I think itās basically a nonsense to try to compare ācause areasā without reference to specific things you can do, aka solutions. Hence, when we say weāre comparing ācause areasā what we are really doing is assessing the best solution in each cause area ābucketā and evaluating their cost-effectiveness. The most important cause = the one with the very most cost-effective intervention.
Maybe a minor point, but I donāt think this is quite right, because:
I donāt think we know what the best solution in each ābucketā is
I donāt think we have to in order to make educated guesses about which cause area will have the best solution, or will have the best āidentifiable positive outliersā (or mean, or median, or upper quartile, or something like that)
I donāt think we only care about the best solution; I think we also care about other identifiable positive outliers. Reasons for that include the facts that:
we may be able to allocate enough resources to an area that the best would no longer be the best on the margin
some people may be sufficiently better fits for something else that thatās the best thing for them to do
(And there are probably cases in which we have to or should āinvestā in a cause area in a general way, not just invest in one specific intervention. So itās useful to know which cause area will be able to best use a large chunk of a certain type of resources, not just which cause area contains the one intervention that is most cost-effective given generic resources on the current margin.)
For example, letās suppose for the sake of discussion that technical AI safety research is the best solution within the x-risk cause area, that deworming is the best solution in the global health & development[1] cause area, and that technical AI safety is better than deworming.[2] In that case, in comparing the cause areas (to inform decisions like what skills EAs should skill up in, what networks we should build, what careers people should pursue, and where money should go), it would still be useful to know what the other frontrunner solutions are, and how they compare across cause areas.
(Maybe you go into all that and more in your thesis, and just simplified a bit in your comment.)
[1] The fact that this is a reply to you made it salient to me that the term āglobal health & developmentā doesnāt clearly highlight the āwellbeingā angle. Would you call Happier Lives Instituteās cause area āglobal wellbeingā?
[2] Personally, I believe the third claim, and am more agnostic about the other two, but this is just an example.
I like this answer.
Maybe a minor point, but I donāt think this is quite right, because:
I donāt think we know what the best solution in each ābucketā is
I donāt think we have to in order to make educated guesses about which cause area will have the best solution, or will have the best āidentifiable positive outliersā (or mean, or median, or upper quartile, or something like that)
I donāt think we only care about the best solution; I think we also care about other identifiable positive outliers. Reasons for that include the facts that:
we may be able to allocate enough resources to an area that the best would no longer be the best on the margin
some people may be sufficiently better fits for something else that thatās the best thing for them to do
(And there are probably cases in which we have to or should āinvestā in a cause area in a general way, not just invest in one specific intervention. So itās useful to know which cause area will be able to best use a large chunk of a certain type of resources, not just which cause area contains the one intervention that is most cost-effective given generic resources on the current margin.)
For example, letās suppose for the sake of discussion that technical AI safety research is the best solution within the x-risk cause area, that deworming is the best solution in the global health & development[1] cause area, and that technical AI safety is better than deworming.[2] In that case, in comparing the cause areas (to inform decisions like what skills EAs should skill up in, what networks we should build, what careers people should pursue, and where money should go), it would still be useful to know what the other frontrunner solutions are, and how they compare across cause areas.
(Maybe you go into all that and more in your thesis, and just simplified a bit in your comment.)
[1] The fact that this is a reply to you made it salient to me that the term āglobal health & developmentā doesnāt clearly highlight the āwellbeingā angle. Would you call Happier Lives Instituteās cause area āglobal wellbeingā?
[2] Personally, I believe the third claim, and am more agnostic about the other two, but this is just an example.