Hey Phil. I’m someone who is very interested in the work of GPI and am impressed by what I have seen so far. I’m looking forward to seeing what the new economists get up to!
I had a look at Leopold’s paper a while back, have listened to you on the 80K podcast and have watched a few of GPI’s videos including Christian Tarsney’s one on the epistemic challenge to longtermism. I notice that in a lot of this research, key results are highly sensitive to the value of certain parameters. My memory is slightly hazy on specifics but I think in Christian’s paper the validity of longtermism depends largely on the existence and frequency of exogenous nullifying events (ENEs) that can essentially wipe out any trajectory change efforts that came before (apologies if I’m not being perfectly accurate here).
I am wondering if empirical estimation of key parameters is a gap in current cause prioritisation research. Because the value of these parameters is so important in determining results from the models, it seems very high-value to more accurately estimate these parameters. Do you know if anyone is actually doing this? Is anyone for example looking into the nature of ENEs? Is this something new economists at GPI might engage in? If this type of research isn’t suitable for GPI, does GPI need closer links to other research institutions that are interested in carrying out more empirical research?
Thanks! I agree that people in EA—including Christian, Leopold, and myself—have done a fair bit of theory/modeling work at this point which would benefit from relevant empirical work. I don’t think this is what either of the current new economists will engage in anytime soon, unfortunately. But I don’t think it would be outside a GPI economist’s remit, especially once we’ve grown.
OK that’s good to hear. It probably makes sense to spend some time laying a solid theoretical base to build on. I’m aware of how new GPI still is so I’m looking forward to seeing how things progress!
Hey Phil. I’m someone who is very interested in the work of GPI and am impressed by what I have seen so far. I’m looking forward to seeing what the new economists get up to!
I had a look at Leopold’s paper a while back, have listened to you on the 80K podcast and have watched a few of GPI’s videos including Christian Tarsney’s one on the epistemic challenge to longtermism. I notice that in a lot of this research, key results are highly sensitive to the value of certain parameters. My memory is slightly hazy on specifics but I think in Christian’s paper the validity of longtermism depends largely on the existence and frequency of exogenous nullifying events (ENEs) that can essentially wipe out any trajectory change efforts that came before (apologies if I’m not being perfectly accurate here).
I am wondering if empirical estimation of key parameters is a gap in current cause prioritisation research. Because the value of these parameters is so important in determining results from the models, it seems very high-value to more accurately estimate these parameters. Do you know if anyone is actually doing this? Is anyone for example looking into the nature of ENEs? Is this something new economists at GPI might engage in? If this type of research isn’t suitable for GPI, does GPI need closer links to other research institutions that are interested in carrying out more empirical research?
Thanks! I agree that people in EA—including Christian, Leopold, and myself—have done a fair bit of theory/modeling work at this point which would benefit from relevant empirical work. I don’t think this is what either of the current new economists will engage in anytime soon, unfortunately. But I don’t think it would be outside a GPI economist’s remit, especially once we’ve grown.
OK that’s good to hear. It probably makes sense to spend some time laying a solid theoretical base to build on. I’m aware of how new GPI still is so I’m looking forward to seeing how things progress!