I disagree - the point estimate for the increase in murders is well above 0 for the entire time period [figure 6]. The effect possibly fades away a little over time, so the confidence interval extends slightly over zero, but that doesn't mean you can assume it is zero! If you did a statistical test for 'did the increase in killings reduce over time' you would not get a significant result.
I agree it is highly politicized. I feel like this is an asymmetric demand for rigor however. I do not recall many people anyone making this objection last summer when everyone, including EA organizations, was super-keen on BLM.
My mental model is that in the early years, a disproportionately large portion of the EA community consisted of the community’s founders and their friends (and friends of friends, etc.) This cohort is likely to be very tolerant of the early members’ idiosyncrasies- it’s even possible some of those friendships were built around those idiosyncrasies.
That's true, and those friendships also probably reduced conflict as well - much harder to take a very negative view of someone you know well socially.
The version of "kind" I'm thinking of doesn't just encompass "not insulting people", but covers other everyday aspects of the word. The relevant one here is: "Don't insinuate that a given member of a certain group is likely to be dangerous, to the point that you don't recommend people interact closely with them.
This seems like quite a strange policy. You're clearly diverging from Scott's policy in a big way: he is talking about being nice to other commenters (form), but you have some major content-based assumptions baked in.
Indeed, your approac...
The document is written in legalese, and by a judge who ultimately decided in Harvard's favor, so you have to piece it together from different sections unfortunately:
...The personal rating reflects the admissions officer’s assessment of what kind of contribution the applicant would make to the Harvard community based on their personal qualities. [Oct. 17 Tr. 213:22–216:1; Oct. 18 Tr. 39:1–25]. Although the reading procedures have not historically provided detailed guidance on what qualities should be considered in assigning a personal rating, relevant qualiti
For this to be the explanation presumably intra-EA conflict would not merely need to be driving people away, but driving people away at higher rates than it used to. It's not clear to me why this would be the case.
It's also worth noting that highly engaged EAs are quite close socially. It's possible that many of those 178 people might be thinking of the same people!
For this to be the explanation presumably intra-EA conflict would not merely need to be driving people away, but driving people away at higher rates than it used to. It's not clear to me why this would be the case.
My mental model is that in the early years, a disproportionately large portion of the EA community consisted of the community’s founders and their friends (and friends of friends, etc.) This cohort is likely to be very tolerant of the early members’ idiosyncrasies- it’s even possible some of those friendships were built around those idiosyncrasie...
Thanks for the feedback. While you are a moderator and can of course moderate as you wish, I must admit I found it confusing. I tried looking through the rules to find anything related to this:
The current comment makes unkind assumptions about a group of people without accurate data to back them — so despite the good intentions, it falls afoul of our rules.
The closest I could find was this section:
Unnecessary rudeness or offensiveness
But this is of course quite different. My comment's tone was not particularly rude (e.g. no swearing, personal ...
Upvoted. I felt this reply was engaging in good faith, and it's given me a chance to add clarity about the Forum's moderation policy.
I tried looking through the rules to find anything related to this: "The current comment makes unkind assumptions about a group of people without accurate data to back them — so despite the good intentions, it falls afoul of our rules."
Thanks for asking the question — I should have linked to the exact section I was referencing, which was:
This criterion is based on Scott Alexander's moderation policy, which I'll quote here:
...If
There is a lot of discrimination that isn't violence.
This is a good point, and definitely true. One example is the massive discrimination that asians face in college admissions. During the Harvard admissions trial, both sides agreed that asian applicants had generally superior academic and extracurricular credentials to white applicants, and much higher than black applicants, and yet were admitted at significantly lower rates. The university's defence was that on average asians had inferior personalities, a finding which to my knowledge not supported...
The university's defence was that on average asians had inferior personalities
Can you mention the page number(s) and/or quote the relevant sections somewhere? I tried skimming the 130 page pdf and didn't see anything that alluded to this directly.
I am wondering whether you are talking about the US only?
Yes - the US is the country whose data I am most familiar with, and the article is written by someone at Cornell (in America) about an event that took place in America and contains a link to a list of resources by Americans providing advice for Americans. The US also has an unusually high asian population for a non asian majority country, which makes this issue more significant than in e.g. Switzerland or Japan.
It's possible that this is also happening in other countries. Certainly Americans of...
I'm not sure it is clear that the Atlanta shooting was an incidence of anti-asian prejudice. The shooter himself said this was not a significant part of his motivation, and given that he seems willing to confess to killing people for a crazy reason I am inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt:
...Long said his actions were not racially motivated, but claims instead to be driven by sex addiction at odds with his religious beliefs.[9][23][24] According to Sheriff Reynolds, Long wanted to "eliminate the temptation" by targeting day spas.[24][25] Long said h
To the extent that this story causes an emotional toll on readers, we should partly blame the media here for trying to fit a racial narrative to an event where it is not at all clear it fits.
I just came across a great article by Andrew Sullivan about this. His conclusions:
...And so it seems to me that the media’s primary role in cases like these is providing some data and perspective on what’s actually happening, to allay irrational fear. Instead they contribute to the distortion by breathlessly hyping one incident without a single provable link to any g
Explanatory note: I gave this a mild downvote because thesis of the OP was "this has been a difficult week for Asian Americans" and I think an appropriate response would acknowledge that. I felt this response was unsympathetic.
...Despite the lack of good data, I suspect that it is indeed the case that anti-asian crimes have risen significantly this year. We known that violent crime in general has increased significantly since the BLM protests/riots of last summer, and that attacks on asians are disproportionately caused by blacks (28% for 2018, the last year we have data, vs just 15% for white and hispanic victims). So my guess is that reductions in policing as a result of the protests have left many asians exposed. Most races are primarily victimised by others of the same race (6
However, I'm not sure in practice there is very much we can directly do about the issue.
Maybe it's worth pointing out that the OP doesn't ask us to do anything other than "stand with the Asian diaspora", which doesn't seem very hard. (I'm reminded of that relationship cliche where one partner tells the other partner about a problem they have, and their partner responds by trying to solve the problem, when all that was really desired was a sympathetic ear.)
I stand with the Asian diaspora. Even if the shooting was not motivated by anti-Asian prejudice, ...
I think one concrete action people could take is to try to listen to the experiences of their Asian friends and colleagues. There is a lot of discrimination that isn't violence. Understanding and solidarity can go a long way, and can also prevent reduce discrimination.
For Chinese immigrants in particular there are also a lot of issues related to immigration and to U.S.-China tensions.
Neither of these is directly related to the Atlanta shootings, but I think it can be a good symbolic moment to better understand others, especially since discrimination agains...
I realize this is a sensitive topic, but as it sounds like you have not yet firmly committed I will go ahead and encourage you to strongly consider not adopting an older child, for several reasons.
Firstly, people significantly over-estimate their ability to change the outcomes for adopted children. This has been well studied with twin adoption studies, which generally find that adopted children's outcomes are closely linked to their biological parents - and not very linked to their adaptive parents. A good (if slightly dated now) introduction to this is Ca...
I agree with this, and strongly disagree with the decision by Aaron to moderate this comment (as well as with other people deciding to downvote this). This strikes me as a totally reasonable and well-argued comment.
I've thought about this topic a good amount, and if a friend of mine were to tell me they are planning to adopt a child, I would immediately drop everything I am working on and spend at least 10 hours trying to talk them out of it, and generally be willing to spend a lot of my social capital to preven them from making this choice.
For...
I strongly disagree with this comment for various reasons, and for the sake of my nerves I won't go through them all. Just one thing:
Usually the argument for adopting an older child is not that you can expect to raise their IQ points a bit or their income in adulthood. But twin adoption studies also show, and Caplan discusses that in his book, that treating your children well is something that will make a difference to them by how they remember and relate to you. The foster system is often a pretty awful experience to children, so you will make their life better by giving them a loving home, even if it will never show on their IQ tests. Feeling loved and cared for matters.
Reminded me of this paper, on a somewhat related topic:
...We investigate the consequences and predictors of emitting signals of victimhood and virtue. In our first three studies, we show that the virtuous victim signal can facilitate nonreciprocal resource transfer from others to the signaler. Next, we develop and validate a victim signaling scale that we combine with an established measure of virtue signaling to operationalize the virtuous victim construct. We show that individuals with Dark Triad traits—Machiavellianism, Narcissism, Psychopathy—more frequen
And then, having not quite forgotten this state of affairs, when they happen to be used by someone, they complain of having being treated like an animal, which of course suggests that animals are treated in a way that we find utterly unacceptable (if they are in fact the sorts of creatures that can be mistreated).
I realize this is not the focus of your argument, but I don't think this holds true:
In general on this forum we seek to encourage people to adopt a 'Scout Mindset':
"The drive not to make one idea win or another lose, but to see what's there as honestly and accurately as you can."
Clarity about what you believe, your reasons for believing it, and what would cause you to change your mind.
Note that this does not require you to have 'definitive' proof of something. This would be an unreasonable standard in general, but especially so here, because even if these individuals had been diagnosed (which many autists are not), there is no particular ...
I think you have missed one clear downside: that increasing partisanship will make any action that is passed worse. There have been some clear examples historically of where the association of climate change with left wing politics has been a negative:
I agree that 1. is a problem. I think you want to keep things fairly simple for the sake of transparency, which would mean you end up being e.g. unfairly positive towards leaders of asian countries with conscientious populations and strong hygiene norms. One thing you could do would be to add "which is better than other similar countries like X, Y and Z" - but then there is still some subjectivity about which peer countries to include.
I'm less concerned about 2. Even if the majority of voters are impossible to persuade, the marginal voter theorem suggests ...
Secondly, we would want them to more precisely calculate the negative externalities caused by their wealth accumulation and engage in direct reparations where possible, or at least commit to contribute a significant amount to prevent further harm in the specific sector where wealth was generated.
I think you dramatically over-estimate how often it will be possible to identify and make amends to the victims. There are a few cases, e.g.
I think you are under-estimating the practical difficulties involved in self-determination. A good example is Brexit. On paper, it seems like it should be an ideal case:
Hi Dale. Thanks for your comment.
The gender question and many of the other demographic questions were selected largely to ensure comparability with other surveys run by CEA.
That aside, I think your claim that open comment gender questions are "considered poor survey technique" is over-stated. The literature discusses pros and cons to both formats. From this recent article in the International Journal of Social Research Methodology:
...One of the simplest ways to collect data on gender identity is to use an open text box (see Figure 2) which allows participan
I was disappointed to see this. I think there is a strong 'What gets measured gets done" effect, so the fact that some demographic questions (race, sexual preference) are recorded while others (politics, diet, religion) are not is significant. In particular, I think it tends to lead to efforts to reach out to groups which the data shows to be under-represented, while those without data are neglected.
Sorry, I didn't mean to suggest the US shouldn't have intervened - I think quite possibly we should have! I just meant the costs would likely have been higher than you estimated, because it's not just the per-hour cost of the radio jamming plane. Political capital with neighbors is costly, and protecting the plane could have been quite expensive. Wikipedia suggests Rwanda had some (old) Russian fighter jets, so they might have needed to be shot down, and they may also have had SAMs which would require neutralization.
Yeah, I was thinking a...
Interesting work on a very important topic, good job. I was especially surprised to see that it took two weeks for the US to learn about the genocide; surely the US ambassador should have noticed?
I think you are a little harsh on the US decision not to use the radio blocking technology. It sounds like money wasn't their only (main?) objection: it was also logistically difficult to use the radio blocking plane, and require a substantial escort. Perhaps keeping it safe might even have required destroying Rwandan SAMs:
...It costs approximately $8500 per flight h
Yes, and I would also highlight this one:
People are of equal moral value (all people matter: everyone has an equal claim to be happy, healthy, fulfilled and free)
I think many people might disagree, perhaps thinking that actually:
I like that you went back and reviewed your predictions. However, this piece could have been better if you had also reviewed the ways in which Trump has been better than you expected.
For example, under 'Authoritarianism' you list the election of some authoritarian and anti-globalist leaders. But equally there are positive cases - in France Macron, a highly globalist and neoliberal candidate, won the election. Similarly in the UK, the relatively authoritarian May was replaced with the much more libertarian Johnson. This is a far cry from your worries ...
In some cases Trump has been bad, but for the opposite reason than you were worried about! For example you criticized him for supporting travel bans during Ebola
It's not the opposite reason. The underlying criticism is that Trump's measures were miscalibrated to the magnitude of the problem. If your decision-making process is deeply flawed, as Trump's is, you should expect miscalibration in both directions.
Thanks for the hyperlink! I'm a bit surprised at the argument that these countries are not safe. Obviously all places have some risk, but both Tunisia and Libya have much lower murder rates than the US does, and I wouldn't accept 'it is too dangerous here' as a reason for why the US shouldn't take refugees.
Interesting idea. Are you trying to evaluate how cost-effective they have been historically, or how cost-effective they might be in the future with additional funding? Presumably they latter will be lower, due to mean reversion. Additionally, the easiest to save people will probably already have been saved, leaving people who are more difficult to access.
I thought the two other comments about downsides were interesting (incentivising a larger number and more risky crossings, and negative reactions from people in Europe), but it seems that there is an easy ...
I didn't downvote it, though probably I should have. But it seems a stretch to say 'one guy who works for a weird organization that is supposedly EA' implies 'congregation'. I think that would have to imply a large number of people. I would be very disappointed if I had a congregation of less than ten people.
JoshYou also ignores important hedging in the linked comment:
Bennett denies this connection; he says he was trying to make friends with these white nationalists in order to get information on them and white nationalism. I t...
I've seen a few cases where EAs online say things that are pretty racist or sexist. They'll be defended with comments like "we need to be free to break be intellectual ground and find the truth", but I don't understand how telling me I'm less likely to be a genius because I'm a woman at a social event makes anyone any better at improving the world. It certainly doesn't make me better at improving the world.
I realize this is probably not what you were looking for, but I think I can think of what they might have...
I'd be a lot less annoyed about it in this particular conversation - I've seen it brought up in much less relevant contexts.
This comment is currently at 0 karma and 5 votes. I would appreciate it if someone would tell me why did they downvote. I am not questioning the decision; I am looking for a more nuanced perspective on how to have better norms around sensitive topics.
My uncertain guess is that, while the comment's story could improve discussion on conversational norms, being a devil's advocate in a thread about unpleasant and alienating interactions doesn't contribute much to it?
Surely there exists a line at which we agree on principle. Imagine that, for example, our EA spaces were littered with people making cogent arguments that steel manned holocaust denial, and we were approached by a group of Jewish people saying “We want to become effective altruists because we believe in the stated ideals, but we don’t feel safe participating in a space where so many people commonly and openly argue that the holocaust did not happen.”
In this scenario, I hope that we’d both agree that it would be appropriat...
I have friends who I have watched first hand having to read through a racist Facebook thread who were subsequently unable to focus for hours afterward.
Wow, that's a shocking thread. This will definitely put off newcomers! I can understand why you might want to ban discussion of woke topics from introductory spaces if that sort of thing will be the result!
To be honest I'm surprised the moderators didn't block Blasian Diezo for being such a bully. It seems like he is clearly violating the group rules:
1) Be civil (e.g. don't insult o...
I downvoted this because it seems pretty clear that the author was referencing other aspects of the Facebook thread, and this felt belittling instead of engaging with the author's overall post.
That said, my impression is that, over time, the EA movement has become more attentive to various kinds of diversity, and more cautious about avoiding public discussion of ideas likely to cause offense. This involves trade-offs with other values.
I am skeptical of this. The EA survey shows that one of the most under-represented group in EA is conservatives, and I have seen little sign that EAs in general, and CEA in particular, have become more cautious about public discussion that will offend conservatives.
Similarly, I don't think there is much ...
Specifically, I would be surprised if there was much evidence of EAs/CEA being more cautious about publicly discussing 'woke' views out of fear of offending liberals or conservatives.
I hear frequently from people who express fear of discussing "woke" views on the Forum or in other EA discussion spaces. They (reasonably) point out that anti-woke views are much more popular, and that woke-adjacent comments are frequently heavily downvoted. All I have is a series of anecdotal statements from different people, but maybe that qualifies as "evidence"?
you implicitly assume that the average effective altruist is a heterosexual man
Over 70% of EAs are men (according to the 2019 survey), and probably most of those are heterosexual (though I don't have the statistics to hand), so that would be an accurate assumption.
More importantly, I think the meaning would likely be altered by changing the sex. The gender imbalance probably means that men have a much harder time finding a girlfriend at EAG than women would finding a boyfriend. Also, my impression is that male EAs have, on average, worse social skil...
I think at least some women would still prefer female mentors.
That makes perfect sense to me. But a co-ed mentoring group would presumably be able to offer female mentors to those who wanted them, leaving it equally good for those who preferred women and superior for those who were open-minded or preferred men. I guess some women might be too shy to specify "and I would like a women" in a mixed group, so having WANBAM allows them to satisfy their preference more discretely.
What I would be hesitant to do - but not because I'm afraid but because I think it's a bad idea - is to pitch a mentoring scheme that explicitly emphasizes or discusses at length that it's open to men, or any other audience which is normally included and would be odd to single out.)
In general, the default for most things is that they're open to men.
It is true that most things are open to men, in the sense that (at least in the west) most careers, associations and organisations are open to both men and women. But it seems definitely the ...
Allowing such a post would totally neuter the rule. All one would have to do is take your draft "Trump is actually the best candidate from an EA perspective" and re-title it "Is Trump actually the best candidate from an EA perspective?" Scatter in a few question marks in the text and you are fully compliant.
Do you have a source for this claim?
Yes. You are welcome to ask the other people who helped organize the previous EAGs about it. If you like I can try to work out the dates.
Also, I would note that if you allow unsourced positive claims, but not negative claims, this isolated demand for rigor creates a bias and make us vulnerable to hostile actors whose behavior cannot be called out. Though of course you can moderate your forum however you like!
I doubt it will be a fringe view on this forum that Western colonialism tended to cripple poor countries' economies, or that certain European and US interventions (like the Iraq War) led to huge devastation.
You're right that this is not a fringe view, and it is probably one of the more mainstream views Hickel has. However, I do not think that it is obviously true. Poor countries suffered many disadvantages from colonialism, but also gained many advantages, like education, infrastructure, and more advanced legal systems. The earliest western c...
The 'freedom to trade internationally' composite, which is basically not-being-protectionist, saw one of the largest improvements of any of their scores over this time. They are still protectionist relative to many richer countries, like the JV requirements. But they are dramatically less protectionist than they used to be, and this change coincided with / preceded their dramatic growth.
Hickel claims that China's very non-neoliberal policy enriched its people
China's post-1979 reforms are one of the textbook examples of neoliberalism! They privatized many businesses, allowed the creation of markets for many goods and services, opened up to international trade and reduced capital controls. While there is still a great deal of central control, the level is dramatically lower than it was in the 1970s. Their economic freedom ranking improved from a terrible 3.59 in 1980 to a respectable (though still not great) 6 in 2002, a very ra...
Interesting article. I would like to raise one quabble:
Advocates for traditional diversity metrics such as race, gender and class do so precisely because they track different ways of thinking.
I agree this is the stated reason for many corporate diversity advocates, but I think it is not their true reason. In practice many companies recruit using basically a combination of filters whose purpose is to select people with a certain way of thinking (e.g. resumes, interviews, psychological screens) combined with various quotas for desired racial groups. If ge...
Maybe a deontological version would consist of not merely doing enough to avoid violating moral law, but using evidence to absolutely minimize the risk of violating any such duties. For example, the Center for Effective Deontology might research contracts people commonly sign (like cell phones or insurance) and provide advice on how to avoid accidentally violating them to reduce promise-breaking.
DxE has been fairly controversial in the animal advocacy world
For anyone who hasn't been following closely, this is quite the understatement! Wayne once threatened to "start a big fight" at EAG in order to generate media attention.
For context, Facebook is the social media company that has been most reluctant to be political, and apparently this is really making them bleed financially.
I added up the numbers in the first article and got around $634m of total 2018 ad spend, vs 2019 facebook revenue of 70700bn - less than 1%. Many of those companies only say they are 'pausing' or 'for July', rather than stopping. Finally, a company that was re-considering its facebook ad spend for unrelated reasons might want to frame it as a moral stance.
Perhaps principle-agent p...
Who is the 'we' here and by whose yardstick the benefit measured?
Investigations into police brutality that follow viral footage have historically been quite harmful for all involved. The upside is a small reduction in police brutality. The downside is a massive increase in non-police brutality, as found in this recent paper:
all investigations that were preceded by "viral" incidents of deadly force have led to a large and statistically significant increase in homicides and total crime. We estimate that these investigations caused almo...
This seems pretty worrying! Have you spoken to the CEA community health team about this? I guess they will probably read this blog post.
The community health team at CEA has been following the situation.