total dollars donated are what matter, not anything about the distribution of dollars over people.
Really? Under this approach a hundred EAers where 99 donate zero and one donates $1m suffer from less hypocrisy than a hundred EAers each of which donates $100.
And if only total dollars matter, then there is no need for all that statistical machinery, just sum the dollars up. “Median donations”, in particular, mean nothing.
I think you’re mistaken about total dollars. If I were curious about the hypocrisy of EA people, I would look at the percentage which donates nothing, and for the rest I would look at the percentage of income they donate (possibly estimated conditional on various relevant factors like age) and see how it’s different from a comparable non-EA group.
Really? Under this approach a hundred EAers where 99 donate zero and one donates $1m suffer from less hypocrisy than a hundred EAers each of which donates $100.
Yes. If EA manages to get $1m in donations rather than $10k, then MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.
(Of course, in practice we would prefer that $1m to be distributed over all EAers so we could have more confidence that it wasn’t a fluke—perhaps that millionaire will get bored of EA next year. I have more confidence in the OP results because the increased donations are broadly distributed over EAers, and the increase is robust to outliers and not driven by a single donator, as the u-test of medians indicates. But ultimately, it’s the total which is the intrinsic terminal goal, and other stuff is more about instrumental properties like confidence.)
And if only total dollars matter, then there is no need for all that statistical machinery, just sum the dollars up.
Total over all time is what matters, but unfortunately, observations of the future are not yet available or I would simply include those too… The point of the regressions is to get an idea of future totals by looking at the estimates for age and income. Which indicates that EAs both donate total more now, and will also donate more in the future as well, consistent with Scott’s claims. (If, for example, I’d found that EAers were disproportionately old and the estimated coefficient for EA was ~0 when Age was included as a variable, then that would strongly suggest that the final total dollars would not be greater for EAs and so Yvain’s defense would be wrong.)
There are two entirely separate questions. (1) Are EAs mostly hypocrites? (2) Does EA lead to more (and more effective) charitable donations? It’s perfectly reasonable to care more about #2, but it seems fairly clear that the original accusation was about #1.
Really? Under this approach a hundred EAers where 99 donate zero and one donates $1m suffer from less hypocrisy than a hundred EAers each of which donates $100.
And if only total dollars matter, then there is no need for all that statistical machinery, just sum the dollars up. “Median donations”, in particular, mean nothing.
I think you’re mistaken about total dollars. If I were curious about the hypocrisy of EA people, I would look at the percentage which donates nothing, and for the rest I would look at the percentage of income they donate (possibly estimated conditional on various relevant factors like age) and see how it’s different from a comparable non-EA group.
Yes. If EA manages to get $1m in donations rather than $10k, then MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.
(Of course, in practice we would prefer that $1m to be distributed over all EAers so we could have more confidence that it wasn’t a fluke—perhaps that millionaire will get bored of EA next year. I have more confidence in the OP results because the increased donations are broadly distributed over EAers, and the increase is robust to outliers and not driven by a single donator, as the u-test of medians indicates. But ultimately, it’s the total which is the intrinsic terminal goal, and other stuff is more about instrumental properties like confidence.)
Total over all time is what matters, but unfortunately, observations of the future are not yet available or I would simply include those too… The point of the regressions is to get an idea of future totals by looking at the estimates for age and income. Which indicates that EAs both donate total more now, and will also donate more in the future as well, consistent with Scott’s claims. (If, for example, I’d found that EAers were disproportionately old and the estimated coefficient for EA was ~0 when Age was included as a variable, then that would strongly suggest that the final total dollars would not be greater for EAs and so Yvain’s defense would be wrong.)
There are two entirely separate questions. (1) Are EAs mostly hypocrites? (2) Does EA lead to more (and more effective) charitable donations? It’s perfectly reasonable to care more about #2, but it seems fairly clear that the original accusation was about #1.