Small remark regarding your the metric “* 100% minus the probability that the given technological restraint would have occurred without protests” (let’s call the latter probability x): this seems to suggest that given the protests the probability became 100% while before it had been x and that hence the protests raised the probability from x to 100%. But the fact that the event eventually did occur does not mean at all that after the protests it had a probability of 100% of occurring. It could even have had the very same probability of occurring as before the protests, namely x, or even a smaller probability than that, if only x>0.
What you would actually want to compare here is the probability of occurring given no protests (x) and the probability of occurring given protests (which would have to be estimated separately).
In short: your numbers overestimate the influence of protests by an unknown amount.
FYI I was also confused by the probability metric, reading after your edits. I read it multiple times and couldn’t get my head round it.
“Probability of event occurring given protests—Probability of event occurring without protests”
The former number should be higher than the latter (assuming you think that the protests increased the chance of it happening) and yet in every case, the first number you present is lower, e.g.:
“De-nuclearization in Kazakhstan in early 1990s (5-15%*)”
(Another reason it’s confusing is that they read like ranges or confidence intervals or some such, and it’s not until you get to the end of the list that you see a definition meaning something else.)
Sorry that this is still confusing. 5-15 is the confidence interval/range for the counterfactual impact of protests, i.e. p(event occurs with protests) - p(event occurs without protests) = somewhere between 5 and 15. Rather than p(event occurs with protests) = 5, p(event occurs without protests) = 15, which wouldn’t make sense.
Small remark regarding your the metric “* 100% minus the probability that the given technological restraint would have occurred without protests” (let’s call the latter probability x): this seems to suggest that given the protests the probability became 100% while before it had been x and that hence the protests raised the probability from x to 100%. But the fact that the event eventually did occur does not mean at all that after the protests it had a probability of 100% of occurring. It could even have had the very same probability of occurring as before the protests, namely x, or even a smaller probability than that, if only x>0.
What you would actually want to compare here is the probability of occurring given no protests (x) and the probability of occurring given protests (which would have to be estimated separately).
In short: your numbers overestimate the influence of protests by an unknown amount.
That is a good point, thanks for that Jobst. I’ve made some edits in light of what you’ve said.
FYI I was also confused by the probability metric, reading after your edits. I read it multiple times and couldn’t get my head round it.
“Probability of event occurring given protests—Probability of event occurring without protests”
The former number should be higher than the latter (assuming you think that the protests increased the chance of it happening) and yet in every case, the first number you present is lower, e.g.:
“De-nuclearization in Kazakhstan in early 1990s (5-15%*)”
(Another reason it’s confusing is that they read like ranges or confidence intervals or some such, and it’s not until you get to the end of the list that you see a definition meaning something else.)
Sorry that this is still confusing. 5-15 is the confidence interval/range for the counterfactual impact of protests, i.e. p(event occurs with protests) - p(event occurs without protests) = somewhere between 5 and 15. Rather than p(event occurs with protests) = 5, p(event occurs without protests) = 15, which wouldn’t make sense.