Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Guess which government programs work

80000hours.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 60 posts

Re: Show HN: Guess which government programs work

#21

Post by vacri »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #17
BenjaminTodd wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some have, but many persist for years (e.g. Scared Straight).

Scared straight is highly effective PR. Hood looking young people getting yelled at by scary men? Possibly crying? It's like schadenfreude for "civilized" society. I don't understand how policy leaders can look at hard numbers and say, "fuck it, let's keep funding it."

Tucker: My expert would totally disprove that.

Abbott: Who is your expert?

Tucker: I don’t know, but I can get one by this afternoon. The thing is, you’ve been listening to the wrong expert. You need to listen to the right expert. And you need to know what an expert is going to advise you before he advises you.

- The Thick Of It

Re: Show HN: Guess which government programs work

#23

Post by Retric »

asgard1024 wrote: post #13
NateLawson wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, this is really neat. It reminds me of the lesswrong.com community, where the goal is to figure out ways of offsetting cognitive biases. One thing I've always wanted to see is a mandatory A/B test built into any new legislation. That is, funding for a study after X years of the new law or program being in place would have to be part of the law. It could even including a threshold of the desired controlled effect…

> One thing I've always wanted to see is a mandatory A/B test built into any new legislation This is what I find great about US and EU (I am from Czech Republic), that in a federal system, you can test the legislation in one state first, and then see the results and this lets the other states to perhaps adopt or avoid that approach. Unfortunately, strong moneyed interests break that model by lobbying strongly in Wash…

There are a lot of things which work better as federal programs vs state / local programs. Homeless populations spring to mind, if some city's treat there homeless population poorly they can 'export' the problem to another city / state. Where a state with overly generous benefits may see migration.

Education is another with states that export there most educated population having little incentive to subsidize their higher education system. Which likely has lead to the dismantling of state funded schools as people became more mobile.

Re: Show HN: Guess which government programs work

#24

Post by Thriptic »

superuser2 wrote: post #22

Home visits for older adults is a little disingenuous. The purpose is not really to reduce death risk, but to increase quality of life. I don't think that counts as "no effect" just "no effect on mortality" which is unsurprising.

> The purpose is not really to reduce death risk, but to increase quality of life.

Not necessarily. There are many at home services geared around attempting to improve medication adherence in elderly patients for example, as they frequently are on several medications concurrently and have trouble keeping track of dosing requirements due to cognitive dysfunction. Non-adherence can have a significant effect on longevity.

Re: Show HN: Guess which government programs work

#25

Post by Asbostos »

nulltype wrote: post #14
NateLawson wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, this is really neat. It reminds me of the lesswrong.com community, where the goal is to figure out ways of offsetting cognitive biases. One thing I've always wanted to see is a mandatory A/B test built into any new legislation. That is, funding for a study after X years of the new law or program being in place would have to be part of the law. It could even including a threshold of the desired controlled effect…

What if robberies decreased by 20% for some unrelated reason and the legislation increased robberies by 10%? It would still look like a 10% decrease overall.

I would think the law would have to be designed to be compatible with an experiment. Such as being phased in at different times in different places. You'd really have to design the experiment and set objective criteria for pass/fail before passing the law otherwise there'll be all kinds of interested groups distorting it.

Re: Show HN: Guess which government programs work

#26

Post by jhundal »

NateLawson wrote: post #3
robertwiblin wrote: post #2

I'm one of the creators of the quiz! Note that the projects were not chosen based on their results, and certainly not because the results are counterintuitive. Rather they are the ten best understood social programs we could find. You can read about the findings of our research into whether people can guess what works and what doesn't ahead of time: http://www.vox.com/2015/8/13/9148123/quiz-which-programs-wor...

Hey, this is really neat. It reminds me of the lesswrong.com community, where the goal is to figure out ways of offsetting cognitive biases. One thing I've always wanted to see is a mandatory A/B test built into any new legislation. That is, funding for a study after X years of the new law or program being in place would have to be part of the law. It could even including a threshold of the desired controlled effect…

Not sure how many folks are aware of this, but the ACA included funding for an 'Innovation Center' to run experiments on potential approaches to improve medical outcomes and cut costs: http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/01/14/37719262...

I think that the A/B tests you propose would be great, though there will be plenty of ideologues still finding excuses not to accept the results.

Also, hi Nate! You probably don't remember, but you interviewed me sometime around December 2011.

Re: Show HN: Guess which government programs work

#28

Post by tomjen3 »

dang wrote: post #4
robertwiblin wrote: post #2

I'm one of the creators of the quiz! Note that the projects were not chosen based on their results, and certainly not because the results are counterintuitive. Rather they are the ten best understood social programs we could find. You can read about the findings of our research into whether people can guess what works and what doesn't ahead of time: http://www.vox.com/2015/8/13/9148123/quiz-which-programs-wor...

But don't read the article before taking the quiz. It gives away one of the best answers.

I don't think so, in fact that one was obvious, and unlike most of the others, believable.

Re: Show HN: Guess which government programs work

#29

Post by susiecambria »

NateLawson wrote: post #3
robertwiblin wrote: post #2

I'm one of the creators of the quiz! Note that the projects were not chosen based on their results, and certainly not because the results are counterintuitive. Rather they are the ten best understood social programs we could find. You can read about the findings of our research into whether people can guess what works and what doesn't ahead of time: http://www.vox.com/2015/8/13/9148123/quiz-which-programs-wor...

Hey, this is really neat. It reminds me of the lesswrong.com community, where the goal is to figure out ways of offsetting cognitive biases. One thing I've always wanted to see is a mandatory A/B test built into any new legislation. That is, funding for a study after X years of the new law or program being in place would have to be part of the law. It could even including a threshold of the desired controlled effect…

I would like to quote your comment in a blog post I am doing about the test. With your permission, would quote the last two paragraphs - as an example of how the test results show change is needed and voila, here's a way to change things. Gr8 idea btw. A twist on sunsetting.

Re: Show HN: Guess which government programs work

#30

Post by tomjen3 »

asgard1024 wrote: post #12

This is great! One of the interesting things about social sciences (and engineering, although just like computer hacking, social engineering has unfortunately strong negative connotations) is that the real world is often counter-intuitive. In particular, people tend to believe in punishment a lot, while it commonly escalates the problem (I like the quip "emphasis on punishment is the sign of an obedience frame"). I a…

I hated this quiz, since it is propaganda to social science, which doesn't deserve to use the word science.
Post reply on HN