Julius

No, Americans Don't Think Foreign Aid Is 26% of the Budget

I hate the polling question "What percentage of the US budget goes to foreign aid?" Or, more precisely, I hate the way the results are interpreted. The way these polls are reported is essentially guaranteed to produce a wild overestimate, which inevitably leads experts to write "how wrong Americans are" pieces, like this Brookings article claiming that "Americans believe foreign aid is in the range of 25 percent of the federal budget," or KFF[1]reporting that the "average perceived amount spent on foreign aid was 26%." But this isn't just ignorance. The real problem is a failure of measurement and the statistics used to summarize it. The story isn't "Americans are clueless" (though that may also be true), it's "pollsters are using the wrong math." The Real Problem: Arithmetic Mean + Small Numbers The problem is that pollsters ask for a percentage, then take the arithmetic mean to represent the data. For small true values, this approach is structurally doomed, and it has nothing to do with foreign aid specifically. It has to do with how we summarize guesses about small numbers. When the true value is small, guesses are bounded at zero but unbounded above. That is, nobody can guess negative percentages, but anyone can guess 50% or 80%. On top of that, people tend to respond with round numbers like 5% or 20%, not decimals like 0.05% or 0.15%. This means that, even if there are many guesses around the true value of ~1%, there can only be outliers in the positive direction, so it results in a right-skewed distribution. If we choose the arithmetic mean as the average, it will be dragged upward by the right tail. A handful of overestimates skew the whole average. This isn’t a sampling problem, and it won’t go away with more data. With more data, the arithmetic mean converges to the population arithmetic mean, but in a right-skewed distribution, that number is systematically higher than the median or geometric mean. A larger sample just gives you a more precise estima

67Dec 14, 2025

Julius

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207

Robert Sapolsky Is Simply Not Talking About Compatibilism

Imagine someone wrote a 500-page book called Taking Down Vegetarianism and every chapter was about how animals can feel pain. The arguments are well-researched, the science is fascinating, and by the end you're completely convinced that animals suffer. You look up from the book and say: “Yes, that's why I'm...

Feb 2126

Contra Sam Harris on Free Will

There is something it feels like to make a choice. As I decide how to open this essay, I have the familiar sense that I could express these ideas in many ways. I weigh different options, imagine how each might land, and select one. This process of deliberation is what...

Jan 2820

No, Americans Don't Think Foreign Aid Is 26% of the Budget

Dec 14, 202567

Thinking in Predictions

[This essay is my attempt to write the "predictions 101" post I wish I'd read when first encountering these ideas. It draws extensively from The Sequences, and will be familiar material to many LW readers. But I've found it valuable to work through these concepts in my own voice, and...

Dec 7, 202520

Book Review: The System

Robert Reich wants you to be angry. He wants you to be furious at the rich, outraged at corporations, and incensed by the unfairness of it all. In his book The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, Reich paints a picture of an America ruled by oligarchs, where...

Sep 27, 202514

Probiotics For Traveler's Diarrhea Prevention

I have discovered the ultimate weight loss secret. I lost seventeen pounds in two weeks. SEVENTEEN POUNDS. The beauty of my system is its breathtaking simplicity. No calorie counting. No forbidden foods. You don't even need to exercise, unless you count sprinting to the bathroom as cardio, which I suppose...

Sep 11, 20256

AISN #44: The Trump Circle on AI Safety Plus, Chinese researchers used Llama to create a military tool for the PLA, a Google AI system discovered a zero-day cybersecurity vulnerability, and Complex Systems

Welcome to the AI Safety Newsletter by the Center for AI Safety. We discuss developments in AI and AI safety. No technical background required. Listen to the AI Safety Newsletter for free on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Subscribe here to receive future versions. The Trump Circle on AI Safety The...

Nov 19, 20249

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Julius

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No, Americans Don't Think Foreign Aid Is 26% of the Budget

Robert Sapolsky Is Simply Not Talking About Compatibilism

Contra Sam Harris on Free Will

Thinking in Predictions

Julius

Robert Sapolsky Is Simply Not Talking About Compatibilism

Contra Sam Harris on Free Will

No, Americans Don't Think Foreign Aid Is 26% of the Budget

Thinking in Predictions

Book Review: The System

Probiotics For Traveler's Diarrhea Prevention

AISN #44: The Trump Circle on AI Safety Plus, Chinese researchers used Llama to create a military tool for the PLA, a Google AI system discovered a zero-day cybersecurity vulnerability, and Complex Systems

No, Americans Don't Think Foreign Aid Is 26% of the Budget

Robert Sapolsky Is Simply Not Talking About Compatibilism

Contra Sam Harris on Free Will

Thinking in Predictions

Robert Sapolsky Is Simply Not Talking About Compatibilism

Contra Sam Harris on Free Will

No, Americans Don't Think Foreign Aid Is 26% of the Budget

Thinking in Predictions

Book Review: The System

Probiotics For Traveler's Diarrhea Prevention

AISN #44: The Trump Circle on AI Safety Plus, Chinese researchers used Llama to create a military tool for the PLA, a Google AI system discovered a zero-day cybersecurity vulnerability, and Complex Systems