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At least for the "killed people in Africa" claim, the numbers most cited about how many people cutting it would kill were beyond bogus to the point of what I would consider blatant academic malpractice: https://youtube.com/watch?v=-4eQZdxlPCU
I cannot believe how facile the basis for this claim is.
It's embarrassing that so many progressive journalists uncritically reported such an obviously spurious finding. But what really alarms me is that it wouldn't surprise me if the level of numerical or statistical aptitude among the journos at the NYT, the BBC etc. was so remedial that they literally wouldn't understand why this finding was spurious.
No one who is unable to define the differences between "mean", "median" and "mode" should be working as a journalist. (Okay, fine, you can be a film or literary critic. If you're reporting on the news, you need to understand stats. Your opinions should not be taken seriously if you don't.)
I largely agree here, but the ability or gumption to wrap your head around median, mean, and mode is only barely entry level if "understanding stats" is the goal. I have probably a fair understanding of statistics--if by that we mean different methods (or methodologies), the relevance of statistical significance (and/or irrelevance), and the development of statistics over time. But I take a great deal on faith, unable to personally recite formulas or really understand how Cronbach's alpha is calculated, etc. I do think anyone writing, making, or citing conclusions based on statistical data has the responsibility to mention the limitations and assumptions made in gathering and computing that data. I'm personally very wary of using quantitative methods to measure anything affective (attitudes, for example), but abuse, or at least uninformed use, of statistics is rampant, and not just by left-leaning journalists.
Agreed, I was using "explain the difference between mean, median and mode" as a metonym for "have a basic understanding of fundamental statistical concepts".
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Yes, and if true, it would be trivially easy for people to raise money and save those lives. The fact that no one really made an effort shows a lack of belief. If relatively small amounts of money is all it takes to save African lives, they all would have been saved long ago.
I would argue that EA has been trying to pick up some of the slack. Likely they favored the most effective measures, but it seems to me that they stopped because they ran out of funds rather than because they thought that most of the things USAID funded were net negative
The truth is that before Trump, USAID was spending 12-15G$/a on global healthcare and EA (with a total budget of 1.5-2G$/a over all cause areas) is simply not in the position to simply replace the gap with some spare change.
Was there some USAID funded NGO delivering books with inspiring stories about racial justice to some structurally disadvantaged girls? Probably. Was this where the median dollar was spent? Unlikely, it seems more likely that it got into vaccination campaigns and the like.
In the past, USAID was part of a broader strategy of the US painting itself as the good guy. Sure, sometimes they would bomb the shit out of you and steal your oil, but overall they were not a terrible hegemon as these things go. Trump does not care about USAID as a tool of soft power because he does not understand soft power. His levers of foreign policy are tariffs and the US military.
USAID has been, since its early days, a tool for the CIA to do all of the things they are not legally allowed to do since the Church Comittee kneecapped their dirty tricks department.
If you wanted to overthrow a nominally democratic government, you called USAID.
This was a well-known talking point among the 70s and 80s hippies, but they seem to have conveniently forgotten about it recently.
The problem with USAID, is just like the Roman legions, it began to turn its attention inward and become a player in domestic politics.
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The US never gets any credit for any of the great things we do (Covid vaccines being a recent example) but gets maximum blame for bad things. No one ever said how great the US was because of USAID, but when we took it away, there were howls of protest.
So I would say that, it's not just Trump. The U.S. hasn't understood soft power in a long time. Everyone hates us. So, if hated, better at least to be respected than to continue to beg for scraps of affection.
I do hope that EA's will fully fund the most effective measures with a small share of the bonanza of money coming their way post Anthropic and Open AI IPO's. Personally, I predict little progress on Africa's core problems but much higher SF real estate prices and political donations to politicians who promise to regulate AI. Perhaps I'm overly cynical. I do think that EA's in general believe what they say. It's just that they are also lazy and bullshit and status seeking, just like everyone else.
There were lots of Covid vaccines available. The counterfactual where the US didn't develop a covid vaccine looks like one where Sputnik and Astrazeneca take most of the three US vaccine's early market share.
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