I’m interested in the meta question of how much we should be swayed by counterintuitive conclusions when EVM seems to be so well-motivated (e.g. VNM theorem), and the fact that we know we are prone to biases and cognitive difficulties with large numbers.
I’ve been interested in this as well, and I consider Holden’s contra arguments in Sequence thinking vs. cluster thinking persuasive in changing my mind for decision guidance in practice (e.g. at the “implementation level” of personally donating to actual x-risk mitigation funds) -- I’d be curious to know if you have a different reaction.
Edited to add: I just realized who I’m replying to, so I wanted to let you know that your guided cause prio flowchart was a key input at the start of my own mid-career pivot, and I’ve been sharing it from time to time with other people. In that post you wrote
my (ambitious) vision would be for such a flowchart to be used widely by new EAs to help them make an informed decision on cause area, ultimately improving the allocation of EAs to cause areas.
and if I’m interpreting your followup comment correctly, it’s sad to see little interest in such a good first-cut distillation. Here’s hoping interest picks up going forward.
I’ll need to find some time to read that Holden post.
I’m happy that the flowchart was useful to you! I might consider working on it in the future, but I think the issues are that I’m not convinced many people would use it and that the actual content of the flowchart might be pretty contentious—so it would be easy to be accused of being biased. I was using my karma score as a signal of if I should continue with it, and karma wasn’t impressive.
I’ve been interested in this as well, and I consider Holden’s contra arguments in Sequence thinking vs. cluster thinking persuasive in changing my mind for decision guidance in practice (e.g. at the “implementation level” of personally donating to actual x-risk mitigation funds) -- I’d be curious to know if you have a different reaction.
Edited to add: I just realized who I’m replying to, so I wanted to let you know that your guided cause prio flowchart was a key input at the start of my own mid-career pivot, and I’ve been sharing it from time to time with other people. In that post you wrote
and if I’m interpreting your followup comment correctly, it’s sad to see little interest in such a good first-cut distillation. Here’s hoping interest picks up going forward.
I’ll need to find some time to read that Holden post.
I’m happy that the flowchart was useful to you! I might consider working on it in the future, but I think the issues are that I’m not convinced many people would use it and that the actual content of the flowchart might be pretty contentious—so it would be easy to be accused of being biased. I was using my karma score as a signal of if I should continue with it, and karma wasn’t impressive.