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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 04/08/2025

I think about this everyday. It’s been a month but the scale of preventable suffering here continues to be unfathomable to me.

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Reposted by Marcus A. Davis

Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · 03/08/2025

Look it's @jacobtref.bsky.social dropping three of the best blogposts of 2025. “What does AI progress mean for medical progress?” gives a great overview. Then it turns into a choose-your-own adventure to read about the bottlenecks AI won't solve *and* where it can still help.

blog.jacobtrefethen.com

What does AI progress mean for medical progress?

Rapid AI progress does not automatically mean rapid medical progress. If the point of AI progress is human flourishing, we must make other complementary investments too. Even with extremely powerful A...

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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 10/07/2025

Fascinating paper under fairly realistic conditions but the sample is fairly small. But never underestimate the ability of people to convince themselves the way to do something that feels easiest is actually best all things considered.

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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

Ending USAID is a disaster on a scale I can barely comprehend. For context 14 million people is more than the population of most countries today. It would be multiple times larger than the number of people who died in the Holomodor.

nbcnews.com

USAID cuts could lead to 14 million deaths over the next five years, researchers say

An analysis published Monday in the medical journal The Lancet projects that cuts to the agency will lead to more deaths from diseases like AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.

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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

For context, this is kid me from the time I got tested for lead. He would want every kid to have a lead free future. (He would also want some cake, what he's celebrating here. But who among us...)

kid Marcus with his hands raised in triumph

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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

Leading Rethink Priorities' work on lead exposure has been incredibly gratifying. I think that with more research, organizational capacity, and resources, we can achieve a lead-free future for our kids. My full post on lead exposure, and efforts to end it: amarcusdavis.substack.com/p/how-my-chi...

amarcusdavis.substack.com

How My Chicago Childhood Lead Exposure Connects Me with One in Three Kids Today

I was one of hundreds of millions of children exposed to lead as a child, policymakers and philanthropists are taking bigger steps to combat this today

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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

This issue hits close to home for me. Chicago still has 400k+ lead pipes—the most of any US city. In my last apartment, from 2020-23, I spent $70/month on filtered water. Around the world, millions face the same contamination, but aren't aware of the risks or can't afford protection.

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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

New organizations are stepping up to fix this. Lead Exposure Elimination Project's work in Malawi reduced "dangerously high" lead levels in paint from 50%+ to 33% in under 3 years. They've now expanded to 20 countries representing 45% of global infant births. Inspiring work: leadelimination.org

leadelimination.org

Lead Elimination | We are working to reduce lead poisoning and improve the health, wellbeing, and potential of children worldwide.

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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

But it's a problem we can solve. The global phase-out of leaded gasoline proved it's possible. However, only 43% of countries have legally binding restrictions on lead paint. In other words, more than half the world still allows manufacturers to sell toxic paint.

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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

Lead is everywhere: in batteries, paint, spices, water pipes, cosmetics, toys. Lead poisoning caused ~1.5M deaths in 2021 and costs low and middle-income countries $300-500 billion annually in reduced earnings from cognitive damage.

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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

But globally? The picture is still devastating. 600-800 million children worldwide—1 in 3 kids on the planet—have blood lead levels of at least 5 mcg/dL. That's roughly the entire population of Europe. India alone has ~200 million affected children.

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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

Progress in the US has been extraordinary. Mean blood lead levels in US kids dropped 95% from the late 1970s to 2016. Only 1% of kids under 11 now have levels above 5 mcg/dL (vs 99%+ in the late 70s). The CDC called it a top 10 public health achievement of the 21st century.

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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

Here's the thing about lead: there's NO safe level of exposure. As we learned more, the CDC kept lowering intervention thresholds—from 10 mcg/dL to 5 mcg/dL in 2012, then to 3.5 mcg/dL in 2021. Under today's standards, kid Marcus would have needed intervention.

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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

Chicago was hit especially hard. Between 1993-1998, the city had to test 33-59% of kids under 7 EVERY YEAR. Chicago youth were 2-4x more likely to have severely elevated lead levels compared to the rest of Illinois.

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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

In the 1970s, *88%* of American children had blood lead levels over 10 mcg/dL. By the 90s (when I was tested), that figure had dropped to 9%—still alarming, but a massive improvement owed to interventions like the elimination of leaded gasoline.

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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

I still remember getting my blood drawn for lead testing as an elementary schooler in Chicago. I was just under the intervention threshold of 10 mcg/dL. Many of my classmates weren't so lucky. Today, lead poisoning continues to afflict 800 million kids worldwide. 🧵

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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 17/06/2025

At a basic level, the ideas and arguments that guide our efforts to improve the world deserve scrutiny, whether they emerge from academic theory or hard-won experience. Please join me in applying some of that scrutiny. amarcusdavis.substack.com

amarcusdavis.substack.com

Charity for All | Marcus A. Davis | Substack

Exploring effective charity, and the culture and arguments around doing good. Click to read Charity for All, by Marcus A. Davis, a Substack publication. Launched 7 days ago.

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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 17/06/2025

I'm uncertain about how best to help improve the world, but I also know it would be naive to think everyone shares this vision. After all, Lincoln originally proclaimed "charity for all" during the middle of a civil war!

Still, as much as others and I seek to improve the world, some people wish to undermine the values of equality, freedom, and opportunity that millions of people work every day to expand. So, having “charity for all” doesn’t mean being naive about those out to destroy you. After all, when Abraham Lincoln made that statement, he was in the middle of a civil war where hundreds of thousands of people had died, and his opponents wanted to impose a strict hierarchical, race-based slave society on the rest of the country.

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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 17/06/2025

Still this mandate is hard! I have real uncertainty about what to do. At my day job, at Rethink Priorities, we've worked with a huge range of actors which includes GiveWell and Charity Navigator but also farm animal welfare, nuclear risk, and how to make decisions in the face of moral uncertainty.

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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 17/06/2025

Broadly, I try to apply the principles of effective altruism, namely caring about the scope of how much good you can do, trying to be impartial, and explicitly recognizing there are tradeoffs to make as you can't support every cause. But this isn't a panacea. These are guidelines, not dictates.

This type of approach isn’t a panacea. I take each of these principles as guidelines, not dictates, and I have more than my share of quibbles with how particular people apply these principles in practice. I don’t want to just tease this, you will hear some of those quibbles and gripes in forthcoming posts as I think some of these are pretty substantive disagreements.

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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 17/06/2025

That I work to do the same doesn't make me special. What I think does distinguish me a bit is how I approach doing good. I think we should seek to help improve the world as much as is viable. This means not treating the accident of my birthplace as important. It means prioritizing based on need.

I'd add the moral constraint that when I seek to help, I want to help those who need it most, without regard to how much they resemble me or how close they are to my daily life. I don't think the accident of my birth in America should justify valuing Americans—explicitly or implicitly—as orders of magnitude more important than people from Bangladesh or Kenya. This means prioritizing based on need and impact rather than familiarity or convenience. To the extent I'm fortunate enough to be in a position to help others, I value charity for all.

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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 17/06/2025

Millions of people get up every day and try to make the world a better place. This includes people from all walks of life. From people protesting governments, to those battling homelessness in wealthy countries, to those in low income countries working tirelessly to improve child nutrition.

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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 17/06/2025

I'm excited to announce I have a Substack: Charity for All. It's a blog about charity, the people in that space, and the broad political and philosophical landscape that shapes how we think about these topics. substack.com/home/post/p-...

substack.com

Why Charity For All?

Explore effective charity and the culture and arguments around doing good with me

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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

I feel like podcast episodes get longer as the show goes on, so someone should start a prediction market on how long the first 5 episodes will be on average. Non-zero chance episode 5 could be like 15 hours (of awesomeness).

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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 02/03/2025

I actually have a draft post on his insane defense of Richard Lynn from January but I can’t even get that out before this man argues that DEI is equivalent to firing people who watch the nukes and then having to hire them back.

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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 02/03/2025

I mean this man’s brain is cooked. This is caveating nonsense but he seems to think it is reasonable for some people to conclude that plane crashes could be linked to DEI

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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 02/03/2025

Resetting the sign with “days since Scott Alexander did a racism” back to 0.

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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 27/02/2025

Dean Karlan is a huge loss for USAID and, as a result, tens of thousands if not millions of people around the world. He’s dedicated his career to evidence-based cost-effective interventions. If this was actually about efficiency he’s exactly the kind of person you would want around.

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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

It’s not a sign of intellectual openness or at least not a good sign of that, if you “agree to disagree” when the other person wishes death upon you and bends over backwards to defend those who would actually do it.

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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

I’m reminded of the ludicrous comments defending Hanania’s presence at Manifest last year. Hanania is not a person who should be given any space to engage in polite society. I wonder if the people who were defending him then would say the salute of “I want to do mass murder” isn’t a big deal.

forum.effectivealtruism.org

Why so many “racists” at Manifest? — EA Forum Bots

Manifest 2024 is a festival that we organized last weekend in Berkeley. By most accounts, it was a great success. On our feedback form, the average r…

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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

Nazi salutes are very bad actually. As Ganz notes Hanania’s piece defending them is basically this: ‘“I can tell you all about Nazis, trust me, I used to be one.” Excuse me one moment, please? You said, what now?’

open.substack.com

Enough!

This Bullshit Has to End

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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

But we needn't give up because it's hard. We can do (a lot) better than dueling intuitions about how to improve the world. I will keep pushing RP to help policymakers, grantmakers, ourselves, and anyone else trying to do good to understand and take on this challenge. 9/9

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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

Doing good is hard. We try to to be rigorous but it's really hard to just get the empirical facts right and account for uncertainties. But doing good also means navigating moral complexity and there is a lot of it. We shouldn't act with certainty that our favorite moral theory is right. 8/n

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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

The moral parliament tool and the work around it in the CRAFT sequence highlight how complex it is to try to take uncertainty about doing good seriously. I think it also gets at a core tenet of RP's work... 7/n

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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

Finally, I want to highlight the work from our worldview investigations team modeling how to make decisions in light of normative uncertainty. Here's the post: rethinkpriorities.org/research-are... And here's the tool: parliament.rethinkpriorities.org 6/n

rethinkpriorities.org

Rethink Priorities’ Moral Parliament Tool

This post is the sixth installment in the Worldview Investigation Team’s Charitable Resource Allocation Frameworks and Tools (CRAFT) Sequence. Here, the team introduces the Moral Parliament Tool…

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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

I love the methodology in this post from our animal team attempting to quantify the welfare concerns for farmed shrimp. But the numbers are hard to wrap your head around with the equivalent of 95 trillion hours of disabling-equivalent pain per year rethinkpriorities.org/research-are... 5/n

rethinkpriorities.org

Quantifying and prioritizing shrimp welfare threats

Rethink Priorities’ Shrimp Welfare Sequence is a series that addresses whether and how best to protect the welfare of shrimp. At any time, more shrimp are alive on farms than any other group of farmed...

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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

Our survey team ran a representative survey of the US public that found, among other things, while 54% of US adults report donating to charity in the past year, only 2% report using a recognized charity evaluator. So, one might say, RP still has work to do: rethinkpriorities.org/research-are... 4/n

rethinkpriorities.org

Pulse: US attitudes and awareness regarding effective giving and philanthropic cause areas

Rethink Priorities’ Pulse project seeks to address the critical knowledge gap around US public awareness and perceptions regarding effective giving and related topics. This report presents the first…

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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

The GHD team also did a project for Charity Navigator looking into how they could do more for themselves and their donors on assessing the impact of their charities so they can guide their donors to more impactful charities rethinkpriorities.org/research-are... 3/n

rethinkpriorities.org

Impact ranking database

This report was commissioned by Charity Navigator to explore the feasibility of creating an impact-ranking database that aims to score over 230,000 charities on their website based on their impactfuln...

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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

First, our global health team did an investigation of substandard and falsified antimalarial drugs. In Sub-Saharan Africa these drugs are responsible for 40-160K deaths per year. Yet philanthropy is maybe only spending ~$300 per year per death in prevention rethinkpriorities.org/research-are... 2/n

rethinkpriorities.org

Substandard and falsified antimalarials in sub-Saharan Africa

This report is a “shallow” investigation, as described here, and was commissioned by Open Philanthropy and produced by Rethink Priorities from November 2022 to January 2023. We revised the report for…

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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

2024 is wrapping up (or at least I'm off from work) and I'm really proud of all the impactful work Rethink Priorities did this year. I thought it'd be good to cover some my favorite pieces we did this year. 1/n

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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 08/12/2024

For obvious reasons, the vast majority of the people taking EA type principles seriously are not billionaires and you simply don't have to think billionaire philanthropy is good to think deeply about where your own charitable donations are going.

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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 08/12/2024

I also think the existing economic structure in the world is profoundly unjust and that, generally speaking, taxes should be much higher on the ultra-wealthy. Indeed, it's because of that injustice that I and many others like me are in a position to improve the lives of the global poor.

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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 08/12/2024

(4) Finally, this article focused a lot on billionaires. I think concerns about billionaires influencing the actions of charity are legitimate. At the same time, I would profoundly disagree with the idea that if you think billionaires are bad you should dislike EA.

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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 08/12/2024

If you're arguing not everyone in the world should live by EA rules all the time, sure, I agree. But we're nowhere near that world!

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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 08/12/2024

and that at least some portion of their giving should go towards making this realized. It's just very difficult to argue less people should consider that this type of approach or that it is overrepresented in global giving (unless you are implicitly arguing basically no one should think this way).

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Marcus A. Davis @amarcusdavis.bsky.social · 08/12/2024

The chances that any given movement are wrong in important ways about what to do is basically ~100%. Of course, that includes the actually existing EA movement. But when thinking about what to do, I think it's good if people consider they can save a life in for a few thousand dollars...

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