Hi Ben. I agree with you. Yes I think roulette is a good analogy. And yes I think the “perfect information on expected value” is a strange claim to make.
But I do think it is useful to think about what could be said and justified. I do think a claim along these lines could be made and it would not be wholly unfalsifiable and it would not require completely preferencing Bayesian expected value calculations.
To give another analogy I think there is a reasonable long-termist equivalent of statements like:
Because of differences in wealth and purchasing power we expect that a donor in the developed west can have a much bigger impact overseas than in their home country. So in practice looking towards those kinds of international development options is a useful tool to apply when we are deciding what to do.
This does not completely exclude the probability that we can have impact locally with donations, but it does direct our searching.
Being charitable to Will+Hillary, maybe that is all they are saying. And maybe it is so confusing because they have dressed it up in philosophical language – but this is because, as per GPI’s goals, this paper is about engaging philosophy academics rather than producing any novel insight.
(If being more critical I am not convinced that Will+Hillary successfully give sufficient evidence to make such a claim in this paper and also see my list of things their paper could improve above.)
Hi Ben. I agree with you. Yes I think roulette is a good analogy. And yes I think the “perfect information on expected value” is a strange claim to make.
But I do think it is useful to think about what could be said and justified. I do think a claim along these lines could be made and it would not be wholly unfalsifiable and it would not require completely preferencing Bayesian expected value calculations.
To give another analogy I think there is a reasonable long-termist equivalent of statements like:
Because of differences in wealth and purchasing power we expect that a donor in the developed west can have a much bigger impact overseas than in their home country. So in practice looking towards those kinds of international development options is a useful tool to apply when we are deciding what to do.
This does not completely exclude the probability that we can have impact locally with donations, but it does direct our searching.
Being charitable to Will+Hillary, maybe that is all they are saying. And maybe it is so confusing because they have dressed it up in philosophical language – but this is because, as per GPI’s goals, this paper is about engaging philosophy academics rather than producing any novel insight.
(If being more critical I am not convinced that Will+Hillary successfully give sufficient evidence to make such a claim in this paper and also see my list of things their paper could improve above.)