Barry Grimes

• Barry GrimesJan 1, 2023, 9:31 AM

  22 points

  7 ∶ 0

  on: Your 2022 EA Fo­rum Wrapped 🎁

  Love this! I found it really valuable to be reminded of all the posts I’ve read this year and to reflect on how they’ve shaped my thinking. Big props to everyone involved in making this.

• Barry GrimesDec 31, 2022, 2:20 PM

  6 points

  1 ∶ 3

  in reply to: alex lawsen’s comment on: StrongMinds should not be a top-rated char­ity (yet)

  Thanks for explaining your reasoning for the downvote.

  I don’t expect everyone to agree with my comment but if you think it is false then you should explain why you think that. I value all feedback on how HLI can improve our reasoning transparency.

  However, like I said, I’m going to wait for GWWC’s evaluation before expressing any further personal opinions on this matter.

• Barry GrimesDec 31, 2022, 9:54 AM

  0 points

  3 ∶ 12

  in reply to: Jason’s comment on: StrongMinds should not be a top-rated char­ity (yet)

  “Happiness/​Wellbeing GiveWell” is a fair description of HLI in my opinion. However, I want to push back on your claim that GiveWell is more open and balanced.
  
  As far as I can tell, there is nothing new in Simon’s post or subsequent comments that we haven’t already discussed in our psychotherapy and StrongMinds cost-effectiveness analyses. I’m looking forward to reading his future blog post on our analysis and I’m glad it’s being subjected to external scrutiny.
  
  Whereas, GiveWell acknowledge they need to improve their reasoning transparency:

  Where we’d like to improve on reasoning transparency

  We also agree with HLI that we have room for improvement on explaining our cost-effectiveness models. The decision about how to model whether benefits decline is an example of that—the reasoning I outlined above isn’t on our website. We only wrote, “the KLPS 4 results are smaller in magnitude (on a percentage increase basis) and higher variance than earlier survey rounds.”

  We plan to update our website to make it clearer what key judgment calls are driving our cost-effectiveness estimates, why we’ve chosen specific parameters or made key assumptions, and how we’ve prioritized research questions that could potentially change our bottom line.

  That’s just my opinion though and I don’t want to get into a debate about it here. Instead, I think we should all wait for GWWC to complete their independent evaluation of evaluators before drawing any strong conclusions about the relative strengths and weaknesses of the GiveWell and HLI methodologies.

  What links here?

  • bruce's comment on The Hap­pier Lives In­sti­tute is fund­ing con­strained and needs you! by MichaelPlant (Jul 10, 2023, 10:22 PM; 45 points)
  • Nathan Young's comment on The Hap­pier Lives In­sti­tute is fund­ing con­strained and needs you! by MichaelPlant (Jul 11, 2023, 8:48 AM; 1 point)

• Barry GrimesDec 30, 2022, 10:33 PM

  14 points

  6 ∶ 8

  in reply to: ElliotJDavies’s comment on: StrongMinds should not be a top-rated char­ity (yet)

  I’m seeing a lot of accusations flying around in this thread (e.g. cynical, aggressive, enemy action, secret info etc.). This doesn’t strike me as a ‘scout mindset’ and I was glad to see Bruce’s comment that “it’s important to recognise that everyone here does share the same overarching goal of “how do we do good better”.
  
  HLI has always been transparent about our goals and future plans. The front page of our website seems clear to me:

  The Happier Lives Institute connects donors, researchers, and policymakers with the most cost-effective opportunities to increase global wellbeing.

  Our recommended charity for 2022 is StrongMinds, a non-profit providing cheap, effective treatment for women struggling with depression in Uganda and Zambia.

  Our research agenda is also very clear about our priorities:

  Area 1: Foundational research into the measurement of wellbeing
  Area 2: Applied research to identify and evaluate the most cost-effective ways to increase wellbeing
  Area 3: Understanding the wider global priorities context

  And our 2022 charity recommendation post makes it clear that we plan to investigate a wider range of interventions and charities in 2023:

  So far, we’ve looked at four ‘micro-interventions’, those where you help one person at a time. These were all in low-income countries. However, it’s highly unlikely that we’ve found the best ways to improve happiness already. Phase 2 is to expand our search.

  We already have a pipeline of promising charities and interventions to analyse next year:

  Charities we want to evaluate: CorStone (resilience training), Friendship Bench (psychotherapy), Lead Exposure Elimination Project (lead paint regulation), and Usona Institute (psychedelics research).

  Interventions we want to evaluate: air pollution, child development, digital mental health, and surgery for cataracts and fistula repair.

  We have a long list of charities and interventions that we won’t get to in 2023 but plan to examine in future years. Eventually, we plan to consider systemic interventions and policy reforms that could affect the wellbeing of larger populations at all income levels. There’s plenty to do!

  My role as Communications Manager is to communicate the findings from our research to decision-makers to help them allocate their resources more effectively. There’s nothing suspicious about doing that in Giving Season. That’s what all the charity evaluators do.
  
  We only recommend one charity because StrongMinds is the most cost-effective charity we’ve identified (so far) and they have a $20m funding gap which is very unlikely to be filled in this giving season. GiveWell has a lot more money to allocate so they have to find multiple charities with room for more funding. I hope that HLI will face (and solve) that problem in the future too!
  
  In my personal opinion, GiveWell has been hugely successful and inspirational but it’s clear that their methodology cannot handle interventions that have benefits beyond health and wealth. That’s why HLI is bringing the WELLBY methodology from the academic and policy world into the global health field. It’s the same reason that Open Philanthropy ran an essay prize to find suggestions for measuring non-health, non-pecuniary benefits. Our entry to that competition set out the pros AND the cons of the WELLBY approach as well as our plans for further foundational research on subjective wellbeing measures.
  
  There’s a lot more I could say, but this comment is already getting too long. The key thing I want to get across is that if you (the reader) are confused about HLI’s mission, strategy, or research findings, then please talk to us. I’m always happy to talk to people about HLI’s work on a call or via email.

• Barry GrimesDec 30, 2022, 9:44 PM

  4 points

  3 ∶ 1

  in reply to: Simon_M’s comment on: StrongMinds should not be a top-rated char­ity (yet)

  It’s still not clear who is making the claim unless you click on the link. Here’s my suggested wording (feel free to ignore).

  In GiveWell’s 2019 conversation with StrongMinds, it was noted that “People in targeted communities often incorrectly believe that StrongMinds will provide them with cash or material goods and may therefore provide misleading responses when being diagnosed.”

• Barry GrimesDec 30, 2022, 3:53 PM

  3 points

  2 ∶ 1

  in reply to: Simon_M’s comment on: StrongMinds should not be a top-rated char­ity (yet)

  Thanks for clarifying. I think it would be helpful for readers if you edited the post to make that clear.

• Barry GrimesDec 30, 2022, 1:27 PM

  43 points

  4 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Lorenzo Buonanno🔸’s comment on: StrongMinds should not be a top-rated char­ity (yet)

  Here’s the full exchange between Özler and Haushofer:
  
  JH: Whenever someone meekly suggests that one might not leave those with the lowest incomes entirely alone with their mental health struggles, the “it’s not that simple” brigade shows up and talks about the therapy-industrial complex and it’s so tiresome.
  
  BO: Thanks, Johannes. That thread & and recommendation is outrageous: there’s no good evidence that Strong Minds is effective, let alone most effective. It’s 20-year old studies combined with pre-post data provided by SM itself. People should pay no attention to this 🧵, whatsoever.
  
  JH: This dismissal seems much too strong to me. I thought HLI’s discussion of the evidence here was fair and reasonable: https://​​www.happierlivesinstitute.org/​​report/​​strongminds-cost-effectiveness-analysis
  
  BO: Show me one good published study of the impact of SM on the ground at some decent scale...
  
  JH: My point is not that SM is the best available intervention. My point is that people who get upset at HLI for caring about wellbeing on the grounds that this ignores structural interventions are mistaken.
  
  BO: I have zero problems with your point. It’s well taken & that’s why I thanked you for your tweet. My issue is w the unequivocal SM recommendation, the evidence presented, & the conviction with which it is advertised. People (unfortunately) donate based on such recommendations...
  
  JH: Ok, one can disagree about that. Do you think the Bolton et al work is good? If yes what dissuades you from thinking that SM is effective? (Regardless of whether it should be top-ranked)
  
  BO: Bolton et al. (2003) is not about SM. Why did you evaluate GD with an RCT when we could have extrapolated from Progresa?
  
  JH: Of course there’s always room for more studies. But if someone had said at the time that GD is likely to be effective for certain outcomes based on work on Progresa, I wouldn’t have considered that claim outrageous. (Side point, I think IPT/​SM more similar than Progresa/​GD.)

  JH: (Addendum: I’ve always been a bit uneasy with the hype around GD and our study in light of all the other evidence on cash transfers.)

  BO: You would have if someone was claiming that it was exactly 6 times more effective per $ than the most promising alternative. Also, no one (give or take) would have donated to GD on the basis of previous evidence, say our study in Malawi...(which is much closer).

  JH: GD definitely emphasized early on that cash transfers were very well-researched! Of course not sure if that helped, but I don’t recall any “how can you say that!” reactions. ¹⁄₂
  
  JH: On the “6 times” claim: I think orgs like Givewell and HLI are in the business of providing guesstimates given limited and mixed-quality evidence. I have much more tolerance for extrapolation in that context than in an academic paper. ²⁄₂

  BO: I think smt got lost in translation here: my point is you can’t claim your NGO is best because it works on something promising. You have to show it—effectiveness at scale. That was true for GD and it remains true for SM. /​1

  BO: And you definitely should not make forest plots like that with guesstimates. It’s misleading.../​FIN.

  BO: I’m going to leave it at this. I don’t care for that type of hype right before the giving season, with shaky evidence. We all know the dangers of assuming effectiveness at scale from efficacy studies, especially 20-year-old ones...
  
  JH: I definitely see that. I also think this shaky evidence is leagues better than what most people base their giving decisions on, so if someone listens, it’s a net improvement.

  What links here?

  • bruce's comment on StrongMinds should not be a top-rated char­ity (yet) by Simon_M (Dec 28, 2022, 1:15 AM; 78 points)
  • JWS 🔸's comment on JWS’s Quick takes by JWS 🔸 (Jul 14, 2023, 7:23 PM; 50 points)

• Barry GrimesDec 30, 2022, 12:30 PM

  5 points

  3 ∶ 0

  on: StrongMinds should not be a top-rated char­ity (yet)

  “People in targeted communities often incorrectly believe that StrongMinds will provide them with cash or material goods and may therefore provide misleading responses when being diagnosed.”

  I noticed there’s no reference for this quote. Where did you find it? What is the evidence for this claim?

  What links here?

  • bruce's comment on StrongMinds should not be a top-rated char­ity (yet) by Simon_M (Dec 30, 2022, 7:41 PM; 3 points)

• Barry GrimesDec 28, 2022, 10:18 AM

  36 points

  6 ∶ 3

  on: StrongMinds should not be a top-rated char­ity (yet)

  I’m going to leave aside discussing HLI here. Whilst I think they have some of the deepest analysis of StrongMinds, I am still confused by some of their methodology, it’s not clear to me what their relationship to StrongMinds is. I plan on going into more detail there in future posts. The key thing to understand about the HLI methodology is that follows the same structure as the Founders Pledge analysis and so all the problems I mention above regarding data apply just as much to them as FP.

  Thanks for writing this Simon. I’m always pleased to see people scrutinising StrongMinds because it helps us all to build a better understanding of the most cost-effective ways to address the huge (and severely neglected) burden of disease from mental health conditions.
  
  HLI’s researchers are currently enjoying some well-deserved holiday but they’ll be back next week and will respond in more detail then. In the meantime, I want to recommend the following resources (and discussion) for people reading this post:

  • HLI’s 2022 charity recommendation

  • HLI’s cost-effectiveness analysis of StrongMinds

  • AMA with Sean Mayberry (Founder & CEO of StrongMinds)

  I also want to clarify two things related to the quote above:

  • HLI’s relationship with StrongMinds is no different to GiveWell’s relationship with the charities they recommend. We are separate organisations and HLI’s evaluation of StrongMinds is entirely independent.

  • HLI’s methodology follows a meta-analytic approach. We don’t take the results from StrongMinds’ own trials at face value. We explain this further here.

Inequal­ity, well-be­ing, and the prob­lem of the un­known re­port­ing function

Dou­ble your dona­tion with match­ing opportunities

• Barry GrimesNov 24, 2022, 10:15 PM

  8 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: JackM’s comment on: Don’t just give well, give WELLBYs: HLI’s 2022 char­ity recommendation

  We plan to evaluate Usona Institute next year. We still need to raise $300k to cover our 2023 budget if you prefer to fund further research over direct interventions.

  We already have a pipeline of promising charities and interventions to analyse next year:

  Charities we want to evaluate: CorStone (resilience training), Friendship Bench (psychotherapy), Lead Exposure Elimination Project (lead paint regulation), and Usona Institute (psychedelics research).

  Interventions we want to evaluate: air pollution, child development, digital mental health, and surgery for cataracts and fistula repair.

• Barry GrimesNov 24, 2022, 9:06 PM

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Karthik Tadepalli’s comment on: AMA: Sean May­berry, Founder & CEO of StrongMinds

  On (2): Here’s the section on social desirability bias from HLI’s cost-effectiveness analysis.

  Haushofer et al., (2020), a trial of both psychotherapy and cash transfers in a LMIC, perform a test ‘experimenter demand effect’, where they explicitly state to the participants whether they expect the research to have a positive or negative effect on the outcome in question. We take it this would generate the maximum effect, as participants would know (rather than have to guess) what the experimenter would like to hear. Haushofer et al., (2020), found no impact of explicitly stating that they expected the intervention to increase (or decrease) self-reports of depression. The results were non-significant and close to zero (n = 1,545). We take this research to suggest social desirability bias is not a major issue with psychotherapy. Moreover, it’s unclear why, if there were a social desirability bias, it would be proportionally more acute for psychotherapy than other interventions. Further tests of experimenter demand effects would be welcome.

  Other less relevant evidence of experimenter demand effects finds that it results in effects that are small or close to zero. Bandiera et al., (n =5966; 2020) studied a trial that attempted to improve the human capital of women in Uganda. They found that experimenter demand effects were close to zero. In an online experiment Mummolo & Peterson, (2019) found that “Even financial incentives to respond in line with researcher expectations fail to consistently induce demand effects.” Finally, in de Quidt et al., (2018) while they find experimenter demand effects they conclude by saying “Across eleven canonical experimental tasks we … find modest responses to demand manipulations that explicitly signal the researcher’s hypothesis… We argue that these treatments reasonably bound the magnitude of demand in typical experiments, so our … findings give cause for optimism.”

• Barry GrimesNov 20, 2022, 9:46 AM

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Scott Smith 🔸’s comment on: The elephant in the bed­net: the im­por­tance of philos­o­phy when choos­ing be­tween ex­tend­ing and im­prov­ing lives

  Thanks very much for flagging the issues with the spreadsheet links. I believe I’ve fixed them all now but do let me know if you encounter any further issues.

The Most Cost-Effec­tive Ways to Treat De­pres­sion Globally

Mea­sur­ing Good Better

• Barry GrimesAug 22, 2022, 9:47 AM

  11 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Vasco Grilo🔸’s comment on: To WELLBY or not to WELLBY? Mea­sur­ing non-health, non-pe­cu­niary benefits us­ing sub­jec­tive wellbeing

  Hi Vasco. This is a great question and one that I find personally intriguing (although I am not an expert in this area).

  I’m curious about the possibility of identifying biometric indicators that correlate with subjective wellbeing scores in order to make interspecies comparisons of wellbeing. For example, Blanchfower and Bryson (2021) investigated the link between pulse and wellbeing.

  At the Wellbeing Research & Policy Conference, Daniel Kahneman noted the increasing importance of ‘wearables’ for tracking health and wellbeing data. I think this technology could be applied to non-human animals too. I asked the team at Wild Animal Initiative about this. They’re in the process of hiring a physiology research specialist, but in the meantime they said:

  On the probably more feasible end of things, we would like to be able to measure levels of cortisol and similar hormones associated with physiological stress. On the more difficult end, we would like to be able to measure the average length of telomeres in white blood cells. Currently, that is usually done by performing qPCR on a blood sample with specific primers to distinguish different numbers of repeated sequence motifs at the ends of chromosomes. However, maybe there could one day be a way to simplify that process, considering that we are only interested in the physical length of the telomeres.

  For the most recent thinking about interspecies comparisons of welfare, I recommend watching the recordings from the recent conference sponsored by Rethink Priorities and reading Jason Schukraft’s sequence of posts on moral weights.

A Con­ver­sa­tion with Daniel Kahneman

• Barry GrimesJun 29, 2022, 8:47 AM

  3 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Stephen Clare’s comment on: Will faster eco­nomic growth make us hap­pier? The rele­vance of the Easter­lin Para­dox to Progress Studies

  I think there might be a confusion here between quality of life and satisfaction with life.
  
  As you say, the best possible life in 2022 contains many pleasant experiences and time-saving innovations that were unavailable to previous generations. However, it seems to me that modern lives are subject to more unmet desires and expectations are higher than in the past. As such, even though the lives of the current generation are materially better, this doesn’t mean that people are more satisfied than their grandparents.
  
  John Clifton, CEO of Gallup, wrote in The Economist recently:

  Fifteen years ago, before the widespread use of social media, 3.4% of people rated their lives a 10 (the best possible life) and only 1.6% rated their lives a zero (the worst possible life). Now the share of people with the best feasible lives has more than doubled (to 7.4%), and the share of people with the worst possible lives has more than quadrupled (to 7.6%).

  If you group the world into wellbeing quintiles, this inequality is even more evident. In 2006, the top quintile for life ratings averaged 8.3; the lowest quintile averaged 2.5. Now, look at 2021. The top quintile averaged 8.9, and the lowest quintile averaged 1.2. The gap in those life ratings is now 7.7 points—the highest in Gallup’s history of tracking.

  This wellbeing inequality is as serious as income inequality, in my view. It reflects a growing divide in emotions rather than possessions. And this type of inequality is plainly evident when you ask people to rate how their lives are going. Life could hardly be better for one fifth of the world, and for another fifth it could hardly be worse. It may be that the people at the top appreciate what they have more than ever before. For the most unhappy, they are more aware of what they lack than ever before.

• Barry GrimesJun 28, 2022, 8:26 PM

  23 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Richard Y Chappell🔸’s comment on: Bud­dhism and Utili­tar­i­anism; EA vs EB

  I am keen to read critiques of Teo’s claims but I downvoted this comment for a couple of reasons:
  
  1) Aggressive language—I felt that Teo’s comment was written in good faith and I was surprised that you dismissed it in such strong words: “extremely misleading”, “not remotely fair or accurate”, “an incendiary charge”.
  
  2) Appeals to authority—It doesn’t matter to me that “pretty much every expert in moral philosophy” disagrees. I want to know why they disagree and be referred to relevant authors or papers that make these arguments.