Thanks for responding. Take only what you think is useful from my comments—you have thought much more deeply about this than I have and seem on top of the issues I have raised. Just a couple of responses in case it might be helpful (otherwise please disregard them):
Sorry, I have not seen such numbers. Just thought perhaps there might be some numbers lying around somewhere, e.g. results from surveys. I actually think perhaps the best number would be E2G EAs that pursue for-profit entrepreneurship—not sure if even the quant traders have a high probability of becoming billionaire donors. But this number might be even harder to come by.
I think I would not exclude the Ivy League base rate. Instead some possibilities could be (and please disregard this if it does not seem promising—I have not thought deeply about it!):
Perhaps one path could be to actually discard the EA base rate. My intuition here is that the number of EAs who later become billionaires is so low that the base rate calculated from it does not carry much weight (not sure if statistical significance is the right term here, and if not something close to it). Instead one could use an adjusted Ivy League base rate. And adjusting it based on some assumptions about “strength of talent”, fraction of population that pursues becoming rich and maybe some other adjustments, which would lower the final estimate.
Alternatively keep both base rates but still adjust the Ivy League base rate downwards due to the observations I made. That should also lower the final estimate.
Your point of having a simple model is a good one—I am not sure how much more accurate the forecast would be by making a more complex model. And I think you point out well in the post that one should not lean too heavily on the model but take into consideration other sources of evidence.
Thanks for responding. Take only what you think is useful from my comments—you have thought much more deeply about this than I have and seem on top of the issues I have raised. Just a couple of responses in case it might be helpful (otherwise please disregard them):
Sorry, I have not seen such numbers. Just thought perhaps there might be some numbers lying around somewhere, e.g. results from surveys. I actually think perhaps the best number would be E2G EAs that pursue for-profit entrepreneurship—not sure if even the quant traders have a high probability of becoming billionaire donors. But this number might be even harder to come by.
I think I would not exclude the Ivy League base rate. Instead some possibilities could be (and please disregard this if it does not seem promising—I have not thought deeply about it!):
Perhaps one path could be to actually discard the EA base rate. My intuition here is that the number of EAs who later become billionaires is so low that the base rate calculated from it does not carry much weight (not sure if statistical significance is the right term here, and if not something close to it). Instead one could use an adjusted Ivy League base rate. And adjusting it based on some assumptions about “strength of talent”, fraction of population that pursues becoming rich and maybe some other adjustments, which would lower the final estimate.
Alternatively keep both base rates but still adjust the Ivy League base rate downwards due to the observations I made. That should also lower the final estimate.
Your point of having a simple model is a good one—I am not sure how much more accurate the forecast would be by making a more complex model. And I think you point out well in the post that one should not lean too heavily on the model but take into consideration other sources of evidence.