I’m writing a response to Daron Acemoglu’s critique of effective altruism recently published in the Boston Review. He criticizes effective altruism for perhaps focusing too much on simple metrics which don’t fully take into account what adds value to human lives, and thus adversely and unintentionally risking or incentivizing international aid to take too narrow a focus. While I agree that’s actually a valid criticism, I have some caveats for my draft.
Effective altruism is currently a marginal movement whose donations and affiliated charities are currently unlikely to interfere in the ways concerning Dr. Acemoglu. Indeed, it’s precisely because of the simple mechanisms of poverty interventions effective altruism supports that they don’t interfere or complicate lives in ways which would confound their effectiveness. If a time comes when diminishing marginal impact renders these interventions ineffective, effective altruism will shift its focus.
Much of effective altruism actually agrees with Dr. Acemoglu that the focus on such hard and specific metrics is too narrow, and this is a matter of internal debate and consideration within the movement. In the meantime, organizations like the Open Philanthropy project are making major grants which are assessed for impact on a narrow basis of QALYs generated.
It’s possible as effective altruism becomes more influential, it will seek to work with the field of development economics and/or others to assess or develop metrics which are broader or more general than what QALYs account for, while still being relatively accurate, valid, and reliable.
My question for you: is my latter point valid? Is it actually the case there are or could be metrics which may not be as precise as QALYs, but would still be more robust than the heuristic of “important, neglected, and tractable”?
You could for sure improve on the QALY as its done with 1-3 or 1-7 survey responses. V easy to improve on the DALY.
These measures are about benefits / quality of life in terms of individual welfare though. So they’d relate only to the ‘important’ bit of the heuristic. There are other things that are important, and key EA people have acknowledged and thought about that with, for example, the parliamentary model for resolving uncertainty in moral reasoning.
But is this really what Daren Acemoglu is getting at in terms of narrow focus? Not familiar with his criticism, but his work is all about the importance of market and political institutions—which is important—perhaps even all important in some lights—to human flourishing but very hard to relate to QALYs in the short-medium term or in terms of marginal funding (and nearly all funding is?)
I’m writing a response to Daron Acemoglu’s critique of effective altruism recently published in the Boston Review. He criticizes effective altruism for perhaps focusing too much on simple metrics which don’t fully take into account what adds value to human lives, and thus adversely and unintentionally risking or incentivizing international aid to take too narrow a focus. While I agree that’s actually a valid criticism, I have some caveats for my draft.
Effective altruism is currently a marginal movement whose donations and affiliated charities are currently unlikely to interfere in the ways concerning Dr. Acemoglu. Indeed, it’s precisely because of the simple mechanisms of poverty interventions effective altruism supports that they don’t interfere or complicate lives in ways which would confound their effectiveness. If a time comes when diminishing marginal impact renders these interventions ineffective, effective altruism will shift its focus.
Much of effective altruism actually agrees with Dr. Acemoglu that the focus on such hard and specific metrics is too narrow, and this is a matter of internal debate and consideration within the movement. In the meantime, organizations like the Open Philanthropy project are making major grants which are assessed for impact on a narrow basis of QALYs generated.
It’s possible as effective altruism becomes more influential, it will seek to work with the field of development economics and/or others to assess or develop metrics which are broader or more general than what QALYs account for, while still being relatively accurate, valid, and reliable.
My question for you: is my latter point valid? Is it actually the case there are or could be metrics which may not be as precise as QALYs, but would still be more robust than the heuristic of “important, neglected, and tractable”?
You could for sure improve on the QALY as its done with 1-3 or 1-7 survey responses. V easy to improve on the DALY.
These measures are about benefits / quality of life in terms of individual welfare though. So they’d relate only to the ‘important’ bit of the heuristic. There are other things that are important, and key EA people have acknowledged and thought about that with, for example, the parliamentary model for resolving uncertainty in moral reasoning.
But is this really what Daren Acemoglu is getting at in terms of narrow focus? Not familiar with his criticism, but his work is all about the importance of market and political institutions—which is important—perhaps even all important in some lights—to human flourishing but very hard to relate to QALYs in the short-medium term or in terms of marginal funding (and nearly all funding is?)