Owain_Evans(Owain Evans)
The 15 seconds transmission (if it’s reasonably common and doesn’t involve one person coughing or sneezing in someone’s face) suggests a quite different infectiouness profile than other variants. You’d expect massive superspreader events from public transport, bars, and events. You’d expect very few people to be infected by family members (because they are exposed to so many people for 15 seconds). I’m not ruling this out but it sounds a bit unlikely based on reports of Delta spread so far.
How much does Christianity explain Western economic and intellectual development? Some considerations against:
Lack of comparable successes in most of the Orthodox Christian world.
Impressiveness of Classical Greece and Hellenistic world vs Europe until the Renaissance and scientific revolution.
Temporal correlation between Renaissance and scientific revolution and great uptick of interest in classical works (vs Christian texts).
AFAIK, Christians outside Europe (Ethiopia, Middle East) not being especially successful intellectually or economically.
Scandinavia being pagan till fairly late.
Jews in Europe being very successful economically and intellectually despite not being Christian.
Underperformance of places where Catholic Church has lingering strong influence (Spain, Portugal, Italy, Poland, Ireland).
What actual ideas from Christianity (that seem distinctive and not found elsewhere) do scientists, philosophers, economists, business people, political leaders (etc) draw on directly? My sense is not that many.
I’d like to see investigations of the following:
1. Secondary attack rates for Delta for pairs of people who are fully vaccinated with Pfizer. (I’m guessing this is relevant to someone in the Bay, as most of the people you have close contact with for more than 30 mins are fully vaccinated).
2. Long Covid rates for the fully vaccinated (both Delta and other variants).
3. Using genetics or other personal information to estimate risk of severe disease or Long Covid. (e.g. Blood type was relevant to severe disease risk for original variant.)
4. How to get access to new vaccines designed for Delta (or for “universal” Covid). Most likely route is clinical trials. Maybe some countries will approve earlier than others (e.g. UK, UAE).
5. Aside from being more infectious, is the guidance for avoiding infection from Delta any different? E.g. surfaces vs aerosol.
These are great examples. Maybe a meta class on how to learn manual skills from video tutorials?
On the paper on loss of grey matter:
Mean age of subjects who got Covid was 61 or 62. The range was 50-80. We know effects of Covid are exponentially worse as a function of age. So not clear this would generalize to people in their 20s.
Decent Twitter thread discussing whether Covid caused the reduction and whether it might be reversible. https://twitter.com/Neuro_Skeptic/status/1406693917899341824
Some more ideas:
superforecasting: the best class would involve people actually doing forecasting on something like Metaculus or on a prediction market with financial bets.
real-world practical applications of deep learning: considering the technical and economic/ethical aspects
immersive sociology/anthropology of internet cultures: you can’t do traditional anthropological fieldwork in an undergrad class but you can lurk or participate in any one of innumerable online subcultures.
immersion in country X: using machine translation, it’s possible to consume newspapers, Twitter, TV, etc from another country without speaking the language. someone who knows country X well could build an engaging class around this.
cooking: there are not many college courses on cooking (harvard’s famous class is an exception). youtube is pretty great for demonstrations.
Alyssa Vance asked, “What great classes could be taught using ideas that might be seen on the Internet, but aren’t part of a standard curriculum yet?”.
My answer:
Deep learning (especially recent ideas like graph neural nets, transformers, GPT-3, deep learning applied to science), online advertising, cryptocurrency, contemporary cybersecurity, the internet in China (seems valuable for people outside China to understand), CRISPR, human genetics (e.g. David Reich’s work), contemporary videogames (either from technological or cultural/artistic perspective), contemporary TV, popular music in the age of Spotify, internet culture (e.g. Reddit, social media, memes).
Owain_Evans’s Shortform
AI Safety Research Project Ideas
I’d guess it’s not easy to change the land use for a farm and that it would be expensive and slow to build a campus in or near Oxford. It’s probably easier to move into an existing “campus” (e.g. for a school, training center, residential conference facility).
Immigration-wise: It will harder for EU people to move to the UK going forward but (AFAICT) easier for people from the Canada, US, Australia and elsewhere. The UK now has a points system for skilled workers (you need a job offer) and a special visa (don’t need a job offer) for people in academia research and “digital technology” (which covers fintech, gaming, cybersecurity and AI among other areas).
My answer links to a paper claiming that aroma diffusers can work well but humifiers, spray bottles, and spray bottles did less well.
This paper from engineers at Cambridge University claims that a standard aroma diffuser and plastic bag is close to the performance of commercial equipment. That said, I’m not sure how much the total cost and prep time would compare to the nebulizer approach that jimrandomh suggests.
Paper Link
AbstractObjective:
Qualitative fit testing is a popular method of ensuring the fit of sealing face masks such as N95 and FFP3 masks. Increased demand due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has led to shortages in testing equipment and has forced many institutions to abandon fit testing. Three key materials are required for qualitative fit testing: the test solution, nebulizer, and testing hood. Accessible alternatives to the testing solution have been studied. This exploratory qualitative study evaluates alternatives to the nebulizer and hoods for performing qualitative fit testing.
Methods:
Four devices were trialed to replace the test kit nebulizer. Two enclosures were tested for their ability to replace the test hood. Three researchers evaluated promising replacements under multiple mask fit conditions to assess functionality and accuracy.
Results:
The aroma diffuser and smaller enclosures allowed participants to perform qualitative fit tests quickly and with high accuracy.
Conclusions:
Aroma diffusers show significant promise in their ability to allow individuals to quickly, easily, and inexpensively perform qualitative fit testing. Our findings indicate that aroma diffusers and homemade testing hoods may allow for qualitative fit testing when conventional apparatus is unavailable. Additional research is needed to evaluate the safety and reliability of these devices.
Do you have tips on how to not fail without having one of these test kits? Which N95s work best? Do rubber P100s tend to fit better?
Ability to succeed in building organizations or movements will correlate with ability to organize childcare (either through family, friends or paid help).
Clintons? Obamas? There are many examples from academia. Nobel Laureates Banerjee and Duflo, or these two economists:
During the pregnancy, they employed a doula, or birth companion; after the birth, they hired a nanny named Ellen, who had a BA and was finishing her master’s degree in education policy, and whom they paid $US50,000 (about $65,000) a year. “We didn’t just want a warm body,” Wolfers says, over his second beer. “Some people just want someone who’ll keep their kids safe, but we wanted more than that.”
I haven’t re-read the paper, although IIRC there are critiques online of this paper and the author’s other statistical analyses. How strong do you think the evidence is for the counterfactual “If person has chooses to have kids, their chance of major achievement will drop substantially” (for a range of different people)? Ideally there’d be natural experiments (due to infertility or someone who didn’t want kids raising their sibling’s children etc).
These graphs aren’t that different and (I’d guess) it wouldn’t be hard to p-hack to get the intended result. Rate of being unmarried will vary over time and with country and this will correlate with age of achievements (e.g. if people in biology peak later than math/physics, if there’s more biologists in UK and math/physics people in Germany and Italy). And there’s the causal / counterfactual inference..
I’d like to see discussion of data rather than mostly a priori argument (“I have a sense” … “I suspect desire”). For aggregate data, there’s SSC survey and there are studies of “ambitious” groups (e.g. the Harvard Men study, Benbow on precious math talent). There are also anecdata of the exceptionally ambitious. E.g. Musk had first child age ~30 and has many kids, Hassabis had first child aged ~29. It seems Jaan Tallinn had kids starting in his 20s before founding Skype (Wikipedia). Bezos has 4 kids (started age 37). Gates has 3 kids (started age ~40). Turing award-winners David Patterson and Judea Pearl had kids in their 20s before their biggest contributions. Yoshua Bengio in his 30s. etc
I don’t know of instances. But I’m also interested to know if people have good sources on this.
My understanding is that people entering the UK by air (e.g. from the US) now enter via ePassport gates and so don’t need to talk to a border/immigration official. This might make it easier to enter than before. At the same time, I would be wary (based on what little I know) of entering without a clear explanation and evidence you are not working in the UK (e.g. epic holiday in UK, clear family reasons).
I believe you can spend 6 months in the UK visa free and there’s no rule against more than 6 months out of the year. My understanding is that visitors will be vaccinated and treated for Covid by the NHS—you may need to pay some modest fee.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_policy_of_the_United_Kingdom
https://www.freemovement.org.uk/there-is-no-180-day-rule-for-visitors-to-the-uk/
The persistence of anosmia doesn’t entail that other symptoms are caused by Covid. (IIRC the relevant cells in the nose take a while to regenerate). Though I agree this provides some evidence that Covid is the cause.
This predicts that you’d find organ damage in these patients. Are there studies showing clear organ damage in people with mild cases 6 months later?
I disagree. This does happen without an identifiable cause.