I moderately think this is the wrong approach on the meta-level.
1. We observe a phenomenon where X demographic is less likely to exhibit Y characteristic.
2. You’re coming up with a list of explanations (E1, E2, E3) to explain why X is less likely to have Y, and then stopping when the variance is sufficiently explained.
3. However this ignores that there might be reasons for why your prior should be does X is more likely to have Y.
And on the object level, I agree with the other commentators that EAs often draw from groups that are less, rather than more, likely to be single.
I agree that you should look at the things in order of the size of their prediction about the observation. But I think that a lot of the biggest effects would be in that direction.
I moderately think this is the wrong approach on the meta-level.
1. We observe a phenomenon where X demographic is less likely to exhibit Y characteristic.
2. You’re coming up with a list of explanations (E1, E2, E3) to explain why X is less likely to have Y, and then stopping when the variance is sufficiently explained.
3. However this ignores that there might be reasons for why your prior should be does X is more likely to have Y.
And on the object level, I agree with the other commentators that EAs often draw from groups that are less, rather than more, likely to be single.
I agree that you should look at the things in order of the size of their prediction about the observation. But I think that a lot of the biggest effects would be in that direction.