Adam G. Hughes

research scientist at @meta focused on AI, economics, and policy research. formerly: @pewresearch data labs, @uva.

[Future 42 @future42org]

LEAD or Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion has been used in Seattle for years to help 'divert' drug addicts who commit non violent crimes into programs meant to help them. Activists have claimed the success rate was near 60%, and in turn the program has been replicated all over the country...

Except the actual data says the success rate is "probably 0%".

Fox 13's Hana Kim interviews Eric Zimmerman from the Washington Policy Center about what went wrong, and how it hurts both the addicts and society.

Bonus, there is now a nationwide call for audits to find out how effective (or harmful) it really is.

@hanamkim | @fox13seattle
'Flawed data in Seattle's ‘LEAD’ diversion program prompts calls for audit'
Article: https://t.co/MUqBBAONz0

[Logan Bowers 🏗️ 🏘️ @loganb]

Seattle’s “affordable housing” advocates are arguing for less housing overall because they personally profit from these taxes on new homes.

Remember that’s who they are and they don’t want to solve the housing crisis.

[Keegan - Smartest Boy Urbanist™️ @keegan_tweets]

Incredible that you can have poll numbers by just enforcing the law and focusing on public space quality of life and no one else seems interested in grabbing this flag.

[Sandeep Kaushik @skaushik100]

“We built this crisis by choosing developers over people. We can choose differently.”

There’s still a segment of the left that believes that socking it to developers is more important than maximizing housing construction. But that view was way more prevalent in Seattle 10-15 years ago, when Boomer electeds were still wielding substantial political power.

Housing policy is one area where the Millennial/Gen Z left has rapidly evolved in a much smarter and more results-focused direction, leaving behind the old Boomer/Gen X left as well as the status quo mods.

[Adam G. Hughes @aghpol]

@MikeIsaac @BrandyLJensen @jaeporeon It’s really weird how journalists don’t understand how to read papers and interpret evidence

[Karen Vaites @karenvaites]

This is the most important thing @KelseyTuoc has written about education, by a city mile.

Just read it:

[Sol Messing @SolomonMg]

You can just research things. New from @j_a_tucker & me at @BrookingsInst: Coding agents like Claude Code and Codex will likely accelerate research AND undermine institutional structures we built to support it.

[Adam G. Hughes @aghpol]

@skaushik100 @RealSeattleNice What’s particularly wild to me is that I learned more about the what explains the lack of good governance in this domain on a podcast than I did in YEARS of reading @seattletimes

[Sandeep Kaushik @skaushik100]

If you’re at all concerned with public safety in Seattle, you should listen closely to the new @RealSeattleNice conversation with Scott Lindsay, former mayoral public safety advisor and (until recently) Deputy City Attorney under Ann Davision. The senior folks in the Wilson administration would be well advised to pay attention to Scott’s assessment too.

Whether you fully agree with them or not, Scott’s informed takes on what’s working and what’s not to address problem an criminal behavior on our streets reminds me how shallow and polarized our civic conversation continues to be about consequential - and complicated - public safety issues, how much it’s been dominated by bumper sticker bromides from the left and the right, and how the local media needs to do a much better job of explaining the underlying realities of the public safety policy landscape in the city.

[Adam G. Hughes @aghpol]

@stevemur Note that the study used synthetic controls, not simulation/synthetic data. This just means pooling other empirical data to create a rough estimate of the counterfactual Oregon/Washington

[Liz Franczak @liz_franczak]

that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art?

[pollcat @pollcat]

We just release a new analysis the highlights the potential of opt-in surveys -- those that allow people to volunteer to participate -- to provide misleading results, especially for young adults and Hispanics https://t.co/bZFwPFmtlD

[Screen Slate @ScreenSlate]

Happy 93 Gena Rowlands

[Adam G. Hughes @aghpol]

70mm is back in the Emerald City

[Adam G. Hughes @aghpol]

New foundational research on the effectiveness of digital advertising: https://t.co/Kb5RpRwCHB Proud of my colleagues who contributed to this work!

[Sol Messing @SolomonMg]

📢🚨 New paper @PatrickYWu, @j_a_tucker, @Jonathan_Nagler & me 🚨

1. We show vast knowledge embedded in LLMs (#ChatGPT) can be used for latent measurement (ideology).

2. Correlated but distinct from existing methods.

3. Extensible to new probs.
https://t.co/WtMorC4j3A

[Tom Gara @tomgara]

As in many of these campus conflict stories, the villains here are the college administrators, who seem completely incompetent and maybe like actual legal liabilities https://t.co/rXVhuWIOrT

[Richard Brody @tnyfrontrow]

Molly Ringwald's memoir of working with Godard on King Lear, this week in @NewYorker, is essential reading—it's cinematic in itself, with a view of an unmade film that, while reading about it, I felt like I was seeing: https://t.co/FrJl3eR1WL

[Amaç Herdağdelen @amacinho]

Our paper on community gifting groups on Facebook is out! We used de-identified data from Facebook Groups to study local gift-giving communities, specifically buy nothing (BN) groups. These communities allow people to share, reduce waste, and connect to their local community.