I’d say that pursuing the project of effective altruism is worthwhile, only if the opportunity cost of searching C is justified by the amount of additional good you do as a result of searching for better ways to do good, rather then go by common sense A. It seems to me that if C>= A, then pursuing the project of EA wouldn’t be worth it. If, however, C< A, then pursuing the project of EA would be worth it, right?
To be more concrete let us say that the difference in value between the commonsense distribution of resources to do good and the ideal might be only 0.5%. Let us also assume it would cost you only a minute to find out the ideal distribution and that the value of spending that minute in your commonsense way is smaller than getting that 0.5% increase. Surely it would still be worth seeking the ideal distribution (=engaging in the project of EA), right?
I’d say that pursuing the project of effective altruism is worthwhile, only if the opportunity cost of searching C is justified by the amount of additional good you do as a result of searching for better ways to do good, rather then go by common sense A. It seems to me that if C>= A, then pursuing the project of EA wouldn’t be worth it. If, however, C< A, then pursuing the project of EA would be worth it, right?
To be more concrete let us say that the difference in value between the commonsense distribution of resources to do good and the ideal might be only 0.5%. Let us also assume it would cost you only a minute to find out the ideal distribution and that the value of spending that minute in your commonsense way is smaller than getting that 0.5% increase. Surely it would still be worth seeking the ideal distribution (=engaging in the project of EA), right?
I like the idea of thinking about it quantitatively like this.
I also agree with the second paragraph. One way of thinking about this is that if identifiability is high enough, it can offset low spread.
The importance of EA is proportional to the multiple of the degree to which the three premises hold.