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 interpretation of the numbers, which was in some sense “bolder” than the GW interpretation. My sense of good epistemic standard is you certainly can do this, but should add a caveat with warning that the authors of the numbers have a different interpretation of them (so it is a miss of caveat). At the same time I can imagine how you can fail to do this without any bad faith—for example, if you are at some point of the discussion confused whether some object-level disagreement continues or not (especially if you ask the other party in the disagreement to check the text). Also, if my impression is correct and the core of the object-level disagreement was quite technical question regarding proper use of Bayesian statistics and EV calculations, it does not seem obvious how to report the disagreement to general public.
In general: switching to the assumption someone is deliberately misleading is a highly slippery slope: it seems with this sort of assumption you can kind of explain everything, often easily, and if you can’t e.g. speak to people in person it may be quite difficult to find anything which would make you the update in the opposite direction.
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 speaking you _can_ use the numbers directly as EV estimates if you have a very broad prior, and the prior is all the same across all the actions you are comparing. (You can argue this is technically not the right thing to do, or you can argue that GiveWell advises people not to do it.) As I stated in my original comment, I’d appreciate if such disagreements are reported. At the same time it seems difficult to do it properly in a popular text. I can imagine something like this
According to the most rigorous estimates by GiveWell, the cost to save a life in the developing world is about $3,400 (or $100 for one QALY [Quality-adjusted life year]). However, this depends on a literal interpretation of the numbers, which GiveWell does not recommend. But if you start with a very broad prior distribution over action impacts, uniform across actions, even if you use the correct Bayesian statistics, the mean expectation value of the cost will be the number we use (we can see that from the estimate being unbiased ). About $3,400 is a small enough amount that most of us in affluent countries could donate that amount every year while maintaining about the same quality of life. …
being more precise, but you can probably see it is a very different book now. I’d be quite interested in how you would write the paragraph if you wanted to use the number, wanted to give numerical estimate of the cost per live saved and did not want to explain to the reader Bayesian estimates.
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 interpretation of the numbers, which was in some sense “bolder” than the GW interpretation. My sense of good epistemic standard is you certainly can do this, but should add a caveat with warning that the authors of the numbers have a different interpretation of them (so it is a miss of caveat). At the same time I can imagine how you can fail to do this without any bad faith—for example, if you are at some point of the discussion confused whether some object-level disagreement continues or not (especially if you ask the other party in the disagreement to check the text). Also, if my impression is correct and the core of the object-level disagreement was quite technical question regarding proper use of Bayesian statistics and EV calculations, it does not seem obvious how to report the disagreement to general public.
In general: switching to the assumption someone is deliberately misleading is a highly slippery slope: it seems with this sort of assumption you can kind of explain everything, often easily, and if you can’t e.g. speak to people in person it may be quite difficult to find anything which would make you the update in the opposite direction.
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 speaking you _can_ use the numbers directly as EV estimates if you have a very broad prior, and the prior is all the same across all the actions you are comparing. (You can argue this is technically not the right thing to do, or you can argue that GiveWell advises people not to do it.) As I stated in my original comment, I’d appreciate if such disagreements are reported. At the same time it seems difficult to do it properly in a popular text. I can imagine something like this
being more precise, but you can probably see it is a very different book now. I’d be quite interested in how you would write the paragraph if you wanted to use the number, wanted to give numerical estimate of the cost per live saved and did not want to explain to the reader Bayesian estimates.
This seems like a good argument. Thank you. I will think about it.