It is very generous to characterise Torres’ post as insightful and thought provoking. He characterises various long-termists as white supremacists on the flimsiest grounds imaginable. This is a very serious accusation and one that he very obviously throws around due to his own personal vendettas against certain people. e.g. despite many of his former colleagues at CSER also being long-termists he doesn’t call them nazis because he doesn’t believe they have slighted him. Because I made the mistake of once criticising him, he spent much of the last two years calling me a white supremacist, even though the piece of mine he cited did not even avow belief in long-termism.
Halstead
Karma: 3,969
On species extinctions, you cite the Thomas et al estimate that climate change would cause “15-37% of all species to become ‘committed to extinction’ by mid-century”. This paper has been subject to an avalanche of criticism. For example, there is a good review here, and strong counter-evidence discussed at length here. I think it would be useful to the reader to provide this context.
Also, this is just one study (also the most pessimistic), and I think one would get a better view by providing an overview of the literature. The IPBES report that you also cite says “For instance, a synthesis of many studies estimates that the fraction of species at risk of extinction due to climate change is 5 per cent at 2°C warming, rising to 16 per cent at 4.3°C warming {4.2.1.1}.” 4.3 degrees is the median outcome at 2100 on the high emissions pathway. Being committed to extinction is also very different to being at risk of extinction. This suggests that the risk is a lot lower than the Thomas et al estimate suggests.
The factors you mention therefore seem to increase vulnerability, but merely in the following sense
Some of the factors don’t seem relevant at all (phosphorous depletion)
The food system will be much less vulnerable in the future vs today despite these factors.
Some other event would have to do 99% of the work in bringing about a global food catastrophe
thanks for taking the time to do this!
I think I would find it very hard to update on the view that the minimum wage reduces demand for labour. Maybe if there were an extremely well done RCT showing no effect from a large minimum wage increase of $10, I would update. Incidentally, here is discussion of an RCT on the minimum wage which illustrates where the observational studies might be going wrong. The RCT shows that employers reduced hours worked, which wouldn’t show up in observational studies, which mainly study disemployment effects
I am very conscious of the fact that almost everyone I have ever tried to convince of this view on the minimum wage remains wholly unmoved. I should make it clear that I am in favour of redistribution through tax credits, subsidies for childcare and that kind of thing. I think the minimum wage is not a smart way to help lower income people.
I would agree with that—climate change seems like it could have very bad humanitarian costs for poor agrarian societies that look set to experience low economic growth this century. I do though find it very difficult to see how it could lead to a collapse of the global food system
Thanks for sharing this.
Regarding food, you suggest that due to climate change, soil erosion, water scarcity, and phosphorus depletion, there are risks to the global food supply that could constitute a global catastrophe. What do you think is the probability of this occurring in the next 30 or 80 years?
I am sceptical of this. Crop yields for almost all crops have increased by 200% since 1980, despite warming of about 0.8 degrees since then. The crop effects of climate change you outline, which are typically on the order of up to 20% losses for major food crops at 5 degrees, should be set in this context. Various studies suggest that yield will increase by 25% to 150% by 2050. e.g UN FAO; Wiebe. The yield damage estimates you cite seem like they will be outpaced by technological progress unless there is a massive trend break in agricultural productivity progress.
On phosphorous, according to a report by the IFDC funded by USAID, global phosphorous reserves (those which can be currently economically extracted, so this is a dynamic figure) will last for 300-400 years. “Based on the data gathered, collated and analyzed for this report, there is no indication that a “peak phosphorus” event will occur in 20-25 years. IFDC estimates of world phosphate rock reserves and resources indicate that phosphate rock of suitable quality to produce phosphoric acid will be available far into the future. Based on the data reviewed, and assuming current rates of production, phosphate rock concentrate reserves to produce fertilizer will be available for the next 300-400 years.” The US geological survey says “World resources of phosphate rock are more than 300 billion tons. There are no imminent shortages of phosphate rock.”
On water scarcity, agriculture is about 4% of global GDP and declining. If water became enough of a constraint on agriculture to threaten a global catastrophe, why would we not throw some money or wisdom at the problem for example by spending more money on water, desalination, or stopping subsidising agricultural uses of water? Have any middle or high income countries ever failed to produce more than enough food because of lack of water?
On soil erosion, the UN report on soil says “A synthesis of meta-analyses on the soil erosion-productivity relationship suggests that a global median loss of 0.3 percent of annual crop yield due to erosion occurs.7 If this rate of loss continues unchanged into the future, a total reduction of 10 percent of potential annual yield by 2050 would occur”. again, this is in the context of otherwise increasing yields. Soil erosion rates are also declining in various regions.
As I mention in the post, it’s not just theory and common sense, but also evidence from other domains. If the demand curve for labour low skilled labour is vertical, then it is all but impossible that a massive influx of Cuban workers during the Mariel boatlift had close to zero effect on native US wages. Nevertheless, that is what the evidence suggests.
I am happy to be told of other theoretical explanations of why minimum wages don’t reduce demand for labour. The ones I am aware of in the literature are monopsonistic buyer of labour (clearly not the case), or one could give up on the view that firms are systematically profit-seeking (also doesn’t seem true).
The claims that are wrong are the ones I highlight in the post, viz that the empirical evidence is all that matters when forming believe about the minimum wage. Most empirical research isn’t that good and cannot distinguish signal from noise when there are small treatment effects e.g. the Card and Krueger research that started the whole debate off got their data by telephoning fast food restaurants.
2. I would disagree on economics. I view the turn of economics towards high causal identification and complete neglect of theory as a major error, for reasons I touch on here. The discipline has moved from investigating important things to trivial things with high causal identification. The trend towards empirical behavioural economics is also in my view a fad with almost no practical usefulness. (To reiterate my point on the minimum wage—the negative findings are almost certainly false: it is what you would expect to find for a small treatment effect and noisy data in observational studies. Before reading the literature and believing that the effect of a minimum wage increase of $3 is small but negative, I would still expect to find a lot of studies finding no effect because empirical research is not very good, so one should not update much on those negative findings. If you think the demand curve for low skilled labour is vertical, then the phenomenon of ~0 effect on native US wages after a massive influx of low skilled labour from Cuba is inexplicable. And: the literature is very mixed—it’s not like all the studies find no effect, that is a misconception)
3. I agree that focusing on base rates is important but that doesn’t seem to get at the myopic empiricism issue. For example, the base rate of vaccine efficacy dropping off a cliff after 22 days is very low, but that was not established in the initial Astra Zeneca study. To form that judgement, one needs evidence from other domains, which myopic empiricists ignore.
4. I’m not sure where we disagree there. I don’t think EAs should stay rooted in empiricism if that means ‘form judgements only on the basis of the median published scientific study’, which is the view I criticise. I’m not saying we should become less empirical—I think we should take account of theory but also empirical evidence from other domains, which as I discuss many other experts refuse to do in some cases.
I’m not saying that we should be largely cut off from observation and experiment and should just deduce from theory. I’m saying that the myopic empiricist approach is not the right one.
This is maybe getting too bogged down in the object-level. The general point is that if you have a confident prior, you are not going to update on uncertain observational evidence very much. My argument in the main post is that ignoring your prior entirely is clearly not correct and that is driving a lot of the mistaken opinions I outline.
Tangentially, I stand by my position on the object-level—I actually think that 98% is too low! For any randomly selected good I can think of, I would expect a price floor to reduce demand for it in >99% of cases. Common sense aside… The only theoretical reason this might not be true is if the market for labour is monopsonistic. That is just obviously not the case. There is also evidence from the immigration literature which suggests that native wages are barely affected by a massive influx of low skilled labour, which implies a near horizontal demand curve. There is also the point that if you are slightly Keynesian you think that involuntary employment is caused by the failure of wages to adjust downward; legally forbidding them from doing this must cause unemployment.
Hello, my argument was that there are certain groups of experts you can ignore or put less weight on because they have the wrong epistemology. I agree that the median expert might have got some of these cases right. (I’m not sure that’s true in the case of nutrition however)
The point in all these cases re priors is that one should have a very strong prior, which will not be shifted much by flawed empirical research. One should have a strong prior that the efficacy of the vaccine won’t drop off massively for the over 65s even before this is studied.
One can see the priors vs evidence case for the minimum wage more formally using Bayes theorem. Suppose my prior that minimum wages reduce demand for labour is 98%, which is reasonable. I then learn that one observational study has found that they have no effect on demand for labour. Given the flaws in empirical research, let’s say there is a 30% chance of a study finding no effect conditional on there being an effect. Given this, we might put a symmetrical probability on a study finding no effect conditional on there being no effect - a 70% chance of a null result if minimum wages in fact have no effect.
Then my posterior is = (.3*.98)/(.3*98+.7*.02) = 95.5%
So I am still very sure that minimum wages have no effect even if there is one study showing the contrary. FWIW, my reading of the evidence is that most studies do find an effect on demand for labour, so after assimilating it all, one would probably end up where one’s prior was. This is why the value of information of research into the minimum wage is so low.
On drinking in pregnancy, I don’t think this is driven by people’s view of acceptable risk, but rather by a myopic empiricist view of the world. Oster’s book is the go-to for data-driven parents and she claims that small amounts of alcohol has no effect, not that it has a small effect but is worth the risk. (Incidentally, the latter claim is also clearly false—it obviously isn’t worth the risk.)
On your final point, I don’t think one can or should aim to give an account of whether relying on theory or common sense is always the right thing to do. I have highlighted some examples where failure to rely on theory and evidence from other domains leads people astray. Epistemology is complicated and this insight may of course not be true in all domains. For a comprehensive account of how to approach cases such as these, one cannot say much more than that the true theory of epistemology is Bayesianism and to apply that properly you need to be apprised of all of the relevant information in different fields.
As a matter of interest, where do papers such as this usually get discussed? Is it in personal conversation or in some particular online location?
Thanks for writing this. I disagree that EAs should prioritise this cause area and I disagree with the analysis of the cause-specific arguments.
Firstly, I think it is good for happy people to come into existence, but this is ignored here.
On climate change, I generally think Drawdown is not a reliable source. The only place where births per woman are not close to 2 is sub-saharan Africa. Thus, the only place where family planning could reduce emissions is sub-saharan Africa, which is currently a tiny fraction of emissions. Working on low carbon technology by contrast can affect global emissions, and policy change in the US or EU can affect a much larger fraction of emissions.
I’m also strongly sceptical of the cost to prevent a pregnancy provided. $10 seems far too low. This seems similar to the kind of mainstream charity cost to save a life estimate that EAs have criticised for a while
Thanks for sharing that piece, it’s a great counterpoint. I have a few thoughts in response.
Strevens argues that myopic empiricism drives people to do useful experiments which they perhaps might not have done if they stuck to theory. This seems to have been true in the case of physics. However, there are also a mountain of cases of wasted research effort, some of them discussed in my post. The value of information from eg most studies on the minimum wage and observational nutritional epidemiology is miniscule in my opinion. Indeed, it’s plausible that the majority of social science research is wasted money, per the claims of the meta-science movement.
I agree that it’s not totally clear if it would be positive if in general people tried to put more weight on theory and common sense. But some reliance on theory and common sense is just unavoidable. So, this is a question of how much reliance we put on that, not whether to do it at all. For example, to make judgements about whether we should act on the evidence of whether masks work, we need to make judgments about the external validity of studies, which necessarily involves making some theoretical judgements about the mechanism by which masks work, which the empirical studies confirm. The true logical extension of myopic empiricism is the inability to infer anything from any study. “We showed that one set of masks worked in a series of studies in US in 2020, but we don’t have a study of this other set of masks works in Manchester in 2021, so we don’t know whether they work”.
I tend to think it would be positive if scientists gave up on myopic empiricism and shifted to being more explicitly Bayesian.
Hi, thanks for this.
I’m not making a claim that rationalists are more accurate than the standard experts. I actually don’t think that is true .eg rationalists think you obviously should one-box in Newcomb’s problem (which I think is wrong, as do most decision theorists). The comments of Greg Lewis’ post discuss the track record of the rationalists, and I largely agree with the pessimistic view there. I also largely agree with the direction and spirit of Greg’s main post.
My post is about what someone who accepts the tenets of Bayesianism would do given the beliefs of experts. In the examples I mention, some experts have gone wrong by not taking account of their prior when forming beliefs (though there are other ways to fall short of the Bayesian standard, such as not updating properly given a prior). I think this flaw has been extremely socially damaging during the pandemic.
I don’t think this implies anything about deferring to the views of actual rationalists, which would require a sober assessment of their track record.
Thanks for outlining the tests.
I’m not really sure what he thinks the probability of the singularity before 2100 is. My reading was that he probably doesn’t think that given his tests, the singularity is (eg) >10% likely before 2100. 2 of the 7 tests suggest the singularity after 100 years and 5 of them fail. It might be worth someone asking him for his view on that
Deference for Bayesians
[Link post] Are we approaching the singularity?
There’s also Effective Giving Netherlands
If you agree it is a serious and baseless allegation, why do you keep engaging with him? The time to stop engaging with him was several years ago. You had sufficient evidence to do so at least two years ago, and I know that because I presented you with it, e.g. when he started casually throwing around rape allegations about celebrities on facebook and tagging me in the comments, and then calling me and others nazis. Why do you and your colleagues continue to extensively collaborate with him?
To reiterate, the arguments he makes are not sincere: he only makes them because he thinks the people in question have wronged him.