I do not agree that there are vast differences in value among those actions and strategies that have crossed the bar of having a significant positive impact on the world
(emphasis added)
Perhaps this is a strawman of your position, but it sounds a bit like you want to split actions into basically three buckets: negative, approximately neutral, and significantly positive. This seems unhelpful to me, for several reasons:
I think it is uncontroversial that at least on the negative side of the scale some actions are vastly worse than others, e.g. a mass murder or a military coup of a democratic leader, compared to more âeverydayâ bads like being a grumpy boss.
It feels pretty hard to know which actions are neutral, for many of the reasons you say that the world is complex and there are lots of flow-through effects and interactions.
Identifying which positive actions are significantly so versus insignificantly so feels like it just loses a lot of information compared to a finer-grained scale.
I think it is uncontroversial that at least on the negative side of the scale some actions are vastly worse than others, e.g. a mass murder or a military coup of a democratic leader, compared to more âeverydayâ bads like being a grumpy boss.
Agreed! I share the belief that there are huge differences in how bad an action can be and that thereâs some relevance in distinguish between very bad and just slightly bad ones. I didnât think this was important to mention in my post, but if it came across as suggesting that we basically should only think in terms of three buckets, I clearly communicated poorlyâI agree that this would be too crude.
It feels pretty hard to know which actions are neutral, for many of the reasons you say that the world is complex and there are lots of flow-through effects and interactions.
Strongly agreed! I strongly share the worry that identifying neutral actions would be extremely hard in practiceâtook me a while to settle on âbullshit jobsâ as a representative example in the original post, and Iâm still unsure whether itâs a solid case of âneutral actionsâ. But I think for me, this uncertainty reinforces the case for more research/âthinking to identify actions with significantly positive outcomes vs actions that are basically neutral. I find myself believing that dividing actions into âsignificantly positiveâ vs âeverything elseâ is epistemologically more tractable than dividing them into âthe very bestâ vs âeverything elseâ. (I think Iâd agree that there is a complementary questâidentifying very bad actions and roughly scoring them on how bad they would beâwhich is worthwhile pursuing alongside either of the two options mentioned in the last sentence; maybe I shouldâve mentioned this in the post?)
Identifying which positive actions are significantly so versus insignificantly so feels like it just loses a lot of information compared to a finer-grained scale.
I think I disagree mostly for epistemological reasonsâI donât think we have much access to that information at a finer-grained scale; based on that, giving up on finding such information wouldnât be a great loss because there isnât much to lose in the first place.
I think I might also disagree from a conceptual or strategic standpoint: my thinking on thisâespecially when it comes to catastrophic risks, maybe a bit less for global health & development /â povertyâtends to be more about âwhat bundle of actions and organisations and people do we need for the world to improve towards a state that is more sustainable and exhibits higher wellbeing (/âless suffering)?â For that question, knowing and contributing to significantly good actions seems to be of primary importance, since I believe that weâll need many of these good actionsânot just the very best onesâfor eventual success anyways. Since publishing this essay and receiving a few comments defending (or taking for granted) the counterfactual perspective on impact analysis, Iâve come to reconsider whether I should base my thinking on that perspective more often than I currently do. I remain uncertain and undecided on that point for now, but feel relatively confident that I wonât end up concluding that I should pivot to only or primarily using the counterfactual perspective (vs. the âcollective rationality /â how do I contribute to success at allâ perspective)⌠Curious to hear if all that makes some sense to you (though you might continue to disagree)?
Yes I think that makes sense. I think for me the area where I am most sympathetic to your collective rationality approach is voting, where as you noted elsewhere the 80K narrow consequentialist approach is pretty convoluted. Conversely, the Categorical Imperative, universalisability perspective is very clear that voting is good, and thinking in terms of larger groups and being part of something is perhaps helpful here. So yes while I still generally prefer the counterfactual perspective, I am probably not fully settled there.
I suppose in theory being part of a loose collective like EA focused on impact could mean that individual donation choices matter less if my $X to org Y means someone else will notice Y is better funded and give to a similarly-impressive org Z. I think in practice there is enough heterogeneity incause prioritization this may not be that large an effect? Perhaps within e.g. global health though it could work, where donating directly to any GiveWell top charity is similar to any other as GiveWell might make up the difference.
(emphasis added)
Perhaps this is a strawman of your position, but it sounds a bit like you want to split actions into basically three buckets: negative, approximately neutral, and significantly positive. This seems unhelpful to me, for several reasons:
I think it is uncontroversial that at least on the negative side of the scale some actions are vastly worse than others, e.g. a mass murder or a military coup of a democratic leader, compared to more âeverydayâ bads like being a grumpy boss.
It feels pretty hard to know which actions are neutral, for many of the reasons you say that the world is complex and there are lots of flow-through effects and interactions.
Identifying which positive actions are significantly so versus insignificantly so feels like it just loses a lot of information compared to a finer-grained scale.
Agreed! I share the belief that there are huge differences in how bad an action can be and that thereâs some relevance in distinguish between very bad and just slightly bad ones. I didnât think this was important to mention in my post, but if it came across as suggesting that we basically should only think in terms of three buckets, I clearly communicated poorlyâI agree that this would be too crude.
Strongly agreed! I strongly share the worry that identifying neutral actions would be extremely hard in practiceâtook me a while to settle on âbullshit jobsâ as a representative example in the original post, and Iâm still unsure whether itâs a solid case of âneutral actionsâ. But I think for me, this uncertainty reinforces the case for more research/âthinking to identify actions with significantly positive outcomes vs actions that are basically neutral. I find myself believing that dividing actions into âsignificantly positiveâ vs âeverything elseâ is epistemologically more tractable than dividing them into âthe very bestâ vs âeverything elseâ. (I think Iâd agree that there is a complementary questâidentifying very bad actions and roughly scoring them on how bad they would beâwhich is worthwhile pursuing alongside either of the two options mentioned in the last sentence; maybe I shouldâve mentioned this in the post?)
I think I disagree mostly for epistemological reasonsâI donât think we have much access to that information at a finer-grained scale; based on that, giving up on finding such information wouldnât be a great loss because there isnât much to lose in the first place.
I think I might also disagree from a conceptual or strategic standpoint: my thinking on thisâespecially when it comes to catastrophic risks, maybe a bit less for global health & development /â povertyâtends to be more about âwhat bundle of actions and organisations and people do we need for the world to improve towards a state that is more sustainable and exhibits higher wellbeing (/âless suffering)?â For that question, knowing and contributing to significantly good actions seems to be of primary importance, since I believe that weâll need many of these good actionsânot just the very best onesâfor eventual success anyways. Since publishing this essay and receiving a few comments defending (or taking for granted) the counterfactual perspective on impact analysis, Iâve come to reconsider whether I should base my thinking on that perspective more often than I currently do. I remain uncertain and undecided on that point for now, but feel relatively confident that I wonât end up concluding that I should pivot to only or primarily using the counterfactual perspective (vs. the âcollective rationality /â how do I contribute to success at allâ perspective)⌠Curious to hear if all that makes some sense to you (though you might continue to disagree)?
Yes I think that makes sense. I think for me the area where I am most sympathetic to your collective rationality approach is voting, where as you noted elsewhere the 80K narrow consequentialist approach is pretty convoluted. Conversely, the Categorical Imperative, universalisability perspective is very clear that voting is good, and thinking in terms of larger groups and being part of something is perhaps helpful here. So yes while I still generally prefer the counterfactual perspective, I am probably not fully settled there.
I suppose in theory being part of a loose collective like EA focused on impact could mean that individual donation choices matter less if my $X to org Y means someone else will notice Y is better funded and give to a similarly-impressive org Z. I think in practice there is enough heterogeneity incause prioritization this may not be that large an effect? Perhaps within e.g. global health though it could work, where donating directly to any GiveWell top charity is similar to any other as GiveWell might make up the difference.