How does the idea of stopping funding for ineffective goals fit:
longtermist goals that require actions whose effectiveness cannot be judged in the short-term. You never know if actions toward the goal are effective.
goals to prevent existential risk or suffering risk when the absence of the unwanted outcome could have many reasons other than an organization’s actions to prevent the outcome.
goals that are high value but whose probability of success is low (assuming decisions to support causes use Expected Value), and whose alternative and more likely outcomes have low value. You wouldn’t stop funding until the outcome is known, too late to save any resources spent toward the goal.
There are certainly good things you can do where you can’t measure the outcomes to work out how effective these are. As a prior, I would say that the fact that an intervention is non-measurable should count against it. If non-measurable effects are regularly accepted, then you will see a lot of organisations claiming non-measurable benefits and there will be no way to reasonably evaluate which ones are providing legitimate value and which ones aren’t.
In addition, even if you don’t know if your actions will be effective, you should be able to finish doing the actions at some point.
Thanks for your reply. Yes, nonmeasurable effects allow people to claim effects and then get taken at their word, or not. However, measurable effects are easy to fake, what’s the saying, something about “lies, damned lies, and statistics”?
Can you imagine plausible scenarios where if all your suggestions were put into practice, the same problems that you aim to avoid still occur?
How does the idea of stopping funding for ineffective goals fit:
longtermist goals that require actions whose effectiveness cannot be judged in the short-term. You never know if actions toward the goal are effective.
goals to prevent existential risk or suffering risk when the absence of the unwanted outcome could have many reasons other than an organization’s actions to prevent the outcome.
goals that are high value but whose probability of success is low (assuming decisions to support causes use Expected Value), and whose alternative and more likely outcomes have low value. You wouldn’t stop funding until the outcome is known, too late to save any resources spent toward the goal.
There are certainly good things you can do where you can’t measure the outcomes to work out how effective these are. As a prior, I would say that the fact that an intervention is non-measurable should count against it. If non-measurable effects are regularly accepted, then you will see a lot of organisations claiming non-measurable benefits and there will be no way to reasonably evaluate which ones are providing legitimate value and which ones aren’t.
In addition, even if you don’t know if your actions will be effective, you should be able to finish doing the actions at some point.
Thanks for your reply. Yes, nonmeasurable effects allow people to claim effects and then get taken at their word, or not. However, measurable effects are easy to fake, what’s the saying, something about “lies, damned lies, and statistics”?
Can you imagine plausible scenarios where if all your suggestions were put into practice, the same problems that you aim to avoid still occur?