Sure. To be clear, I think most of what I’m concerned about applies to prioritization decisions made in highly-uncertain scenarios. So far, I think the EA community has had very few opportunities to look back and conclusively assess whether highly-uncertain things it prioritized turned out to be worthwhile. (Ben makes a similar point at https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Kb9HeG2jHy2GehHDY/effective-altruism-is-self-recommending.)
That said, there are cases where I believe mistakes are being made. For example, I think mass deworming in areas where almost all worm infections are light cases of trichuriasis or ascariasis is almost certainly not among the most cost-effective global health interventions.
Neither trichuriasis nor ascariasis appear to have common/significant/easily-measured symptoms when infections are light (i.e., when there are not many worms in an infected person’s body). To reach the conclusion that treating these infections has a high expected value, extrapolations are made from the results of a study that had some weird features and occurred in a very different environment (an environment with far heavier infections and additional types of worm infections). When GiveWell makes its extrapolations, lots of discounts, assumptions, probabilities, etc. are used. I don’t think people can make this kind of extrapolation reliably (even if they’re skeptical, smart, and thinking carefully). When unreliable estimates are combined with an optimization procedure, I worry about the optimizer’s curse.
Someone who is generally skeptical of people’s ability to productively use models in highly-uncertain situations might instead survey experts about the value of treating light trichuriasis & asariasis infections. Faced with the decision of funding either this kind of deworming or a different health program that looked highly-effective, I think the example person who ran surveys would choose the latter.
Just to be clear, much of the deworming work supported by people in the EA community happens in areas where worm infections are more intense or are caused by worm species other than Trichuris & Ascaris. However, I believe a non-trivial amount of deworming done by charities supported by the EA community occurs in areas w/ primarily light infections from those worms.
Sure. To be clear, I think most of what I’m concerned about applies to prioritization decisions made in highly-uncertain scenarios. So far, I think the EA community has had very few opportunities to look back and conclusively assess whether highly-uncertain things it prioritized turned out to be worthwhile. (Ben makes a similar point at https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Kb9HeG2jHy2GehHDY/effective-altruism-is-self-recommending.)
That said, there are cases where I believe mistakes are being made. For example, I think mass deworming in areas where almost all worm infections are light cases of trichuriasis or ascariasis is almost certainly not among the most cost-effective global health interventions.
Neither trichuriasis nor ascariasis appear to have common/significant/easily-measured symptoms when infections are light (i.e., when there are not many worms in an infected person’s body). To reach the conclusion that treating these infections has a high expected value, extrapolations are made from the results of a study that had some weird features and occurred in a very different environment (an environment with far heavier infections and additional types of worm infections). When GiveWell makes its extrapolations, lots of discounts, assumptions, probabilities, etc. are used. I don’t think people can make this kind of extrapolation reliably (even if they’re skeptical, smart, and thinking carefully). When unreliable estimates are combined with an optimization procedure, I worry about the optimizer’s curse.
Someone who is generally skeptical of people’s ability to productively use models in highly-uncertain situations might instead survey experts about the value of treating light trichuriasis & asariasis infections. Faced with the decision of funding either this kind of deworming or a different health program that looked highly-effective, I think the example person who ran surveys would choose the latter.
Just to be clear, much of the deworming work supported by people in the EA community happens in areas where worm infections are more intense or are caused by worm species other than Trichuris & Ascaris. However, I believe a non-trivial amount of deworming done by charities supported by the EA community occurs in areas w/ primarily light infections from those worms.