the core of my problem with “systematic reform” is that we’re “clueless” about its effects—it could have good effects, but could also have quite bad effects, and it’s extremely hard for us to tell which.
I think this can also apply for the atomic interventions EAs tend to like, namely those from GW. You can tell a story about how Give Directly increases meat consumption, so that’s bad. For life saving charities, there’s the same worry about meat, in addition to concerns about overpopulation. I’m not claiming we can’t sensible work through these and concude they all do more good than bad, only that cluelessness isn’t just a systemic intervention worry.
FWIW, I think this is way too broad. Even if, a priori, systemic interventions are more clueness-ny (?) than atomic interventions ones, it’s not that useful to talk about them as a category. It’d would be more useful to argue the toss on particular cases.
Sure—I don’t think “systematic change” is a well-defined category. The relevant distinction is “easy to analyze” vs “hard to analyze”. But in the post you’ve basically just stipulated that your example is easy to analyze, and I think that’s doing most of the work.
So I don’t think we should conclude that “systematic changes look much more effective”—as you say, we should look at them case by case.
I think this can also apply for the atomic interventions EAs tend to like, namely those from GW. You can tell a story about how Give Directly increases meat consumption, so that’s bad. For life saving charities, there’s the same worry about meat, in addition to concerns about overpopulation. I’m not claiming we can’t sensible work through these and concude they all do more good than bad, only that cluelessness isn’t just a systemic intervention worry.
Frame it as a matter of degree if you like: I think we’re drastically more clueless about systematic reform than we are about atomic interventions.
FWIW, I think this is way too broad. Even if, a priori, systemic interventions are more clueness-ny (?) than atomic interventions ones, it’s not that useful to talk about them as a category. It’d would be more useful to argue the toss on particular cases.
Sure—I don’t think “systematic change” is a well-defined category. The relevant distinction is “easy to analyze” vs “hard to analyze”. But in the post you’ve basically just stipulated that your example is easy to analyze, and I think that’s doing most of the work.
So I don’t think we should conclude that “systematic changes look much more effective”—as you say, we should look at them case by case.