationally, I don’t want to be a person that forms an identity around a suboptimal version of myself but realistically I often do.

I think this tendency is suboptimal for future versions of ourselves, our surroundings and society at large. Thus, I want to create a strong mantra and emotional commitment against it. I don’t want to cling to my current identity.

I want to be replaced!

Epistemic status: Motivational (inspired by John Wentworth)

By a better future self

I don’t want to be a person that forms an identity around their current flaws and laughs them off like “I’m just the person who is bad at writing” like it was some inherent feature of mine. I want to be replaced by a future better version of myself, somebody that is similar to me in most aspects but a better writer.

I think this intuition works especially well with a Ship of Theseus-like, continuous flowy version of identity. The cells our bodies consist of are replaced multiple times within our lifetime, our bodies and brain change pretty drastically throughout childhood, puberty and adulthood, and yet, we always build an identity around the current version of ourselves. Why not accept the fact that we change and form an identity that welcomes better versions of the status quo rather than rejects them? I want to be replaced by my future better self!

By a better partner

Some relationship decisions are driven by the fear of losing our partners, independent of the consequences for others. For example, if Bob is in a relationship with Alice but Alice realizes that she likes Chakresh better, Bob will traditionally fight for her and try to prevent her from being with Chakresh. After a while, the dust settles and everyone is unhappy. Bob is unhappy because he can’t make Alice as happy as she could be, and Alice+Chakresh are unhappy because they are not with each other.

The entire situation could be so much better if Bob just allowed Alice to be with Chakresh. Clearly, this goes against most social norms and instincts and yet it seems better in the long term to accept when you are a suboptimal fit. Furthermore, the easier it is for you to accept the situation, the less damage is done to everyone involved. I don’t want to be Bob.

I want to be replaced by a better partner!

By a better employee

People cling to their jobs as if it’s the only thing they can ever do. We hate to be fired, we hate being demoted and we hate it when other people are promoted while we are “the next in line”. For the economy at large, it is good when inefficient jobs are cut, bad employees are demoted and good ones promoted. Even for ourselves, it’s usually not as bad as we assume. If a better person gets promoted, that will likely benefit the company at large and thus us. If we get fired for bad work, we might not have been a perfect fit to begin with. In the long run, it often means finding a better-fitting position or is better for society.

I want to be replaced by a better employee.

I know that there are people in less privileged positions for whom this mantra doesn’t make any sense.

By a machine

Historically people have really disliked losing their job to automation. The weavers rioted against the introduction of the power loom and the co...

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: CE is scaling – our 3-year plan and current hiring round, published by KarolinaSarek on February 1, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum.

TLDR: Charity Entrepreneurship is expanding our team to facilitate our plan to scale. Based on the track record of our incubated organizations, we believe that we could increase our impact by doubling the quality of our incubated charities followed by the quantity. To do so, we’re looking for 5 new team members who will be involved in research, outreach, or writing. Open roles include senior and entry-level staff.

What we do

At Charity Entrepreneurship, we’re focused on launching new high-impact nonprofits annually by connecting entrepreneurs with effective ideas, training, and funding. This means that each year, we dedicate hundreds of research hours to identifying neglected problems worldwide and pinpointing the charity ideas with the highest potential impact per dollar. Then we recruit aspiring entrepreneurs and provide them with free, two-month-long intensive training, helping them find the co-founder and idea that best fit their talents. Next, our board and network of experts evaluate teams and their project proposals to award seed funding (with grants ranging from $50,000 to $175,000). We continue to provide ongoing operational support, more training opportunities, regular mentorship calls, and a worldwide network of advisors, peers, and partner organizations. You can learn about our Incubation Program on our website.

Our track record

Charity Entrepreurship’s impact is largely dependent on the success of the charities we launch. Although our work has some other beneficial flow-through effects (e.g., research that informs other organizations and governmental institutions, or advice and guidance that improves broader EA project decision-making and outcomes), when we think about our track record, we mostly focus on the progress of the existing charities we helped to start and continue to mentor. Our current views on this impact are summarized below.

To date, we have launched 18 new charities and secured them over $1.15 million in seed funding grants.

So far, these charities have:

Improved the lives of ~1.6 million animals

Implemented programs that have reached over 6 million people

To break it down into proportions:

About ⅖ of the charities each year exceed the cost-effectiveness of the strongest charities in their fields and have been supported by multiple independent funding bodies (Open Philanthropy, GiveWell, EA funds, etc.).

About ⅖ make progress, but remain small-scale or have an unclear cost-effectiveness.

About ⅕ shut down in their first 24 months without having a significant impact.

On our website, we published an “Our Charities” page with space dedicated to each individual organization so you can follow their progress. Some highlights below.

Fortify Health has signed 15 partnerships with flour mills across West Bengal, Maharashtra, and Madhya Pradesh. If they work at scale, fortified flour can reach around 1.65 million people. The organization was also awarded 2 GiveWell Incubation Grants, totaling $1.3M (2018, 2019), and is under evaluation for another. They are predicted to have a 25% chance of becoming a GiveWell top recommended charity.

Fish Welfare Initiative has potentially helped 420,000 fish and 1.2 million shrimp through welfare improvements. They have also enrolled 58 fish farmers in their Alliance for Responsible Aquaculture.

Thanks to the Lead Exposure Elimination Project, the Malawi Bureau of Standards has committed to enforcing regulation and getting lead paint off shelves. Estimated impact if the Malawi Bureau of Standards enforces lead paint regulation: decrease poisoning in ~322,000 children (averting 87,000 DALY-equivalents, equivalent to saving 2,900 lives). LEEP estimates that this will be completed...

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: Immune, In a Nutshell, published by Jsevillamol on January 31, 2022 on LessWrong.

Immune: A journey into the mysterious system that keeps you alive, by Philipp Dettmer, is a cross between a high-school biology textbook and an epic two-part saga. At its core there are two stories, describing a bacterial and a viral infection respectively. Both battles introduce us to our immune system, how it recognizes pathogens, and how it dispatches them.

I enjoyed the book a lot. It’s become my late night lecture for the last week, as my body fought off its own battle against COVID-19. Even fatigued and hazy, the book manages to explain and entertain.

Through the book I learned many useful and fascinating concepts: how the immune system has weaponized evolution to produce antibodies, how proteins come in matching pairs that are used to recognize pathogens, and how the body prevents the immune system from attacking itself.

While simplified, I felt the book did a good job at explaining the reasons why the immune system works the way it does, instead of leaving the reader with just surface metaphors as many others do.

Should you read this book? Possibly!

If you want to learn more about immunology, but you are unsure of whether the book is right for you, I would first watch the relevant Kurzgesagt videos:

How the Immune System ACTUALLY Works

You Are Immune Against Every Disease

Tiny Bombs in your Blood - The Complement System

The videos have a very similar style and cover the same material as some chapters of the book. If they seem interesting and novel, you will definitely enjoy the book!

You should also read this book if you want to learn good communication. The clever use of metaphors and illustrations, interwoven with technical details, make the topic approachable and memorable. I will be thinking from now on of MHC class II molecules as hot dog buns, and I will be wiser because of it.

The only part of the book I am hesitant to recommend is the fourth one. The messages about the importance of vaccinations, the dangers of smoking, and the cruelty of nature fell a bit flat to me. The digression on why autoimmune diseases are on the rise in first world countries, how allergies might have evolved to fight parasitic worms, and the COVID pandemic felt vague and handwavy.

Overall, I am glad that I dedicated time to actively engage with this book. It has helped me shore up my knowledge on one of my weakest subjects, and I had fun while doing so.

In the remainder of this article I plan to offer a summary of what I learned. I’ll proceed chapter by chapter, writing one paragraph for each. This sadly means I will leave out most of the interesting metaphors, illustrations and stories, which are probably the most valuable part of the book.

I think this will be most useful to people who have already read the book, as a quick recap to jog their memory.

The book has four parts:

Part I: Meet Your Immune System. This is a brief introduction and overview.

Part II: Catastrophic Damage. This part covers the skin, bacterial infections, the innate immune system, the adaptive immune system, and antibody production.

Part III: Hostile Takeover. This part covers the mucosa, viral infections, how the body detects and disposes of infected cells, and immunity.

Part IV: Rebellion and Civil War. This part covers some loose topics like the immunodeficiency virus, autoimmune diseases, how to boost your immune system, cancer, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Let’s get started!

Part I: Introduction and overview

The immune system is the group of cells and mechanisms meant to identify and destroy pathogens. It is designed to distinguish the self from the other, and destroy and disable the latter.

Pathogens include some bacteria, viruses, cancer cells, and other organisms. They are dangerous because they steal your body’s nut...