This is excellent work. I certainly think you should have included more detail!
Forgive my ignorance, but what is an international development professor? Are they political scientists who specialise in international development? Are they economists? Are they a separate track? What were their PhDs in? [Edit: I retract this, you already answered it in a different comment]
I think the simplest explanation for these results is that most university professors are staggeringly innumerate. This is analogous to the surveys that show that if you ask the average person what share of the government’s budget is spent on different areas, it adds up to like 400% or something.
But if the sample contains economists or other highly quantitative fields, the results are particularly shocking. It would be interesting to compare STEM and non-STEM professors.
From the 80,000 Hours page, it seems many people cannot parse what Q2 means. When you ask what the minimum cost of doing something is, people seem to imagine scenarios in which they are in the right place at the right time to save a life. For example, in the 80k survey, some people answered that it would take $10 to save a child’s life, because, if the child were dying right in front of them, that’s how much it would cost for a day’s worth of food and water. This is not necessarily the wrong answer; it is a valid answer to a totally different question.
Thanks for the kind words and thoughts. I wanted to keep the post short, but if you want more detail there is lots more in the link at the end.
I agree that that Q2 has some issues, but what makes Q2 is valuable is that other people have used it and so I have a collection of answers to the question from other samples (the public and experts). That’s why I used it (and why I also added my own question, Q1).
There are a lot of economists in my sample, and at least in the US political scientists get a lot of quant methods training so their numeracy tends to be high (in the UK and Canada this varies from place to place). I don’t think the issue is pure innumeracy. I also phrased the question so as to avoid some of the more common misinterpretations.
This was the actual question: “Consider a charity whose programs are among the most cost-effective ways of saving the lives of children. In other words, thinking across all charities that currently exist, this one can save a child’s life for the smallest amount of money.
Roughly what do you think is the minimum amount of money that you would have to donate to this charity in order to expect that your money has saved the life of one child?”
This is excellent work. I certainly think you should have included more detail!
Forgive my ignorance, but what is an international development professor? Are they political scientists who specialise in international development? Are they economists? Are they a separate track? What were their PhDs in? [Edit: I retract this, you already answered it in a different comment]
I think the simplest explanation for these results is that most university professors are staggeringly innumerate. This is analogous to the surveys that show that if you ask the average person what share of the government’s budget is spent on different areas, it adds up to like 400% or something.
But if the sample contains economists or other highly quantitative fields, the results are particularly shocking. It would be interesting to compare STEM and non-STEM professors.
From the 80,000 Hours page, it seems many people cannot parse what Q2 means. When you ask what the minimum cost of doing something is, people seem to imagine scenarios in which they are in the right place at the right time to save a life. For example, in the 80k survey, some people answered that it would take $10 to save a child’s life, because, if the child were dying right in front of them, that’s how much it would cost for a day’s worth of food and water. This is not necessarily the wrong answer; it is a valid answer to a totally different question.
Thanks for the kind words and thoughts. I wanted to keep the post short, but if you want more detail there is lots more in the link at the end.
I agree that that Q2 has some issues, but what makes Q2 is valuable is that other people have used it and so I have a collection of answers to the question from other samples (the public and experts). That’s why I used it (and why I also added my own question, Q1).
There are a lot of economists in my sample, and at least in the US political scientists get a lot of quant methods training so their numeracy tends to be high (in the UK and Canada this varies from place to place). I don’t think the issue is pure innumeracy. I also phrased the question so as to avoid some of the more common misinterpretations.
This was the actual question: “Consider a charity whose programs are among the most cost-effective ways of saving the lives of children. In other words, thinking across all charities that currently exist, this one can save a child’s life for the smallest amount of money.
Roughly what do you think is the minimum amount of money that you would have to donate to this charity in order to expect that your money has saved the life of one child?”