Hmm yes policy work is trickyâprobably even harder to model in a CEA than the more physical interventions I was mainly thinking about.
I suppose this is what I was gesturing at with âSo plausibly EAs that have significant sway over government decision-makers and can convince them to invest more in flood defences should do this. This would be the case for almost any good policy though: if it is low-effort to convince the government to do it, you should.â
But yes perhaps I did undersell the value of policy here.
I think I mostly stand by my claim that if you are able to influence policy a lot you should probably focus on other things first. If as you say the policies needed for flooding are unusually tractable then yes that would change things.
Yeah, my only disagreement with you is that I think people who have policy influence should look at tractability and effectiveness across more domains than just ones youâve identified as the most effective, since policy windows are fairly unpredictable, and in my experience, over-focusing on âyourâ issues often means you miss opportunities to get very impactful things done, while spinning your wheels on items that arenât currently possible.
Hmm yes policy work is trickyâprobably even harder to model in a CEA than the more physical interventions I was mainly thinking about. I suppose this is what I was gesturing at with âSo plausibly EAs that have significant sway over government decision-makers and can convince them to invest more in flood defences should do this. This would be the case for almost any good policy though: if it is low-effort to convince the government to do it, you should.â But yes perhaps I did undersell the value of policy here. I think I mostly stand by my claim that if you are able to influence policy a lot you should probably focus on other things first. If as you say the policies needed for flooding are unusually tractable then yes that would change things.
Yeah, my only disagreement with you is that I think people who have policy influence should look at tractability and effectiveness across more domains than just ones youâve identified as the most effective, since policy windows are fairly unpredictable, and in my experience, over-focusing on âyourâ issues often means you miss opportunities to get very impactful things done, while spinning your wheels on items that arenât currently possible.