Thanks for this! I agree that apart from speciesism, there isn’t a good reason to prioritize GHD over animal welfare if targeting suffering reduction (or just directly helping others).
Would you mind expanding further on the goals of the “reliable global capacity growth” cause bucket? It seems to me that several traditionally longtermist / uncategorized cause areas could fit into this bucket, such as:
Under your categorization, would these be included in GHD?
It also seems that some traditionally GHD charities would fall into the “suffering reduction” bucket, since their impact is focused on directly helping others:
Fistula Foundation
StrongMinds
Under your categorization, would these be included in animal welfare?
Also, would you recommend that GHD charity evaluators more explicitly change their optimization target from metrics which measure directly helping others / suffering reduction (QALYs, WELLBYs) to “global capacity growth” metrics? What might these metrics look like?
Hi! Yeah, as per footnote 3, I think the “reliable capacity growth” 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 we’re able.) But I don’t have a view on precisely where to draw the line for what counts as “reliable” vs “speculative”.
Whether causes like FF and SM belong in the “reliable capacity growth” or “pure suffering reduction” 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 I’m 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 / suffering reduction (QALYs, WELLBYs) to “global capacity growth” metrics?
This is an important question. I’m actually not sure. After all, the case for “reliable capacity growth” over “speculative moonshots” 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 we’re hoping for. I don’t know whether we can—I think it would be worth researchers looking into this question. If it turns out that we can’t find better metrics, I think we could reasonably take “QALYs within reason” (i.e. excluding obvious exceptions as mentioned in the OP) as the best metric we have for pursuing this goal.
Thanks for this! I agree that apart from speciesism, there isn’t a good reason to prioritize GHD over animal welfare if targeting suffering reduction (or just directly helping others).
Would you mind expanding further on the goals of the “reliable global capacity growth” cause bucket? It seems to me that several traditionally longtermist / uncategorized cause areas could fit into this bucket, such as:
Improving institutional decisionmaking
Accelerating economic growth
Under your categorization, would these be included in GHD?
It also seems that some traditionally GHD charities would fall into the “suffering reduction” bucket, since their impact is focused on directly helping others:
Fistula Foundation
StrongMinds
Under your categorization, would these be included in animal welfare?
Also, would you recommend that GHD charity evaluators more explicitly change their optimization target from metrics which measure directly helping others / suffering reduction (QALYs, WELLBYs) to “global capacity growth” metrics? What might these metrics look like?
Hi! Yeah, as per footnote 3, I think the “reliable capacity growth” 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 we’re able.) But I don’t have a view on precisely where to draw the line for what counts as “reliable” vs “speculative”.
Whether causes like FF and SM belong in the “reliable capacity growth” or “pure suffering reduction” 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 I’m happy to defer to those who know more empirical details.
This is an important question. I’m actually not sure. After all, the case for “reliable capacity growth” over “speculative moonshots” 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 we’re hoping for. I don’t know whether we can—I think it would be worth researchers looking into this question. If it turns out that we can’t find better metrics, I think we could reasonably take “QALYs within reason” (i.e. excluding obvious exceptions as mentioned in the OP) as the best metric we have for pursuing this goal.