If I understand you correctly you believe the formula does not take into account how good the future will be. I do somewhat agree that there is a related problem in my analysis, however I donât think that the problem is related to the formula.
The problem your talking about is actually being taken into account by âtâ. You should note that the formula is about ânet well-beingâ, so âall well-beingâ minus âall sufferingâ. So if future ânet well-beingâ is very low, then the tractability of WAW will be high (aka âtâ being low). E.g. lets say ânet well-beingâ = 1 (made up unit), than itâs gonna be alot easier to increase by 1 % than if ânet well-beingâ = 1000.
However I do agree that estimations for expectations on how good the future is going to be, is technically needed for making this analysis correctly. Specifically for estimating âtâ and ânet negative futureâ (or u(negative)) in for the âmain formulaâ. I may fix this in the future.
The problem your talking about is actually being taken into account by âtâ.
If you intended it that way, then the formula is technically correct, but only because youâve offloaded all the difficulty into defining this parameter. The value of t is now strongly dependent on the net proportion of well-being vs. suffering in the entire universe, which is extremely difficult to estimate and not something that people usually mean by tractability of a cause. (And in fact, itâs also not what you talk about in this post in the section on tractability.)
The value we care about here is something like well-beingwell-being âsufering. If well-being and suffering are close together, this quantity becomes explosively larger, and so does the relative impact of improving WAW permanently relative to x-risk reduction. Since again, I donât think this is what anyone thinks of when they talk about tractability, I think it should be in the formula.
I do agree that t in the formula is quite complicated to understand (and does not mean the same as the typical meant by tractability), I tried to explain it, but since no one edited my work, I might be overestimating the understandability of my formulations. âtâ is something like âthe cost-effectiveness of reducing the likelihood of x-risk by 1 percentage pointâ divided by âthe cost-effectiveness of increasing net happiness of x-risk by 1 percentâ.
When thatâs been said, I still think that the analysis lacks an estimation for how good the future will be. Which could make the numbers for âtâ and ânet negative futureâ (or u(negative)) âmore objectiveâ.
If I understand you correctly you believe the formula does not take into account how good the future will be. I do somewhat agree that there is a related problem in my analysis, however I donât think that the problem is related to the formula.
The problem your talking about is actually being taken into account by âtâ. You should note that the formula is about ânet well-beingâ, so âall well-beingâ minus âall sufferingâ. So if future ânet well-beingâ is very low, then the tractability of WAW will be high (aka âtâ being low). E.g. lets say ânet well-beingâ = 1 (made up unit), than itâs gonna be alot easier to increase by 1 % than if ânet well-beingâ = 1000.
However I do agree that estimations for expectations on how good the future is going to be, is technically needed for making this analysis correctly. Specifically for estimating âtâ and ânet negative futureâ (or u(negative)) in for the âmain formulaâ. I may fix this in the future.
If you intended it that way, then the formula is technically correct, but only because youâve offloaded all the difficulty into defining this parameter. The value of t is now strongly dependent on the net proportion of well-being vs. suffering in the entire universe, which is extremely difficult to estimate and not something that people usually mean by tractability of a cause. (And in fact, itâs also not what you talk about in this post in the section on tractability.)
The value we care about here is something like well-beingwell-being âsufering. If well-being and suffering are close together, this quantity becomes explosively larger, and so does the relative impact of improving WAW permanently relative to x-risk reduction. Since again, I donât think this is what anyone thinks of when they talk about tractability, I think it should be in the formula.
I do agree that t in the formula is quite complicated to understand (and does not mean the same as the typical meant by tractability), I tried to explain it, but since no one edited my work, I might be overestimating the understandability of my formulations. âtâ is something like âthe cost-effectiveness of reducing the likelihood of x-risk by 1 percentage pointâ divided by âthe cost-effectiveness of increasing net happiness of x-risk by 1 percentâ.
When thatâs been said, I still think that the analysis lacks an estimation for how good the future will be. Which could make the numbers for âtâ and ânet negative futureâ (or u(negative)) âmore objectiveâ.