GiveWell.org interviews SIAI

Paul Crowley

Holden Karnofsky of GiveWell.org interviewed Jasen Murray of SIAI and published his notes (Edit: PDF, thanks lukeprog!), with updates from later conversations. Lots of stuff to take an interest in there - thanks to jsalvatier for drawing our attention to it. One new bit of information stands out in particular:

Michael Vassar is working on an idea he calls the "Persistent Problems Group" or PPG. The idea is to assemble a blue-ribbon panel of recognizable experts to make sense of the academic literature on very applicable, popular, but poorly understood topics such as diet/nutrition. This would have obvious benefits for helping people understand what the literature has and hasn't established on important topics; it would also be a demonstration that there is such a thing as "skill at making sense of the world."

Michael Vassar is working on an idea he calls the "Persistent Problems Group" or PPG. The idea is to assemble a blue-ribbon panel of recognizable experts to make sense of the academic literature on very applicable, popular, but poorly understood topics such as diet/nutrition. This would have obvious benefits for helping people understand what the literature has and hasn't established on important topics; it would also be a demonstration that there is such a thing as "skill at making sense of the world."

it would also be a demonstration that there is such a thing as "skill at making sense of the world."

There probably isn't such a thing with visible advantage for most topics that enough people already worked on.

A summary of the diet/nutrition literature which sorts the well-established points from the chaff would be extremely useful. Is there already a comprehensive online user-friendly treatment, written by extremely rational thinker(s) who have done thorough research? I would be surprised. The area is a minefield of cleverly disguised bad research.

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GiveWell.org interviews SIAI

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GiveWell.org interviews SIAI

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