re: writing it out: I’ve long been a proponent of what I’m temporarily calling the CoILS (Counterfactuality, Implementation, Linkage, Significance) framework for breaking down pros and cons into smaller analytical pieces, primarily because:
At the heuristic level:
It seems that breaking down complex questions into smaller pieces is generally helpful if the process does not leave out any considerations and does not involve significant duplication (and I believe that the four considerations in the framework are indeed collectively exhaustive and mostly mutually exclusive for any conceivable advantage/disadvantage and its associated decision, as I explain in more detail in the post)
The EA community has glommed around the ITN heuristic as useful (despite its flaws), and the ITN heuristic bears a lot of resemblance to this framework (as I explain in more detail in the post, including how COILS does not share some of the main flaws in the ITN heuristic).
At the specific-effect level:
It seems helpful for checking some of your key assumptions, especially when you’re already biased in favor of believing some argument;
It standardizes/labelizes certain concepts (which seems helpful for various reasons).
Applying it is not too difficult (although one can definitely get better with practice): for any given advantage/disadvantage for a decision (e.g., “this plan leads to X which is good/bad”), one asks questions such as:
Would X occur (to a similar extent) without the plan? (counterfactuality)
What would the plan actually involve doing/what can actually be implemented? (implementation)
Would X occur if the plan is implemented in a given way? (linkage)
How morally significant is it that X occurs? (significance)
For what it’s worth, I really liked the chunk at the bottom of this comment (starting at “Applying it is not...” and it made it feel like a system I’d want to use, but when I clicked on your link to the original piece I bounced off of it because of the length and details. Might just be an unvirtuous thing about me, and possibly the subtleties are really important to doing this well, but I could imagine this having more reach if it was simplified and shortened.
Thanks for the reply/feedback! I’ve realized that the length of the article is probably a problem, despite my efforts to also include a short, standalone summary up front. I just thought it would be important to include a lot of content in the article, especially since I feel like it makes some perhaps-ambitious claims (e.g., about the four components being collectively exhaustive, about the framework being useful for decision analysis). More generally, I was seeking to lay out a framework for decision analysis that could compete with/replace the INT heuristic (at least with regards to specific decision analysis vs. broad “cause area prioritization”)...
But yeah, it has one of the highest bounce rates of all my posts, so I figure I probably should have done it differently.
And it was also my second attempt at writing a post on that concept (i.e., my first attempt at improving on the original post), and it did even worse than my first attempt in Karma terms, so my motivation to try again has been pretty low (especially since only one person ever even engaged with the idea, and it definitely felt like it was out of pity).
That being said, I suppose I could try again to just write a simple (<750 words) summary that largely resembles my comment above, albeit with the order flipped (explanation first, justification second).
re: writing it out:
I’ve long been a proponent of what I’m temporarily calling the CoILS (Counterfactuality, Implementation, Linkage, Significance) framework for breaking down pros and cons into smaller analytical pieces, primarily because:
At the heuristic level:
It seems that breaking down complex questions into smaller pieces is generally helpful if the process does not leave out any considerations and does not involve significant duplication (and I believe that the four considerations in the framework are indeed collectively exhaustive and mostly mutually exclusive for any conceivable advantage/disadvantage and its associated decision, as I explain in more detail in the post)
The EA community has glommed around the ITN heuristic as useful (despite its flaws), and the ITN heuristic bears a lot of resemblance to this framework (as I explain in more detail in the post, including how COILS does not share some of the main flaws in the ITN heuristic).
At the specific-effect level:
It seems helpful for checking some of your key assumptions, especially when you’re already biased in favor of believing some argument;
It standardizes/labelizes certain concepts (which seems helpful for various reasons).
Applying it is not too difficult (although one can definitely get better with practice): for any given advantage/disadvantage for a decision (e.g., “this plan leads to X which is good/bad”), one asks questions such as:
Would X occur (to a similar extent) without the plan? (counterfactuality)
What would the plan actually involve doing/what can actually be implemented? (implementation)
Would X occur if the plan is implemented in a given way? (linkage)
How morally significant is it that X occurs? (significance)
For what it’s worth, I really liked the chunk at the bottom of this comment (starting at “Applying it is not...” and it made it feel like a system I’d want to use, but when I clicked on your link to the original piece I bounced off of it because of the length and details. Might just be an unvirtuous thing about me, and possibly the subtleties are really important to doing this well, but I could imagine this having more reach if it was simplified and shortened.
Well, it was worth a shot, but it doesn’t seem to have gotten any more traction in a simplified/shortened post, unfortunately.
Thanks for the reply/feedback! I’ve realized that the length of the article is probably a problem, despite my efforts to also include a short, standalone summary up front. I just thought it would be important to include a lot of content in the article, especially since I feel like it makes some perhaps-ambitious claims (e.g., about the four components being collectively exhaustive, about the framework being useful for decision analysis). More generally, I was seeking to lay out a framework for decision analysis that could compete with/replace the INT heuristic (at least with regards to specific decision analysis vs. broad “cause area prioritization”)...
But yeah, it has one of the highest bounce rates of all my posts, so I figure I probably should have done it differently.
And it was also my second attempt at writing a post on that concept (i.e., my first attempt at improving on the original post), and it did even worse than my first attempt in Karma terms, so my motivation to try again has been pretty low (especially since only one person ever even engaged with the idea, and it definitely felt like it was out of pity).
That being said, I suppose I could try again to just write a simple (<750 words) summary that largely resembles my comment above, albeit with the order flipped (explanation first, justification second).