Nonzerosum Roundup - Week Ending 16/09/2018
Every week I come across articles, videos and podcasts that don’t really fit into to the structure of one of my full-length post but are none-the-less full of wonderful ideas that have enriched my life. This weekly “roundup” post is an attempt to share three of the best of them with you in the hope that it may inspire future posts of your own.
Enjoy!
Will MacAskill on cause prioritisation
One of the most life defining moments of my adult life happened while I was planning a seminar for a health psychology module I was teaching on in the fall of 2014. I was trying to find an engaging topic for me and the students to discuss in relation to global health inequalities, when I stumbled across the philosophy of effective altruism. This idea quickly got under my skin and to date its probably the idea that has informed many of my biggest life and career choices after that point.
In short effective altruism is about combining the evidence and reason with compassion and empathy in order to do as much ‘good’ as possible.
In this talk Will MacAskill, moral philosopher and one of the coiners of the term effective altruism, talks about the idea of cause prioritisation and outlines the three most pressing global issues that we face as a species today
Will MacAskill (TED talk, 10 mins): How can we do the most good for the world?
I do love me some smart data presentation
The world is changing at a spectacularly quick pace.
As I stumble through life, I often worry that I’m only ever able to pick up snippets of this change. The bad news of outbreaks and population displacement makes it into my bubble easily enough, but sources that can update my big-picture worldview are few and far between. That’s why I so value the work of Max Roser from Our World in Data.
This week Max wrote the following blog post:
Here is the map in its full CC-BY-SA glory, so feel free to spread it far and wide here on steemit!
In the associated blog post Max breaks the map down explains why a population scaled map is vital for understanding the modern world.
At a glance, you are able to see just how much of the world’s population is located in India and China two countries that I know very little about compared to their coming global relevance in the 21st century.
Long read
A friend of mine sent me this (very) long read from The Atlantic:
A Warning From Europe: The Worst Is Yet to Come
I’m not sure what it says about me that my friend thought I like this, but it really is a cracking read. The article focuses on how extreme political polarization is changing the fabric of Polish and Hungarian society.
The article provides a tonne of nuance and nicely supplements this video from Vox (also from this week).
About me
My name is Richard, I blog under the name of @nonzerosum. I’m a PhD student at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. I write mostly on Public Health, Effective Altruism and The Psychology of Vaccine Hesitancy. If you’d like to read more on these topics in the future follow me here on Steemit or on Twitter @RichClarkePsy.
Three interesting referrals, most especially the article on Poland. I think the author captures the sense of the times when he refers to people's historic naivete--most don't realize that
Nonchalance about democracy--low voter turnout--is an expression of this naivete. Sobering article.
Lovely & informative post.upvote & follow you from today.thank you @nonzerosum
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