Thank you again for taking the time to share your thoughts. I hadn’t seen that link before, and you make a fair point that using distributions often doesn’t change the end conclusions. I think it would be interesting to explore how Jensen’s inequality comes into play with this, and the effects of differing sample sizes.
You’re right. His critique is mostly about the decision cutoff rule, and assumes that Givewell has accurately measured the point estimate, given the data. On the other hand, the url you provided shows that taking into account uncertainty can cause the point estimate to shift.
Thank you again for taking the time to share your thoughts. I hadn’t seen that link before, and you make a fair point that using distributions often doesn’t change the end conclusions. I think it would be interesting to explore how Jensen’s inequality comes into play with this, and the effects of differing sample sizes.
Ah, another article. It seems
uncertainty analysis is getting more traction: https://www.metacausal.com/givewells-uncertainty-problem/
But am I reading right that that one doesn’t push through to a concrete demonstration of impacts on expected values of interventions?
You’re right. His critique is mostly about the decision cutoff rule, and assumes that Givewell has accurately measured the point estimate, given the data. On the other hand, the url you provided shows that taking into account uncertainty can cause the point estimate to shift.