multifoliaterose comments on The Effectiveness of Developing World Aid - Less Wrong

19 Post author: multifoliaterose 12 September 2010 09:56PM

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Comment author: multifoliaterose 13 September 2010 09:21:42PM *  1 point [-]

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.

Comment author: PhilGoetz 13 September 2010 09:36:52PM *  4 points [-]

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".

Comment author: CronoDAS 14 September 2010 02:02:08AM *  2 points [-]

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?