I upvoted this post, because I thought the question was at least interesting enough to think about, and I liked that you didn’t come in with a confident declaration of the idea’s quality.
However, in my experience, posts that propose some major, novel form of action without any cost-effectiveness estimates (and without much other background) don’t tend to do well on the Forum. I personally don’t mind “questioning” posts where only the bare bones of an idea are brought forward, but I think the following would have helped with engagement:
Some background on the impact of other protracted legal battles fought with the goal of changing a law; how often does this sort of thing actually work? What factors typically separate successful from unsuccessful battles?
An estimate of how much this “battle” might cost, and for how valuable it would be to pass a law legalizing kidney sales (with consideration of positives and negatives). Even if X is a plausible strategy for accomplishing Y, we need to know the magnitude of Y’s impact before deciding whether thinking about X is worthwhile. (For more on factors behind the impact of an activity, see this 80,000 Hours post on the “scale/neglectedness/solvability” framework.)
My guess is that, while some people are concerned about the PR implications of the idea, many others have a view along the lines of:
“Okay, this is one of a thousand things that might be better than AMF under some model or other. One thousand things is too many to evaluate, so posts like this aren’t very helpful unless they have information that lets us actually get a sense for the likelihood that this is better than AMF.”
Excellent criticisms thanks. I do, occasionally, have ideas like this that seem worth posting, but that I am unlikely to ever get around to if I wait until I have time to give them the full research treatment. I suppose it would make sense to note that in the original post.
It also occurs to me that, while the idea that organ sales should be legal seems like a pretty mainstream view in EA circles, there are likely some members of the forum that disagree with that. Perhaps that could be someone’s reason for downvoting.
I upvoted this post, because I thought the question was at least interesting enough to think about, and I liked that you didn’t come in with a confident declaration of the idea’s quality.
However, in my experience, posts that propose some major, novel form of action without any cost-effectiveness estimates (and without much other background) don’t tend to do well on the Forum. I personally don’t mind “questioning” posts where only the bare bones of an idea are brought forward, but I think the following would have helped with engagement:
Some background on the impact of other protracted legal battles fought with the goal of changing a law; how often does this sort of thing actually work? What factors typically separate successful from unsuccessful battles?
An estimate of how much this “battle” might cost, and for how valuable it would be to pass a law legalizing kidney sales (with consideration of positives and negatives). Even if X is a plausible strategy for accomplishing Y, we need to know the magnitude of Y’s impact before deciding whether thinking about X is worthwhile. (For more on factors behind the impact of an activity, see this 80,000 Hours post on the “scale/neglectedness/solvability” framework.)
My guess is that, while some people are concerned about the PR implications of the idea, many others have a view along the lines of:
“Okay, this is one of a thousand things that might be better than AMF under some model or other. One thousand things is too many to evaluate, so posts like this aren’t very helpful unless they have information that lets us actually get a sense for the likelihood that this is better than AMF.”
Excellent criticisms thanks. I do, occasionally, have ideas like this that seem worth posting, but that I am unlikely to ever get around to if I wait until I have time to give them the full research treatment. I suppose it would make sense to note that in the original post.
It also occurs to me that, while the idea that organ sales should be legal seems like a pretty mainstream view in EA circles, there are likely some members of the forum that disagree with that. Perhaps that could be someone’s reason for downvoting.