All of guzey's Comments + Replies
I think all of these effects are plausible. However, I'm not a big fan of non-pre-registered RCTs, which appear to be most, if not all of the RCTs in that review paper. See: the section Our priors about sleep research should be weak
I'm not a big fan of non-pre-registered RCTs
I'm not sure why you accept as evidence non-pre-registered non-RCTs but do not accept non-pre-registered RCTs.
>I do think the change to my sleep schedule also came with a lot of other changes in my life, so this is far from even a single clear anecdote, but it did update me that at least for myself, I am quite hesitant to sleep less than 9 hours.
Do you mean that the change in sleep pattern came with the change in something like the job you had or the country where you lived?
However, I need to throw a flag on the field for isolated demands of rigor / motivated reasoning here - I think you are demanding a lot from sleep science to prove their hypotheses about needing >7hrs of sleep
Yes, I'm demanding a lot from sleep science but you are missing one of the key points: the evidence that sleep scientists have any idea about the amount of sleep we need is incredibly weak. They literally recommend at least 7 hours of sleep (1) without any long-term causal evidence about the effects of sleep on health and with (2) correlational evi...
I don't think that negative votes on this comment reflects its value, if people who downvoted this comment could explain why I think that would be helpful for discourse.
If I had to guess why this comment has been heavily downvoted I think it would be because the tone of the comment could seem a bit adversarial and possibly because the original commenter is well known within the EA community and some people don't like attacks on their group. I hope that I am wrong and people are downvoting this on more reasonable grounds, but as I said before it would be great that could be made clear.
Do you believe that the following representation of the incident is unfair?
Yes, at present I do.
I haven't yet seen evidence to support the strong claims you are making about Julia Wise's knowledge and intentions at various stages in this process. If your depiction of events is true (i.e. Wise both knowingly concealed the leak from you after realising what had happened, and explicitly lied about it somewhere) that seems very bad, but I haven't seen evidence for that. Her own explanation of what happened seems quite plausible to me.
(Conversely, we do have ev...
I hadn't realised that your comment on LessWrong was your first public comment on the incident for 3 years. That is an update for me.
But also, I do find it quite strange to say nothing about the incident for years, then come back with a very long and personal (and to me, bitter-seeming) comment, deep in the middle of a lengthy and mostly-unrelated conversation about a completely different organisation.
Commenting on this post after it got nominated for review is, I agree, completely reasonable and expected. That said, your review isn't exactly very reflecti...
The other perspective is that EA was actually able to solve Yudkowsky's Why Our Kind Can't Cooperate.
Fiscal sponsorship for new projects without their own incorporation (yet)
Rethink Charity does this! https://www.rethinkprojects.org/fiscal-sponsorship
To be fair to Brian, this appears to be the first explicit confirmation by Musk that he has Asperger's (even though I and many others suspected that this is the case).
Yes I would consider this a correct prediction by you - though I think most other people would made the same prediction and considered it pretty obvious.
I'm in the very early stages of starting a nonprofit too and looking forward to reading more about your experience!
I'm surprised that you care about harms to autistic people but not to bad leaders. Are people born to be bad leaders somehow more deserving of that?
Contrary to your insinuation, I never wrote that I don't understand the difference between those two. I was pointing out that Brian's argument applies to both "(autism)" and "terrible leaders".
I'm not trying to troll, sorry if it seems this way. I really don't understand why you have a problem with "(autistic)" but don't have a problem with a "terrible leader". This seems inconsistent to me. As far as I can see all of your arguments apply to both of these. My title still seems justified to me.
I don't have a problem admitting a mistake and in fact in the past I have changed the title of the post based on people telling me that it wasn't justified: https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/gn55rx/ignore_any_paper_based_on_selfreported_data/fvcfskr/
I don't understand you. Brian writes: "there's still something wrong with hinting that people are "(autistic)", when they aren't diagnosed with it, or don't want to be known as that"
I wrote that the people I wrote about in the post used to be "terrible leaders". I would guess that they don't want to be known as terrible leaders, thus satisfying one of Brian's conditions. Thus, I conclude that Brian and you want me to remove that part of my post as well.
If I wasn't a fan of your other work I'd have written you off as trolling at the point. The costs from random people on the internet hypothesizing about who's autistic are not only borne by the people you are hypothesising about, they are also borne by actually autistic people.
I don't see what the upside is for you, other than not having to admit to a mistake. Neither Brian nor I disliked the article, and the article in no way relies on the claim that the people you are discussing are autistic. We're just asking you not to throw around pseudodiagnoses about a condition that's already pretty badly misunderstood.
I assume you also have a problem with me writing that they were all terrible leaders and terrible at running a company then?
I don't have a problem with you writing that they were all terrible leaders or terrible at running a company. This is because I think there's enough good evidence showing that Jobs, Musk, and Page were all terrible leaders when they started out, or at least showed examples of bad leadership. And your article cites some of this good evidence.
Meanwhile, you haven't really cited any evidence of them being autistic, and I don't think there's enough good evidence that they are. And yet you hint that all of them have it, without any caveats in the article that t...
I believe your point would've been valid had I claimed that they were formally diagnosed with autism. I'm not aware of any of them being diagnosed, which is why the title says "(autistic)" in parentheses, indicating that I'm not making such a claim about people I discuss in the post, but rather my impression that they exhibited a host of traits typically associated with autism/asperger's.
indicating that I'm not making such a claim about people I discuss in the post, but rather my impression that they exhibited a host of traits typically associated with autism/asperger's.
FWIW I don't interpret title words being in parentheses as indicating it's the author's impression. I interpreted your title as meaning something like "I think probably all visionaries are not natural-born leaders, but I'm more confident that autistic ones are not."
I'm also super interested in this and would love to hear Jason's thoughts.
As Dietrich Vollrath often points out, technological progress does not necessarily lead to an increase in GDP and sometimes actually lowers it: https://growthecon.wordpress.com/2014/08/25/246/
It seems that lots of contemporary innovations are like this and GDP becomes and ever less reliant way of tracking scientific progress.
If nobody bothered to create a better measure of scientific progress, I would like to create it or to help someone create it or to at least figure out what prevents us from creating it.
I agree with Jason about the S-curves and the importance of distinguishing between within-area progress and between-area progress and he's making some really good points about ways to think about these issues in the linked posts. I also have a giant essay about this paper coming out soon and I'm very skeptical of its findings - lmk if you'd be interested in reading the draft
Added this quote to the Appendix:
writing an A0 makes me smarter. Writing an A1 makes me especially smarter. Taking smart criticism into account and finding solutions to address them is almost as good as having a great collaborator. /9 (https://twitter.com/HCCvPDAC/status/1162453567191433216)
Thanks so much for the feedback! Especially the point about writing grants being real science. I completely agree and I should add this in the post -- planning and thinking in detail about your research and expectations in the process of writing a grant application is indeed very much science.
I'm optimistic because the impression I had was that everything is just terrible. What I ended up concluding is that things are okay but there are still a lot of problems. The fact that even famous scientists have troubles raising money for interesting projects is one such problem.
I should note that now we know that William did in fact know that the draft was confidential. Quoting a comment of his above:
In hindsight, once I’d seen that you didn’t want the post shared I should have simply ignored it, and ensured you knew that it had been accidentally shared with me.
but MacAskill played no part in that
Just wanted to note that now we know that MacAskill knew that the draft was confidential.
As you know, the draft you sent to Julia was quite a bit more hostile than the published version
And the first draft that I sent to my friends was much more hostile than that. Every draft gets toned down and corrected a lot. This is precisely why I ask everybody not to share them.
Well, happens. Although if you forwarded it to Will, then he probably read the part of an email where I ask not to share it with anybody, but proceeded to read that draft and respond to a confidential draft anyway.
I've defended MacAskill extensively here, but why are people downvoting to hide this legitimate criticism? MacAskill acknowledged that he did this and apologized.
If there's a reason please say so, I might be missing something. But downvoting a comment until it disappears without explaining why seems harsh. Thanks!
CN: I don't agree with you
PlayPumps: I don't agree with your assessment of points 1, 2, 4.
...At this point, I really don't think you can justifiably continue to hold your either of your positions: that DGB is significantly inaccurate, or that MacAskill is dishonest. I really do believe that you're in this in good faith, and that your main error (save the ad hominem attack, likely a judgement error) was in not getting to the bottom of these questions. But now the questions feel very well resolved. Unless the four issues listed above constitute systemic inacc
Thank you a ton for the time and effort you put into this. I find myself disagreeing with you, but this may reflect my investment in my arguments. I will write to you later, once I reflect on this further.
I never posted the draft that had this quote on EA Forum. Further, I clearly asked everyone I sent the drafts not to share them with anybody.
I second Julia in her apology. In hindsight, once I’d seen that you didn’t want the post shared I should have simply ignored it, and ensured you knew that it had been accidentally shared with me.
When it was shared with me, the damage had already been done, so I thought it made sense to start prepping a response. I didn’t think your post would change significantly, and at the time I thought it would be good for me to start going through your critique to see if there were indeed grave mistakes in DGB, and offer a speedy response for a more fruitful discussi...
I'm sorry, this was my fault. You sent me a draft and asked me not to share it, and a few days later in rereading the email and deciding what to do with it, I wasn't careful and failed to read the part where you asked me not to share it. I shared it with Will at that point, and I apologize for my carelessness.
Also, I wonder what you think about the second half of this comment of mine in this thread.
There, I point out that MacAskill responds not to any of the published versions of the essay but to a confidential draft (since he says that I'm quoting him on something that I only quoted him about in a draft).
What do you think about it? Is my interpretation here plausible? What are the other plausible explanations for this? Maybe I fail to see charitable interpretations of how that happened.
I'm not sure how EA Forum displays drafts. It seems very plausible that, on this sometimes confusing platform, you're mistaken as to which draft was available where and when. If you're implying that the CEA employee sent MacAskill the draft, then yes, they should not have done that, but MacAskill played no part in that. Further, it seems basic courtesy to let someone respond to your arguments before you publicly call them a liar - you should've allowed MacAskill a chance to respond without immediate time pressure.
Thank you for a thoughtful response.
1. Deworming. Seems fair.
2. GiveWell. This seems like a good argument. I will think about it.
3. CN. If you read my post and not William's response to it, I never accuse him of conflating CEO pay and overhead. He deflects my argument by writing about this. This is indeed a minor point.
I specifically accuse him of misquoting CN. As I wrote in other comments here, yes this might indeed be CN's position and in the end, they would judge the doughnuts charity highly. I do not contend this point and never did. I only wrote that
...First, on honesty. As I said above, I completely agree with you on honesty: "bad arguments for a good conclusion are not justified." This is one of my (and I'd say the EA community as a whole) strongest values. Arguments are not soldiers, their only value is in their own truth. SSC's In Favor of Niceness, Community, and Civilization sums up my views very well. I'm glad we're after the same goal.
That said, in popular writing, it's impossible to reflect the true complexity of what's being described. So the goal is to ...
Hi smithee,
I do wonder if I should've written this post in a less personal tone. I will consider writing a follow up to it.
About me deciding that MacAskill is deliberately misleading, please see my comment in /r/slatestarcodex in response to /u/scottalexander about it. Would love to know what you think.
I'll headline this by saying that I completely believe you're doing this in good faith, I agree with several of your criticisms, and I think this deserves to be openly discussed. But I also strongly disagree with your conclusion about MacAskill's honesty, and, even if I thought it was plausible, it still would be an unnecessary breach of etiquette that makes open conversation near impossible. I really think you should stop making this an argument about MacAskill's personal honesty. Have the facts debate, leave ad hominem aside so everyo...
About cost-effectiveness estimates: I don't think your interpretation is plausible. The GiveWell page that gives the $3400 estimate, specifically asks not to interpret it literally.
About me deciding that MacAskill is deliberately misleading. Please see my comment in /r/slatestarcodex in response to /u/scottalexander about it. Would love to know what you think.
[because of time constrains, I will focus on just one example now]
Yes, but GiveWell is not some sort of ultimate authority on how their numbers should be interpreted. Take an ab absurdum example: NRA publishes some numbers about guns, gun-related violence, and their interpretation that there are not enough guns in the US and gun violence is low. If you basically agree with numbers, but disagree with their interpretation, surely you can use the numbers and interpret them in a different way.
GiveWell reasoning is explained in this article. Technically speakin...
I wonder why my reply has so many downvotes (-8 score) and no replies. This could of course indicate that my arguments are so bad that they're not worth engaging with, but the fact that many of the members of the community find my criticism accurate and valuable, this seems unlikely.
As a datapoint, I thought that your reply was so bad that it was not worth engaging in, although I think you did find a couple of inaccuracies in DGB and appreciate the effort you went to. I'll briefly explain my position.
I thought MacAskill's explanations were convincing and your counter-argument missed his points completely, to the extent that you seem to have an axe to grind with him. E.g. if GiveWell is happy with how their research was presented in DGB (as MacAskill mentioned), then I really don't see how you, as an outsider and non-GW...
Hi Jan,
Thanks for the feedback.
You write:
In some of the examples, it seems adding more caveats and reporting in more detail would have been better for readers interested in precision.
I should point out that in the post I show not just a lack of caveats and details. William misrepresents the evidence. Among other things, he:
- cherry picks the variables from a deworming paper he cites
- interprets GW's AMF estimate in a way they specifically asked not to interpret them ("five hundred times" more effective thing — Holden wrote specifically about such argume
I think I understand you gradually become upset, but it seems in the process you started to miss the more favorable interpretations.
For example, with the "interpretation of the GiveWell estimates": based on reading a bunch of old discussions on archive, my _impression_ is there was at least in some point of time a genuine disagreement about how to interpret the numbers between Will, Tobi, Holden and possibly others (there was much less disagreement about the numeric values). So if this is the case, it is plausible Will was using his interpretati...
Hi Gregory,
I should point out that
- the essay posted to the Effective Altruism Forum never contained the bit about disavowing Will. I did write this in the version that I posted on my site, and I removed it, after much feedback elsewhere and wrote:
...I updated this post significantly, based on feedback from the community. Several of my points were wrong and my tone and conclusions were sometimes inappropriate. I believe that my central point stands, but I apologize to William MacAskill for the first versions of the essay. For previous versions please see W
I want to apologize for both the tone and relative lack of informativeness in my responses - it seems to me that our thinking here is extremely difficult to reconcile in the low-bandwidth medium of writing.