Sure, if you assume (as you do) that Folding won’t save many lives in the long run, it looks like a bad use of resources if you’re purely concerned about charity. But that assumption could be applied to any research that doesn’t pay off immediately or with certainty. The LHC uses 180 MW (http://lhc-machine-outreach.web.cern.ch/lhc-machine-outreach/faq/lhc-energy-consumption.htm) for example, or 12x as much as much as your numbers for F@H, and is arguably even less practical, despite no doubt producing many more papers.
So, you’re resorting to the same teapot argument I specifically addressed in the essay. No wonder this conversation is so frustrating for me—it looks to me like you didn’t read it, or skimmed it at best.
How is this situation comparable to any “teapot argument”? There are clear and obvious ways that something like Folding could produce valuable results. It might not, but it wouldn’t be shocking if it did, and it doesn’t need either a high probability or an especially large magnitude of success to make up for a few lives a year in EV. Comparing it to space teapots is getting things wrong by many orders of magnitude.
Anything looks bad if you incorrectly assume that the probability of it working is astronomically small.
edit: And the reason this conversation has been a bit confusing is because you made two different points (that F@H is a net negative even ignoring opportunity costs, and that giving charity to anything other than the #1 Givewell charity or close equivalent is bad), and while I don’t agree with either of them, they’re unrelated enough that it’s tricky to argue against both at once.
There are clear and obvious ways that something like Folding could produce valuable results.
Which it has not. 10 years it has run, and the paper count seems to be dropping.
What is the prior probability for Folding@home justifying either its sins of commission or sins of omission? Now, what’s the posterior probability, conditional on what we have (not) observed, of it now retroactively justifying all past expenses, and then its ongoing expenses?
edit: Also at best you don’t seem to have any better justification for thinking that the probability of significant success is astronomically low than I do for thinking that it’s low but not astronomically so, so this aspect of the argument isn’t really going anywhere.
Folding has already incurred somewhere around $100m in total expenses. Do the Bayesian update on a 1/10th chance not happening… It’s not epsilon or zero, I’ll tell you that!
Let me ask you something. I know what evidence would convince me that Folding was a good idea: show me a drug based on Folding results or a therapy change or something like that. But is there any evidence that could convince you that Folding is not a good idea? Because everything you’ve said seems like it could apply to any project.
Sure, if you assume (as you do) that Folding won’t save many lives in the long run, it looks like a bad use of resources if you’re purely concerned about charity. But that assumption could be applied to any research that doesn’t pay off immediately or with certainty. The LHC uses 180 MW (http://lhc-machine-outreach.web.cern.ch/lhc-machine-outreach/faq/lhc-energy-consumption.htm) for example, or 12x as much as much as your numbers for F@H, and is arguably even less practical, despite no doubt producing many more papers.
So, you’re resorting to the same teapot argument I specifically addressed in the essay. No wonder this conversation is so frustrating for me—it looks to me like you didn’t read it, or skimmed it at best.
How is this situation comparable to any “teapot argument”? There are clear and obvious ways that something like Folding could produce valuable results. It might not, but it wouldn’t be shocking if it did, and it doesn’t need either a high probability or an especially large magnitude of success to make up for a few lives a year in EV. Comparing it to space teapots is getting things wrong by many orders of magnitude.
Anything looks bad if you incorrectly assume that the probability of it working is astronomically small.
edit: And the reason this conversation has been a bit confusing is because you made two different points (that F@H is a net negative even ignoring opportunity costs, and that giving charity to anything other than the #1 Givewell charity or close equivalent is bad), and while I don’t agree with either of them, they’re unrelated enough that it’s tricky to argue against both at once.
Which it has not. 10 years it has run, and the paper count seems to be dropping.
What is the prior probability for Folding@home justifying either its sins of commission or sins of omission? Now, what’s the posterior probability, conditional on what we have (not) observed, of it now retroactively justifying all past expenses, and then its ongoing expenses?
It costs up to a billion dollars (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_development) and up to 14 years (http://www.addictiontreatmentmagazine.com/addiction-treatment/what-it-takes-to-bring-new-treatment-drugs-to-market/) to create a new drug once the basic idea is discovered, and seeing as the companies doing this stay in business, that level of investment must be (reasonably) worthwhile economically. Folding is a drop in the bucket compared to that and even if it never achieves anything serious and is eventually shut down, it seems like it was worth trying—and there’s still a chance that it could discover something important about proteins.
edit: Also at best you don’t seem to have any better justification for thinking that the probability of significant success is astronomically low than I do for thinking that it’s low but not astronomically so, so this aspect of the argument isn’t really going anywhere.
Folding has already incurred somewhere around $100m in total expenses. Do the Bayesian update on a 1/10th chance not happening… It’s not epsilon or zero, I’ll tell you that!
Let me ask you something. I know what evidence would convince me that Folding was a good idea: show me a drug based on Folding results or a therapy change or something like that. But is there any evidence that could convince you that Folding is not a good idea? Because everything you’ve said seems like it could apply to any project.