Letās say the direct effect of a donation to AMF is +100 utilons, and the flow-through effects are normally distributed around 0 with st. dev. 50 utilons. That would seem to meet your criteria that itās not astronomically unlikely that AMF is net harmful, but I can still claim with 97.5% confident that itās net beneficial. Which personally I would call āhigh confidenceā.
That all seems fairly obvious to me, which makes me think Iām probably not understanding your position correctly here. I also assume that your position isnāt that āwe can never be 100% certain about anything and this is annoyingā. But Iām not sure what āmiddle groundā you are aiming for with the claim āeverything is uncertainā.
I would also describe that scenario as āhigh confidence.ā My best guess on the actual numbers is more like, the direct effect of a donation to AMF is +1 utilon, and flow-through effects are normally distributed around 100 with standard deviation 500. So itās net positive in expectation but still has a high probability (~42% for the numbers given) of being net negative.
I appreciate that those would be your numbers, Iām just pointing out that you do actually need that high standard deviation (i.e. you need to believe that the flow through affects will likely be larger than the direct effects) in order to justify that claim. Which is what Denise was saying in the first place.
You appeared to think you could get away with allowing that flow through affects are probably smaller than direct impact and then make the much weaker claim āthereās a possibility that AMF has large negative flow-through effects that overwhelm its benefitsā to get to your conclusion that you canāt have high confidence in AMF being good. But I donāt think you can actually allow that; Iām fully capable of accepting that argument and still considering AMF āhigh confidenceā good.
Of course, you might just have a good argument for focusing on the flow-through effects, which would render this discussion moot.
Those seem really high flow through effects to me! Ā£2000 saves one life, but you could easily see it doing as much good as saving 600!
How are you arriving at the figure? The argument that āif you value all times equally, the flow through effects are 99.99...% of the impactā would actually seem to show that they dominated the immediate effects much more than this. (Iām hoping thereās a reason why this observation is very misleading.) So what informal argument are you using?
I more or less made up the numbers on the spot. I expect flow-through effects to dominate direct effects, but I donāt know if I should assume that they will be astronomically bigger. The argument Iām making here is really more qualitative. In practice, I assume that AMF takes $3000 to save a life, but I donāt put much credence in the certainty of this number.
Whatās āhigh confidenceā?
Letās say the direct effect of a donation to AMF is +100 utilons, and the flow-through effects are normally distributed around 0 with st. dev. 50 utilons. That would seem to meet your criteria that itās not astronomically unlikely that AMF is net harmful, but I can still claim with 97.5% confident that itās net beneficial. Which personally I would call āhigh confidenceā.
That all seems fairly obvious to me, which makes me think Iām probably not understanding your position correctly here. I also assume that your position isnāt that āwe can never be 100% certain about anything and this is annoyingā. But Iām not sure what āmiddle groundā you are aiming for with the claim āeverything is uncertainā.
I would also describe that scenario as āhigh confidence.ā My best guess on the actual numbers is more like, the direct effect of a donation to AMF is +1 utilon, and flow-through effects are normally distributed around 100 with standard deviation 500. So itās net positive in expectation but still has a high probability (~42% for the numbers given) of being net negative.
I appreciate that those would be your numbers, Iām just pointing out that you do actually need that high standard deviation (i.e. you need to believe that the flow through affects will likely be larger than the direct effects) in order to justify that claim. Which is what Denise was saying in the first place.
You appeared to think you could get away with allowing that flow through affects are probably smaller than direct impact and then make the much weaker claim āthereās a possibility that AMF has large negative flow-through effects that overwhelm its benefitsā to get to your conclusion that you canāt have high confidence in AMF being good. But I donāt think you can actually allow that; Iām fully capable of accepting that argument and still considering AMF āhigh confidenceā good.
Of course, you might just have a good argument for focusing on the flow-through effects, which would render this discussion moot.
Those seem really high flow through effects to me! Ā£2000 saves one life, but you could easily see it doing as much good as saving 600!
How are you arriving at the figure? The argument that āif you value all times equally, the flow through effects are 99.99...% of the impactā would actually seem to show that they dominated the immediate effects much more than this. (Iām hoping thereās a reason why this observation is very misleading.) So what informal argument are you using?
I more or less made up the numbers on the spot. I expect flow-through effects to dominate direct effects, but I donāt know if I should assume that they will be astronomically bigger. The argument Iām making here is really more qualitative. In practice, I assume that AMF takes $3000 to save a life, but I donāt put much credence in the certainty of this number.