That’s very useful, thanks! I was hoping that it felt like there is no way it gets washed out given that what is such a large portion of the World’s resources gets put into this, so really good to know you don’t have this intuition reading this (especially if you generally think we are clueless!).
Maybe I can give a better intuition pump for how the effects will last and ramificate. But, also, maybe talking about cats and dogs makes the decision look too trivial to begin with and other cause area examples would be better.
Thanks again! Glad you shared an intuition that goes against what I was hoping. That was the whole point of me posting this :)
I also didn’t find it too compelling, I think partly it is the issue of the choice seeming not important or high-stakes enough. Maybe the philanthropist should be deciding whether to fund clean energy R&D or vaccines R&D, or similar.
I don’t think I quite agreed with this, or at least it felt misleading:
And you cannot reasonably believe these chaotic changes will be even roughly the same no matter whether the beneficiaries of the donation are dog or cat shelters.
I think it may be very reasonable to think that in expectation the longterm effects will be ‘roughly the same’. This feels more like a simple cluelessness case than complex cluelessness (unless you explain why the cats vs dogs will predictably change economic growth, world values, population size etc).
Whereas the vaccines vs clean energy I think there would be more plausible reasons why one or the other will systematically have different consequences. (Maybe a TB vaccine will save more lives, increasing population and economic growth (including making climate change slightly worse), whereas the clean energy will increase growth slightly, make climate change slightly less bad, and therefore increase population a bit as well, but with a longer lag time.)
Also on your question 1, I think being agnostic about which one is better is quite different to being agnostic about whether something is good at all (in expectation) and I think the first is a significantly easier thing to argue for than the second.
Maybe the philanthropist should be deciding whether to fund clean energy R&D or vaccines R&D, or similar.
I like these examples, especially the fact that it’s obvious they impact the long term. My main worry, however, would be that most longtermists will start pretty convinced that we can figure out which one is best without too much trouble (actually, I think they’d even already have an opinion) and that this is not a good example of cluelessness, (even) more so than with something like dogs vs cats.
But very good pointer. I’ll try to think of something in the same vein as clean energy vs vaccines but where longtermist would start more agnostic. Maybe two things where the sign on X-risk reduction seems unusually uncertain..
Nice, thanks Oscar! I totally get how it might seem like a case of simple cluelessness. I don’t think it actually is but it definitely isn’t obvious, yeah. This is a problem.
Also on your question 1, I think being agnostic about which one is better is quite different to being agnostic about whether something is good at all (in expectation) and I think the first is a significantly easier thing to argue for than the second.
I think I kinda agree but the same way I agree that doing 1 trillion push-ups in a row is significantly harder than doing 1 million. It’s technically true in some sense but both are way out of reach anyway. I really don’t see how one could make a convincing argument why donating to animal shelters predictably makes the World better or worse, considering all the effects from now until the end of time.
That’s very useful, thanks! I was hoping that it felt like there is no way it gets washed out given that what is such a large portion of the World’s resources gets put into this, so really good to know you don’t have this intuition reading this (especially if you generally think we are clueless!).
Maybe I can give a better intuition pump for how the effects will last and ramificate. But, also, maybe talking about cats and dogs makes the decision look too trivial to begin with and other cause area examples would be better.
Thanks again! Glad you shared an intuition that goes against what I was hoping. That was the whole point of me posting this :)
I also didn’t find it too compelling, I think partly it is the issue of the choice seeming not important or high-stakes enough. Maybe the philanthropist should be deciding whether to fund clean energy R&D or vaccines R&D, or similar.
I don’t think I quite agreed with this, or at least it felt misleading:
I think it may be very reasonable to think that in expectation the longterm effects will be ‘roughly the same’. This feels more like a simple cluelessness case than complex cluelessness (unless you explain why the cats vs dogs will predictably change economic growth, world values, population size etc).
Whereas the vaccines vs clean energy I think there would be more plausible reasons why one or the other will systematically have different consequences. (Maybe a TB vaccine will save more lives, increasing population and economic growth (including making climate change slightly worse), whereas the clean energy will increase growth slightly, make climate change slightly less bad, and therefore increase population a bit as well, but with a longer lag time.)
Also on your question 1, I think being agnostic about which one is better is quite different to being agnostic about whether something is good at all (in expectation) and I think the first is a significantly easier thing to argue for than the second.
I like these examples, especially the fact that it’s obvious they impact the long term. My main worry, however, would be that most longtermists will start pretty convinced that we can figure out which one is best without too much trouble (actually, I think they’d even already have an opinion) and that this is not a good example of cluelessness, (even) more so than with something like dogs vs cats.
But very good pointer. I’ll try to think of something in the same vein as clean energy vs vaccines but where longtermist would start more agnostic. Maybe two things where the sign on X-risk reduction seems unusually uncertain..
Nice, thanks Oscar! I totally get how it might seem like a case of simple cluelessness. I don’t think it actually is but it definitely isn’t obvious, yeah. This is a problem.
I think I kinda agree but the same way I agree that doing 1 trillion push-ups in a row is significantly harder than doing 1 million. It’s technically true in some sense but both are way out of reach anyway. I really don’t see how one could make a convincing argument why donating to animal shelters predictably makes the World better or worse, considering all the effects from now until the end of time.
You’re welcome! N=1 though, so might be worth seeing what other people think too.