I think counterfactual analysis as a guide to making decisions is sometimes (!) a useful approach (especially if it is done with appropriate epistemic humility in light of the empirical difficulties).
But, tentatively, I don’t think that it is a valid method for calculating the impact an individual has had (or can be expected to have, if you calculate ex ante). I struggle a bit to put my thinking on this into words, but here’s an attempt: If I say “Alec [random individual] has saved 1,000 lives”, I think what I mean is “1,000 people now live because of Alec alone”. But if Alec was only able to save those lives with the help of twenty other people, and the 1,000 people would now be dead were it not for those twenty helpers, then it seems wrong to me to claim that the 1,000 survivors are alive only because of Alec—even if Alec played a vital role in the endeavour and if it would have been impossible to replace Alec by some other random individual. And just because any one of the twenty people were easily replaceable, I don’t think that they all suddenly count for nothing/very little in the impact evaluation; the fact seems to remain that Alec would not have been able to have any impact if he did not have twenty other people to help him… So it seems like an individual impact evaluation would need to include some sharing between Alec and the twenty other helpers; wouldn’t it??
Correct me if you (anyone reading this) think I’m misguided, but I believe the crux here is that I’m using a different definition of “impact” than the one that underlies counterfactual analysis. I agree that the impact definition underlying counterfactual analysis can sometimes be useful for making individual decisions, but I would argue that the definition I use can be helpful when talking about efforts to do good as a community and when trying to build a strategy for how to live one’s life over the long term (because it looks at what is needed for positive change in the aggregate).
It seems that you are gesturing toward the supporting roles that enabled or allowed Alec to save those lives. I find it both true (in this hypothetical scenario) that those lives were saved because of Alec’s choices, and also that AleC’s choices are in turn dependent on other things. This seems to echo some aspects of the ideas of dependent origination. If we really want to give “credit,” then maybe we would have to use something vaguely analogous to exponential smoothing: Alec get’s 80% of the credit, and the person before that gets 80%^2 of the remaining credit, the person before that gets 80%^3 of the remaining credit, etc.
Also vaguely related, the book The Innovation Delusion has a section relating to this idea of giving credit and the idea of the enabling and supporting people that don’t get credit for their contributions, describing it as a “cult of the inventor.” Here is a small excerpt:
Edison—widely celebrated as the inventor of the lightbulb, among many other things—is a good example. Edison did not toil alone in his Menlo Park laboratory; rather, he employed a staff of several dozen men who worked as machinists, ran experiments, researched patents, sketched designs, and kept careful records in notebooks. Teams of Irish and African American servants maintained their homes and boardinghouses. Menlo Park also had a boardinghouse for the workers, where Mrs. Sarah Jordan, her daughter Ida, and a domestic servant named Kate Williams cooked for the inventors and provided a clean and comfortable dwelling. But you won’t see any of those people in the iconic images of Edison posing with his lightbulb.
Yeah, I think the crux is that you want to weight counterfactual analysis less and myself and EAs generally think this is the ultimate question (at least to the extent consequentialism is motivating our actions as opposed to non-consequentialist moral considerations).
I think that the way to evaluate Alec’s impact is to say, if Alec had not taken action, would those thousand people be dead or would they be alive? (in this hypothetical, I’m assuming Alec is playing a founder role regarding a new intervention). Regarding the twenty other people, ask yourself if the same is true of them. If they are volunteering, would there have been others to volunteer, or would the project been able to procure the funds to fund employees? If they are working for pay, was their work such that the project would not have been able to happen without them? Maybe it is the case that some or all of these people were truly indispensable to the project, such that a proper impact analysis would attribute much or even most of the impact to the twenty people other than Alec.
On the other hand, it may be the case that Alec secured funding to pay these twenty other people and if they had not taken the position, other competent people would. In this situation, provided that there were not other sources of funding for Alec, I would say an impact analysis would attribute half of the lives saved to Alec and half to the funder.
I acknowledge that determining the counterfactual is hard (for instance, maybe the 20 workers freed up other actors to do other impactful work). But as the endpoint of analysis, I definitely think we should be trying to determine what the world looks like if we do X rather than if we did not do X, rather than if we do something that other people consider admirable or otherwise feels good.
EDIT: I realize you put “and those thousand people would not be saved but for the twenty others”. If this is true, then the impact “credit” should definitely be spread among them. I think it bears considering whether that is true.
I think counterfactual analysis as a guide to making decisions is sometimes (!) a useful approach (especially if it is done with appropriate epistemic humility in light of the empirical difficulties).
But, tentatively, I don’t think that it is a valid method for calculating the impact an individual has had (or can be expected to have, if you calculate ex ante). I struggle a bit to put my thinking on this into words, but here’s an attempt: If I say “Alec [random individual] has saved 1,000 lives”, I think what I mean is “1,000 people now live because of Alec alone”. But if Alec was only able to save those lives with the help of twenty other people, and the 1,000 people would now be dead were it not for those twenty helpers, then it seems wrong to me to claim that the 1,000 survivors are alive only because of Alec—even if Alec played a vital role in the endeavour and if it would have been impossible to replace Alec by some other random individual. And just because any one of the twenty people were easily replaceable, I don’t think that they all suddenly count for nothing/very little in the impact evaluation; the fact seems to remain that Alec would not have been able to have any impact if he did not have twenty other people to help him… So it seems like an individual impact evaluation would need to include some sharing between Alec and the twenty other helpers; wouldn’t it??
Correct me if you (anyone reading this) think I’m misguided, but I believe the crux here is that I’m using a different definition of “impact” than the one that underlies counterfactual analysis. I agree that the impact definition underlying counterfactual analysis can sometimes be useful for making individual decisions, but I would argue that the definition I use can be helpful when talking about efforts to do good as a community and when trying to build a strategy for how to live one’s life over the long term (because it looks at what is needed for positive change in the aggregate).
It seems that you are gesturing toward the supporting roles that enabled or allowed Alec to save those lives. I find it both true (in this hypothetical scenario) that those lives were saved because of Alec’s choices, and also that AleC’s choices are in turn dependent on other things. This seems to echo some aspects of the ideas of dependent origination. If we really want to give “credit,” then maybe we would have to use something vaguely analogous to exponential smoothing: Alec get’s 80% of the credit, and the person before that gets 80%^2 of the remaining credit, the person before that gets 80%^3 of the remaining credit, etc.
Also vaguely related, the book The Innovation Delusion has a section relating to this idea of giving credit and the idea of the enabling and supporting people that don’t get credit for their contributions, describing it as a “cult of the inventor.” Here is a small excerpt:
Yeah, I think the crux is that you want to weight counterfactual analysis less and myself and EAs generally think this is the ultimate question (at least to the extent consequentialism is motivating our actions as opposed to non-consequentialist moral considerations).
I think that the way to evaluate Alec’s impact is to say, if Alec had not taken action, would those thousand people be dead or would they be alive? (in this hypothetical, I’m assuming Alec is playing a founder role regarding a new intervention). Regarding the twenty other people, ask yourself if the same is true of them. If they are volunteering, would there have been others to volunteer, or would the project been able to procure the funds to fund employees? If they are working for pay, was their work such that the project would not have been able to happen without them? Maybe it is the case that some or all of these people were truly indispensable to the project, such that a proper impact analysis would attribute much or even most of the impact to the twenty people other than Alec.
On the other hand, it may be the case that Alec secured funding to pay these twenty other people and if they had not taken the position, other competent people would. In this situation, provided that there were not other sources of funding for Alec, I would say an impact analysis would attribute half of the lives saved to Alec and half to the funder.
I acknowledge that determining the counterfactual is hard (for instance, maybe the 20 workers freed up other actors to do other impactful work). But as the endpoint of analysis, I definitely think we should be trying to determine what the world looks like if we do X rather than if we did not do X, rather than if we do something that other people consider admirable or otherwise feels good.
EDIT: I realize you put “and those thousand people would not be saved but for the twenty others”. If this is true, then the impact “credit” should definitely be spread among them. I think it bears considering whether that is true.