I find “Wayne has told me he wants to use evidence-based reasoning for deciding city policy and has identified as EA for years” to be extraordinarily weak evidence. Anyone can say either of those things.
From a few conversations with him, I think he semi-identifies as an EA. He’s definitely known about EA for a while, there is evidence for that (just search his name in the EA Forum search).
I think he would admit that he doesn’t fully agree with EAs on many issues. I think that most EAs I know wouldn’t exactly classify him as an EA if they were to know him, but as EA-adjacent.
He definitely knows far more about it than most politicians.
I would trust that he would use “evidence-based reasoning”. I’m sure he has for DXE. However, “evidence-based reasoning” by itself is a pretty basic claim at this point. It’s almost meaningless at this stage, I think all politicians can claim this.
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.
He has in the past used evidence-based reasoning in other EA-related issues, particularly for the animal space which is his focus. Well, only one example comes to mind specifically, surrounding the debate on cage-free campaigns with Open Phil. See here, here and here.
I’m personally skeptical of the disruption tactics DxE has used (under his lead). There was another debate on that, starting here , which suggested their disruption tactics might do more harm than good (DxE’s official response was taken down , but you can find it here. Wayne didn’t write it.). I’m more supportive of their open rescue work, but I think evidence there is also lacking.
EDIT: I would also see the other comments here about DxE being cult-like under his leadership, though, and other criticism in the piece Dale shared.
Wayne at least sort-of identified as an EA in 2015, eg hosting EA meetups at his house. And he’s been claiming to be interested in evidence-based approaches to making the world better since at least then.
I find “Wayne has told me he wants to use evidence-based reasoning for deciding city policy and has identified as EA for years” to be extraordinarily weak evidence. Anyone can say either of those things.
From a few conversations with him, I think he semi-identifies as an EA. He’s definitely known about EA for a while, there is evidence for that (just search his name in the EA Forum search).
I think he would admit that he doesn’t fully agree with EAs on many issues. I think that most EAs I know wouldn’t exactly classify him as an EA if they were to know him, but as EA-adjacent.
He definitely knows far more about it than most politicians.
I would trust that he would use “evidence-based reasoning”. I’m sure he has for DXE. However, “evidence-based reasoning” by itself is a pretty basic claim at this point. It’s almost meaningless at this stage, I think all politicians can claim this.
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.
He has in the past used evidence-based reasoning in other EA-related issues, particularly for the animal space which is his focus. Well, only one example comes to mind specifically, surrounding the debate on cage-free campaigns with Open Phil. See here, here and here.
I’m personally skeptical of the disruption tactics DxE has used (under his lead). There was another debate on that, starting here , which suggested their disruption tactics might do more harm than good (DxE’s official response was taken down , but you can find it here. Wayne didn’t write it.). I’m more supportive of their open rescue work, but I think evidence there is also lacking.
EDIT: I would also see the other comments here about DxE being cult-like under his leadership, though, and other criticism in the piece Dale shared.
Wayne at least sort-of identified as an EA in 2015, eg hosting EA meetups at his house. And he’s been claiming to be interested in evidence-based approaches to making the world better since at least then.