EA has a pathology of insisting that we defer to data even in situations where sufficient quantities of data can’t be practically collected before a decision is necessary.
And that is extremely relevant to EA’s media problem.
Say it takes 100 datapoints over 10 years to make an informed decision. During that time:
The media ecosystem, the character of the discourse, the institutions (there are now prediction markets involved btw) and the dominant moral worldviews of the audience has completely changed, you no longer need the answer to the question this data answers.
You have already been assassinated for not engaging in a principled and decisive way.
I should assume that I’m talking to someone who has this pathology and needs me to explain what the alternative to “defer to data” even is: Get better at interpreting the data you already have. Seek theories of communication that’re general enough and robust enough that you don’t strictly need to collect further data to validate them. Test them anyway, but you can’t wait for the tests to conclude before deploying.
You make good points, but there’s no boolean that flips when “sufficient quantities of data [are] practically collected”. The right mental model is closer to a multi-armed bandit IMO.
It is a joke, but it’s an appropriate one.
EA has a pathology of insisting that we defer to data even in situations where sufficient quantities of data can’t be practically collected before a decision is necessary.
And that is extremely relevant to EA’s media problem.
Say it takes 100 datapoints over 10 years to make an informed decision. During that time:
The media ecosystem, the character of the discourse, the institutions (there are now prediction markets involved btw) and the dominant moral worldviews of the audience has completely changed, you no longer need the answer to the question this data answers.
You have already been assassinated for not engaging in a principled and decisive way.
I should assume that I’m talking to someone who has this pathology and needs me to explain what the alternative to “defer to data” even is: Get better at interpreting the data you already have. Seek theories of communication that’re general enough and robust enough that you don’t strictly need to collect further data to validate them. Test them anyway, but you can’t wait for the tests to conclude before deploying.
You make good points, but there’s no boolean that flips when “sufficient quantities of data [are] practically collected”. The right mental model is closer to a multi-armed bandit IMO.