For considering flow-through effects, I would want to distinguish between dimensions like the following:
Improves someone’s life quality
Improves values
Increases economic growth
Differential technological progress
Improves institutions
I ordered these in ascending order of importance with how likely I think they’re going to have a big impact. I think all of those look more likely positive than negative to me, except for economic growth where I have no idea (though I note that more people lean in the direction of it being positive, and considering it negative is maybe a bit of a brittle argument) .
Probably a lot of people would put “improves values” above economic growth in terms of relevance on the future, but my intuitions go in the direction of technological determinism and the view that if things go poorly, it’s more because of hypocrisy and lack of competence rather than “bad values.”
To get back to your question: I think I’d approach this by looking for correlations between what you call “good things” and the other factors on my list. I’d say there’s a significant positive correlation. So I’d say “good things have good flow-through effects” because of that positive correlation. If you find an example where you improve someone’s life quality but it doesn’t have any effect on the other variables, I wouldn’t expect positive flow-through effects from that.
For considering flow-through effects, I would want to distinguish between dimensions like the following:
Improves someone’s life quality
Improves values
Increases economic growth
Differential technological progress
Improves institutions
I ordered these in ascending order of importance with how likely I think they’re going to have a big impact. I think all of those look more likely positive than negative to me, except for economic growth where I have no idea (though I note that more people lean in the direction of it being positive, and considering it negative is maybe a bit of a brittle argument) .
Probably a lot of people would put “improves values” above economic growth in terms of relevance on the future, but my intuitions go in the direction of technological determinism and the view that if things go poorly, it’s more because of hypocrisy and lack of competence rather than “bad values.”
To get back to your question: I think I’d approach this by looking for correlations between what you call “good things” and the other factors on my list. I’d say there’s a significant positive correlation. So I’d say “good things have good flow-through effects” because of that positive correlation. If you find an example where you improve someone’s life quality but it doesn’t have any effect on the other variables, I wouldn’t expect positive flow-through effects from that.