Comment by tomtim on Open Thread, Jun. 8 - Jun. 14, 2015 · 2015-06-20T14:35:40.019Z · LW · GW

Bonjour! Translation can be frustrating, but it's almost never because one of the languages sucks. From my experience, there is probably an equal number of concepts that are hard to translate the other way around.

Here are my attempts:

“Evidence for a given theory is the observation of an event that is more likely to occur if the theory is true than if it is false”

Une donnée en faveur d’une théorie consiste en l’observation d’un évènement plus probable si la théorie est vraie que si la théorie est fausse.

or

Une indication en faveur d’une théorie consiste en l’observation d’un évènement plus probable si la théorie est vraie que si la théorie est fausse.

or

Un élément de preuve en faveur d’une théorie consiste en l’observation d’un évènement plus probable si la théorie est vraie que si la théorie est fausse.

“Generalization from fictional evidence”

Généralisation depuis des données fictionelles.

Comment by tomtim on Taking Effective Altruism Seriously · 2015-06-20T14:18:01.996Z · LW · GW

Would it be fair to summarise your post thus: "aid to the poorest people on earth is an ineffective way to create utils, it is better to invest in western businesses" ?

Now I must say that this is a very long-standing debate. One way this debate has taken place is between Jeff Sachs and William Easterly. (Easterly basically takes the same position as you in this post.) Sachs and Easterly have been writing books on this for years. You provide a link to one general economic history book, and a link to an RCT evaluation of GiveDirectly. This is a good start, but I don't think it brings any new insight, let alone warrant a 90% confidence in your beliefs. The rise of RCT in developement economics came out of the observation that the Sachs-Easterly debate was targeting unanswerable grand questions instead of limited and specific ones. There is now an extensive literature trying to answer the exact question "Can aid interventions create utils? How much?". GiveWell try to answer the same question. I don't think providing some standard arguments from the Easterly camp is advancing the discussion much.

edit: added links