Thanks for the article ! This is an important topic, glad there is an overview of this.
I saw the “Taking Happiness seriously” presentation by Michael Plant at the EAG Berlin in September, and I was really impressed.
My two main takeaways for this post here are the same than back then:
I’m surprised and a bit disappointed by the selection criteria used by GiveWell. As pointed out by someone else, “asking how 80 Givewell donors would make these same types of tradeoffs” seems like a weak criteria to me, especially for 60% of the value. We really have trouble imagining how happy we’d be in another situation, so this criteria sounds mostly like guessing.
This was also pointed out in Michael Plant’s presentation: using DALY tends to represent depression and reduced mobility as having the same impact on the quality of life—while depression is much more devastating to mental wellbeing.
If asking people how happy they are works (which sounds surprising to me, but if it does correlate with other criterias, like say smile, I can accept that), then it would make way more sense to use that criteria. It’s closer to the endpoint. Otherwise we’re just guessing.
Anyway, this post clarifies things quite a bit, thanks for this work !
Thanks for the article ! This is an important topic, glad there is an overview of this.
I saw the “Taking Happiness seriously” presentation by Michael Plant at the EAG Berlin in September, and I was really impressed.
My two main takeaways for this post here are the same than back then:
I’m surprised and a bit disappointed by the selection criteria used by GiveWell. As pointed out by someone else, “asking how 80 Givewell donors would make these same types of tradeoffs” seems like a weak criteria to me, especially for 60% of the value. We really have trouble imagining how happy we’d be in another situation, so this criteria sounds mostly like guessing.
This was also pointed out in Michael Plant’s presentation: using DALY tends to represent depression and reduced mobility as having the same impact on the quality of life—while depression is much more devastating to mental wellbeing.
If asking people how happy they are works (which sounds surprising to me, but if it does correlate with other criterias, like say smile, I can accept that), then it would make way more sense to use that criteria. It’s closer to the endpoint. Otherwise we’re just guessing.
Anyway, this post clarifies things quite a bit, thanks for this work !