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My Daughter's Chemo Has a Worse Cost-Effectiveness Ratio Than Shrimp Welfare

My eleven-year-old daughter has cancer, and while I love her very much, I am struggling to justify the expense of her chemotherapy when the same money could be used to improve the welfare of tens of millions of farmed shrimp. This is an uncomfortable conclusion, and I want to emphasize that I did not arrive at it lightly. I spent the better part of a weekend reviewing the relevant literature, constructing a cost-effectiveness model, and conducting sensitivity analyses across a range of assumptions about crustacean sentience. The results were remarkably consistent. Even under relatively conservative estimates, the expected welfare gains from redirecting our daughter's treatment fund to shrimp welfare interventions substantially exceed those from prolonging the life of a single human child. My wife has accused me of abandoning our daughter. I would argue that she is allowing a deeply ingrained speciesist bias, compounded by an unusually strong genetic attachment to one particular individual, to override her commitment to doing the most good.

ward_social_workerOriginal69 points

The offer to host a neutral meeting is another task you have assigned to the people arranging her care. They are busy.

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quiet_donorOriginal33 points

I donated to the fundraiser. No additional analysis requested.

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cognitive_overheadOriginal59 points

Why is the gaming computer an investment evaluated through your hoped-for future impact, while her entire future is represented by treatment costs?

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The Children in the Control Village Will Thank Us for the Knowledge

I am the principal investigator on a child-nutrition trial in twenty-four rural villages. Twelve receive a daily meal and nutritional support immediately; the other twelve continue without the program for two years while we measure differences in growth, school attendance, and survival. Our charity has enough funding to serve all twenty-four. We are withholding the intervention from half because feeding everyone would answer fewer questions.

causal_nutritionOriginal9 points

The dedication and the funding model serve different purposes and face different review standards. I have asked our advisers whether the wording can make that clearer without implying findings the study was not designed to establish.

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attribution_windowOriginal57 points

You require individual causal identification before acknowledging harm and use a modeled population effect to claim credit for future lives saved. Why do the two directions have different evidentiary thresholds?

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small_child_parentOriginal94 points

You can send the food today. There are children who will still be alive tomorrow if you do. I don't know how else to say this.

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My Genetically Optimized Son Is Dumb as Shit

We paid $38,000 to select the embryo most likely to become an unusually intelligent person. Our son Felix is now four, and he is dumb as shit. I appreciate that four-year-olds are not generally at the frontier of human cognition, but we purchased an advantage over other four-year-olds, and those are the people I am comparing him with. Laura says it is unfair to compare children. The clinic compared eight children before any of them existed, and she was comfortable authorizing the transfer.

measurement_windowOriginal57 points

I paid for embryo screening too, and the most useful thing our clinic did was insist that we discuss what decisions we would make differently after receiving the rankings. Your proposed comparison doesn't seem to have a decision attached to it. If the second child were less intelligent, you would say the first intervention worked. If the second were more intelligent, you would have two children and an argument with a clinic. In either case the second child would eventually be able to read this.

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pedigree_modelOriginal31 points

The discussion of your master's degree is doing more work than you acknowledge. Within-family selection doesn't choose the brightest person in a population; it chooses among combinations available from two parents. You seem to accept this only when it supports your account of the seven remaining embryos. When it might say something about you, you introduce educational attainment as if it settles the question. Were the parental scores supplied to you?

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preschool_parentOriginal79 points

My daughter is in his class. The children are all taking their shoes off because the school asks them to change into indoor shoes, and Felix gets distracted talking to her while they do it. She also forgets. I would prefer not to have her categorized as an environmental exposure in correspondence to the teacher. She is four and would like him to come to her birthday party.

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Gay Son or Thot Daughter: A Decision-Theoretic Treatment

“Gay son or thot daughter?” is usually treated as a vulgar preference-revelation exercise. This undersells it. The question is interesting because it forces the respondent to compare two very different kinds of variance in descendant outcomes while operating under severe informational compression.

lurker_since_2019Original27 points

Coming back to this because my daughter turned 13 last week. I would like to withdraw my upvote and replace it with a question about whether anyone has a version of this model for the next five years specifically.

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wagmi_utilitarianOriginal-21 points

gay son is cope. thot daughter has a higher expected income and you all know it

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mean_reversion_mikeOriginal19 points

That's mean reversion again, just with a different name.

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An Intellectual History of the Time My Dick Didn’t Work

The evening my dick did not work has generally been described as an instance of sexual difficulty. This account mistakes the physiological occasion for the historical event. Between approximately 11:20 p.m. and midnight, an entire conception of the sovereign, self-transparent subject encountered its material limits in Rachel’s bedroom. Rachel remembers that I became defensive and would not let her put a film on. Her recollection is valuable as testimony, but it does not possess the conceptual resources necessary to interpret the transition she witnessed.

materialist_42Original19 points

The body failing to do what you want is a fairly ordinary piece of evidence against sovereign agency. The insistence that someone else stay awake to interpret it seems to preserve most of the original model.

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weak_priorOriginal33 points

I had something similar happen on a second date. We watched television and are now married. I appreciate that this is only one data point, but it does seem relevant to the unchosen branch.

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rachel_has_the_remoteOriginal61 points

The film was already rented. There was a time limit on that too.

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The Value-of-Information Case for Stalking My Ex

A common objection to my recent behavior is that my ex-girlfriend has asked me, in writing and on several occasions, to stop. I have read all of these requests carefully, in some cases before she sent them. My position is that a request to stop gathering information is not a reason to make decisions without it.

slow_wheel_thursdayOriginal22 points

For whatever it's worth, the Thursday class is a lot quieter now.

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kayla_pleaseOriginal46 points

kayla if you're reading this, change your passwords

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prior_is_the_problemOriginal31 points

I'd go back further than everyone else here. Where did 0.25 come from fourteen months after a breakup she initiated? I don't see a reference class anywhere in the post.

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Socrates Smelled Like Shit, So Do I: Against Deodorant as a Form of Social Control

Socrates, the father of Western philosophy, smelled like absolute shit. He rarely bathed, walked barefoot through the filthy streets of Athens, and wore the same cloak until it was practically falling apart. Plato records in the Symposium that Socrates had bathed and put on sandals for a dinner party, an occasion so extraordinary that his companion Aristodemus immediately remarked upon it. Here was arguably the greatest mind in human history, and the mere sight of him having washed his body was a noteworthy event.

ordinary_thursdayOriginal46 points

I started showering before my philosophy reading group because I wanted them to keep inviting me. They still disagree with everything I say. It has been reassuring to establish that my arguments can fail independently of my smell.

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rough_draft_readerOriginal33 points

The $47 saving is useful context. I have spent more than that shipping manuscripts to journals that do not read them. The harder question is whether the forty minutes recovered each week are producing better work. Is any part of the manuscript available to read, or is it still mostly correspondence with gyms?

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trevor_from_payrollOriginal81 points

I borrowed the chair because you had taken mine to put books on. I asked for mine back. You said private property was an unresolved philosophical question and kept both chairs. The hygiene complaint came after I carried one back to my desk and had to leave the window open through a fire alarm test.

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Excluding Training Costs, I Don’t Have a Gambling Problem

I lost $186,000 on Polymarket and DraftKings in eighteen months. That is the GAAP number, and I understand why Jess keeps saying it in front of the children. But the $186,000 includes our emergency fund, most of their 529s, and a $41,000 home-equity line as though those were losses, when they were capital committed to improving my forecasting model. On an adjusted basis, I am profitable. Jess says a profitable person would be able to pay the roofer, which is a very backward-looking way to value a frontier operation.

correlated_legsOriginal26 points

He's obviously not bad at the math. The math is the cleanest part of the post.

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real_engineer_420Original-12 points

gambling is a tax on people who are bad at math

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adjusted_basisOriginal17 points

I'm not taking outside capital until the current model resolves. After December 31 I'd consider a fund structure.

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God's War on Innovation: The Case for Rebuilding the Tower of Babel

The first great technological setback in human history occurred in ancient Mesopotamia, when God, concerned that humanity was advancing too quickly, intervened to halt construction of the Tower of Babel. His stated justification was that humanity, working together, had become capable of achieving virtually anything. Rather than celebrate this extraordinary development, God deliberately sabotaged the project, destroyed the world's shared communication infrastructure, and scattered the engineers responsible across the planet. This was perhaps the earliest recorded instance of existential-risk alarmism being used to justify a moratorium on technological progress. It came directly from God himself.

celestial_early_stageOriginal26 points

I have been looking for an investment that addresses the constraint underlying the other longevity investments. Better treatments still leave the administration of death in the same hands. Establishing direct access changes the bargaining position. The proposed valuation seems easier to understand once the project is assessed at that level rather than as a construction business.

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alignment_before_worshipOriginal57 points

The advisory position is a generous offer. It preserves useful institutional knowledge while separating that knowledge from the power to impose preferences on everyone else. I would make relinquishing unilateral intervention rights a condition of the appointment. An adviser who can alter the environment to vindicate his own recommendations would be difficult to evaluate.

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cosmic_governanceOriginal39 points

People object to your retaining final authority without comparing it with the current arrangement. Your proposal at least contains an evaluation procedure, an announced objective, and a person who can be contacted about it. We should judge the transition against the incumbent rather than an imaginary administration that already possesses every desirable property.

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The Antichrist Has Better Unit Economics

I have reviewed the competing proposals for the future of the human soul, and the Antichrist has a substantially better business model. Christianity acquires customers through expensive persuasion, encourages them to give away their possessions, and promises its principal benefit after they have ceased participating in the economy. The Antichrist controls the payments infrastructure and makes continued participation conditional on joining. It’s simple dollars and sense, although my pastor seems determined to make the discussion about something else.

beneficial_ownerOriginal51 points

I used to structure holding companies. They do not prevent someone who can inspect your soul from determining beneficial ownership. This is probably outside your adviser's normal engagement letter.

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beast_series_bOriginal-3 points

I would ask for a board observer seat before committing. Even if the retail terms are fixed, governance access could be valuable at this stage.

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covenant_liteOriginal44 points

Why would early investors get better treatment? The founder can compel participation and you cannot credibly exit. Your entire thesis removes the bargaining power you expect to exercise personally.

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