Well I guess someone who hasn’t heard of EA couldn’t say that.
So I don’t think that statement is quite as useless as you do. It shows that he:
A) Knows about EA
B) Has at least implied that he wants to use EA thinking in the role
EAs generally tend to think that the cause areas they focus on and the prioritisation they do within those cause areas allow them to be many magnitudes more effective than a typical non-EA. So I might expect him, in expectation, to be more effective than a typical mayor.
I do take your point that that alone isn’t much and we will want to examine his track record and specific proposals in more detail.
B) Has at least implied that he wants to use EA thinking in the role
My default belief is that a politician implying something he knows the listener wants to hear is not evidence he’s believes or will act on that implication. Do you disagree with that, in general or for Hsuing in particular?
It’s certainly not strong evidence, but it is evidence. All other things equal I would vote for someone who claims they are an effective altruist over someone who doesn’t.
Politicians do have at least some incentive to deliver on promises. If they don’t it should reduce the probability of them getting elected / tarnish their reputation. I accept this is certainly not a perfect rule by any means but it’s still got a grain of truth.
Overall I don’t take much from him saying he’s an EA, but that doesn’t mean I take nothing at all.
No time to call up the paper, but the basic answer is that such statements are evidence.
A common pattern is that politicians can propose policy A or B before entering office, but have an incentive to implement A once elected. So some of the politicians who propose B will switch to A once elected. But none of the politicians who support A will switch to B. For example this happens with economic security vs. economic efficiency platforms in Latin America (politicians prefer efficiency policies more once elected). About half of them switched in the study I read, and no efficiency campaigns switched to security after election.
That means the voter choice is simple. Even if you belief a politician might switch off B, the politician who is campaigning on B is always more likely to do B than the politician campaigning on A. This applies to head to head elections only ofc.
So the optimal decision theoretic choice is to support the politician who advocates for your policy in the election.
Maybe. That’s orthogonal to my comment. I was responding to
My default belief is that a politician implying something he knows the listener wants to hear is not evidence he’s believes or will act on that implication.
As to the empirical content of “evidence-based policy”, I’m not an expert on that question yet.
Well I guess someone who hasn’t heard of EA couldn’t say that.
So I don’t think that statement is quite as useless as you do. It shows that he:
A) Knows about EA
B) Has at least implied that he wants to use EA thinking in the role
EAs generally tend to think that the cause areas they focus on and the prioritisation they do within those cause areas allow them to be many magnitudes more effective than a typical non-EA. So I might expect him, in expectation, to be more effective than a typical mayor.
I do take your point that that alone isn’t much and we will want to examine his track record and specific proposals in more detail.
My default belief is that a politician implying something he knows the listener wants to hear is not evidence he’s believes or will act on that implication. Do you disagree with that, in general or for Hsuing in particular?
It’s certainly not strong evidence, but it is evidence. All other things equal I would vote for someone who claims they are an effective altruist over someone who doesn’t.
Politicians do have at least some incentive to deliver on promises. If they don’t it should reduce the probability of them getting elected / tarnish their reputation. I accept this is certainly not a perfect rule by any means but it’s still got a grain of truth.
Overall I don’t take much from him saying he’s an EA, but that doesn’t mean I take nothing at all.
No time to call up the paper, but the basic answer is that such statements are evidence.
A common pattern is that politicians can propose policy A or B before entering office, but have an incentive to implement A once elected. So some of the politicians who propose B will switch to A once elected. But none of the politicians who support A will switch to B. For example this happens with economic security vs. economic efficiency platforms in Latin America (politicians prefer efficiency policies more once elected). About half of them switched in the study I read, and no efficiency campaigns switched to security after election.
That means the voter choice is simple. Even if you belief a politician might switch off B, the politician who is campaigning on B is always more likely to do B than the politician campaigning on A. This applies to head to head elections only ofc.
So the optimal decision theoretic choice is to support the politician who advocates for your policy in the election.
But “I will use evidence based thinking” isn’t a policy, and is completely unverifiable.
Maybe. That’s orthogonal to my comment. I was responding to
As to the empirical content of “evidence-based policy”, I’m not an expert on that question yet.