by Carl Howard | Feb 17, 2011 | Blog Topics, Charity and Philanthropy, Ethics, Philosophy, Resources, Food and Environment
I’ve noticed that with social causes people often passionately and vehemently support improvements that are marginal/token at best. At the same time, they might be [obliviously?] engaging in actions that are contributing to the problem much more than their token...
by Carl Howard | Sep 12, 2010 | Biases and Fallacies, Blog Topics, Charity and Philanthropy, Resources, Food and Environment, Society
Before I mention the chart, a quick little reader experiment: Commit to an estimate of how many people in the UK die each year from falling off ladders. Try to avoid calculations, just go with your gut. Check your answer Commit to an estimate of how many children...
by Carl Howard | Aug 2, 2010 | Blog Topics, Charity and Philanthropy, History, Resources, Food and Environment, Society
I’ve blogged before about the dark side of population control. Over the years though I’ve come to take a still-dimmer view of most attempts at population control. One thing that’s gotten to me is the supposed tension between aid/development and population control....
by Carl Howard | Jun 16, 2010 | Biases and Fallacies, Blog Topics, Charity and Philanthropy, Science and Skepticism
About 8 months ago I did a post about World Food Day where I mentioned microfinance (especially Kiva.org) as a great way of doing more useful things with donor funds. Skeptical fail: I applied an abysmal level of critical thinking to the area of charities/development....
by Carl Howard | May 3, 2010 | Biases and Fallacies, Blog Topics, Charity and Philanthropy, Mind, Psychology and Consciousness, Science and Skepticism
I think the most famous quote from Stalin, or at least the one most famous outside the Russian-speaking world is “The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic”. This looks to be an urban legend but the sentiment is certainly true. We are...
