Hi Joey! I have a question on cause plurality and prioritization. In the Clearer Thinking podcast Ep 154, you highlighted your skepticism on the expected value theory and described is “one tool of many” with a preference for a convergence of many models.
As a decision maker, if EV strongly points to one cause but other frameworks don’t converge, would you rather commit to the EV cause given its potential impact or to diversify across causes at the risk of diluting that impact?
Hey, indeed I have a bit of a unique perspective on this relative to other EAs. I would say it really depends if we are talking about a model of EV (which I think in practice is typically what we have) or the real EV. I would not trade off “true” EV but in practice I am pretty skeptical about models of EV really getting at truth, particularly when they diverge from other forms of evidence. Another way to frame it is I am comfortable with risk but discount EV models based on uncertainty as I think in practice uncertainty tends to lead to less dramatic outcomes (closer to no effect) as we gain more evidence/certainty.
Hi Joey! I have a question on cause plurality and prioritization. In the Clearer Thinking podcast Ep 154, you highlighted your skepticism on the expected value theory and described is “one tool of many” with a preference for a convergence of many models.
As a decision maker, if EV strongly points to one cause but other frameworks don’t converge, would you rather commit to the EV cause given its potential impact or to diversify across causes at the risk of diluting that impact?
Hey, indeed I have a bit of a unique perspective on this relative to other EAs. I would say it really depends if we are talking about a model of EV (which I think in practice is typically what we have) or the real EV. I would not trade off “true” EV but in practice I am pretty skeptical about models of EV really getting at truth, particularly when they diverge from other forms of evidence. Another way to frame it is I am comfortable with risk but discount EV models based on uncertainty as I think in practice uncertainty tends to lead to less dramatic outcomes (closer to no effect) as we gain more evidence/certainty.