Re the polio vaccine, I donât know much about it, but I think the inventors probably do deserve a lot of credit! Yes, lots and lots of people were needed to manufacture and distribute many vaccine doses, but I think the counterfactual is illustrative: the workers driving the trucks and going door to door and so forth seem very replaceable to me and it is hard to imagine a great vaccine being invented, but then not being rolled our because no-one is willing to take a job as a truck driver distributing the doses. Whereas if the inventors didnât invent it, maybe it would be years or decades before someone else did. But I can think of a case where inventors should get far less credit I think: if there is a huge prize for developing a vaccine, then quite likely lots of teams will try to do it, and if you are the winning team you might have only accelerated it by a few months. So in this case maybe the people who made/âfunded the prize get a lot of the credit.
I really like your inclusion of people who have influenced us in thinking about how to apportion credit. For me personally, my parents sometimes muse that despite all the great things they have done directly, parenting my brother and I well may be the single biggest âimpactâ of their lives. Of course it is hard to guess, but this seems at least plausible, and I think parenting (and more broadly supporting/âmentoring/âcaring for other people) is really valuable!
[The thoughts expressed below are tentative and reveal lingering confusion in my own brain. I hope they are somewhat insightful anyways.]
but I think the counterfactual is illustrative
Completely agree! The concept of counterfactual analysis seems super relevant to explaining how and why some of my takes in the original post differ from âthe mainstream EA narrative on impactâ. Iâm still trying to puzzle out exactly how my claims in âThe empirical problemâ link to the counterfactual analysis pointâdo I think that my claims are irrelevant to a counterfactual impact analysis? do I, in other words, accept and agree that impact between actions/âpeople differs by several magnitudes when calculated via counterfactual analysis methods? how can I best name, describe, illustrate, and maybe defend the alternative perspective on impact evaluations that seems to inform my thinking in the essay and in general? what role does and should counterfactual analysis play in my thinking alongside that alternative perspective?
To discuss with regards to the polio example: I see the rationale for claiming that the vaccine inventors are somehow more pivotal because they are less easily replaceable than all those people performing supportive and enabling actions. But just because an action is replacement doesnât mean itâs unimportant. It is a fact that the vaccine discovery could not have happened and would not have had any positive consequences if the supporting & enabling actions had not been performed by somebody. I canât help myself, but this seems relevant and important when I think about the impact I as an individual can have; on some level, it seems true to say that as an individual, living in a world where everything is embedded in society, I cannot have any meaningful impact on my own; all effects I can bring about will be brought about by myself and many other people; if only I acted, no meaningful effects could possibly occur. Should all of this really just be ignored when thinking about impact evaluations and my personal decisions (as seems to occur in counterfactual analyses)? I donât know.
I think this is a good framing! And I think I am happy to bite this bullet and say that for the purposes of deciding what to do it matters relatively little whether my action being effective relies on systems of humans acting predictably (like polio vaccine deliverers getting paid to do their job) or natural forces (atmospheric physics for a climate geoengineering intervention). Whereas regarding what is a virtuous attitude to have, yes probably it is good to foreground the many (sometimes small) contributions of other humans that help our actions have their desired impacts.
Re the polio vaccine, I donât know much about it, but I think the inventors probably do deserve a lot of credit! Yes, lots and lots of people were needed to manufacture and distribute many vaccine doses, but I think the counterfactual is illustrative: the workers driving the trucks and going door to door and so forth seem very replaceable to me and it is hard to imagine a great vaccine being invented, but then not being rolled our because no-one is willing to take a job as a truck driver distributing the doses. Whereas if the inventors didnât invent it, maybe it would be years or decades before someone else did. But I can think of a case where inventors should get far less credit I think: if there is a huge prize for developing a vaccine, then quite likely lots of teams will try to do it, and if you are the winning team you might have only accelerated it by a few months. So in this case maybe the people who made/âfunded the prize get a lot of the credit.
I really like your inclusion of people who have influenced us in thinking about how to apportion credit. For me personally, my parents sometimes muse that despite all the great things they have done directly, parenting my brother and I well may be the single biggest âimpactâ of their lives. Of course it is hard to guess, but this seems at least plausible, and I think parenting (and more broadly supporting/âmentoring/âcaring for other people) is really valuable!
[The thoughts expressed below are tentative and reveal lingering confusion in my own brain. I hope they are somewhat insightful anyways.]
Completely agree! The concept of counterfactual analysis seems super relevant to explaining how and why some of my takes in the original post differ from âthe mainstream EA narrative on impactâ. Iâm still trying to puzzle out exactly how my claims in âThe empirical problemâ link to the counterfactual analysis pointâdo I think that my claims are irrelevant to a counterfactual impact analysis? do I, in other words, accept and agree that impact between actions/âpeople differs by several magnitudes when calculated via counterfactual analysis methods? how can I best name, describe, illustrate, and maybe defend the alternative perspective on impact evaluations that seems to inform my thinking in the essay and in general? what role does and should counterfactual analysis play in my thinking alongside that alternative perspective?
To discuss with regards to the polio example: I see the rationale for claiming that the vaccine inventors are somehow more pivotal because they are less easily replaceable than all those people performing supportive and enabling actions. But just because an action is replacement doesnât mean itâs unimportant. It is a fact that the vaccine discovery could not have happened and would not have had any positive consequences if the supporting & enabling actions had not been performed by somebody. I canât help myself, but this seems relevant and important when I think about the impact I as an individual can have; on some level, it seems true to say that as an individual, living in a world where everything is embedded in society, I cannot have any meaningful impact on my own; all effects I can bring about will be brought about by myself and many other people; if only I acted, no meaningful effects could possibly occur. Should all of this really just be ignored when thinking about impact evaluations and my personal decisions (as seems to occur in counterfactual analyses)? I donât know.
I think this is a good framing! And I think I am happy to bite this bullet and say that for the purposes of deciding what to do it matters relatively little whether my action being effective relies on systems of humans acting predictably (like polio vaccine deliverers getting paid to do their job) or natural forces (atmospheric physics for a climate geoengineering intervention). Whereas regarding what is a virtuous attitude to have, yes probably it is good to foreground the many (sometimes small) contributions of other humans that help our actions have their desired impacts.