Some illegal stuff (i.e—financial fraud for earning-to-give, bribing politicians to prioritise EA cause areas) seems positive EV before considering optics and negative EV after considering optics.
(I’m purely focusing on the effects of optics on EV here. Obviously, EV shouldn’t be the only consideration when making decisions, and we should avoid doing illegal stuff even when it maximises EV because we should follow certain deontological constraints.)
You could just break down optics into a set of smaller factors like with any Fermi estimate—number of people who would hear about *thing *, proportion who would think badly of EA because of it, proportion who would have counterfactually become engaged with EA otherwise, etc.
Would you be up for making a few concrete proposals for how to factor in the optics of a contemplated action with some example cases?
Some illegal stuff (i.e—financial fraud for earning-to-give, bribing politicians to prioritise EA cause areas) seems positive EV before considering optics and negative EV after considering optics.
(I’m purely focusing on the effects of optics on EV here. Obviously, EV shouldn’t be the only consideration when making decisions, and we should avoid doing illegal stuff even when it maximises EV because we should follow certain deontological constraints.)
You could just break down optics into a set of smaller factors like with any Fermi estimate—number of people who would hear about *thing *, proportion who would think badly of EA because of it, proportion who would have counterfactually become engaged with EA otherwise, etc.