All good points Jonas, Ben W, Ben P, and Stefan. Was uncertain at the beginning but am pretty convinced now. Also, side-note, very happy about the nature of all of the comments, in that they understood my POV and engaged with them in a polite manner.
So-Low Growth
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This is going to sound controversial here (people are probably going to dislike this but I’m genuinely raising this as a concern) but is the Robert Miles $60,000 grant attached to any requirements? I like his content but it seems to me you could find someone with a similar talent level (explaining fairly basic concepts) who could produce many more videos. I’m not well versed in YouTube but four/five videos in the last year doesn’t seem substantial. If the $60,000 was instead offered as a one-year job, I think you could find many talented individuals who could produce much more content.
I understand that he’s doing other non-directly YouTube related things but if you include support in other forms (Patreon), the output seems pretty low relative to the investment.
Again I should emphasise I’m uncertain about my criticism here and personally have enjoyed watching his videos on occasion.
I like the post but I’m not entirely convinced. Even if these are optional classes to pad your degree out, you’d have to think taking history classes adds more value than all other potential options. I don’t entirely believe that’s the case even if I agree with many of your points in the post.
[Question] What music do you find most inspires you to use your resources (effectively) to help others?
What do you think EA could learn from the ‘Progress Studies’ movement ?
Thanks for pointing that out. Will refrain from doing so in the future. What I was trying to make clear was that I didn’t want my comment to be seen as a personal attack on an individual. I was uneasy about making the comment on a public platform when I don’t know all the details nor know much about the subject matter.
These are great Gavin.
It’s been a while since I worked on global development issues (largely focusing on NTDs back in 2014⁄15) but did Farmer not also help popularise the biosocial approach (which I thought had a large impact) ? No mention of ‘biosocial’ on the wiki page though.
Trying my luck here but would I also be able to get funds for academic projects (my research interests are in Metascience/Innovation/Growth)?
Thanks for this—one of my favourite blogs!
Few questions (not all directly related to the job, so feel free to skip all/any of them):
How do you think blogging compares to other careers available to you in terms of impact?
Why not set up a Patreon (I’m aware you’ve got some grants)?
Why remain pseudonymous?
Why the name ADS?
Lincoln Announces New Fellowship on Emerging Technologies
I think it’s a cool idea.
One thing that comes to mind that I have noticed is many academics aren’t aware of EA but I think they would be on board. Many of these academics have time (often tenured), resources (to help EA students), and networks. I wonder if there’s a way of targeting/appealing to this demographic.
Good idea! May be worth reaching out to the LSE Econ PhD programme (I see you’re attending!), who trialled something similar last year for underrepresented backgrounds (in order to get some feedback on what applicants want).
I think a good addition to this would be providing help to people applying for pre-docs as well, given how important they have become in the profession.
I wonder if something similar could also be done but with donations to long-term issues instead? I.e. the same set-up but searching for the most convincing long-term arguments. Would this be of interest? (I’ve been thinking about setting something up along the lines of this).
I should have added the following statement. If anyone would like a quick chat about researching cousin marriage, feel free to message me.
Caveat: I’m still fairly new to the topic (there’s a lot of non-econ literature) but can try to help wherever possible.
I’d like feedback on an idea if possible. I have a longer document with more detail that I’m working on but here’s a short summary that sketches out the core idea/motivation:
Potential idea: hosting a competition/experiment to find the most convincing argument for donating to long-termist organisations
Brief summary
Recently, Professor Eric Shwitzgebel and Dr Fiery Cushman conducted a study to find the most convincing philosophical/logical argument for short-term causes. By ‘philosophical/logical argument’ I mean an argument that attempts to persuade readers to donate to short-term causes through reasoning by logic, which often involves basing the arguments on certain philosophical underpinnings, rather than relying on evoking emotion (i.e. pictures of starving children etc.). The authors were motivated by the hypothesis that arguments that appealed to people through logical/philosophical reasoning would not be an effective tool at persuading people to donate, compared to a control condition (reading a passage from a Physics textbook). Shwitzgebel and Cushman ran a competition for submissions from the public. The winners were awarded $1000 ($500 to the author and $500 to the author’s choice of charity).
The authors measured the ‘persuasiveness’ of an argument by the highest average donation given by participants in an experiment to six selected short-termist charities (all of which had a global development/public health focus). Participants in the experiment read different passages of text depending on the experimental condition they were in. They were then informed that they had a 10% chance of receiving a $10 bonus, and that they would be given an opportunity to donate a portion of that bonus to one of the six charities. The winning argument was submitted by Peter Singer and Matthew Lindauer, which had the highest average mean donation amount, beating all the other arguments and the control group.
I found this experiment very intriguing. I suggest here that something similar should be done but for long-termist causes. To my knowledge, something along the lines of this has not been conducted previously. Extending the framework of the Shwitzgebel and Cushman study, I would find the most convincing argument by hosting a competition to elicit submissions for persuasive arguments on long-termism. After narrowing these down, I’d then proceed to run an experiment on participants to see which of the remaining arguments results in the highest average contribution.
Isn’t there a strong motivation for following-up with a conference introducing these professors to EA?
The sharing of information can—sometimes—lead to more conservative funding due to people weighting other peoples’ weak points greater than their strong points. See here for a really fascinating paper in the economics of science: https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/pdf/10.1287/mnsc.2021.4107
Thanks for doing this Jason. I agree with your response here. Seems natural to think that there are diminishing marginal returns to ideas within a sector.
You mention APM, which would spur progress in other sectors. Are there ways to identify which sectors open up progress in other domains, i.e. identifying the ideas that could remove the constraining factors of progress (small and big)?
Thanks for the understanding responses Jonas and Linch. Again, I should clarify, I don’t know where I stand here but I’m still not entirely convinced.
So, we have four videos in the last year on his channel, plus three videos on Computerphile, giving seven videos. If I remember correctly, The Alignment Newsletter podcast is just reading Shah’s newsletter, which may be useful but I don’t think that requires a lot of effort.
I should reiterate that I think what Miles does is not easy. I may also be severely underestimating the time it takes to make a YouTube video!
I’m currently actively working on this in my PhD (I’m an Economist), which developed from one of my pre-PhD courses. I have a few different ideas and am currently applying for funding for them. Truthfully, this is not one of my core research interests but I think it’s relatively fertile ground for research/publication and I have some nice co-authors that I’m working with, so I don’t have to devote too much time to the topic.
A few points:
The negative biological effects seem to be severe where there is persistent cousin marriage. Otherwise it seems that the impact may not be too bad.
Often the social benefits of consanguinity outweigh the biological disadvantages, particularly in rural regions. For example, some studies seem to show a reduction in domestic violence, greater female autonomy, closer family relations, better retirement etc.
Many of the existing studies are not particularly empirically sound. Lots of selection bias, poor stats, and questionable IVs.
Schulz et al. suggest there’s a link between reducing cousin marriage and democracy, which I find quite interesting (although some have critiqued this). There may also be a relationship between cousin marriage and lower long-run economic growth.
There’s some interesting work being done on potential interventions. For example, the link between education and cousin marriage and the link between a wealth shock and choice of spouse. My paper is proposing an intervention as well.