Ishan Khire

First public experiment blog post! I've written a private diary called "Life is a Science Experiment" for quite a while now, but for the first time, I'm experimenting by just blogging about my experiments publicly. This feels so exciting!! Why am I doing this? First and foremost, to increase the success rate on my experiments. Secondly, maybe someone reads this and is inspired to try their only experiment blog ( https://www.raptitude.com/ sure did for me). Experiment #1: Don't complain / say anything negative or sarcastic for 7 days Motivations: I want to experiment with how it feels to just not say anything negative. Don't trash on that new bad song or TV show. Or bad restaurant food. This just feels like an interesting initial experiment to run. I'm curious if this actually has any impact on my life.  Hypothesis: I suspect, if this succeeds, I will be somewhat nicer to be around. I will also be more mindful of what I'm saying, which is always good.

  Background: Farming Conditions and Prop 12 Currently in the US, most breeding pigs live in factory farmers, where they are confined in gestation crates which are small metal cages so small that pigs can’t even turn around, while egg-laying hens live in tiny, cramped battery cages that cause a range of psychological and physiological harm . The crowded conditions also have potential health harms by increasing the stress levels of pigs and weakening their immune systems, which can make them more susceptible to zoonotic diseases that may spread to humans. Starting in the early 2000s, a few animal welfare groups including the Humane Society of the Unites States aimed to ban the farming system of cages for hens, breeding pigs and veal calves. In 2008, Proposition 2 was passed which put in place a “production” ban on cages, which said that producers had to ensure pigs, hens, and calves could lie down, turn around, and extend their limbs or wings without hitting the side of an enclosur

State of Shrimp Farming The shrimp farming industry is rapidly growing at a rate of 10% a year. In light of this and new research supporting crustacean sentience, charity entrepreneurship published a report recommending a new charity working in this field. Through its incubation program, the Shrimp Welfare Project was founded. This post is based on the 80000 after hours podcast with Andres Jimenez Zorilla, founder of the Shrimp Welfare Project. The post aims to condense the information in the podcast, add new context, and raise several questions regarding shrimp farming. https://80000hours.org/after-hours-podcast/episodes/andres-jimenez-zorrilla-shrimp-welfare-project/ What does shrimp farming look like? It’s separated into different stages : Sexually active reproductive shrimp are brought to India or Vietnam Females undergo “eyestalk ablation” — the crushing of one or two eyes to induce egg laying Newly born shrimp spend 30 days growing in small tanks (incubators) Shrimp are transpo

  Chapter 4: Population Control Do large families cause poverty? Another common theory is that families which have more kids are poorer, the idea that if there are many children, each child gets less resources (quantity/quality tradeoff). But is this really true? Or is there just a correlation? Are families poor because they are large, or large because they are poor? As it turns out, no causal link has actually been shown between the two. In 1977, half of the 141 villages in Matlab, Bangladesh were selected to receive intensive family planning. These regions had about 1.2 fewer children than the other villages. However, by 1996, there was no significant difference in the height, weight, school enrollment or years of education in both regions! I think this should be taken with a grain of salt for the reason that it's probably heavily dependent on the region and whether it has enough resources, enough jobs, and how strong government programs are. Wait but if the same resources have

Poor Economics, is a fantastic, insightful look into the complex economics surrounding poverty. It's central thesis can be summarized in a single sentence in the foreword: "we have to abandon the habit of reducing the poor to cartoon characters and take the time to really understand their lives, in all their complexity and richness." There are many grand sweeping theories out there that claim the solution to poverty, that foreign aid is the solution to the poverty trap, or the opposite, that left to the free market with the encouragement of democracy and liberty, poverty will resolve itself. However, this fundamental question can't be resolved abstractly; it requires evidence and close examination of the economics of the poor: how they lead their lives, make decisions, and deal with problems. Because of this, a lot of Duflo's and Banerjee's theories and suggestions are backed by randomized control trials (RTCs) that aim to test out predictions with experiment