Hi! Yeah, as per footnote 3, I think the āreliable capacity growthā bucket could end up being more expansive than just GHD. (Which is to say: it seems that reasons of principle would favor comparing these various charities against each other, insofar as weāre able.) But I donāt have a view on precisely where to draw the line for what counts as āreliableā vs āspeculativeā.
Whether causes like FF and SM belong in the āreliable capacity growthā or āpure suffering reductionā buckets depends on whether their beneficiaries can be expected to be more productive. I would guess that the case for productivity benefits is stronger for SM than for FF (depression is notoriously disabling). But Iām happy to defer to those who know more empirical details.
would you recommend that GHD charity evaluators more explicitly change their optimization target from metrics which measure directly helping others /ā suffering reduction (QALYs, WELLBYs) to āglobal capacity growthā metrics?
This is an important question. Iām actually not sure. After all, the case for āreliable capacity growthā over āspeculative moonshotsā depends on a kind of pessimism about the prospects for hyper-rationalistic targeted efforts to directly improve the far-future. So it would depend upon whether we could identify suitably reliable metrics of the kind of impact weāre hoping for. I donāt know whether we canāI think it would be worth researchers looking into this question. If it turns out that we canāt find better metrics, I think we could reasonably take āQALYs within reasonā (i.e. excluding obvious exceptions as mentioned in the OP) as the best metric we have for pursuing this goal.
Hi! Yeah, as per footnote 3, I think the āreliable capacity growthā bucket could end up being more expansive than just GHD. (Which is to say: it seems that reasons of principle would favor comparing these various charities against each other, insofar as weāre able.) But I donāt have a view on precisely where to draw the line for what counts as āreliableā vs āspeculativeā.
Whether causes like FF and SM belong in the āreliable capacity growthā or āpure suffering reductionā buckets depends on whether their beneficiaries can be expected to be more productive. I would guess that the case for productivity benefits is stronger for SM than for FF (depression is notoriously disabling). But Iām happy to defer to those who know more empirical details.
This is an important question. Iām actually not sure. After all, the case for āreliable capacity growthā over āspeculative moonshotsā depends on a kind of pessimism about the prospects for hyper-rationalistic targeted efforts to directly improve the far-future. So it would depend upon whether we could identify suitably reliable metrics of the kind of impact weāre hoping for. I donāt know whether we canāI think it would be worth researchers looking into this question. If it turns out that we canāt find better metrics, I think we could reasonably take āQALYs within reasonā (i.e. excluding obvious exceptions as mentioned in the OP) as the best metric we have for pursuing this goal.