All of Dylan Matthews's Comments + Replies

Having followed Alvea's journey for a good chunk of this time, I was really impressed by how you all handled the project and your humility in dealing with trial disappointments and winddown.

1
Seth Ariel Green
5mo
Can we hear about why you want to take another look at Egger et al. (2021)? This is a really important paper and it's important to get this stuff right; OTOH, its data and programs are publicly accessible (download link here), the journal has a pretty robust replication policy...I guess I'm thinking that if something is wrong in this paper it's going to be off in the text and not in the code, i.e. that any mistakes are going to be conceptual. WDYT?
1
HStencil
5mo
It's worth noting that the second of those papers actually has recently been reanalyzed, and Cutler and Miller have now published a response to the reanalysis, as well. I think there is probably more work one could do on this (e.g., updating the difference-in-differences estimators in the original paper to reflect the current methodological state-of-the-art), but I also think it's fair to say that the result has already been subjected to thorough and meaningful scrutiny.

I don't know that I'm the kind of person OP is thinking of, but beyond opportunity cost there's also a question of reportorial distance/objectivity. I've thought a lot about whether to do a project like this and one sticking point is (a) I identify as an EA (b) I donate to GiveWell and signed the GWWC pledge (c) many of my friends are EAs, so I'm not sure any book I produce would be perceived as having sufficient credibility among non-EA readers.

3
Larks
1y
People enjoyed reading Winston Churchill's history of the war and he was hardly a neutral observer! Pretty clear which side he wanted to win.
1
Wil Perkins
1y
I’d also say take it on. Someone objective can always rewrite it later, but if we don’t save it now we could lose a lot.
1
Pete Rowlett
1y
Definitely agree with Chris here!  Worst case scenario, you create useful material for someone else who tackles it down the line, best case scenario, you write the whole thing yourself.

I'd encourage you to consider taking it on. Even if identifying as an EA would reduce the credibility for outsiders, I'm sure whatever you produced would be a wonderful starting point for anyone else tackling it down the line.

Email me at the address here, I'm also based in DC and would love to talk.

1
AffectiveEltruism
1y
Appreciated

Hell yes to all of this. I'll also add that as someone who grew up in a small town (not a universal experience but probably a shared one) I found mega-cities like New York or London to be so overwhelming in their scale that just trying to get around was stressful.

DC is, as Anon mentions, a pretty compact city, and young professionals tend to live in a small number of neighborhoods (Petworth, Shaw, Adams Morgan, Columbia Heights, Mt. Pleasant, H St — I'm probably dating myself with this list) that aren't far apart from each other. You can walk from the cent... (read more)

These are all fair points. For myself, I'll say that (a) we have a lot of evidence internally that Vox's readership is pretty left-leaning and (b) I care a lot about persuading people of core EA ideas, like giving impartially and effectively, the importance of global poverty/animals/future people, etc. So naturally when I'm aiming to persuade, I tend to make arguments I think will make sense to the audience I know I have.

I didn't intend the piece to alienate EAs who don't have center-left politics, and apologize if I had that effect anyway. I agree that a strength of the movement is the relative lack of ideological litmus tests, and I hope that continues.

Hi Dylan,

Thanks for the reply. I do appreciate that Vox's readership leans left, and it can be useful to tailor one's messaging to the expected readership. 

Trouble is, in the social media era, articles intended for one readership can easily get picked up, shared, mocked, trolled, satirized, and misunderstood by people from other political perspectives.  So I'm worried about conservatives who see the article might end up thinking that EA is 'just virtue signaling for liberal Vox readers', or 'just an excuse to push the Soros/WEF globalism agenda',... (read more)

These are great questions; I'd be curious to see some of the major labs write up their answers to 2. As a non-specialist I sometimes struggle to understand the nuances of how what Anthropic's doing differs from what OpenAI does etc etc.

Perhaps helpful: a few years ago Hidden Brain did an episode on my marriage and how my wife (who is a lovely, ethical person, but doesn't identify as EA and has some significant disagreements with some EA ideas) and I (an EA trying his best who's also wrong sometimes) get along. Obviously we're just one couple so our discussions/tensions may not be representative, but I thought Shankar Vedantam and the producer, Rhaina Cohen, did a fantastic job. 

1
Hedgehog
2y
Thank you! I will be listening with great interest!

I wonder how much of this is explained by utilitarians selecting out of professional philosophy because of the theory's implications.

I seriously considered philosophy grad school and was discouraged by some mentors who thought that if I took consequentialism seriously, other career options were more promising avenues to impact.

If enough people do that, though, the academy's going to be left leaning against consequentialism.

5
MichaelDickens
2y
Sounds plausible. Some data: The PhilPapers survey found that 31% of philosophers accept or lean toward consequentailism, vs. 32% deontology and 37% virtue ethics. The ratios are about the same if instead of looking at all philosophers, you look at just applied ethicists or normative ethicists. I don't know of any surveys on normative views of philosophy-adjacent people, but I expect that (e.g.) economists lean much more consequentialist than philosophers. Not sure what other fields one would consider adjacent to philosophy. Maybe quant finance?

I appreciate the feedback! I will admit I had not seen Terminator in a while before writing that post. I also appreciate including Paul's follow-up, which is definitely clarifying. Will be clearer about the meaning of "influence" going forward.

Thanks for reading! I admire that you take the time to respond to critiques even by random internet strangers. Thank you for all your hard work in promoting effective altruist ideas.