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Authors: John Halstead, Hauke Hillebrandt
Opinions are ours, not those of our employers.
Summary
Randomista development (RD) is a form of development economics which evaluates and promotes interventions that can be tested by randomised controlled trials (RCTs). It is exemplified by GiveWell (which primarily works in health) and the randomista movement in economics (which primarily works in economic development).
Here we argue for the following claims, which we believe to be quite weak:
- Prominent economists make plausible arguments which suggest that research on and advocacy for economic growth in l
Introduction
MIT's Poverty Action Lab has made their courses available online, and this is a big deal because the teaching is of excellent quality. I've taken Microeconomics, Evaluating Social Programs, The Challenges of Global Poverty and Foundations of Development Policy.
Regarding the first two courses, I remember that Evaluating Social Programs delivers on the title, as does the book Running Randomized Evaluations: A Practical Guide. I remember Microeconomics as being a solid introduction to the subject by a competent teacher of above-average charisma.
Below is a review of the last two cours
... (Read more)Thanks for the recommendation. I'm taking a development economics course/paper at my university at the moment and have been a bit disappointed in the quality of the teaching. I might check these out as a supplement/extension at some point.
Summary
Making it possible for people to deliberately fall in love seems like a high priority, competitive with good short- and medium-term causes such as malaria prevention and anti-aging. However there is little serious work on it. While this prevents casual donors from being able to do anything about it, it also suggests major opportunities for well-placed researchers, grantmakers, and business entrepreneurs. Both replications and generalizations of the tiny body of existing work, and ambitious science to figure out new paradigms and prospects, could be big steps forward.
If you want the shor... (Read more)
I think there are problems with the study that article is based on, as outlined here:
"The problem? That finding is the result of a grievous misunderstanding on Dolan’s part of how the American Time Use Survey works. The people conducting the survey didn’t ask married people how happy they were, shoo their spouses out of the room, and then ask again. Dolan had misinterpreted one of the categories in the survey, “spouse absent,&... (Read more)(Click to expand thread. ⌘F to Expand All)Cmd/Ctrl F to expand all comments on this post
This is a cross-post of a bonus edition of the Alignment Newsletter that I thought would be particularly interesting to this audience.
Find all Alignment Newsletter resources here. In particular, you can sign up, or look through this spreadsheet of all summaries that have ever been in the newsletter. I'm always happy to hear feedback; you can give some by commenting on this post.
Audio version here (may not be up yet).
Welcome to another special edition of the newsletter! In this edition, I summarize four conversations that AI Impacts had with researchers who were optimistic that AI safety w... (Read more)
I also found that passage odd, though I think for a somewhat different reason (or at least with a different framing).
For me, the passage reminded me of the O-ring theory of economic development, "which proposes that tasks of production must be executed proficiently together in order for any of them to be of high value".
For the sake of the argument, let's make the very extreme and unlikely assumption that, if no longtermists worked on them, each of AI risk, biorisk, and nuclear war would by themselves be enough to guarantee an existential c... (Read more)(Click to expand thread. ⌘F to Expand All)Cmd/Ctrl F to expand all comments on this post
One thing that doesn't seem to be entered into people's conversations about the value of having kids is value of information.
There a common thought that Effective Altruists can, through careful, good parenting, impart positive values and competence to their descendants. However, it is highly uncertain how well this will actually go. And given the large differences in cost-effectiveness from top causes to secondary ones, and from Effective Altruism to other social movements, it is pretty important to know how likely our kids are to remain faithful to Effective Altruist principles. Yes... (Read more)
N=1, but I enjoyed reading the Autobiography of John Stuart Mill.
Epistemic status: Highly speculative. I know very little about the current state of the field or what EAs in this space think about. I also know about as much about general policy as you’d expect of a random layman who has ever once lived in DC, so everything I say could be wildly off-base.
Who should read this: If you think US politics and policy are not really important for improving the world, or if you’re extremely skeptical that EAs could have any tangible effect on either, you can stop reading this post now.
Introduction
I think it’s plausible that Effective Altruism w... (Read more)
Epistemic status: This is basically meant as a collection and analysis of existing ideas, not as anything brand new. I’m not an expert on the topics covered. I’d appreciate feedback or comments in relation to any mistakes, unclear phrasings, etc. (and just in general!).
In various communities (including the EA and rationalist communities), it’s common to make use of explicit, numerical probabilities.[1]
At the extreme end, this may involve explicit attempts to calculate what would maximise expected utility, and then do that thing.
It could also involve attempts to create explicit, probabilistic m
... (Read more)The Foreign Policy Generation project (hence FPGen), led by Abigail Stowe-Thurston and Matt Korda, proposes a set of directives for American foreign policy. They are based on progressive political philosophy and provide a partial remedy to the oft-recognized gap in foreign policy thinking among the modern left. Effective Altruists may be interested in foreign policy, and may be interested in deciding whether progressive political candidates are trustworthy in foreign policy.
In this article I evaluate their ideas. (A couple weeks ago, I emailed a draft to a lead member asking for feedback, but ... (Read more)
This is the 2019 case for supporting The Center for Election Science. (Here's our intro page.) We need your financial support to succeed in our mission. This outline details what you can look forward to in this post. Also, you can hear in (very) long form about our work from an episode of 80,000 Hours. And there’s our EA Global Presentation.
- Who we are
- Why we do what we do
- Importance
- Tractability
- Neglectedness
- What we will do with sufficient funding
- Why we’re asking for funding from you
- Why there is urgency
- My ask to you
- FAQ
Who we are
The Center for Election Science (CES) is a 501(c)3 ... (Read more)
Aaron, thanks much for the update. Did the poll include non-democratic primary voters - e.g. registered republicans, etc.? A broader view of citizen views might offer additional insights.
I agree that more research and evaluation is desirable. In fact, I think that robust evidence is critical for concepts like approval voting to gain traction and support. Could CES organize volunteers to do exit interviews at polling locations during primary and general elections? Capturing plurality, approval, and even other voting preferences during real elections could o... (Read more)(Click to expand thread. ⌘F to Expand All)Cmd/Ctrl F to expand all comments on this post
Key-points
This post aims to give evidence-based recommendations on physical exercise for EAs.
Why exercise?
Exercise can enhance productivity (and thus impact) of EAs in two ways:
- Acute enhancement of cognitive performance.
- Medium and long-term improvement of physical and mental health.
How to exercise?
- Moderate and/or vigorous intensity “cardio” exercise for at least 20 minutes per day on at least 3 days per week is recommended.
- Additionally, resistance exercise (~ 3 x 10 repetitions with high intensity) for each of the major muscle groups should be performed on 2-3 days per week
I think it would certainly also be useful to go Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday. The importance of the restday-position is secondary to the workout-frequency. Hope that helps.
Check out this prediction market platform ( https://smarkets.com/event/886734/politics/us/us-presidential-election-2020/democratic-nominee-2020 ). Would it be useful to you to have markets on certain questions (climate change, child literacy, next paper to fail replication etc)? Perhaps you have discussions which could be solved by being able to show that the market is in favour of a certain position? Maybe it could be useful marketing material.
So if you could create a prediction market for any testable question, what would it be? Do you think this might be particularly valuable to you?
I’m looking for help to design my web site as an effective altruism coach. I'm a retired clinical psychologist who would like to offer pro-bono altruism coaching/counseling and help spread the word about EA by giving a powerpoint presentation I created that integrates EA with "Cognitive-Behavior Therapy." But I need someone soon. I have no web site design skills. I’m trying to create a site myself and I'm making a mess! Please contact me at raypsyd@optonline.net
Thanks for this piece, I thought it was interesting!
A small error I noticed while reading through one of the references is that the line "For example, France’s GDP per capita is around 60% of US GDP per capita.[7]" is incorrectly summarizing the cited material. The value needs to be 67% to make this sentence correct. The relevant section in the underlying material is: "As an example, suppose we wish to compare living standards in France and the United States. GDP per person is markedly lower in France: France had a per capita GDP in 2... (Read more)(Click to expand thread. ⌘F to Expand All)Cmd/Ctrl F to expand all comments on this post