The winningest rationalist I know of is Dominic Cummings, who was the lead strategist behind the Brexit pro-leave movement. While the majority of LWers may not agree with his goals, he did seem to be effective, and he frequently makes references to rationalist concepts (including IIRC some references to the work of Eliezer Yudkowsky) on his blog: https://dominiccummings.com/
I followed his work, and I estimate the difference he made to be very high relative to other individuals working on the issue (on either side). According to his own estimation, his contribution consisted of assembling highly competent people and then minimizing interference from incompetent ones.
Some context: he had previously worked on the campaign to reject the Euro, and so had more experience with the question of ‘how people in the UK feel about the EU’ than most, which is why there was a push to recruit him for a campaign. Their campaign took a series of basic steps, like tried to determine what voters actually thought, which none of the other campaigns did. Then they tested a bunch of different methods to communicate with the voters effectively (the other campaigns went with old strategies and did not check whether they worked), and focused on driving voter turnout.
In a nutshell what he did was: determine to solve the actual problem, find other like-minded people, and then set about actually trying to solve the problem using basic tools like measurement and experiment. You can find the list of posts on his blog relevant to the campaign here, but I think the real meat is in #20-22. He does not claim responsibility for success, placing most of the credit with the team and most of the blame with an incompetently run Remain campaign.
I followed his work, and I estimate the difference he made to be very high relative to other individuals working on the issue (on either side).
On what basis the polling was close before the referendum, and the result of the referendum was close. I am not seeing evidence that he made something happen that would not have happened. Are you saying that he must have got results, because he was using the right methods?
What he made happen that would not have happened is voters turning out to vote for Brexit at a higher rate.
When the campaign began, polling was not close. Here is one, from a company which Cummings referred to frequently, that showed a 10 point lead for staying in as of August 2015. The rest of that post is here, wherein he discusses the state of things as the campaign was beginning.
Further, I point you to the expected outcomes, which were heavily in favor of the UK remaining. On page 4 here you see the odds Betfair was putting on the question. This is only over the 10 week span of the official campaign immediately before the referendum.
Using the right methods, their team was able to determine that the actual level of support for leaving was higher than the other campaigns or the media expected. Investigating what the voters thought (via focus groups) helped them identify what people’s concerns were, for and against. Then they tested different ways of communicating with voters, such that their communication resonated with leave voters and minimized antagonism of remain voters. As a result, the turnout for leave voters was higher than expected before the campaign.
At the same time, the other campaigns made assumptions both about the real state of opinion and about methods for communicating with voters. These assumptions were wrong, and they did not test them. As a result, turnout for remain voters was mediocre. I’m not sure if this was expected or not; the remain campaign was pretty much business as usual, so I suspect it was.
The winningest rationalist I know of is Dominic Cummings, who was the lead strategist behind the Brexit pro-leave movement. While the majority of LWers may not agree with his goals, he did seem to be effective, and he frequently makes references to rationalist concepts (including IIRC some references to the work of Eliezer Yudkowsky) on his blog: https://dominiccummings.com/
How much of a difference do you think he made? Was there strong pro-remain sentiment before he got stated?
I followed his work, and I estimate the difference he made to be very high relative to other individuals working on the issue (on either side). According to his own estimation, his contribution consisted of assembling highly competent people and then minimizing interference from incompetent ones.
Some context: he had previously worked on the campaign to reject the Euro, and so had more experience with the question of ‘how people in the UK feel about the EU’ than most, which is why there was a push to recruit him for a campaign. Their campaign took a series of basic steps, like tried to determine what voters actually thought, which none of the other campaigns did. Then they tested a bunch of different methods to communicate with the voters effectively (the other campaigns went with old strategies and did not check whether they worked), and focused on driving voter turnout.
In a nutshell what he did was: determine to solve the actual problem, find other like-minded people, and then set about actually trying to solve the problem using basic tools like measurement and experiment. You can find the list of posts on his blog relevant to the campaign here, but I think the real meat is in #20-22. He does not claim responsibility for success, placing most of the credit with the team and most of the blame with an incompetently run Remain campaign.
On what basis the polling was close before the referendum, and the result of the referendum was close. I am not seeing evidence that he made something happen that would not have happened. Are you saying that he must have got results, because he was using the right methods?
How come we sill don’t know?
What he made happen that would not have happened is voters turning out to vote for Brexit at a higher rate.
When the campaign began, polling was not close. Here is one, from a company which Cummings referred to frequently, that showed a 10 point lead for staying in as of August 2015. The rest of that post is here, wherein he discusses the state of things as the campaign was beginning.
Further, I point you to the expected outcomes, which were heavily in favor of the UK remaining. On page 4 here you see the odds Betfair was putting on the question. This is only over the 10 week span of the official campaign immediately before the referendum.
Using the right methods, their team was able to determine that the actual level of support for leaving was higher than the other campaigns or the media expected. Investigating what the voters thought (via focus groups) helped them identify what people’s concerns were, for and against. Then they tested different ways of communicating with voters, such that their communication resonated with leave voters and minimized antagonism of remain voters. As a result, the turnout for leave voters was higher than expected before the campaign.
At the same time, the other campaigns made assumptions both about the real state of opinion and about methods for communicating with voters. These assumptions were wrong, and they did not test them. As a result, turnout for remain voters was mediocre. I’m not sure if this was expected or not; the remain campaign was pretty much business as usual, so I suspect it was.