Michael_S

Karma: 228

Michael_S Apr 1, 2017, 9:53 PM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: nikvetr’s comment on: An Effective Altruist Message Test
No; I did not fit multiple models. Lasso regression was used to fit a propensity model using the predictors.

Using bachelor’s vs. non-bachelor’s has advantages in interpretability, so I think this was the right move for my purposes.

I did not spend an exorbitant amount of time investigating diagnostics, for the same reason I used a proprietary package was has been built for running these tests at a production level and has been thoroughly code reviewed. I don’t think it’s worth the time to construct an overly customized analysis.

Michael_S Apr 1, 2017, 9:39 PM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: nikvetr’s comment on: An Effective Altruist Message Test
Sure, in an ideal world, software would all be free for everyone; alas, we do not live in such a world :p. I used the proprietary package because it did exactly what I needed and doesn’t require writing STAN code or anything myself. I’d rather not re-invent the wheel. I felt the tradeoff of transparency for efficiency and confidence in its accuracy was worth it, especially since I wouldn’t be able to share the data either way (such are the costs of getting these questions on a 1200 person survey without paying a substantial amount).

But the basic model was just a multilevel binomial model predicting the dependent variable using the treatments and questions asked earlier in the survey as controls.

Michael_S Apr 1, 2017, 9:04 PM
0 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Peter Wildeford’s comment on: An Effective Altruist Message Test
Unfortunately, because I used proprietary survey data/a proprietary R package to run this analysis, I don’t think I’ll be able to share the data and code.

Michael_S Apr 1, 2017, 9:02 PM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: nikvetr’s comment on: An Effective Altruist Message Test
Yup, binomial.

The respondents in a treatment were each shown a message and asked how compelling they thought it was. The control was shown no message.

Yeah; the plots are the predicted values for those given a particular treatment. and Average Treatment Effect is the difference with the control.

I did not include every control used in the provided questionnaire. There were a mix of demographics/attitudinal/behavioral questions asked in the survey that I also used. These controls, particularly previous donations, were important for decreasing variance.

I used a multilevel model to estimate the effects among those with and without a bachelor’s degree. So, the bachelor’s estimate borrow’s power from those without a degree, reducing problems with over fitting.

These models used STAN, which handles these multilevel models well. Convergence was assessed with gelman-rubin statistics.

Michael_S Apr 1, 2017, 1:21 PM
5 points
0 ∶ 0
on: A Third Take on Trump
I agree that the modal outcome of a Trump presidency is that he changes little and the Democrats come out stronger at the end of his presidency than they entered. However, I still think it would have been better that Clinton had won (even if we assume the same congress).

The most important reason is tail risk. As others have commented, the risk of nuclear war may be greater under Trump than it would have been under Clinton. So far, he seems to be pursuing a more conventional foreign policy than I feared, but I still believe the risk is higher than with Clinton. Additionally, I’m worried that the Trump presidency is increasing the salience of Russian hostility among Democrats and could increase the chance of conflict in the future even when a Democrat takes office.

Another are of concern is pandemics. Trump has expressed anti-Vaccine sentiments and submitted budgets which cut pandemic preparedness. Furthermore, the overall level of incompetence in his administration and many of his appointees leaves me worried that the response of the US to a major pandemic could be diminished.

None of the above is likely to happen, but I’d much rather play it safe with a Clinton presidency. Additionally, even the modal outcome of a presidency isn’t all good for the liberals. Most notably, he’ll almost certainly be able to move at least one conservative into the supreme court and has a high chance of moving at least one more. If Trump replaces a liberal with a conservative on the court, the court will move to the right and it will likely be quite a while until Democrats retake it. With a Clinton presidency, liberals would have been able to achieve a majority on the court that would likely have lasted a long time itself.

Michael_S Feb 26, 2017, 3:20 PM
7 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Vote Pairing is a Cost-Effective Political Intervention
Thanks for the write up. I think you make a compelling case that this is more effective than canvassing, which can be over 1000 dollars for votes at the margin in a competitive election like 2016. I do think there are a few ways your estimate may be an overestimate though.

Of those who claimed they would follow through with vote trading, some may not have. You mention that there wouldn’t have been much value to defecting. However, much of the value of a vote for individual comes from tribal loyalties rather than affecting the outcome. That’s why turnout is higher in safe presidential states in a presidential election than midterm elections, even when the midterm election is competitive. Some individuals may still have defected because of this.

Secondly, many of the 3rd party folks who made the trade could have voted for Clinton anyway. People who sign up for these sites are necessarily strategic thinkers. If they wanted more total votes for Stein/Johnson, but recognized that a vote for Clinton was more important in a swing state, they might have signed up for the site to gain the Stein/Johnson voter, but planned to vote for Clinton even if they didn’t get a match. Additionally, even if they were acting in good faith when they signed up, they may have changed their mind as the election approached. 3rd parties are historically over estimated in polling compared to the election results, and 2016 was no exception: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_clinton_vs_johnson_vs_stein-5952.html.

I don’t think these problems are enough to reduce the value by an order of magnitude, but it is worth keeping in mind.

Additionally, while vote trading may be high EV now, I am skeptical that it is easy to scale. It’s even more difficult to apply outside of presidential elections, so, unlike other potential political interventions, it will mostly be confined to every 4 years in one race. Furthermore, the individuals who signed up now may be lower cost to acquire than additional potential third party traders. They are likely substantially more strategic than the full population of 3rd party voters; in many years, the full population isn’t that large to begin with. The cost per additional vote may be larger than your current estimates.

Nevertheless, I agree that right now it’s probably more valuable than traditional canvassing and I’m glad people are putting resources into it.

Michael_S Jan 8, 2017, 4:54 PM
4 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Proposal for an Pre-registered Experiment in EA Outreach
This sounds really great to me. I love the idea of having more RCTs in the EA sphere. I would definitely record how much they are giving 1 year later.

I also think it’s worth having a hold out set. People can pre-register the list of friends, than a random number generator can be used to randomly selects some friends not to make an explicit GWWC pitch to. It’s possible many of the friends/contacts who join GWWC and start donating are those who have already been exposed to EA ideas before over a long period of time, and the effect size of the direct GWWC pitch isn’t as large as it would appear. Having a hold out set would account for this. With a hold out set, CEA wouldn’t have to worry about who they contact. The holdout set would take care of this and make the estimate of the treatment effect unbiased.

Michael_S Nov 12, 2016, 12:04 AM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: kbog’s comment on: What does Trump mean for EA?
You can’t look at aggregate turnout numbers being different and assume the composition of turnout was different. You’re making the assumption that there was 0 movement from Obama to Trump or from Romney to Clinton; both of which are definitely incorrect as evidenced by polling.

Secondly, turnout is much higher than that appears; much more will come in from California, Washington, Oregon and Colorado. It always takes these states forever to report. So the turnout numbers now are misleading.

Michael_S Nov 11, 2016, 2:54 PM
0 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: kbog’s comment on: What does Trump mean for EA?
At most, campaign funds would have moved this a point or two. Campaign funding has little impact on presidential elections; Clinton far outspent Trump and Trump was far outspent in the primary election. If we assume an effective size of 5% for all of Trump’s money and assume no diminishing marginal return (both very generous assumptions), that 0.15% is 0.0075 percentage points in movement. The outcome was decided by 1, so that’s over two orders of magnitude lower than what was needed under generous assumptions. It was probably more orders of magnitude lower.

That’s not true at all.Trump gained substantially in rural areas with mostly white people where Obama had won or performed substantially better. I mean, if turnout had magically been higher among Democrats but not Republicans, we would have won, but you don’t get to do that. The composition of the electorate was roughly the same (minus some black people plus some Hispanics) as 2012. It’s conceivably possible that without the drop in black turnout, we would have won, but this was inevitable without the first black president running. There is overwhelming evidence that attitudes among the white working class moved against us. Hence our drop in the midwest.

I agree on the point that phone banking does not make much of a difference.

There were several instances that fall under the same pattern: the email story, the hollywood access tapes, the debates, probably the apprentice tapes if they had appeared, and potentially the wikileak emails, though it’s much harder to gauge their effect size.

Michael_S Nov 11, 2016, 1:46 PM
0 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: kbog’s comment on: What does Trump mean for EA?
Thiel had essentially nothing to do with the outcome of this election.

This was not primarily a turnout issue. Black turnout was down, but Hispanic turnout was up. White turnout appears relatively flat (both Democratic and Republican white turnout), but we’ll know more when actual person level vote history is released. Regardless, EA messaging is not the right way to appeal to Berners.

The easiest way to shift the outcome of the election would have been to change public opinion by a point or two by shifting the narrative of the race in the final week. Comey was successful at doing this.

Michael_S Nov 11, 2016, 6:29 AM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: kbog’s comment on: What does Trump mean for EA?
I don’t think a rationalist message/meme would have been successful at convincing hundreds of thousands of working class whites not to vote for Trump. Rationalism has it’s place in deciding what to do about an election, but I don’t think EA messaging is at all useful in influencing a mass audience.

Michael_S Oct 30, 2016, 4:55 PM
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: MichaelDickens’s comment on: Dedicated Donors May Not Want to Sign the Giving What We Can Pledge
I agree that the pledge is most useful for those who don’t have as strong a dedication. But I expect it is useful for the vast majority of EAs. According to the EA survey, less than half of EAs donate even 10% of their income. So I think we have a far greater incidence of people not taking the pledge when they should than the other way around, even in the EA community. If EAs start putting greater weight on potential problems from the pledge, I expect that would be a net negative across the community.

Michael_S Oct 30, 2016, 3:00 PM
5 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Dedicated Donors May Not Want to Sign the Giving What We Can Pledge
I don’t reject the argument that the GWWC pledge may not make sense for every single person. There are always exceptions. But I think it’s quite small, and it’s much more beneficial for us as a community to try to get as many people to pledge as possible.

In addition to what it might do for yourself, signing the pledge allows you to influence others. The more people sign the pledge and the more public they are, the more we spread giving a large portion of your income to effective charities as a cultural institution. I think that’s very valuable in itself.

Additionally, some of the items you listed as conflicting with donations, eg. wanting a comfortable retirement, seem like items for which donation should take the higher priority from a utilitarian standpoint. I understand that’s very difficult for people and many EAs will not be able to do this. That’s reality. However, if the pledge gets you to cut back on these luxuries in favor of utilitarian actions, only because you feel obligated to keep the pledge, I think that’s a good thing. If you face a conundrum like in the over justification effect, it may be more productive to try and rethink 5) than rethink 2).

Michael_S Sep 2, 2016, 7:00 PM
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Gleb_T’s comment on: How to Measure and Optimize EA Marketing
You might want to also try using google consumer surveys. If you restrict it to a single question (you can put the message in the question), they’re incredibly cheap.

Michael_S Sep 2, 2016, 3:08 PM
2 points
0 ∶ 0
on: How to Measure and Optimize EA Marketing
Is Intentional Insights doing anything to promote the use of RCTs in EA messaging? There may be a lot of value to be gained in conducting message testing experiments to determine which messages are most effective at getting potentual EAs to perform certain actions. Heterogeneous Effects models might also be useful in identifying who to target.

Michael_S Aug 26, 2016, 5:45 PM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: MichaelDickens’s comment on: Should you switch away from earning to give? Some considerations.
Sure, but your absolute advantage may provide some evidence of a comparative advantage. If you can give say ~10X the top 90th percentile of self-identified EAs, you might also fine some direct work that allows you to contribute much more effectively than most EAs do directly, but it means there’s a higher bar to clear.

Michael_S Aug 26, 2016, 5:22 PM
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Buck’s comment on: Should you switch away from earning to give? Some considerations.
Most people who work on direct work are also probably working suboptimal jobs that require less sacrifice as well. But, whether the average EtG EA or the average direct work EA is making a greater sacrifice is irrelevant in deciding whether you pursue MacAskill’s suggested EtG path. There’s no reason why you would want to over correct from that. If your EtG plan itself involves minimal sacrifice, than you might want to correct for that. Same with direct work that requires minimal sacrifice.

Michael_S Aug 26, 2016, 12:38 PM
4 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Buck’s comment on: Should you switch away from earning to give? Some considerations.
I don’t think it’s fair to say that EtG is less of a sacrifice than direct work. It’s dependent on a number factors. If someone EtG by staying in the same job and working the same # of hours one would otherwise while still living on a substantial proportion of one’s salary, it may not be that much of a sacrifice.

However, EtG could also mean working at a job that may not have been one’s first choice otherwise (eg. Finance), working many more hours than one would otherwise and/or living on just as much or less than one would if they were doing direct work. The EtG work MacAskill suggests involves taking high paying jobs like finance rather than staying in whatever job one happens to be doing, so I don’t think your criticism stands in that case.

Michael_S Aug 11, 2016, 12:16 AM
3 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Introducing Envision: A new EA-Aligned Organization
This is really cool! It’s exactly the kind of X-risk intervention I’m excited about (capacity building among elites). I think this investment in the future is even more important than tackling technical problems today.

I noticed that you didn’t mention any need for funding. Does the mean that your current funding needs are adequately met?

Michael_S Jul 30, 2016, 7:47 PM
0 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: ChrisCundy’s comment on: The 2015 Survey of Effective Altruists: Results and Analysis
Very interesting. I think there’s a number of reasons why the $1,500 figure might be biased downwards or updwards as an estimate for median EA donations/charitable savings after exposure to the movement. It might be too low if many people are just saving to give rather than consuming (attempting to measure this may be useful in the future). It might be biased upwards if those who joined the movement earlier are predisposed to give more than the average EA or those who take the survey are more likely to donate than the average EA.

Regardless, I think the evidence suggests there are a lot of untapped donations among current EAs. I think trying to increase current EA donations should be a priority.