Do you believe that experts who think developing world aid is not effective, are more likely to be driven by ideological considerations?
No, not necessarily. I think that my remark applies equally to the quote by Shiktawi and the quote by Jeffrey Sachs.
But… you just said… Wait—you mean you believe there are humans whose opinions are not heavily skewed by selection bias and/or driven by ideological considerations which have nothing to do with the available evidence?
No, although on a given topic some people are more even-handed than others. I would recur to the “A Note on Overcorrecting Bias” section at the end of my top level post.
In short: A sudden decrease in child mortality reliably causes terrorism and civil war.
The links that you provide do not corroborate your above statement (which seems to me to be quite sweeping). Are there more relevant references that you would point to?
The links that you provide do not corroborate your above statement. Are there more relevant references that you would draw attention to?
I believe that they corroborate my statement. Most countries that have a sudden decrease in child mortality, have frequent terrorism and/or civil war. Few countries today that did not have that sudden decrease, have frequent terrorism and/or civil war. Find me another variable that correlates as strongly with terrorism and war, or an argument that causation runs the other way, if you want to refute that. I find it hard to believe that terrorism and civil war cause a sudden decrease in child mortality.
I slightly edited my comment while you were replying to the parenthetical “(which seems to me to be quite sweeping)”.
You raise a question which I will have to think about and may eventually have more to say something about.
My first reaction is that the collection of examples that you cite is too small to support the claim that in general to support the claim that there’s even reliable correlation between decrease in child mortality to result in frequent terrorism and/or civil war.
The collection I cited is all the countries in the world today. I don’t think you can get a bigger sample.
I haven’t done a statistical test; I haven’t searched for alternate hypotheses. The word “reliably” is too strong, since there are exceptions—I’ll change it to “usually”.
The collection I cited is all the countries in the world today. I don’t think you can get a bigger sample.
What about historically? The set of nations that exists now is a subset of all the nations and empires that ever existed. What was the median age in France in 1700?
No, not necessarily. I think that my remark applies equally to the quote by Shiktawi and the quote by Jeffrey Sachs.
No, although on a given topic some people are more even-handed than others. I would recur to the “A Note on Overcorrecting Bias” section at the end of my top level post.
The links that you provide do not corroborate your above statement (which seems to me to be quite sweeping). Are there more relevant references that you would point to?
I believe that they corroborate my statement. Most countries that have a sudden decrease in child mortality, have frequent terrorism and/or civil war. Few countries today that did not have that sudden decrease, have frequent terrorism and/or civil war. Find me another variable that correlates as strongly with terrorism and war, or an argument that causation runs the other way, if you want to refute that. I find it hard to believe that terrorism and civil war cause a sudden decrease in child mortality.
I slightly edited my comment while you were replying to the parenthetical “(which seems to me to be quite sweeping)”.
You raise a question which I will have to think about and may eventually have more to say something about.
My first reaction is that the collection of examples that you cite is too small to support the claim that in general to support the claim that there’s even reliable correlation between decrease in child mortality to result in frequent terrorism and/or civil war.
The collection I cited is all the countries in the world today. I don’t think you can get a bigger sample.
I haven’t done a statistical test; I haven’t searched for alternate hypotheses. The word “reliably” is too strong, since there are exceptions—I’ll change it to “usually”.
What about historically? The set of nations that exists now is a subset of all the nations and empires that ever existed. What was the median age in France in 1700?