When we talk about social change like improving policy or promoting an idea like effective altruism, how do we figure out the counterfactual to measure our impact? Say I’m a civil rights activist in the 1950′s and I really want to give a speech titled “I Have a Dream.” How would I determine if someone else would do something similar (like MLK actually did in 1963)?
In order words, what social change is inevitable and what is more malleable? In posting this comment, did I just make the idea of “Replaceability in Social Change” come into the EA idea-sphere sooner than it would have otherwise.. or is the counterfactual that we wouldn’t even consider this idea? What general frameworks can we use for answering this question, and how do we avoid hindsight bias?
To answer your object-level question, I believe that something resembling the idea of “Replaceability of Social Change” would enter our minds eventually. For the last few months, there has been conversation in the Facebook group about the importance of, and how to assess, the history of social movements. Additionally, groups like the Open Philanthropy Project are pushing forward the idea of assessing political change. From our point of view, variable change will affect the probability that a certain idea will come to us for any given point in time. As we discussed other ideas factoring into this one, over time, it seems like we might eventually come across it.
Anyway, you’re trying to figure out what important social change we would want that would not happen, or fail, if we didn’t intervene. I agree with Robby Bensinger that all of history added up together is very fragile, with small changes to the initial state of any point possibly causing huge changes later. So, again, I believe this is difficult, and that we need to get more specific.
Thanks for asking these tough questions. I appreciate it.
I’ve given this some more thought, and I think I’ve at least partially explained why my model of social change involves less fragility than others’. I think of modern human society similarly to how I think about evolutionary human society (i.e. when we still faced obvious natural selection pressures) and similarly to how I think about evolution as a whole. In biology, it’s in some way true that “All evolution is random,” in that mutations in genetic code are arbitrary. I think of people in this same way. Yes, I agree that what MLK did in particular probably had causation in random things like his birthday or a specific event in his childhood or other randomness, but on the macro-scale, this randomness evens out in some sense and all possible micro-worlds converge, like they (mostly) do in evolution.
To specify what you mean, I believe the important idea is a question: how can we use replaceability to measure the impact (or expected value) of social change?
I believe traction can be made towards solving this problem, but I still believe it will be difficult. I notice that you use the historical example of Martin Luther King, Jr.‘s activism, but you want to measure social impact in the present, or for the future. However, I notice that I can’t recall reading about anyone, effective altruists or otherwise, ever measuring the impact of social change in the past. Like, we take Martin Luther King, Jr.’s success for granted, even though we haven’t tried quantifying it at all. We could then try comparing King’s success to other activist strategies: those which worked well, and others less so.
In measuring the impact of historical efforts, we are measuring in a field where we have access to all the measurable data. So, that makes studying history good practice grounds for figuring out what to look for in estimating social impact in the future.
Here’s some suggestions for doing that:
One can learn how to measure anything, and practice for free, which should help in measuring something as abstract as the impact of social change. I believe trying to measure other intangibles as practice a bit will give one experience to gauge how to measure the impact of social change. From there, realizing getting some kind, any kind of metric(s) placed on what you’re trying to measure in social change is better than having no metric(s).
One can also study Givewell’s History of Philanthropy Project to get a sense of how they determined which historical points were worth considering. Then, you can try replicating it a bit in studying the history of social change. Note that Givewell’s project focuses upon the history of philanthropy in the United States, which might be a narrower and simpler section to assess than the history of social change.
In regards to determining where to start with at a point in history, asking some historians, and the community, what heuristics they would use could help. Givewell itself hired some actual historians.
The guide How To Measure Anything may give some ideas, but I believe the metric you’ll be developing for social impact will be more similar to metrics used in global studies or reports from the WHO, or other NGOs, or in charity evaluation. Perhaps review the field of sociology for any ideas it has for measuring social change.
This is a framework for figuring out how to measure the impact that we must create for ourselves. Frankly, the idea of replaceability, let measurement, in social change might be rare enough that we might be the first ones to put that method together.
[Replaceability in Social Change]
When we talk about social change like improving policy or promoting an idea like effective altruism, how do we figure out the counterfactual to measure our impact? Say I’m a civil rights activist in the 1950′s and I really want to give a speech titled “I Have a Dream.” How would I determine if someone else would do something similar (like MLK actually did in 1963)?
In order words, what social change is inevitable and what is more malleable? In posting this comment, did I just make the idea of “Replaceability in Social Change” come into the EA idea-sphere sooner than it would have otherwise.. or is the counterfactual that we wouldn’t even consider this idea? What general frameworks can we use for answering this question, and how do we avoid hindsight bias?
To answer your object-level question, I believe that something resembling the idea of “Replaceability of Social Change” would enter our minds eventually. For the last few months, there has been conversation in the Facebook group about the importance of, and how to assess, the history of social movements. Additionally, groups like the Open Philanthropy Project are pushing forward the idea of assessing political change. From our point of view, variable change will affect the probability that a certain idea will come to us for any given point in time. As we discussed other ideas factoring into this one, over time, it seems like we might eventually come across it.
Anyway, you’re trying to figure out what important social change we would want that would not happen, or fail, if we didn’t intervene. I agree with Robby Bensinger that all of history added up together is very fragile, with small changes to the initial state of any point possibly causing huge changes later. So, again, I believe this is difficult, and that we need to get more specific.
Thanks for asking these tough questions. I appreciate it.
I’ve given this some more thought, and I think I’ve at least partially explained why my model of social change involves less fragility than others’. I think of modern human society similarly to how I think about evolutionary human society (i.e. when we still faced obvious natural selection pressures) and similarly to how I think about evolution as a whole. In biology, it’s in some way true that “All evolution is random,” in that mutations in genetic code are arbitrary. I think of people in this same way. Yes, I agree that what MLK did in particular probably had causation in random things like his birthday or a specific event in his childhood or other randomness, but on the macro-scale, this randomness evens out in some sense and all possible micro-worlds converge, like they (mostly) do in evolution.
To specify what you mean, I believe the important idea is a question: how can we use replaceability to measure the impact (or expected value) of social change?
I believe traction can be made towards solving this problem, but I still believe it will be difficult. I notice that you use the historical example of Martin Luther King, Jr.‘s activism, but you want to measure social impact in the present, or for the future. However, I notice that I can’t recall reading about anyone, effective altruists or otherwise, ever measuring the impact of social change in the past. Like, we take Martin Luther King, Jr.’s success for granted, even though we haven’t tried quantifying it at all. We could then try comparing King’s success to other activist strategies: those which worked well, and others less so.
In measuring the impact of historical efforts, we are measuring in a field where we have access to all the measurable data. So, that makes studying history good practice grounds for figuring out what to look for in estimating social impact in the future.
Here’s some suggestions for doing that:
One can learn how to measure anything, and practice for free, which should help in measuring something as abstract as the impact of social change. I believe trying to measure other intangibles as practice a bit will give one experience to gauge how to measure the impact of social change. From there, realizing getting some kind, any kind of metric(s) placed on what you’re trying to measure in social change is better than having no metric(s).
One can also study Givewell’s History of Philanthropy Project to get a sense of how they determined which historical points were worth considering. Then, you can try replicating it a bit in studying the history of social change. Note that Givewell’s project focuses upon the history of philanthropy in the United States, which might be a narrower and simpler section to assess than the history of social change.
In regards to determining where to start with at a point in history, asking some historians, and the community, what heuristics they would use could help. Givewell itself hired some actual historians.
The guide How To Measure Anything may give some ideas, but I believe the metric you’ll be developing for social impact will be more similar to metrics used in global studies or reports from the WHO, or other NGOs, or in charity evaluation. Perhaps review the field of sociology for any ideas it has for measuring social change.
This is a framework for figuring out how to measure the impact that we must create for ourselves. Frankly, the idea of replaceability, let measurement, in social change might be rare enough that we might be the first ones to put that method together.