Here’s the case that the low-fidelity version is actually better. Not saying I believe it, but trying to outline what the argument would be...
Say the low-fidelity version is something like: “Think a bit about how you can do the most good with your money and time, and do some research.”
Could this be preferable to the real thing?
It depends on how sharply diminishing the returns are to the practice of thinking about all of this stuff. Sometimes it seems like effective altruists see no diminishing returns at all. But it’s plausible that they are steeply diminishing, and that effectively the value of EA is avoiding really obviously bad uses of time and money, rather than successfully parsing whether AI safety is better or worse than institutional decision-making as an area of focus.
If you can get most of the benefits of EA with people just thinking a little about whether they’re doing as much good as they could be, perhaps the low-fidelity EA is the best EA: does a lot of good, saves a lot of time for other things. And that’s before you add in the potential of the low-fidelity version to spread more quickly and put off fewer people, thereby also potentially doing much more good.
Unfortunately I think the importance of EA actually goes up as you focus on better and better things. My best guess is the distribution of impact is lognormal, this means that going from, say, the 90th percentile best thing to the 99th could easily be a bigger jump than going from, say, the 50th percentile to the 80th.
You’re right that at some point diminishing returns to more research must kick in and you should take action rather than do more research, but I think that point is well beyond “don’t do something obviously bad”, and more like “after you’ve thought really carefully about what the very top priority might be, including potentially unconventional and weird-seeming issues”.
Here’s the case that the low-fidelity version is actually better. Not saying I believe it, but trying to outline what the argument would be...
Say the low-fidelity version is something like: “Think a bit about how you can do the most good with your money and time, and do some research.”
Could this be preferable to the real thing?
It depends on how sharply diminishing the returns are to the practice of thinking about all of this stuff. Sometimes it seems like effective altruists see no diminishing returns at all. But it’s plausible that they are steeply diminishing, and that effectively the value of EA is avoiding really obviously bad uses of time and money, rather than successfully parsing whether AI safety is better or worse than institutional decision-making as an area of focus.
If you can get most of the benefits of EA with people just thinking a little about whether they’re doing as much good as they could be, perhaps the low-fidelity EA is the best EA: does a lot of good, saves a lot of time for other things. And that’s before you add in the potential of the low-fidelity version to spread more quickly and put off fewer people, thereby also potentially doing much more good.
Unfortunately I think the importance of EA actually goes up as you focus on better and better things. My best guess is the distribution of impact is lognormal, this means that going from, say, the 90th percentile best thing to the 99th could easily be a bigger jump than going from, say, the 50th percentile to the 80th.
You’re right that at some point diminishing returns to more research must kick in and you should take action rather than do more research, but I think that point is well beyond “don’t do something obviously bad”, and more like “after you’ve thought really carefully about what the very top priority might be, including potentially unconventional and weird-seeming issues”.