This was very interesting. Retrospectives on projects that didn’t work can be extremely helpful to others, but I imagine can also been tough to write, so thanks very much!
Just because they didn’t get the evidence of impact they were aiming for doesn’t mean it “didn’t work”.
I understand if EAs want to focus on interventions with strong evidence of impact, but I think it’s terrible comms (both for PR and for our own epistemics) to go around saying that interventions lacking such evidence don’t work.
It’s also pretty inconsistent; we don’t seem to have that attitude about spending $$ on speculative longtermist interventions! (although I’m sure some EAs do, I’m pretty sure it’s a minority view).
This was very interesting. Retrospectives on projects that didn’t work can be extremely helpful to others, but I imagine can also been tough to write, so thanks very much!
Just because they didn’t get the evidence of impact they were aiming for doesn’t mean it “didn’t work”.
I understand if EAs want to focus on interventions with strong evidence of impact, but I think it’s terrible comms (both for PR and for our own epistemics) to go around saying that interventions lacking such evidence don’t work.
It’s also pretty inconsistent; we don’t seem to have that attitude about spending $$ on speculative longtermist interventions! (although I’m sure some EAs do, I’m pretty sure it’s a minority view).