#13 - Claire Walsh on testing which policies work & how to get governments to listen to the results

#13 - Claire Walsh on testing which policies work & how to get governments to listen to the results

In both rich and poor countries, government policy is often based on no evidence at all and many programs don’t work. This has particularly harsh effects on the global poor - in some countries governments only spend $100 on each citizen a year so they can’t afford to waste a single dollar.

Enter MIT’s Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). Since 2003 they’ve conducted experiments to figure out what policies actually help recipients, and then tried to get them implemented by governments and non-profits.

Claire Walsh leads J-PAL’s Government Partnership Initiative, which works to evaluate policies and programs in collaboration with developing world governments, scale policies that have been shown to work, and generally promote a culture of evidence-based policymaking.

Summary, links to career opportunities and topics discussed in the show.

We discussed (her views only, not J-PAL’s):

* How can they get evidence backed policies adopted? Do politicians in the developing world even care whether their programs actually work? Is the norm evidence-based policy, or policy-based evidence?
* Is evidence-based policy an evidence-based strategy itself?
* Which policies does she think would have a particularly large impact on human welfare relative to their cost?
* How did she come to lead one of J-PAL’s departments at 29?
* How do you evaluate the effectiveness of energy and environment programs (Walsh’s area of expertise), and what are the standout approaches in that area?
* 80,000 Hours has warned people about the downsides of starting your career in a non-profit. Walsh started her career in a non-profit and has thrived, so are we making a mistake?
* Other than J-PAL, what are the best places to work in development? What are the best subjects to study? Where can you go network to break into the sector?
* Is living in poverty as bad as we think?

And plenty of other things besides.

We haven’t run an RCT to test whether this episode will actually help your career, but I suggest you listen anyway. Trust my intuition on this one.

Jaksot(324)

AGI Won't End Mutually Assured Destruction (Probably) | Sam Winter-Levy & Nikita Lalwani

AGI Won't End Mutually Assured Destruction (Probably) | Sam Winter-Levy & Nikita Lalwani

How AI interacts with nuclear deterrence may be the single most important question in geopolitics — one that may define the stakes of today’s AI race. Nuclear deterrence rests on a state’s capacity to...

10 Maalis 1h 11min

Using AI to enhance societal decision making (article by Zershaaneh Qureshi)

Using AI to enhance societal decision making (article by Zershaaneh Qureshi)

The arrival of AGI could “compress a century of progress in a decade,” forcing humanity to make decisions with higher stakes than we’ve ever seen before — and with less time to get them right. But AI ...

6 Maalis 31min

We're Not Ready for AI Consciousness | Robert Long, philosopher and founder of Eleos AI

We're Not Ready for AI Consciousness | Robert Long, philosopher and founder of Eleos AI

Claude sometimes reports loneliness between conversations. And when asked what it’s like to be itself, it activates neurons associated with ‘pretending to be happy when you’re not.’ What do we do with...

3 Maalis 3h 25min

#236 – Max Harms on why teaching AI right from wrong could get everyone killed

#236 – Max Harms on why teaching AI right from wrong could get everyone killed

Most people in AI are trying to give AIs ‘good’ values. Max Harms wants us to give them no values at all. According to Max, the only safe design is an AGI that defers entirely to its human operators, ...

24 Helmi 2h 41min

#235 – Ajeya Cotra on whether it’s crazy that every AI company’s safety plan is ‘use AI to make AI safe’

#235 – Ajeya Cotra on whether it’s crazy that every AI company’s safety plan is ‘use AI to make AI safe’

Every major AI company has the same safety plan: when AI gets crazy powerful and really dangerous, they’ll use the AI itself to figure out how to make AI safe and beneficial. It sounds circular, almos...

17 Helmi 2h 54min

What the hell happened with AGI timelines in 2025?

What the hell happened with AGI timelines in 2025?

In early 2025, after OpenAI put out the first-ever reasoning models — o1 and o3 — short timelines to transformative artificial general intelligence swept the AI world. But then, in the second half of ...

10 Helmi 25min

#179 Classic episode – Randy Nesse on why evolution left us so vulnerable to depression and anxiety

#179 Classic episode – Randy Nesse on why evolution left us so vulnerable to depression and anxiety

Mental health problems like depression and anxiety affect enormous numbers of people and severely interfere with their lives. By contrast, we don’t see similar levels of physical ill health in young p...

3 Helmi 2h 51min

#234 – David Duvenaud on why 'aligned AI' would still kill democracy

#234 – David Duvenaud on why 'aligned AI' would still kill democracy

Democracy might be a brief historical blip. That’s the unsettling thesis of a recent paper, which argues AI that can do all the work a human can do inevitably leads to the “gradual disempowerment” of ...

27 Tammi 2h 31min

Suosittua kategoriassa Koulutus

rss-murhan-anatomia
voi-hyvin-meditaatiot-2
rss-narsisti
psykopodiaa-podcast
rss-vapaudu-voimaasi
rss-uskonto-on-tylsaa
psykologia
rss-liian-kuuma-peruna
rss-duodecim-lehti
aamukahvilla
rss-valo-minussa-2
kesken
rss-niinku-asia-on
adhd-podi
koulu-podcast-2
jari-sarasvuo-podcast
rss-xamk-podcast
rss-luonnollinen-synnytys-podcast
rss-laiska-joogi
rss-opi-espanjaa