Neither we nor they had any way of forecasting or quantifying the possible impact of [Extinction Rebellion]
and go on to talk about this is an example of the type of intervention that EA is likely to miss due to lack of quantifiability.
One think that would help us understand your point is to answer the following question:
If it’s really not possible to make any kind of forecast about the impact of grassroots activism (or whatever intervention you would prefer), then on what basis do you support your claim that supporting grassroots activism would improve its impact? And how would you have any idea which groups or which forms of activism to fund, if there’s no possible way of forecasting which ones will work?
I think the inferential gap here is that (we think that) you are advocating for an alternative way of justifying [the claim that a given intervention is impactful] other than the traditional “scientific” and “objective” tools (e.g. cost-benefit analysis, RCTs) , but we’re not really sure what you think that alternative justification would look like or why it would push you towards grassroots activism.
I suspect that you might be using words like “scientific”, “objective”, and “rational” in a narrower sense than EAs think of them. For instance, EAs don’t believe that “rationality” means “don’t accept any idea that is not backed by clear scientific evidence,” because we’re aware that often the evidence is incomplete, but we have to make a decision anyway. What a “rational” person would say in that situation is something more like “think about what we would expect to see in a world where the idea is true compared to what we would expect to see if it were false, see which is closer to what we do see, and possibly also look at how similar things have turned out in the past.”
You mention that:
and go on to talk about this is an example of the type of intervention that EA is likely to miss due to lack of quantifiability.
One think that would help us understand your point is to answer the following question:
If it’s really not possible to make any kind of forecast about the impact of grassroots activism (or whatever intervention you would prefer), then on what basis do you support your claim that supporting grassroots activism would improve its impact? And how would you have any idea which groups or which forms of activism to fund, if there’s no possible way of forecasting which ones will work?
I think the inferential gap here is that (we think that) you are advocating for an alternative way of justifying [the claim that a given intervention is impactful] other than the traditional “scientific” and “objective” tools (e.g. cost-benefit analysis, RCTs) , but we’re not really sure what you think that alternative justification would look like or why it would push you towards grassroots activism.
I suspect that you might be using words like “scientific”, “objective”, and “rational” in a narrower sense than EAs think of them. For instance, EAs don’t believe that “rationality” means “don’t accept any idea that is not backed by clear scientific evidence,” because we’re aware that often the evidence is incomplete, but we have to make a decision anyway. What a “rational” person would say in that situation is something more like “think about what we would expect to see in a world where the idea is true compared to what we would expect to see if it were false, see which is closer to what we do see, and possibly also look at how similar things have turned out in the past.”