Hmm, I feel we might be talking past each other slightly or something.
My impression is that Happier Lives Institute is already taking or planning to take both: (a) actions largely optimised for helping us identify the most cost-effective actions to improve near-term human wellbeing[1], and evaluate their cost-effectiveness, and (b) actions largely optimised for relatively directly improving near-term human wellbeing.
The fact that youāre doing or planning to do (b) implies that you have at least implicitly prioritised near-term human wellbeing over other issues, right? And since youāve done it before weāve thoroughly considered a wide range of interventions in a wide range of cause areas and decently evaluated their cost-effectiveness, it seems you are in some sense appealing to heuristics for the purpose of cause prioritisation?
So it seems like maybe what youāre saying is mainly that we should remember that our cause priorities should currently be considered quite preliminary and uncertain, rather than that we canāt have cause priorities yet?
(Also, FWIW, for tentative cause prioritisation it does seem to me that there are a range of heuristics which can be useful, even if theyāre not totally decisive. I have in mind things including but not limited to ITN. But thereās already been a lot of debate on the value of many of those specific heuristics, and I imagine you discuss some in your thesis but I havenāt read it.)
[1] Iām not sure if this is precisely how youād define HLIās focus. By ānear-termā I have in mind something like āwithin the next 100 yearsā.
Hmm, I feel we might be talking past each other slightly or something.
My impression is that Happier Lives Institute is already taking or planning to take both: (a) actions largely optimised for helping us identify the most cost-effective actions to improve near-term human wellbeing[1], and evaluate their cost-effectiveness, and (b) actions largely optimised for relatively directly improving near-term human wellbeing.
The fact that youāre doing or planning to do (b) implies that you have at least implicitly prioritised near-term human wellbeing over other issues, right? And since youāve done it before weāve thoroughly considered a wide range of interventions in a wide range of cause areas and decently evaluated their cost-effectiveness, it seems you are in some sense appealing to heuristics for the purpose of cause prioritisation?
So it seems like maybe what youāre saying is mainly that we should remember that our cause priorities should currently be considered quite preliminary and uncertain, rather than that we canāt have cause priorities yet?
(Also, FWIW, for tentative cause prioritisation it does seem to me that there are a range of heuristics which can be useful, even if theyāre not totally decisive. I have in mind things including but not limited to ITN. But thereās already been a lot of debate on the value of many of those specific heuristics, and I imagine you discuss some in your thesis but I havenāt read it.)
[1] Iām not sure if this is precisely how youād define HLIās focus. By ānear-termā I have in mind something like āwithin the next 100 yearsā.