I guess I have (i) some different empirical assumptions, and (ii) some different moral assumptions (about what counts as a sufficiently modest revision to still count as “conservative”, i.e. within the general spirit of GHD).
To specifically address your three examples:
I’d guess that variance in cost (to save one life, or whatever) outweighs the variance in predictable ability to contribute. (iirc, Nick Beckstead’s dissertation on longtermism made the point that all else equal, it would be better to save a life in a wealthy country for instrumental reasons, but that the cost difference is so great that it’s still plausibly much better to focus on developing countries in practice.)
Perhaps it would justify more of a shift towards the “D” side of “H&D”, insofar as we could identify any good interventions for improving economic development. But the desire for lasting improvements seems commonsensical to many people anyway (compare all the rhetoric around “root causes”, “teaching a man to fish”, etc.)
In general, extreme poverty might seem to have the most low-hanging fruit for improvement (including improvements to capacity-building). But there may be exceptions in cases of extreme societal dysfunction, in which case, again, I think it’s pretty commonsensical that we shouldn’t invest resources in places where they’d actually do less lasting good.
I don’t understand at all why this would motivate less focus on infant mortality: fixing that is an extremely cheap way to improve human capacity! I think I already mentioned in the OP that increasing fertility could also be justified in principle, but I’m not aware of any proven cheap interventions that do this in practice. Adding some child benefit support (or whatever) into the mix doesn’t strike me as unduly radical, in any case.
Greater support for education seems very commonsensical in principle (including from a broadly “global health & development” perspective), and iirc was an early focus area of GiveWell—they just gave up because they couldn’t find any promising interventions.
So I’m not really seeing anything “bad” here. I agree that it could involve some revisions to standard GHD portfolios. But it’s very conservative in comparison to proposals to shift all GHD funding to Animal Welfare, as the orthodox “neartermist” worldview seemingly recommends.
All that said: I’m less interested in what counts as “radical” or “conservative”, and more interested in what is actually justified. The strongest argument for my reconceptualization is that all the “worldviews” I set out are very sensible and warrant support (IMO). I don’t think the same is true of all the “orthodox” worldviews.
I didn’t say your proposal was “bad”, I said it wasn’t “conservative”.
My point is just that, if GHD were to reorient around “reliable global capacity growth”, it would look very different, to the point where I think your proposal is better described as “stop GHD work, and instead do reliable global capacity growth work”, rather than the current framing of “let’s reconceptualize the existing bucket of work”.
I don’t understand at all why this would motivate less focus on infant mortality: fixing that is an extremely cheap way to improve human capacity!
This sounds plausible, but not obvious, to me. If your society has a sharply limited amount of resources to invest in the next generation, it isn’t clear to me that maximizing the number of members in that generation would be the best “way to improve human capacity” in that society. One could argue that with somewhat fewer kids, the society could provide better nutrition, education, health care, and other inputs that are rather important to adult capacity and flourishing.
To be clear, I am a strong supporter of life-saving interventions and am not advocating for a move away from these. I just think they are harder to justify on improving-capacity grounds than on the grounds usually provided for them.
One could argue that with somewhat fewer kids, the society could provide better nutrition, education, health care, and other inputs that are rather important to adult capacity and flourishing.
I think that’s an argument worth having. After all, if the claim were true then I think that really would justify shifting attention away from infant mortality reduction and towards these “other inputs” for promoting human flourishing. (But I’m skeptical that the claim is true, at least on currently relevant margins in most places.)
I guess I have (i) some different empirical assumptions, and (ii) some different moral assumptions (about what counts as a sufficiently modest revision to still count as “conservative”, i.e. within the general spirit of GHD).
To specifically address your three examples:
I’d guess that variance in cost (to save one life, or whatever) outweighs the variance in predictable ability to contribute. (iirc, Nick Beckstead’s dissertation on longtermism made the point that all else equal, it would be better to save a life in a wealthy country for instrumental reasons, but that the cost difference is so great that it’s still plausibly much better to focus on developing countries in practice.)
Perhaps it would justify more of a shift towards the “D” side of “H&D”, insofar as we could identify any good interventions for improving economic development. But the desire for lasting improvements seems commonsensical to many people anyway (compare all the rhetoric around “root causes”, “teaching a man to fish”, etc.)
In general, extreme poverty might seem to have the most low-hanging fruit for improvement (including improvements to capacity-building). But there may be exceptions in cases of extreme societal dysfunction, in which case, again, I think it’s pretty commonsensical that we shouldn’t invest resources in places where they’d actually do less lasting good.
I don’t understand at all why this would motivate less focus on infant mortality: fixing that is an extremely cheap way to improve human capacity! I think I already mentioned in the OP that increasing fertility could also be justified in principle, but I’m not aware of any proven cheap interventions that do this in practice. Adding some child benefit support (or whatever) into the mix doesn’t strike me as unduly radical, in any case.
Greater support for education seems very commonsensical in principle (including from a broadly “global health & development” perspective), and iirc was an early focus area of GiveWell—they just gave up because they couldn’t find any promising interventions.
So I’m not really seeing anything “bad” here. I agree that it could involve some revisions to standard GHD portfolios. But it’s very conservative in comparison to proposals to shift all GHD funding to Animal Welfare, as the orthodox “neartermist” worldview seemingly recommends.
All that said: I’m less interested in what counts as “radical” or “conservative”, and more interested in what is actually justified. The strongest argument for my reconceptualization is that all the “worldviews” I set out are very sensible and warrant support (IMO). I don’t think the same is true of all the “orthodox” worldviews.
I didn’t say your proposal was “bad”, I said it wasn’t “conservative”.
My point is just that, if GHD were to reorient around “reliable global capacity growth”, it would look very different, to the point where I think your proposal is better described as “stop GHD work, and instead do reliable global capacity growth work”, rather than the current framing of “let’s reconceptualize the existing bucket of work”.
I was replying to your sentence, “I’d guess most proponents of GHD would find (1) and (2) particularly bad.”
Oh I see, sorry for misinterpreting you.
This sounds plausible, but not obvious, to me. If your society has a sharply limited amount of resources to invest in the next generation, it isn’t clear to me that maximizing the number of members in that generation would be the best “way to improve human capacity” in that society. One could argue that with somewhat fewer kids, the society could provide better nutrition, education, health care, and other inputs that are rather important to adult capacity and flourishing.
To be clear, I am a strong supporter of life-saving interventions and am not advocating for a move away from these. I just think they are harder to justify on improving-capacity grounds than on the grounds usually provided for them.
I think that’s an argument worth having. After all, if the claim were true then I think that really would justify shifting attention away from infant mortality reduction and towards these “other inputs” for promoting human flourishing. (But I’m skeptical that the claim is true, at least on currently relevant margins in most places.)