I think of one of the main experts here as Kevin Esvelt, the first person to suggest using CRISPR to affect wild populations. Here's an article largely based on interviews with him that he recommends, explaining why he's against unilateral action here:
"Esvelt, whose work helped pave the way for Target Malaria’s efforts, is terrified, simply terrified, of a backlash between now and then that could derail it. This is hardly a theoretical concern. In 2002, anti-GMO hysteria led the government of Zambia to reject 35,000 tons of food aid in the middle of a famine out of fear it could be genetically modified. Esvelt knows that the CRISPR gene drive is a tool of overwhelming power. If used well, it could save millions of lives, help rescue endangered species, even make life better for farm animals. If used poorly, gene drives could cause social harms that are difficult to reverse. . . .
“To the extent that you or I say something or publish something that reduces the chance that African nations will choose to work with Target Malaria by 1 percent, thereby causing a 1 percent chance that project will be delayed by a decade, the expected cost of our action is 25,000 children dead of malaria,” Esvelt tells me. “That’s a lot of kids.”"
An EA contacted me who knows Kontsevich and is considering reaching out to him. If you want to coordinate with that person, let me know and I can put you in touch.
I think it's often worth making a comparison to "what am I trying to achieve in my relationship with my partner? With another adult, you're not trying to mold them into a better human. You're trying to enjoy the time you have together now, and next month, and over the decades.
There's a lot of parenting that makes a difference to how much you both enjoy the next 18 years. Like the "teaching them not to whine" thing - you will both be happier if they have other ways of getting their needs met.
They make special pens for this. https://www.amazon.com/Mental-Health-Non-Lethal-Flexible-Point/dp/B00KALP5Z4
The other obvious workaround, if the facility allows, is to lend them a pen to sign something with and then take it back. One of the doctors I worked with did have someone disassemble the pen and steal the ink part from it during this process, which the doctor didn't notice until afterward, but he can't have been paying super close attention.
It depends a lot on the meeting. In some "popcorn" meetings there's a lot of talking with pauses between; in some the default is silence.
>"It seems to me the Quakers would also run into this problem at least sometimes. I'm curious how they deal"
I once saw someone else stand up and say that we'd heard what they have to say and it was now time for some silence. (Context was that this was a person who habitually talked a lot in meeting, and was starting to repeat themselves during a long message.)
It says "In New Zealand, the choice to attend a single-sex school is not a result of a family’s desire that their child attend a religious or military institution; choice is primarily determined by which school the pupil can most easily walk to." Looks like about 20% of government-run secondary schools are currently single-sex; not sure what it was like in the 70s or so when this was done. But I could imagine that in cases where parents particularly want a particular school they still chose based on things like whether it was single-sex and not only on what was closest.
Yes, the book was published in 2020. The parts about genetics emphasize that at the time they did the research (significantly earlier), testing was a lot more labor-intensive and expensive which is why they used a method that nobody would use now. The authors' paper about the MAOA stuff came out in 2002. But if the method is also now considered to be mostly bogus, I wonder if they couldn't resist publishing research that they'd already done even if the method wasn't considered good anymore.
The new text is finally up: https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/our-mistakes
Talking with you was one of the prompts to write it!
And now omicron is at 74% of US cases!
I don't know what the supposed changes in growing and processing wheat are, but a lot of that will presumably have happened by the stage it's flour. So doing the mixing and baking yourself might not change anything.