One way to resolve our initial skepticism would be to have a trusted expert in the field
And in what field is Chloe Cockburn a “trusted expert”?
If we go by her twitter, we might say something like “she is an expert left-wing, highly political, anti-trump, pro-immigration activist”
Does that seem like a reasonable characterization of Chloe Cockburn’s expertise to you?
Characterizing her as “Trusted” seems pretty dishonest in this context. Imagine someone who has problems with EA and Cosecha, for example because they were worried about political bias in EA. Now imagine that they got to know her opinions and leanings, e.g. on her twitter. They wouldn’t “trust” her to make accurate calls about the effectiveness of donations to a left-wing, anti-Trump activist cause, because she is a left-wing anti-Trump activist. She is almost as biased as it is possible to be on this issue, the exact opposite of the kind of person whose opinion you should trust. Of course, she may have good arguments since those can come from biased people, but she is being touted as a “trusted expert”, not a biased expert with strong arguments, so that is what I am responding to.
I am uncertain why someone would choose to figure out what other people’s area of expertise is from Twitter. Most people’s Twitters contain their political opinions—as you point out—and do not contain their CV.
If you look at her LinkedIn, which seems to me to be a more appropriate source of information about her expertise, you’ll discover that in addition to being the current program officer at OpenPhil specializing in criminal justice (which is presumably why she was asked), she was also a former advocacy and policy counsel for the ACLU specializing in ending mass incarceration and a lawyer who specialized in holding police accountable for wrongful convictions. This seems to me like a person who does, in fact, have informed opinions about ending mass incarceration.
Informed opinions can still be biased, and we are being asked to “trust” her.
I am uncertain why someone would choose to figure out what other people’s area of expertise is from Twitter.
Well I am worried about political bias in EA. Her political opinions are supremely relevant.
On a strictly legal question such as “In situation X, does law Y apply” I would definitely trust her more than I would trust myself. But that is not the question that is being asked, the question that is being asked is “Will the action of funding Cosecha reduce incarceration while maintaining public safety” with the followup question of “Or is this about increasing illegal immigration by making it harder to deport illegals, opposing Trump and generally supporting left-wing causes?”
I don’t think that she can claim special knowledge or lack of bias in answering those questions. I think it’s hard for anyone to.
I am perhaps confused about what your claim is. Do you mean to say “Chloe Cockburn does not have expertise except in the facts of the law and being a left-wing anti-Trump activist”? Or “Chloe Cockburn has a good deal of expertise in fields relevant to the best possible way to reduce mass incarceration, but her opinion is sadly biased because she has liberal political opinions”?
Regarding her Twitter, I think Chloe Cockburn might have an informed opinion that reducing deportations of undocumented immigrants would reduce incarceration (through reducing the number of people in ICE detention) while maintaining public safety. That would cause her both to recommend Cosecha and to advocate on her Twitter feed for reducing deportations. Indeed, it is very common for people to do awareness-raising on Twitter for causes they believe are highly effective: if your argument were taken to its endpoint, we ought not trust GiveWell because its employees sometimes talk about how great malaria nets and deworming are on social media.
Probably, like all people, Chloe Cockburn supports the causes she supports for both rational and irrational reasons. That is something to take into account when deciding how seriously to take her advice. But that is also a fully general counterargument against ever taking advice from anyone.
reducing deportations of undocumented immigrants would reduce incarceration (through reducing the number of people in ICE detention)
That is true, but it is politicized inference. You could also reduce the number of people in ICE detention at any given time by deporting them much more quickly. Or you could reduce the number of undocumented immigrants by making it harder for them to get in in the first place, for example by building a large wall on the southern US border.
So I would characterize this as a politically biased opinion first and foremost. It’s not even an opinion that requires being informed—it’s obvious that you could reduce incarceration by releasing people from detention and just letting them have whatever they were trying to illegally take, you don’t need a law degree to make this inference, but you do need a political slant to claim that it’s a good idea.
And the totality of policies espoused by people such as Chloe Cockburn would be to flood the US with even more immigrants from poorer countries, not just to grant legal status to existing ones. This is entryism, and it is a highly political move that many people are deeply opposed to because they see it as part one of a plan to wipe them and their culture out. I don’t think that’s a good fit for an EA cause—even if you think it’s a good idea, it makes sense to separate it from EA.
Well, yes, anyone can come up with all sorts of policy ideas. If a person has policy expertise in a particular field, it allows them to sort out good policies from bad ones, because they are more aware of possible negative side effects and unintended consequences than an uninformed person is. I don’t think the fact that a person endorses a particular policy means that they haven’t thought about other policies.
Is your claim that Chloe Cockburn has failed to consider policy ideas associated with the right-wing, and thus has not done her due diligence to know that what she recommends is actually the best course? If so, what is your evidence for this claim?
What is policy expertise in the field of deciding that it is a good idea to encourage illegal immigration? I feel like we are (mis)using words here to make some extremely dodgy inferences. Chloe studied worked for the ACLU and a law firm, focusing on litigating police misconduct and aiming to reduce incarceration, and then Open Phil. This doesn’t IMO qualify her to decide that increasing legal and illegal immigration is a good idea, and doesn’t endow her with expertise on that question.
Is your claim that Chloe Cockburn has failed to consider policy ideas associated with the right-wing, and thus has not done her due diligence to know that what she recommends is actually the best course? If so, what is your evidence for this claim?
Well what is your evidence that she has done her due diligence to know that what she recommends is actually the best course?
if your argument were taken to its endpoint, we ought not trust GiveWell because its employees sometimes talk about how great malaria nets and deworming are on social media.
I don’t trust them, to the extent that I endorse these causes, I trust their arguments (having read them) and data, and I trust the implicit critical process that has failed to come up with reasons why deworming isn’t that good (to the extent that it hasn’t).
OpenPhil made an extensive write-up on their decision to hire Chloe here: http://blog.givewell.org/2015/09/03/the-process-of-hiring-our-first-cause-specific-program-officer/. Presumably after reading that you have enough information to decide whether to trust her recommendations (taking into account also whatever degree of trust you have in OpenPhil). If you decide you don’t trust it then that’s fine, but I don’t think that can function as an argument that the recommendation shouldn’t have been made in the first place (many people such as myself do trust it and got substantial value out of the recommendation and of reading what Chloe has to say in general).
I feel your overall engagement here hasn’t been very productive. You’re mostly repeating the same point, and to the extent you make other points it feels like you’re reaching for whatever counterarguments you can think of, without considering whether someone who disagreed with you would have an immediate response. The fact that you and Larks are responsible for 20 of the 32 comments on the thread is a further negative sign to me (you could probably condense the same or more information into fewer better-thought-out comments than you are currently making).
I don’t think that can function as an argument that the recommendation shouldn’t have been made in the first place
I agree, and I didn’t mention that document or my degree of trust in it.
I feel your overall engagement here hasn’t been very productive.
I suppose it depends what you want to produce. If debates were predictably productive I presume people would just update without even having to have a debate.
it feels like you’re reaching for whatever counterarguments you can think of, without considering whether someone who disagreed with you would have an immediate response
What counterarguments is one supposed to make, other than the ones one thinks of? I suppose the alternative is to not make a counterargument, or start a debate with all possible lines of play fully worked out and prepared? A high standard, to be sure. Sometimes one doesn’t correctly anticipate the actual responses. Is there some tax on number of comments or responses? I mean this is valid to an extent, if someone is making really dumb arguments, but then again sometimes one has to ask the emperor why he isn’t wearing any clothes.
Support for a cause area isn’t bias. That’s just having an opinion. Your argument would imply that ACE is biased because they are run by animal activists, or that Givewell is biased because they advocate for reducing global poverty. These groups aren’t necessarily an authority when you’re deciding between cause areas, of course. But in deciding which organization is most effective within a given cause area, the “trusted experts” are almost always going to be advocates for that cause area.
More generally, you keep trying to frame your points as politically neutral “meta” considerations but it definitely feels like you have an axe to grind against the activist left which motivates a lot of what you’re saying.
More generally, you keep trying to frame your points as politically neutral “meta” considerations but it definitely feels like you have an axe to grind against the activist left which motivates a lot of what you’re saying.
Well if EA is funding the activist left, justifying it by saying that a “trusted expert” (who just happens to be a leftist activist!) said it was a good idea, what exactly do you expect me to do?
And if people who disagree with leftist activism aren’t allowed to bring up “meta” considerations when those considerations are inconvenient for leftist activism, then who is going to do it?
I’m all for criticising organizations without having your post vetted by them. But at some point, it is useful to reach out to them to let them know your criticism, if you want it to to be useful, and it seems like you’ve now well-passed this point.
I agree that people should be allowed to give criticism without talking to the critiqued organizations first. It does usually improve informativeness and persuasiveness, but if we required every critique to be of extremely high journalistic quality then we would never get any criticism done, so we have a lower standard.
By this point, though, the thread has created enough discussion that at least some of OpenPhil are probably reading it. Still you’re effectively talking about them as though they’re not in the room, even though they are. The fix is to email them a link, and to try to give arguments that you think they would appreciate as input for how they could improve their activities.
The fix is to email them a link, and to try to give arguments that you think they would appreciate as input for how they could improve their activities.
Those arguments are in the post.
I am writing under a pseudonym so I don’t have an easy way of emailing them without it going to their spam folder. I have sent an email pointing them to the post, though.
And in what field is Chloe Cockburn a “trusted expert”?
If we go by her twitter, we might say something like “she is an expert left-wing, highly political, anti-trump, pro-immigration activist”
Does that seem like a reasonable characterization of Chloe Cockburn’s expertise to you?
Characterizing her as “Trusted” seems pretty dishonest in this context. Imagine someone who has problems with EA and Cosecha, for example because they were worried about political bias in EA. Now imagine that they got to know her opinions and leanings, e.g. on her twitter. They wouldn’t “trust” her to make accurate calls about the effectiveness of donations to a left-wing, anti-Trump activist cause, because she is a left-wing anti-Trump activist. She is almost as biased as it is possible to be on this issue, the exact opposite of the kind of person whose opinion you should trust. Of course, she may have good arguments since those can come from biased people, but she is being touted as a “trusted expert”, not a biased expert with strong arguments, so that is what I am responding to.
I am uncertain why someone would choose to figure out what other people’s area of expertise is from Twitter. Most people’s Twitters contain their political opinions—as you point out—and do not contain their CV.
If you look at her LinkedIn, which seems to me to be a more appropriate source of information about her expertise, you’ll discover that in addition to being the current program officer at OpenPhil specializing in criminal justice (which is presumably why she was asked), she was also a former advocacy and policy counsel for the ACLU specializing in ending mass incarceration and a lawyer who specialized in holding police accountable for wrongful convictions. This seems to me like a person who does, in fact, have informed opinions about ending mass incarceration.
Informed opinions can still be biased, and we are being asked to “trust” her.
Well I am worried about political bias in EA. Her political opinions are supremely relevant.
On a strictly legal question such as “In situation X, does law Y apply” I would definitely trust her more than I would trust myself. But that is not the question that is being asked, the question that is being asked is “Will the action of funding Cosecha reduce incarceration while maintaining public safety” with the followup question of “Or is this about increasing illegal immigration by making it harder to deport illegals, opposing Trump and generally supporting left-wing causes?”
I don’t think that she can claim special knowledge or lack of bias in answering those questions. I think it’s hard for anyone to.
I am perhaps confused about what your claim is. Do you mean to say “Chloe Cockburn does not have expertise except in the facts of the law and being a left-wing anti-Trump activist”? Or “Chloe Cockburn has a good deal of expertise in fields relevant to the best possible way to reduce mass incarceration, but her opinion is sadly biased because she has liberal political opinions”?
Regarding her Twitter, I think Chloe Cockburn might have an informed opinion that reducing deportations of undocumented immigrants would reduce incarceration (through reducing the number of people in ICE detention) while maintaining public safety. That would cause her both to recommend Cosecha and to advocate on her Twitter feed for reducing deportations. Indeed, it is very common for people to do awareness-raising on Twitter for causes they believe are highly effective: if your argument were taken to its endpoint, we ought not trust GiveWell because its employees sometimes talk about how great malaria nets and deworming are on social media.
Probably, like all people, Chloe Cockburn supports the causes she supports for both rational and irrational reasons. That is something to take into account when deciding how seriously to take her advice. But that is also a fully general counterargument against ever taking advice from anyone.
That is true, but it is politicized inference. You could also reduce the number of people in ICE detention at any given time by deporting them much more quickly. Or you could reduce the number of undocumented immigrants by making it harder for them to get in in the first place, for example by building a large wall on the southern US border.
So I would characterize this as a politically biased opinion first and foremost. It’s not even an opinion that requires being informed—it’s obvious that you could reduce incarceration by releasing people from detention and just letting them have whatever they were trying to illegally take, you don’t need a law degree to make this inference, but you do need a political slant to claim that it’s a good idea.
And the totality of policies espoused by people such as Chloe Cockburn would be to flood the US with even more immigrants from poorer countries, not just to grant legal status to existing ones. This is entryism, and it is a highly political move that many people are deeply opposed to because they see it as part one of a plan to wipe them and their culture out. I don’t think that’s a good fit for an EA cause—even if you think it’s a good idea, it makes sense to separate it from EA.
Well, yes, anyone can come up with all sorts of policy ideas. If a person has policy expertise in a particular field, it allows them to sort out good policies from bad ones, because they are more aware of possible negative side effects and unintended consequences than an uninformed person is. I don’t think the fact that a person endorses a particular policy means that they haven’t thought about other policies.
Is your claim that Chloe Cockburn has failed to consider policy ideas associated with the right-wing, and thus has not done her due diligence to know that what she recommends is actually the best course? If so, what is your evidence for this claim?
What is policy expertise in the field of deciding that it is a good idea to encourage illegal immigration? I feel like we are (mis)using words here to make some extremely dodgy inferences. Chloe studied worked for the ACLU and a law firm, focusing on litigating police misconduct and aiming to reduce incarceration, and then Open Phil. This doesn’t IMO qualify her to decide that increasing legal and illegal immigration is a good idea, and doesn’t endow her with expertise on that question.
Well what is your evidence that she has done her due diligence to know that what she recommends is actually the best course?
I don’t trust them, to the extent that I endorse these causes, I trust their arguments (having read them) and data, and I trust the implicit critical process that has failed to come up with reasons why deworming isn’t that good (to the extent that it hasn’t).
OpenPhil made an extensive write-up on their decision to hire Chloe here: http://blog.givewell.org/2015/09/03/the-process-of-hiring-our-first-cause-specific-program-officer/. Presumably after reading that you have enough information to decide whether to trust her recommendations (taking into account also whatever degree of trust you have in OpenPhil). If you decide you don’t trust it then that’s fine, but I don’t think that can function as an argument that the recommendation shouldn’t have been made in the first place (many people such as myself do trust it and got substantial value out of the recommendation and of reading what Chloe has to say in general).
I feel your overall engagement here hasn’t been very productive. You’re mostly repeating the same point, and to the extent you make other points it feels like you’re reaching for whatever counterarguments you can think of, without considering whether someone who disagreed with you would have an immediate response. The fact that you and Larks are responsible for 20 of the 32 comments on the thread is a further negative sign to me (you could probably condense the same or more information into fewer better-thought-out comments than you are currently making).
I agree, and I didn’t mention that document or my degree of trust in it.
I suppose it depends what you want to produce. If debates were predictably productive I presume people would just update without even having to have a debate.
What counterarguments is one supposed to make, other than the ones one thinks of? I suppose the alternative is to not make a counterargument, or start a debate with all possible lines of play fully worked out and prepared? A high standard, to be sure. Sometimes one doesn’t correctly anticipate the actual responses. Is there some tax on number of comments or responses? I mean this is valid to an extent, if someone is making really dumb arguments, but then again sometimes one has to ask the emperor why he isn’t wearing any clothes.
Support for a cause area isn’t bias. That’s just having an opinion. Your argument would imply that ACE is biased because they are run by animal activists, or that Givewell is biased because they advocate for reducing global poverty. These groups aren’t necessarily an authority when you’re deciding between cause areas, of course. But in deciding which organization is most effective within a given cause area, the “trusted experts” are almost always going to be advocates for that cause area.
More generally, you keep trying to frame your points as politically neutral “meta” considerations but it definitely feels like you have an axe to grind against the activist left which motivates a lot of what you’re saying.
Well if EA is funding the activist left, justifying it by saying that a “trusted expert” (who just happens to be a leftist activist!) said it was a good idea, what exactly do you expect me to do?
And if people who disagree with leftist activism aren’t allowed to bring up “meta” considerations when those considerations are inconvenient for leftist activism, then who is going to do it?
I’m all for criticising organizations without having your post vetted by them. But at some point, it is useful to reach out to them to let them know your criticism, if you want it to to be useful, and it seems like you’ve now well-passed this point.
Can you elaborate?
I agree that people should be allowed to give criticism without talking to the critiqued organizations first. It does usually improve informativeness and persuasiveness, but if we required every critique to be of extremely high journalistic quality then we would never get any criticism done, so we have a lower standard.
By this point, though, the thread has created enough discussion that at least some of OpenPhil are probably reading it. Still you’re effectively talking about them as though they’re not in the room, even though they are. The fix is to email them a link, and to try to give arguments that you think they would appreciate as input for how they could improve their activities.
...
Those arguments are in the post.
I am writing under a pseudonym so I don’t have an easy way of emailing them without it going to their spam folder. I have sent an email pointing them to the post, though.