Thanks so much for publishing this report Yi-Yang! I am really glad there is now one report written up properly on the EA Forum about an EA group’s local priorities research.
I haven’t been able to write a proper report yet for EA Philippines’s local priorities research, but I hope to do that within the next few weeks or months. (If anyone is interested in reading about our work on this though, I wrote a bit about this in our 2020 annual report).
Your research process is more structured than ours, and I like the idea of independent research and aggregating people’s ratings, which we aren’t doing (or haven’t done yet).
I think it would be a lot better though if you had “problem profiles” like 80,000 Hours’s for those causes you listed, especially the top 2-4 causes. Maybe that’s something to work on next, as something you can use to convince more Malaysians why those causes should be worked on. This is what we’re doing at EA Philippines, and it also helps you easily give people resources they can read if they’re interested to learn more about that cause area.
Or if not making full problem profiles, putting a few sentences or bullets about the scale and neglectedness of each of the causes would help. For example, you could put the number of farmed land animals and farmed aquatic animals in Malaysia slaughtered/produced every year, or the estimated % of Malaysians with a mental health disorder. You could also try putting a few sentences or bullets about tractability, but that’s a lot harder to talk about or research about.
About your actual cause area rankings, my comments are:
I think 6 out of the top 8 causes you put make a lot of sense for why they’re there. The 2 that I think are very questionable though are financial literacy and improving diversity and inclusion. I don’t see why these two could be in the top 8 causes for Malaysia. Maybe one of you could make the case for why these two causes are very impactful to work on, especially compared to other alternatives I list below?
I’ve listed three causes notably not in your top 8 that I think have a strong case for being there. I’d be curious to hear if you considered them (and what their scores were if you considered them):
Biosecurity and pandemic preparedness in Malaysia—If AI risks are there, I think this should be on the list too. I think any sufficiently large or rich country could probably do better work on biosecurity and pandemic preparedness.
Improving institutional decision making in Malaysia—I assume that helping top institutions, especially the government, make better decisions is going to be very impactful in most countries around the world. Even just recruiting better talent into government, or finding ways to improve the government, are probably big in expected impact.
Health and development in the poorest areas of Malaysia—if family planning is on your list, why isn’t this on the list too? Cost-effective and evidence-based GiveWell interventions like cash transfers, deworming, vitamin a supplementation, and community health interventions might still be important and very cost-effective to do for the poorest areas of Malaysia.
I think 2 other causes that you could consider looking into, but might not make it to your top 8, are the following. I’d be curious to hear if you considered these causes:
Climate change
COVID-19 response in Malaysia (this relates to biosecurity and pandemic preparedness, and also improving institutional decision making, but is more short-term and specifically about COVID).
thank you for your thoughtful feedback Brian! i’m unconfident to speak on behalf of my team so will bring up your feedback during our next meeting, notably on having problem profiles and the potential need to extend the report to clarify each cause area further (the present ones and some big absents).
Hi Brian! Thank for your response. I’ll be using “we” (as a team) to address most of your comments, and “I” at the end to address one point.
I think it would be a lot better though if you had “problem profiles” like 80,000 Hours’s for those causes you listed, especially the top 2-4 causes.
Yes if there is a case for conducting further research, we are definitely considering deeper research in the top causes, and producing “problem profiles”.
Or if not making full problem profiles, putting a few sentences or bullets about the scale and neglectedness of each of the causes would help.
We realised that our last point at the disclaimer didn’t make clear an additional related issue, which addresses this concern of yours. We didn’t detail which piece of evidence or arguments that made us give a certain score. Technically we did—it’s probably somewhere in our meeting minutes and it’s very messy—hence we’ve decided not to address this issue at this time. However, if we were to conduct another research like this, we definitely want to be better at making explicit our assumptions, evidences, and arguments.
The 2 that I think are very questionable though are financial literacy and improving diversity and inclusion. I don’t see why these two could be in the top 8 causes for Malaysia. Maybe one of you could make the case for why these two causes are very impactful to work on, especially compared to other alternatives I list below?
We actually found a huge variance of scores for the above two causes areas in both the initial ranking stage and weighted factor model stage. So some of us in our team do agree with you that these cause areas shouldn’t be in the top 8. It also might be the case that we didn’t brainstorm enough cause areas that may reach the top 8.
As a side note, most of us in our team have a lot of strong feelings with diversity and inclusion issues in Malaysia (although some of us did put a lower score for this cause area, we weren’t that surprised it made it in the top 8). In a nutshell, issues of race and religion are often used as a dividing force within Malaysia at the legislative, political and social level in much of Malaysia’s modern history.
On a personal note, I wouldn’t be surprised if these two cause areas actually do drop out in the next iteration of research (unless there’s really convincing evidence of a cost-effective intervention).
Would love to check out EA PH’s cause prioritisation report soon! :)
Thanks so much for publishing this report Yi-Yang! I am really glad there is now one report written up properly on the EA Forum about an EA group’s local priorities research.
I haven’t been able to write a proper report yet for EA Philippines’s local priorities research, but I hope to do that within the next few weeks or months. (If anyone is interested in reading about our work on this though, I wrote a bit about this in our 2020 annual report).
Your research process is more structured than ours, and I like the idea of independent research and aggregating people’s ratings, which we aren’t doing (or haven’t done yet).
I think it would be a lot better though if you had “problem profiles” like 80,000 Hours’s for those causes you listed, especially the top 2-4 causes. Maybe that’s something to work on next, as something you can use to convince more Malaysians why those causes should be worked on. This is what we’re doing at EA Philippines, and it also helps you easily give people resources they can read if they’re interested to learn more about that cause area.
Or if not making full problem profiles, putting a few sentences or bullets about the scale and neglectedness of each of the causes would help. For example, you could put the number of farmed land animals and farmed aquatic animals in Malaysia slaughtered/produced every year, or the estimated % of Malaysians with a mental health disorder. You could also try putting a few sentences or bullets about tractability, but that’s a lot harder to talk about or research about.
About your actual cause area rankings, my comments are:
I think 6 out of the top 8 causes you put make a lot of sense for why they’re there. The 2 that I think are very questionable though are financial literacy and improving diversity and inclusion. I don’t see why these two could be in the top 8 causes for Malaysia. Maybe one of you could make the case for why these two causes are very impactful to work on, especially compared to other alternatives I list below?
I’ve listed three causes notably not in your top 8 that I think have a strong case for being there. I’d be curious to hear if you considered them (and what their scores were if you considered them):
Biosecurity and pandemic preparedness in Malaysia—If AI risks are there, I think this should be on the list too. I think any sufficiently large or rich country could probably do better work on biosecurity and pandemic preparedness.
Improving institutional decision making in Malaysia—I assume that helping top institutions, especially the government, make better decisions is going to be very impactful in most countries around the world. Even just recruiting better talent into government, or finding ways to improve the government, are probably big in expected impact.
Health and development in the poorest areas of Malaysia—if family planning is on your list, why isn’t this on the list too? Cost-effective and evidence-based GiveWell interventions like cash transfers, deworming, vitamin a supplementation, and community health interventions might still be important and very cost-effective to do for the poorest areas of Malaysia.
I think 2 other causes that you could consider looking into, but might not make it to your top 8, are the following. I’d be curious to hear if you considered these causes:
Climate change
COVID-19 response in Malaysia (this relates to biosecurity and pandemic preparedness, and also improving institutional decision making, but is more short-term and specifically about COVID).
thank you for your thoughtful feedback Brian! i’m unconfident to speak on behalf of my team so will bring up your feedback during our next meeting, notably on having problem profiles and the potential need to extend the report to clarify each cause area further (the present ones and some big absents).
Hi Brian! Thank for your response. I’ll be using “we” (as a team) to address most of your comments, and “I” at the end to address one point.
Yes if there is a case for conducting further research, we are definitely considering deeper research in the top causes, and producing “problem profiles”.
We realised that our last point at the disclaimer didn’t make clear an additional related issue, which addresses this concern of yours. We didn’t detail which piece of evidence or arguments that made us give a certain score. Technically we did—it’s probably somewhere in our meeting minutes and it’s very messy—hence we’ve decided not to address this issue at this time. However, if we were to conduct another research like this, we definitely want to be better at making explicit our assumptions, evidences, and arguments.
We actually found a huge variance of scores for the above two causes areas in both the initial ranking stage and weighted factor model stage. So some of us in our team do agree with you that these cause areas shouldn’t be in the top 8. It also might be the case that we didn’t brainstorm enough cause areas that may reach the top 8.
As a side note, most of us in our team have a lot of strong feelings with diversity and inclusion issues in Malaysia (although some of us did put a lower score for this cause area, we weren’t that surprised it made it in the top 8). In a nutshell, issues of race and religion are often used as a dividing force within Malaysia at the legislative, political and social level in much of Malaysia’s modern history.
On a personal note, I wouldn’t be surprised if these two cause areas actually do drop out in the next iteration of research (unless there’s really convincing evidence of a cost-effective intervention).
Would love to check out EA PH’s cause prioritisation report soon! :)