I think the second set of hypotheticals does involve trade-offs. When I say that a person has an additional 1% chance of being cured, I mean that they have an additional 1% chance of receiving a medicine that will definitely cure them. If you spend more money on medicines to distribute among people with disease Q (thus increasing the chance that any given person with disease Q will be cured), you will have less money to spend on medicines to distribute among people with disease R (thus decreasing the chance that any given person with disease R will be cured).
The reason I think that the second set of hypotheticals is more analogous to the situations EAs face is that there are typically already many funders in the space, meaning that potential beneficiaries often have some chance of being helped even absent your donation. It’s quite rare that you choosing to fund one person over another will result in the other person having no chance at all of being helped.
My apologies. After re-reading your second set of hypothetical, I think I can answer your questions.
In the original choice situation contained in my essay, the device I used to capture the amount of chance each group would be given of being helped was independent of the donation amount. For example, in the choice situation between Bob, Amy, and Susie, the donation was $10 and the device used to give each a 50% chance of being saved from a painful disease was a coin.
However, it seems like in your hypotheticals, the donation is used as the device too. That confused me at first. But yeah, at the end of the day, I would give person A a roughly 90% of being saved from his/her suffering and roughly a 10% to each of the billions of others, regardless of what the dollar breakdown would look like. So, if I understand your hypotheticals correctly, then my answer would be yes to both your original questions.
I don’t however see the point of using the donation to also act as the device. It seems to unnecessarily over complicate the choice situations.
If your goal is to try to create a choice situation in which I have to give a vast amount of money to give person A around a 90% chance of surviving, and the objection you’re thinking of raising is that it is absurd to give that much to give a single person around a 90% of being helped, then my response is:
1) Who suffers matters
2) What person A stands to suffer is far worse than what any one of the people from the competing group stands to suffer.
I think if we really appreciate those two facts, our intuition is to give person A 90% and each of the others a 10%, regardless of the $ breakdown that involves. Thanks.
Just noticed you expanded your comment. You write, “It’s quite rare that you choosing to fund one person over another will result in the other person having no chance at all of being helped.” This is not true. There will always be a person in line who isn’t helped, but who would have been helped had you funded the charity working in his area. He may not be the first in line, but he is somewhere in the line waiting to be helped by that charity.
Just noticed you expanded your comment. You write, “It’s quite rare that you choosing to fund one person over another will result in the other person having no chance at all of being helped.” This is not true. There will always be a person in line who isn’t helped, but who would have been helped had you funded the charity working in his area. He may not be the first in line, but he is somewhere in the line waiting to be helped by that charity.
I was simply noting the difference between our two examples. In your example, Bob has no chance of receiving help if you choose the other person. In the real world, me choosing one charity over another will not cause a specific person to have no ex-ante chance of being helped. Instead, it means that each person in the potential beneficiary population has a lower chance of being helped. I wanted my situation to be more analogous to the real world because I want to see how your principle works in practice. It’s the same reason I introduced different prices into the example.
Also, my comment was expanded very shortly after it was originally posted. It’s possible that you saw the original one and while you were writing your response to it I posted my edit.
Sorry for the late reply. Well, say I’m choosing between the World Food Programme (WFP) and some other charity, and I have $30 to donate. According to WFP, $30 can feed a person for a month (if I remember correctly). If I donate to the other charity, then WFP in its next operation will have $30 less to spend on food, meaning someone who otherwise would have been helped won’t be receiving help. Who that person is, we don’t know. All we know is that he is the person who was next in line, the first to be turned away.
Now, you disagree with this. Specifically you disagree that it could be said of any SPECIFIC person that, if I don’t donate to WFP, that it would be true of THAT person that he won’t end up receiving help that he otherwise would have. And this is because:
1) HE—that specific person—still had a chance of being helped by WFP even if I didn’t donate the $30. For example, he might have gotten in line sooner than I’m supposing he has. And you will say that this holds true for ANY specific person. Therefore, the phrase “he won’t end up receiving help” is not guaranteed.
2) Moreover, even if I do donate the $30 to WFP, there isn’t any guarantee that he would be helped. For example, HE might have gotten in line way to late for an additional $30 to make a difference for him. And you will say that this holds true for ANY specific person. Therefore, the phrase “that he otherwise would have” is also not guaranteed.
In the end, you will say, all that can be true of any SPECIFIC person is that my donation of $30 would raise THAT person’s chance of being helped.
Therefore, in the real world, you will say, there’s rarely a trade-off choice situation between specific people.
I am tempted to agree with that, but two points:
1) There still seems to be a trade off choice situation between specific groups of people: i.e. the group helped by WFP and the group helped by the other charity. 2) I think, at least in refugee camps, there is already a list of all the refugees and a document specifying who in specific is next in line to receive a given service/aid. In these cases, we will be faced with a trade off choice situation between a specific individual (who we would be helping if we donated to the refugee camp) and whatever group of people that would be helped by donating to another charity. I wonder what percentage of real life situations are like this.
Moreover, if you’re looking for real life trade off situations between some specific person(s) and some other specific person or specific group, they are clearly not hard to find. For example, you can either help a specific homeless man vs whoever. Or you can help a specific person avoid torture by helping pay off a ransom vs whoever else by helping a charity. Or you can spend fund a specific person’s cancer treatment vs whoever. Etc…
My overall point is that trade off situations of the kind I describe in my paper are very real and everywhere EVEN IF it is true that there are trade off situations of the nature you describe.
I think the second set of hypotheticals does involve trade-offs. When I say that a person has an additional 1% chance of being cured, I mean that they have an additional 1% chance of receiving a medicine that will definitely cure them. If you spend more money on medicines to distribute among people with disease Q (thus increasing the chance that any given person with disease Q will be cured), you will have less money to spend on medicines to distribute among people with disease R (thus decreasing the chance that any given person with disease R will be cured).
The reason I think that the second set of hypotheticals is more analogous to the situations EAs face is that there are typically already many funders in the space, meaning that potential beneficiaries often have some chance of being helped even absent your donation. It’s quite rare that you choosing to fund one person over another will result in the other person having no chance at all of being helped.
My apologies. After re-reading your second set of hypothetical, I think I can answer your questions.
In the original choice situation contained in my essay, the device I used to capture the amount of chance each group would be given of being helped was independent of the donation amount. For example, in the choice situation between Bob, Amy, and Susie, the donation was $10 and the device used to give each a 50% chance of being saved from a painful disease was a coin.
However, it seems like in your hypotheticals, the donation is used as the device too. That confused me at first. But yeah, at the end of the day, I would give person A a roughly 90% of being saved from his/her suffering and roughly a 10% to each of the billions of others, regardless of what the dollar breakdown would look like. So, if I understand your hypotheticals correctly, then my answer would be yes to both your original questions.
I don’t however see the point of using the donation to also act as the device. It seems to unnecessarily over complicate the choice situations.
If your goal is to try to create a choice situation in which I have to give a vast amount of money to give person A around a 90% chance of surviving, and the objection you’re thinking of raising is that it is absurd to give that much to give a single person around a 90% of being helped, then my response is:
1) Who suffers matters
2) What person A stands to suffer is far worse than what any one of the people from the competing group stands to suffer.
I think if we really appreciate those two facts, our intuition is to give person A 90% and each of the others a 10%, regardless of the $ breakdown that involves. Thanks.
Just noticed you expanded your comment. You write, “It’s quite rare that you choosing to fund one person over another will result in the other person having no chance at all of being helped.” This is not true. There will always be a person in line who isn’t helped, but who would have been helped had you funded the charity working in his area. He may not be the first in line, but he is somewhere in the line waiting to be helped by that charity.
I was simply noting the difference between our two examples. In your example, Bob has no chance of receiving help if you choose the other person. In the real world, me choosing one charity over another will not cause a specific person to have no ex-ante chance of being helped. Instead, it means that each person in the potential beneficiary population has a lower chance of being helped. I wanted my situation to be more analogous to the real world because I want to see how your principle works in practice. It’s the same reason I introduced different prices into the example.
Also, my comment was expanded very shortly after it was originally posted. It’s possible that you saw the original one and while you were writing your response to it I posted my edit.
Hey RandomEA,
Sorry for the late reply. Well, say I’m choosing between the World Food Programme (WFP) and some other charity, and I have $30 to donate. According to WFP, $30 can feed a person for a month (if I remember correctly). If I donate to the other charity, then WFP in its next operation will have $30 less to spend on food, meaning someone who otherwise would have been helped won’t be receiving help. Who that person is, we don’t know. All we know is that he is the person who was next in line, the first to be turned away.
Now, you disagree with this. Specifically you disagree that it could be said of any SPECIFIC person that, if I don’t donate to WFP, that it would be true of THAT person that he won’t end up receiving help that he otherwise would have. And this is because:
1) HE—that specific person—still had a chance of being helped by WFP even if I didn’t donate the $30. For example, he might have gotten in line sooner than I’m supposing he has. And you will say that this holds true for ANY specific person. Therefore, the phrase “he won’t end up receiving help” is not guaranteed.
2) Moreover, even if I do donate the $30 to WFP, there isn’t any guarantee that he would be helped. For example, HE might have gotten in line way to late for an additional $30 to make a difference for him. And you will say that this holds true for ANY specific person. Therefore, the phrase “that he otherwise would have” is also not guaranteed.
In the end, you will say, all that can be true of any SPECIFIC person is that my donation of $30 would raise THAT person’s chance of being helped.
Therefore, in the real world, you will say, there’s rarely a trade-off choice situation between specific people.
I am tempted to agree with that, but two points:
1) There still seems to be a trade off choice situation between specific groups of people: i.e. the group helped by WFP and the group helped by the other charity.
2) I think, at least in refugee camps, there is already a list of all the refugees and a document specifying who in specific is next in line to receive a given service/aid. In these cases, we will be faced with a trade off choice situation between a specific individual (who we would be helping if we donated to the refugee camp) and whatever group of people that would be helped by donating to another charity. I wonder what percentage of real life situations are like this. Moreover, if you’re looking for real life trade off situations between some specific person(s) and some other specific person or specific group, they are clearly not hard to find. For example, you can either help a specific homeless man vs whoever. Or you can help a specific person avoid torture by helping pay off a ransom vs whoever else by helping a charity. Or you can spend fund a specific person’s cancer treatment vs whoever. Etc…
My overall point is that trade off situations of the kind I describe in my paper are very real and everywhere EVEN IF it is true that there are trade off situations of the nature you describe.
Thanks.