For instance, maybe I think that a donation to ALLFED in expectation leads to more lives saved than a donation to a GiveWell charity. But you could point out that the expected value is undefined, because maybe the future contains infinite amount of both flourishing and suffering. Then donating to ALLFED can still be the superior option if I think that it’s stochastically dominant.
There are probably also tweaks to make to stochastic dominance, e.g., if you have two “games”,
Game 1: Get X expected value in the next K years, then play game 3
Game 2: Get Y expected value in the next K years, then play game 3
Game 3: Some Pasadena-like game with undefined value
then one could also have a principle where Game 1 is preferable to Game 2 if X > Y, and this also sidesteps some more expected value problems.
I think that some of your anti-expected-value beef can be addressed by considering stochastic dominance as a backup decision theory in cases where expected value fails.
For instance, maybe I think that a donation to ALLFED in expectation leads to more lives saved than a donation to a GiveWell charity. But you could point out that the expected value is undefined, because maybe the future contains infinite amount of both flourishing and suffering. Then donating to ALLFED can still be the superior option if I think that it’s stochastically dominant.
There are probably also tweaks to make to stochastic dominance, e.g., if you have two “games”,
Game 1: Get X expected value in the next K years, then play game 3
Game 2: Get Y expected value in the next K years, then play game 3
Game 3: Some Pasadena-like game with undefined value
then one could also have a principle where Game 1 is preferable to Game 2 if X > Y, and this also sidesteps some more expected value problems.