Math Pedantic/Computer Science Honours interested in Cause Prioritization. Currently working with QURI on Squiggle and Pedant.
SamNolan
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Type Checking GiveWell’s GiveDirectly Cost Effective Analysis
A General Treatment of the Moral Value of Information
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A Prototype Application for allocating people to Effective Projects
Thanks a lot!
If I was to flesh this out further, it would likely involve a way of proposing EA projects that we could then curate. The form would likely be accessible via the browser, but yes, it’s currently just a very modest proof of concept.
I’ve been seeing you around and have loved some of your posts! The project is meant to try and find both highly skilled but also beginners in EA. I’m not sure what direction it needs to go in, as I kind of want to talk to the people that have proposed this idea in the past to try and get their thoughts on what it should look like. I should probably get in contact with them soon.
This is currently just a prototype, with many many bugs. I’ve actually joined the team and EA CoLabs. Which is a proper application of the concepts here.
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Thanks for pointing that out! I just fixed it up.
Pedant, a type checker for Cost Effectiveness Analysis
Thanks for your considerations!
Yes, I agree. I can very much add tuple style function application, and it will probably be more intuitive if I do so. It’s just that the theory works out a lot easier if I do Haskell style functions.
It seems to be a priority however. I’ve added an issue for it.
The web interface should be able to write pedant code without actually installing Pedant. Needing to install custom software is definitely a barrier.
I definitely was considering adding some form of exporting feature to Pedant at some point. I’m not sure that it’s within the current scope/roadmap of Pedant, but maybe at some point in the future!
Causal is amazing, and if I could introduce Causal into this mix, this would save a lot of my time in developing, and I would be massively appreciative. It would likely help enable many of the things I’m trying to do.
Hopefully Pedant ends up pretty much being a continuation and completion of Squiggle, that’s the dream anyway. Basically Squiggle plus more abstraction features, and more development time poured into it.
Hello Michael!
Yes, I’ve heard of Idris (I don’t know it, but I’m a fan, I’m looking into Coq for this project). I’m also already a massive fan of your work on CEAs, I believe I emailed you about it a while back.
I’m not sure I agree with you about the DSL implementation issue. You seem to be mainly citing development difficulties, whereas I would think that doing this may put a stop to some interesting features. It would definitely restrict the amount of applications. For instance, I’m fully considering Pedant to be simply a serialization format for Causal. Which would be difficult to do if it was embedded within an existing language.
Making a language server that checks for dimensional errors would be very difficult to do in a non-custom language. It may just be possible in a language like Coq or Idris, but I think Coq and Idris are not particularly user friendly, in the sense that someone with no programming background could just “pick them up”.
I may be interested in writing your CEAs into Pedant in the future, because I find them very impressive!
Maybe, your work there is definitely interesting.
However, I don’t fully understand your project. Is it possible to refine a Cost Effectiveness Analysis from this? I’d probably need to see a worked example of your methodology before being convinced it could work.
Hey Neil,
How is this different from EA CoLabs? This team is working to connect people with projects and need as much help as they can help as they can get. Would it be worth joining them over starting a new project?
Quantifying Uncertainty in GiveWell’s GiveDirectly Cost-Effectiveness Analysis
Would love to! I’m in communication to set up an EA Funds grant to continue building these for other GiveWell charities. I’d also like to do this with ACE! but I’ll need to communicate with them about it.
Hello!
I’ve read this article as part of the EA Forum Podcast. If you wanted an audio version.