Consequentialists are supposed to estimate all of the effects of their actions, and then add them up appropriately. This means that they cannot just look at the direct and immediate effects of their actions, but also have to look at indirect and less immediate effects. Failing to do so amounts to applying naive consequentialism. That is to be contrasted with sophisticated consequentialism, which appropriately takes indirect and less immediate effects into account (cf. the discussion on āsimplisticā vs. ācorrectā replaceability on 80,000 Hoursā blog (Todd 2015)).
As for a concrete example, a naive conception of consequentialism may lead one to believe that it is right to break rules if it seems that that would have net positive effects on the world. Such rule-breaking normally has negative side-effects, howeverāe.g. it can lower the degree of trust in society, and for the rule-breakerās group in particularāwhich means that sophisticated consequentialism tends to be more opposed to rule-breaking than naive consequentialism.
I think maybe what I have in mind is actually āconsequentialism that accounts appropriately for biases, model uncertainty, optimizerās curse, unilateralistās curse, etc.ā (This seems like a natural fit for the words sophisticated consequentialism, but it sounds like thatās not what the term is meant to mean.)
Iād be much more comfortable with someone having your heuristic if they were aware of those reasons why your EV estimates (whether implicit or explicit, qualitative or quantitative) should often be quite uncertain and may be systematically biased towards too much optimism for whatever choice youāre most excited about. (Thatās not the same as saying EV estimates are useless, just that they should often be adjusted in light of such considerations.)
I now think sophisticated consequentialism may not be what I really had in mind. Hereās the text from the entry on naive consequentialism I linked to:
I think maybe what I have in mind is actually āconsequentialism that accounts appropriately for biases, model uncertainty, optimizerās curse, unilateralistās curse, etc.ā (This seems like a natural fit for the words sophisticated consequentialism, but it sounds like thatās not what the term is meant to mean.)
Iād be much more comfortable with someone having your heuristic if they were aware of those reasons why your EV estimates (whether implicit or explicit, qualitative or quantitative) should often be quite uncertain and may be systematically biased towards too much optimism for whatever choice youāre most excited about. (Thatās not the same as saying EV estimates are useless, just that they should often be adjusted in light of such considerations.)