Another point to perhaps add (not well formed thought) is that 2 groups may be doing the exact same thing with the exact same outcome (say 2 vaccine companies), but because they have such different funding sources and/or political influence there remains enormous counterfactual good.
For example in Covid, many countries for political reasons almost “had” to have their own vaccine so they could produce the vaccine themselves and garner trust in the population. I would argue that none of America, China and Russia would have freely accepted each other’s vaccines, so they had to research and produce their own even if it didn’t make economic sense. The counterfactual value was their not because the vaccine was “needed” in a perfect world, but because it was needed in the weird geopolitcal setup that happens to exist. If those countries hadn’t invented and produced their own vaccines, there would have been huge resistance in importing one from another country. Even if it was allowed and promoted how many Americans would have accepted using sinovax?
OR 2 NGOs could do the same thing (e.g. giving out bednets), but have completely different sources of funding. One could be funded by USAID and the other by DIFID. It might be theoretically inefficient to have 2 NGOs doing the same thing, but in reality they do double the good and distribute twice as many nets because their sources of income don’t overlap at all.
The world is complicated
I didn’t express this so well but I hope you get the jist....
Yes, this is a reason that in practice, applying Shapley values will be very tricky—you need to account for lots of details. That’s true of counterfactuals as well, but Shapley values make it even harder. (But given that we’re talking about Givewell and similar orgs allocating tens of millions of dollars, the marginal gain seems obviously worth it to me.)
I really like this, thanks!
Another point to perhaps add (not well formed thought) is that 2 groups may be doing the exact same thing with the exact same outcome (say 2 vaccine companies), but because they have such different funding sources and/or political influence there remains enormous counterfactual good.
For example in Covid, many countries for political reasons almost “had” to have their own vaccine so they could produce the vaccine themselves and garner trust in the population. I would argue that none of America, China and Russia would have freely accepted each other’s vaccines, so they had to research and produce their own even if it didn’t make economic sense. The counterfactual value was their not because the vaccine was “needed” in a perfect world, but because it was needed in the weird geopolitcal setup that happens to exist. If those countries hadn’t invented and produced their own vaccines, there would have been huge resistance in importing one from another country. Even if it was allowed and promoted how many Americans would have accepted using sinovax?
OR 2 NGOs could do the same thing (e.g. giving out bednets), but have completely different sources of funding. One could be funded by USAID and the other by DIFID. It might be theoretically inefficient to have 2 NGOs doing the same thing, but in reality they do double the good and distribute twice as many nets because their sources of income don’t overlap at all.
The world is complicated
I didn’t express this so well but I hope you get the jist....
Yes, this is a reason that in practice, applying Shapley values will be very tricky—you need to account for lots of details. That’s true of counterfactuals as well, but Shapley values make it even harder. (But given that we’re talking about Givewell and similar orgs allocating tens of millions of dollars, the marginal gain seems obviously worth it to me.)