The linked article does point out the difficulties of raising overall quality of life and human development. Is that what you're saying is harder to do than just throwing money at the problem? If so, I agree completely (and join the anti-PC crowd in suggesting that the very best of currently conceivable general solutions for Africa is reinstating colonialism).
However, I was talking specifically about satisfying the most elementary physical needs of individual destitute Africans (sustenance, health, peace), not grand questions of policy or structural change. Why I took such a narrow view is because I feel that pushing the self-sufficiency, ground-up angle when talking about ways to fix the whole mess is quite limited and even hypocritical; maybe sharing a little of our wealth to guarantee those needs for everyone (and enforcing birth control, and dealing with a whole separate can of worms, but that's a problem with every approach) could indeed ameliorate the ongoing nightmare while our social engineering looks for a way to kickstart the aforementioned self-sufficiency.
Yes, increasing dependency and taking away responsibility is a clear instrumental evil, and according to many just evil, period. But if we could first stop people from 1) being born into suffering to do little but increase that very suffering and 2) dying quickly and miserably, maybe that's worth the tradeoff.
Yes, I'm exploring a view I know to be naive.
maybe sharing a little of our wealth to guarantee those needs for everyone . . . could indeed ameliorate the ongoing nightmare
When there is hunger, there is power in controlling the distribution of food. When people have power from something, they do not simply allow outsiders to come in and take it away without a fight. You can ship all the food you like for free to African ports; the people of the country itself will still go hungry, because the people with guns will control the distribution to maximize their power.
If a man is intentionally starvin...
This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapter 81, which should be published later today. The previous thread passed 400 comments as of the time of this writing, so it will pass 500 comments soon after the next chapter is posted, if not before. I suggest refraining from commenting here until chapter 81 is posted; comment in the 12th thread until you read chapter 81. After chapter 81 is posted, I suggest all discussion of previous guesses be kept here, with links to comments in the previous thread.
There is now a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author’s Notes. (This goes up to the notes for chapter 76, and is now not updating. The authors notes from chapter 77 onwards are on hpmor.com.) When posted, chapter 81 should appear here.
The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag. Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system. Also: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight,nine, ten, eleven, twelve.
As a reminder, it’s often useful to start your comment by indicating which chapter you are commenting on.
Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically: