What motivations tend to drive the largest effect sizes on humanity?
FWIW, I think questions like “what actually causes globally consequential things to happen or not happen” are one of the areas in which we’re most dropping the ball. (AI Impacts has been working on a few related question, more like “why do people sometimes not do the consequential thing?”)
How do you control for survivorship bias?
I think it’s good to at least spot check and see if there are interesting patterns. If “why is nobody doing X???” is strongly associated with large effects, this seems worth knowing, even if it doesn’t constitute a measure of expected effect sizes.
FWIW, I think questions like “what actually causes globally consequential things to happen or not happen” are one of the areas in which we’re most dropping the ball. (AI Impacts has been working on a few related question, more like “why do people sometimes not do the consequential thing?”)
I think it’s good to at least spot check and see if there are interesting patterns. If “why is nobody doing X???” is strongly associated with large effects, this seems worth knowing, even if it doesn’t constitute a measure of expected effect sizes.