I’m trying to translate some material from LessWrong for a friend (interested with various subjects aborded here, but can’t read english…), and I’m struggling to find the best translation for “evidence”. I have many candidates, but every one of them is a little bit off relative to the connotation of "evidence". Since it’s a so central term in all the writings here, I figured out that it could not be bad to spend a little time finding a really good translation, rather than a just-okayish one.

English readers : - Could you find a few different sentences that would cover all (slighty differenrt) usages of evidence ? The objective is, if my translation fit well in all those propositions, there is good chances that it will fit well in everything i may want to translate. For example, from wiki : “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” “Generalization from fictional evidence” “Conservation of expected evidence”. I except that finding a translation that will cover equally well those three usages will basically cover any usage, but can you think of a 4th usage that may prove problematic even for a term that fit well for the 3 others ? - What would be the less bad synonym of “evidence” : clue, proof, observation, sign (that’s basically my best candidates, translated back in english). I dislike all of them, but that’s the best candidates I found, translated back in english. (substitute evidence in all the test sentences abole, and you will understand my problem. “Clue for a given theory…” is somewhat good, but “conservation of expected clue” less so…)

French readers, if any :

J’ai comme candidats : « preuve », « indice », « signe », « observation ». D’autres propositions ? Laquelle vous semble la meilleure ?

Thanks for your cooperation.

(and don’t get me started on “entangled with”, I think I will lose much hair trying to find an acceptable translation for that one. French sucks.)

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