I’d be up for being convinced otherwise – and maybe the model with log returns you mention later could do that. If you think otherwise, could you explain the intuition behind it?
The more general model captured the idea that there are almost always gains from cooperation between those looking to do good. It doesn’t show, however, that those gains are necessarily large relative to the costs of building cooperation (including opportunity costs). I’m not sure what the answer is to that.
Here’s one line of reasoning which makes me think the net gains from cooperation may be large. Setting aside the possibility that everyone has near identical valuations of causes, I think we’re left with two likely scenarios:
1. There’s enough overlap in valuations of direct-work to create significant gains from compromise on direct-work (maybe on the order of doubling each persons impact). This is like example A in the post.
2. Valuations of direct work are so far apart (everyone thinks that their cause area is 100x more valuable than others) that we’re nearly in the situation from example D, and there will be relatively small gains from building cooperation on direct work. However, this creates opportunities for huge externalities due to advocacy, which means that the actual setting is closer to example B. Intuition: If you think x-risk mitigation is orders of magnitude more important than global poverty, then an intervention which persuades someone to switch from working on global poverty to x-risk will also have massive gains (and have massively negative impact from the perspective of the person who strongly prefers global poverty). I don’t think this is a minor concern. It seems like a lot of resources get wasted in politics due to people with nearly perpendicular value systems fighting each other through persuasion and other means.
So, in either case, it seems like the gains from cooperation are large.
The more general model captured the idea that there are almost always gains from cooperation between those looking to do good. It doesn’t show, however, that those gains are necessarily large relative to the costs of building cooperation (including opportunity costs). I’m not sure what the answer is to that.
Here’s one line of reasoning which makes me think the net gains from cooperation may be large. Setting aside the possibility that everyone has near identical valuations of causes, I think we’re left with two likely scenarios:
1. There’s enough overlap in valuations of direct-work to create significant gains from compromise on direct-work (maybe on the order of doubling each persons impact). This is like example A in the post.
2. Valuations of direct work are so far apart (everyone thinks that their cause area is 100x more valuable than others) that we’re nearly in the situation from example D, and there will be relatively small gains from building cooperation on direct work. However, this creates opportunities for huge externalities due to advocacy, which means that the actual setting is closer to example B. Intuition: If you think x-risk mitigation is orders of magnitude more important than global poverty, then an intervention which persuades someone to switch from working on global poverty to x-risk will also have massive gains (and have massively negative impact from the perspective of the person who strongly prefers global poverty). I don’t think this is a minor concern. It seems like a lot of resources get wasted in politics due to people with nearly perpendicular value systems fighting each other through persuasion and other means.
So, in either case, it seems like the gains from cooperation are large.