[thinking/rambling aloud] I feel like an “ideal reasoner” or something should indeed have that heuristic, but I feel unsure whether boundedly rational people internalising it more or having it advocated for to them more would be net positive or net negative. (I feel close to 50⁄50 on this and haven’t thought about it much; “unsure” doesn’t mean “I suspect it’d probably be bad.)
If I had to choose whether to make most of the world closer to naive consequentialism than they are now, and I can’t instead choose sophisticated consequentialism, I’d probably do that. But I’m not sure for EA grantmakers. And of course sophisticated consequentialism seems better.
Maybe there’s a way we could pair this heuristic with some other heuristics or counter-examples such that the full package is quite useful. Or maybe adding more of this heuristic would already help “balance things out”, since grantmakers may already be focusing somewhat too much on downside risk. I really don’t know.
Hmm, I think this heuristic actually doesn’t make sense for ideal (Bayesian) reasoners, since ideal reasoners can just multiply the EVs out for all actions and don’t need weird approximations/heuristics.
I broadly think this heuristic makes sense in a loose way in situations where the downside risks are not disproportionately high. I’m not sure what you mean by “sophisticated consequentialism” here, but I guess I’d sort of expect sophisticated consequentialism (at least in situations where explicit EV calculations are less practical) to include a variant of this heuristic somewhere.
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 “simplistic” vs. “correct” replaceability on 80,000 Hours’ 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, however—e.g. it can lower the degree of trust in society, and for the rule-breaker’s group in particular—which 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 “consequentialism that accounts appropriately for biases, model uncertainty, optimizer’s curse, unilateralist’s curse, etc.” (This seems like a natural fit for the words sophisticated consequentialism, but it sounds like that’s not what the term is meant to mean.)
I’d 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 you’re most excited about. (That’s not the same as saying EV estimates are useless, just that they should often be adjusted in light of such considerations.)
As an aside, I think that’s an excellent heuristic, and I worry that many EAs (including myself) haven’t internalized it enough.
(Though I also worry that pushing too much for it could lead to people failing to notice the exceptions where it doesn’t apply.)
[thinking/rambling aloud] I feel like an “ideal reasoner” or something should indeed have that heuristic, but I feel unsure whether boundedly rational people internalising it more or having it advocated for to them more would be net positive or net negative. (I feel close to 50⁄50 on this and haven’t thought about it much; “unsure” doesn’t mean “I suspect it’d probably be bad.)
I think this intersects with concerns about naive consequentialism and (less so) potential downsides of using explicit probabilities.
If I had to choose whether to make most of the world closer to naive consequentialism than they are now, and I can’t instead choose sophisticated consequentialism, I’d probably do that. But I’m not sure for EA grantmakers. And of course sophisticated consequentialism seems better.
Maybe there’s a way we could pair this heuristic with some other heuristics or counter-examples such that the full package is quite useful. Or maybe adding more of this heuristic would already help “balance things out”, since grantmakers may already be focusing somewhat too much on downside risk. I really don’t know.
Hmm, I think this heuristic actually doesn’t make sense for ideal (Bayesian) reasoners, since ideal reasoners can just multiply the EVs out for all actions and don’t need weird approximations/heuristics.
I broadly think this heuristic makes sense in a loose way in situations where the downside risks are not disproportionately high. I’m not sure what you mean by “sophisticated consequentialism” here, but I guess I’d sort of expect sophisticated consequentialism (at least in situations where explicit EV calculations are less practical) to include a variant of this heuristic somewhere.
I now think sophisticated consequentialism may not be what I really had in mind. Here’s the text from the entry on naive consequentialism I linked to:
I think maybe what I have in mind is actually “consequentialism that accounts appropriately for biases, model uncertainty, optimizer’s curse, unilateralist’s curse, etc.” (This seems like a natural fit for the words sophisticated consequentialism, but it sounds like that’s not what the term is meant to mean.)
I’d 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 you’re most excited about. (That’s not the same as saying EV estimates are useless, just that they should often be adjusted in light of such considerations.)