Taxing vapes increases smoking (a lot).
Restricting access entirely is even worse.
Anti-vape is pro-tobacco.
PDF of paper: nber.org/system/files/w
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Robert Wiblin
@robertwiblin
Host of The Podcast: 80000hours.org/podcast/
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I am again begging health agencies not to act in a way that causes millions of innocent people to die:
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Credit to the UK which is all in on using vaping to stop smoking. A ray of sanity in a mad world.
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The idea that vaping isn't vastly vastly safer than smoking is among the most personally harmful falsehoods a person can believe.
And in many countries, including the US, it's a piece of misinformation authorities both tolerate and encourage.
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I'm amazed to meet smokers who still don't realise vaping is something like 20–100 times less harmful. It seems to be the defining characteristic of people I meet who still smoke. Pretty sad if the main obstacle to getting people to quit is insufficient pro-vape marketing.
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Has any monarch in history inherited a throne and then refused to rule over some of their foreign territories because they oppose imperialism / colonialism?
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I've heard so little about Afghanistan this year.
I assume the situation is grim AF but so hopeless newspapers don't think people want to hear about it. Plus hard to report from the country.
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IMO updated vaccines for new COVID strains should be checked for safety alone — and then it should be up to me (and my doctor) whether I opt to take the e.g. new Omicron shot or the 'COVID classic' shot.
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The educational gain from starting high schools later in the day is so large that until politicians, parents and teachers unions adopt the change we should laugh in their face when they say they care about students or how much they learn.
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Holy shit look at that effect size: jstor.org/stable/41238103
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Aspartame is safe, the end:
"The current science says that the health impact of aspartame is essentially zero. Every credible body that has studied this question has reached the same conclusion."
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LOL early school start time is also awful for teen health (or at least greatly reduces attendance). If it weren't just part of how schools operate I wonder if you could even get ethics permission to wake people up early like this for years at a time:
frontiersin.org/articles/10.33
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Haven't seen a study lately but I would bet that reducing crowding and noise in classrooms would help a lot for obvious reasons.
Likewise having very bright indoor lighting if you're somewhere with little sun. 3/
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5. A bit disputed, but if you believe the deworming literature then having intestinal parasites is awful for education.
6. Lead/heavy metals are horrific.
All these have gotten some attention but I suspect still highly underrated.
All are cheap and scalable interventions! 2/
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A recurring result in education studies is that biological fundamentals affect learning a *lot*:
1. Sleep cycle (e.g. teens starting school at 10am not 7am)
2. Food (school meals boost learning)
3. Heat/cold (aircon improves learning)
4. Clean air (pollution reduces learning) 1/
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The remaining annoyance is putting everything back when you're home, so I organise the suitcase into bags corresponding to where the items come from: a bag for wardrobe, a bag for bathroom, a bag for my bedside table, a bag for my office desk, etc. 2/
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The cool kids find clever ways to travel super light with carefully crafted carry-on bags, but I do the opposite:
Eat the fixed cost of checking a bag, but then save time by throwing everything I might want in my suitcase without worrying about it. 1/
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Russia gives “ultimatum” to Lithuania after Vilnius bans Kaliningrad rail transit of goods sanctioned by EU. “Retaliatory measures” will follow, says Peskov. RIA’s report ends by citing Putin’s warning that the West seeks to “weaken & contain” Russia.
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Given the huge economic costs of the war in Ukraine via food, oil, inflation, etc, is it possible that when the US sends an extra $10 billion in equipment to the Ukrainian military to try to end the war faster, the country comes out ahead financially?
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Politico named the most dangerous place on earth right now
The 'Suwałki Gap' from Belarus to Kaliningrad, where the border of Poland and Lithuania now passes is the most dangerous place because of the threat of a direct conflict between Russia and NATO.
📰politico.eu/article/suwalk
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If you think democracy is genuinely in danger (and I do!), then this kind of ratfucking is just outrageously dangerous
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I'm amazed to meet smokers who still don't realise vaping is something like 20–100 times less harmful. It seems to be the defining characteristic of people I meet who still smoke. Pretty sad if the main obstacle to getting people to quit is insufficient pro-vape marketing.
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From an economic productivity standpoint Brexit has sucked roughly as much as was predicted.
'The deafening silence over Brexit’s economic fallout': ft.com/content/7a209a
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Recent paper on how computation inputs used to train ML models have been growing.
For flagship models the doubling time is currently about 10 months (4000x growth over a decade):
arxiv.org/pdf/2202.05924
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And here's the third from a few months back!
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Here's our first conversation (2017):
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This Friday I'm again interviewing , this time just about his upcoming book 'What We Owe The Future', for what may become our new audio intro to longtermism.
We've got 3 or so hours — what should I ask him?
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Seems like having one big park (like Central Park) rather than the same area split into many smaller parks maximises the average distance a city resident has to travel to get to a park.
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The US has some problems but browsing the insane frenetic chaos of American television for 30 minutes I'm mostly impressed it still has any buildings standing.
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Our *World* in Data with 12 new charts on space. Classic example of mission creep!
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I love data, but I also love space, so I'm excited to say we have a brand new collection of charts on space exploration & satellites on @OurWorldInData! 
12 charts on launches (number & cost), astronauts, exoplanets, asteroids, pollution, spending… ourworldindata.org/space-explorat
12 charts on launches (number & cost), astronauts, exoplanets, asteroids, pollution, spending… ourworldindata.org/space-exploratShow this thread
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this was my multiverse of madness
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Really bad news: DOJ just filed a brief asking the Supreme Court to overturn CA’s ban on the sale of pork from crated pigs.
The Biden Administration is siding with the pork industry in defending one of the most extreme forms of farm animal cruelty.
supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/21/2
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One finding from Ackva's research that people don't like to hear: simply giving your money to an effective climate charity is vastly more impactful than any personal consumer choice (even assuming those choices influence others).
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1/10 I had the privilege of talking to about what has been my obsession for the past couple of years, “puzzling through the best way to spend [philanthropic] money on climate"
Really grateful to for him making a complex topic accessible, some highlights:
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Today on Volts: the "effective altruism" movement seeks to apply logical & empirical rigor to philanthropic giving. What does it have to say about climate change philanthropy? I talk with someone who's been puzzling through that question. volts.wtf/p/volts-podcas
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The moon is very highly rated yet still underrated
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"If pondering comes at a cost, we should ponder only if it seems we will be able to separate better options from worse options quickly enough to warrant the pondering."
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Counterpoint: currencies are priced on a smooth continuum and there are no such 'thresholds'.
ft.com/content/97b5a7
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