Every time I see something like this I wonder if it’s going to criticize the emphasis on Givewell charities and allege that EA needs to pay less attention to hard evidence, or criticize the emphasis on x-risks and long term trajectories and allege that EA needs to pay more attention to hard evidence. Half the time it’s one and half the time it’s the other.
I think it’s time everyone realized that EAs are already covering all the methodological bases and we should really spend our time on actual evaluations of actual programs.
Disregarding academic evidence on a cause level (x-risk) is not the same as doing so on an intervention level.
There most certainly is a substantial gap in evaluations of programs, particularly novel ideas, which has gone unaddressed throughout the entire existence of the EA community. Those efforts are crippled by the dominant views that only a few careers and courses of action are appropriate (see how 80K thinks about careers, for example), so that very much reduces the interest in evaluating other programs.
Every time I see something like this I wonder if it’s going to criticize the emphasis on Givewell charities and allege that EA needs to pay less attention to hard evidence, or criticize the emphasis on x-risks and long term trajectories and allege that EA needs to pay more attention to hard evidence. Half the time it’s one and half the time it’s the other.
I think it’s time everyone realized that EAs are already covering all the methodological bases and we should really spend our time on actual evaluations of actual programs.
Disregarding academic evidence on a cause level (x-risk) is not the same as doing so on an intervention level.
There most certainly is a substantial gap in evaluations of programs, particularly novel ideas, which has gone unaddressed throughout the entire existence of the EA community. Those efforts are crippled by the dominant views that only a few careers and courses of action are appropriate (see how 80K thinks about careers, for example), so that very much reduces the interest in evaluating other programs.