What I really don’t agree with is that we should let someone choke and die, just because otherwise Henry Heimlich would get the credit anyway. The goal is not to get the most credit or Shapley values, but to help others, I don’t see what prof. Wenar proposes as a better alternative to GiveWell.
Different ways of calculating impact make sense in different contexts. What I want to say is that the way Singer, MacAskill, GiveWell are doing it (i) is the one you should be using in deciding whether/​where to donate (at the very least assuming you aren’t in some special collective action problem, etc.) and (ii) one that is totally fine by ordinary standards of speech—it isn’t deceptive, misleading, excessively imprecise, etc. Maybe we agree.
Yes I think we agree, but I also think that it’s not a crux of the argument.
As Neel Nanda noted, whatever vaguely reasonable method you use to calculate impact will result in attributing a lot of impact to life-saving interventions.
I think there is a valuable concern about Triple counting impact in EA and I agree that there is a case for Shapley values being better than counterfactuals[1].
What I really don’t agree with is that we should let someone choke and die, just because otherwise Henry Heimlich would get the credit anyway. The goal is not to get the most credit or Shapley values, but to help others, I don’t see what prof. Wenar proposes as a better alternative to GiveWell.
I disagree that Shapley values are better than counterfactual in most cases, but I think it’s a reasonable stance to have.
Different ways of calculating impact make sense in different contexts. What I want to say is that the way Singer, MacAskill, GiveWell are doing it (i) is the one you should be using in deciding whether/​where to donate (at the very least assuming you aren’t in some special collective action problem, etc.) and (ii) one that is totally fine by ordinary standards of speech—it isn’t deceptive, misleading, excessively imprecise, etc. Maybe we agree.
Yes I think we agree, but I also think that it’s not a crux of the argument.
As Neel Nanda noted, whatever vaguely reasonable method you use to calculate impact will result in attributing a lot of impact to life-saving interventions.