I agree that our different reactions come partly from having different intuitions about the boundaries of a thought experiment. Which factors should one include vs exclude when evaluating answers?
For me, I assumed that the question can’t be just about expected values. This seemed too trivial. For simple questions like that, it would be clearer to ask the question directly (e.g., “Are you in favor of high-risk interventions with large expected rewards?”) than to use a thought experiment. So I concluded that the thought experiment probably goes a bit further.
If it goes further, there are many factors that might come into play:
How certain are we of the numbers?
Are there any negative effects if the intervention fails? These could be direct negative outcomes, but also indirect ones like difficulty to raise funds in the future, reputation loss...
Are we allocating a small part of a budget, or our total money? Is this a repeated decision or a one-off?
I had no good answers, and no good guesses about the question’s intent. Maybe this is clearer for you, given that you mention “the way EA culture has handled thought experiments thus far” in a comment below. I, for one, decided to skip the question :/
I agree that our different reactions come partly from having different intuitions about the boundaries of a thought experiment. Which factors should one include vs exclude when evaluating answers?
For me, I assumed that the question can’t be just about expected values. This seemed too trivial. For simple questions like that, it would be clearer to ask the question directly (e.g., “Are you in favor of high-risk interventions with large expected rewards?”) than to use a thought experiment. So I concluded that the thought experiment probably goes a bit further.
If it goes further, there are many factors that might come into play:
How certain are we of the numbers?
Are there any negative effects if the intervention fails? These could be direct negative outcomes, but also indirect ones like difficulty to raise funds in the future, reputation loss...
Are we allocating a small part of a budget, or our total money? Is this a repeated decision or a one-off?
I had no good answers, and no good guesses about the question’s intent. Maybe this is clearer for you, given that you mention “the way EA culture has handled thought experiments thus far” in a comment below. I, for one, decided to skip the question :/