But I think it’s more important to look directly at different charities you could donate to or actions you could take at the object level or meta level and try to figure out what you can do that works best.
I think this is also true only up to a point. Of course it’s extremely important to look at the different actions you can take or charities to donate to when making a decision. But comparing between different types of thing can be very hard. Looking at the actions or charities directly should be enough to choose within an area. But to compare something in the direct domain with something in the meta domain, we need to know not only how good those are at what they do, but also have an idea of how to trade off the direct against the meta progress. And to answer that question I think looking at the balance in the movement is a helpful tool.
Yeah I’m not sure this is a substantial disagreement, although I’m not sure that “proportion of movement working on meta” is a useful heuristic for choosing between cause areas. I don’t know how we could come up with a good proportion other than arbitrarily making up a number that looks reasonable (which is what people seem to do). It’s probably not that useful to arbitrarily make up a number and then decide what cause area to work on based on how far we are from that made-up number. Perhaps we could make a more rigorous attempt to determine a good proportion, but that’s not any easier than doing expected-value estimates of different cause areas, and in the end, proportion in meta is really a proxy for expected value of marginal contributions.
I think this is also true only up to a point. Of course it’s extremely important to look at the different actions you can take or charities to donate to when making a decision. But comparing between different types of thing can be very hard. Looking at the actions or charities directly should be enough to choose within an area. But to compare something in the direct domain with something in the meta domain, we need to know not only how good those are at what they do, but also have an idea of how to trade off the direct against the meta progress. And to answer that question I think looking at the balance in the movement is a helpful tool.
Re-reading, I’m not sure we disagree here. :)
Yeah I’m not sure this is a substantial disagreement, although I’m not sure that “proportion of movement working on meta” is a useful heuristic for choosing between cause areas. I don’t know how we could come up with a good proportion other than arbitrarily making up a number that looks reasonable (which is what people seem to do). It’s probably not that useful to arbitrarily make up a number and then decide what cause area to work on based on how far we are from that made-up number. Perhaps we could make a more rigorous attempt to determine a good proportion, but that’s not any easier than doing expected-value estimates of different cause areas, and in the end, proportion in meta is really a proxy for expected value of marginal contributions.