Another bias seems to be an orientation toward interventions that help a single individual have significantly more QALYs, and under-weighing the systematic benefit of interventions that cause many to have slightly more QALYs.
Another bias is an orientation toward easily measurable interventions, and under-weighing the benefits of less easily measurable interventions.
Is there a term for the first one? I generally refer to as the concentration of benefits and harms problem.
WRT the second: That reminds me that improving the metrics (such as QALYs) could be very high impact, but I think Stanford METRICS is already working on this?
I think the solution here is to be more comfortable making a Fermi Estimate of QALYs for hard-to-measure interventions, as opposed to trying to be very exact about QALYs.
Another bias seems to be an orientation toward interventions that help a single individual have significantly more QALYs, and under-weighing the systematic benefit of interventions that cause many to have slightly more QALYs.
Another bias is an orientation toward easily measurable interventions, and under-weighing the benefits of less easily measurable interventions.
Is there a term for the first one? I generally refer to as the concentration of benefits and harms problem.
WRT the second: That reminds me that improving the metrics (such as QALYs) could be very high impact, but I think Stanford METRICS is already working on this?
Interesting, didn’t hear about Stanford METRICS working on this, is there a link you can provide?
Not sure about the term for the first one, would be nice to come up with one :-) I think your term might be good, but something that would signal systemic intervention would be good, maybe something about meta-interventions? Also maybe something related to these LW posts, which I’m sure you’re well familiar with: http://lesswrong.com/lw/kn/torture_vs_dust_specks/ and http://lesswrong.com/lw/n3/circular_altruism/
Glancing through their website it doesn’t look like they’re working on anything related so I must be mistaken.
I think the solution here is to be more comfortable making a Fermi Estimate of QALYs for hard-to-measure interventions, as opposed to trying to be very exact about QALYs.