Int'l Development Professional, professional skeptic. Interested in solutions, effective altruism and stuff. Research management @DILatUChicago. Views own.
Joined November 2012
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Shardul Oza retweeted
Great.
Public order is the highest ROI investment American cities can make right now.
San Francisco announces $12 million plan to improve safety near Mission District trouble spots
Mayor Daniel Lurie and Supervisor Jackie Fielder announced the initiative Friday, outlining a combination of immediate law enforcement measures and longer-term investments around the 16th and 24th Street BART stations. @KTVU
ktvu.com/news/san-francisco-…
Shardul Oza retweeted
If we don’t change this … in 40 years we will look back on allowing dogs in downtowns the same way we look at cars:
As a terrible mistake for how it molded dense urban environment for the benefit of a few ... by not properly pricing in public costs of the "free rider" dog owners and by changing the entire culture to accommodate them.
My fear is by then (like with cars today) there will be too many ppl accustomed to the private benefits and impunity of living downtown with their dogs so we're only able to make marginal changes
And that negative downstream effects (fewer kids, playgrounds, dirty sidewalks, dog attacks) will be baked in
Shardul Oza retweeted
People have heard about the phonics vs triple-queuing fiasco but there is a similar issue in math where ed school ideologues have stigmatized the normal and necessary work of drilling novice students in the fundamentals.
slowboring.com/p/math-needs-…
Shardul Oza retweeted
🚨 BREAKING: Ken Griffin is donating $2 BILLION to launch a Carnegie Mellon University campus in Miami.. the largest individual gift to higher education in U.S. history.
The new 35-acre campus will be located in Wynwood and focus on computer science, AI, robotics, technology and innovation.
This is a MASSIVE win for Miami’s evolution into a global tech and innovation hub.
Shardul Oza retweeted
"My brother in effectiveness" is insanely funny.
My brother in effectiveness, EY has been highly influential on AI X Risk, and on a bunch of the "in the water" practices and values held by many EAs.
He himself tends to keep separation from EA itself, whereas his foremost acolyte, Scott Alexander, is explicitly EA.
With all due respect, how the fuck do you bring up the Harry Potter fanfic (which I know has had EA-adjacent $$$ used to publish/disseminate it as a missionary tract of sorts in foreign lands) without acknowledging EY and MIRI influence on AI Risk, the whole goddamn reason we're having this conversation???
You just gave me a serious jolt of Gell-Mann Amnesia.
The "remarkably scandal plagued" bit is an unfair judgment unless someone establishes a base rate for comparison. SBF was a real big one though.
Shardul Oza retweeted
ANNOUNCEMENT: Michael Kremer appointed as World Bank Group Chief Economist and Senior Vice President for Development Economics. bit.ly/4cQg0zT
Shardul Oza retweeted
The OpenAI Foundation is investing $60M to help bring AI-powered weather and crop disease forecasts to 100 million smallholder farmers across South and Southeast Asia and East Africa over the next three years.
As climate change makes weather more volatile and extreme, farmers with little to fall back on if a harvest fails need timely, reliable forecasts to make critical decisions about when to plant, harvest and protect their crops.
Advances in AI are making high-quality weather forecasts more affordable, localized and accessible.
Through our Civil Society & Philanthropy team, we’re supporting @UChicago, @UCBerkeley, Precision Development, AIM for Scale, @digitalgreenorg and @CIMMYT who will work alongside governments and local institutions to turn these advances into useful, actionable guidance for farmers.
Learn more: openaifoundation.org/news/ai…
Shardul Oza retweeted
📢 Hiring Alert! (1/3) The Development Innovation Lab (DIL) at UChicago, founded by Nobel Laureate Michael Kremer, is seeking Research Professionals (predocs) to work on development econ projects.
This role is an excellent fit for students with strong econ and/or math.
Shardul Oza retweeted
This sort of conversation is a legacy of Soviet education. When I studied in Russia many years ago, even random people on the street would recite poetry—Pushkin, Blok, Tsvetaeva—as you walked by.
Shardul Oza retweeted
@tylercowen & @ATabarrok don't need more acclaim, but look at this *2019* grant list. Alice Evans (great new book coming). Jason pre-Progress foundation. Saloni/Sam pre-Works in Progress. *17 year old* Aschenbrenner. Tyler's "how to spot talent" book clearly "self-recommending"!
Shardul Oza retweeted
Interesting map of where the number of children is growing vs. falling.
WSJ: America’s Big Cities Are Rapidly Losing Kids - The number of children is falling across the U.S., but the decline is especially pronounced in big metros wsj.com/us-news/cities-losin…
Shardul Oza retweeted
We used to make fun of boomers for having a “mid-life crisis”, but now our entire generation is heading for an “ongoing-life crisis”, consumed by infinite optionality and an inability to commit to anything.
The boomer crisis usually came after committing too hard to one life. Same career for 20 years, same house, same marriage, then suddenly wondering whether they chose wrong.
Ours is almost the opposite. Every job is temporary, every city is a trial period, every relationship remains slightly conditional because some better version of your life might still be available elsewhere. We keep every door open for so long that we never properly walk through one.
At first this feels like freedom. But you don’t build an identity by endlessly browsing possible identities. At some point you become someone by choosing a path, closing a few doors and staying with something long enough for it to shape you.
The internet makes that incredibly difficult because whatever you choose, you receive a daily live feed of people who chose differently and appear to be winning. So everyone keeps optimizing, pivoting, relocating and starting again.
Keeping your options open at 23 feels smart. Ten years later you might realise the reason every door remained open is that you never entered any room.
As a result gen-z are increasingly choosing lottery tickets over the traditional 9-5 route.
Startups, crypto, creator, trading, AI wrappers, whatever gives them a tiny chance of escaping the normal income curve.
Because what exactly is the traditional route offering now? Sell your soul for 10–15 years, survive office politics and sacrifice your 20s just to save $100–200k, only to still struggle to buy a house and remain nowhere near the lifestyle you were told the grind would eventually unlock.
Meanwhile the internet shows you people your age making life-changing money from one startup, one token, one trade or one viral account. Most will fail and half the winners online are probably fake, but psychologically that barely matters. Once the respectable path promises guaranteed sacrifice for increasingly mediocre upside, variance starts to look rational.
Especially when in most Western countries, the welfare state effectively protects your downside, while the upside from one hit remains private and uncapped.
When the safe path no longer buys a safe life, gambling stops looking stupid.
Shardul Oza retweeted
American cities tend to have too many massive parks and too few small, integrated ones.
Like much of America, centralized green spaces surrounded by auto-centric infrastructure are just not that nice. They leave residential neighborhoods starved of smaller, everyday spaces.
