= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
CronoDAS comments on The Craigslist Revolution: a real-world application of torture vs. dust specks OR How I learned to stop worrying and create one billion dollars out of nothing - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d){kind=logo}
Comments (219)
You don't care about $1 billion for tuberculosis control? TB may not be an existential risk, but it's still a really big, important problem, and it's one that could easily get a lot worse if universally antibiotic resistant strains start becoming common. If the Dark Lords of the Matrix offered me the choice between "tomorrow someone invents a fusion power plant that actually works, is easily built and maintained, and generates electricity energy at a lower cost than burning fossil fuels does" and "all TB bacteria spontaneously die", it's hard to say which would actually generate more utility.
I would take the TB cure but you are not thinking on the margins. People are already worried about TB, funding is already going there.
The only way this will work is if we trigger feelings that already exist. We cannot create new worries and feelings in the time it takes them to read a Facebook group name. We need something that will already have enough momentum to make them click the button.
I could be misunderstanding your point.
So...the thing that most needs to be done is hard. Gosh, reality isn't allowed to do that to us, is it?
True, but It's still not nearly enough, though. In the short run, the Stop TB Partnership (GiveWell's #2 charity) can productively use about $20 million more to supply drugs to eligible countries.
I would take the fusion plant; an energy technology that is cheaper than fossil fuels in all major ways is basically a license to print money. Most literally it is a license to print money -- you could sell the patent for more than a billion dollars and then cure even more tuberculosis.
Note that I said "someone" - meaning someone other than me - does the inventing. And the alternative is "The TB bacteria immediately becomes extinct - nobody ever gets TB again, and everyone who has it is immediately cured."
Point taken, I misread your scenario.