Say that $2B to $20B, or 10x to 100x the amount that Open Philanthropy has already spent, would have a 1 to 10% chance of succeeding at that goal [5].
But shouldn’t this be simplified to include fewer variables? In particular:
1. Why do we need cost as a variable on it’s own?
cost is basically a choice variable. Presumably the more that is spent, the greater the probabilityOfSuccess. The uncertainty surrounds ‘benefit per dollar spent’. But that ‘slope of benefit in cost’ is really only a single uncertainty, not two uncertainties. Wouldn’t it be better to just pick a middle reasonable ‘amount spent’, perhaps the amount that seems ex-ante optimal?
These seem likely to be highly (negatively?) correlated to each other, and positively correlated to cost. For a given expenditure, if we target a lower ‘reduction in prison population’, or we a slower rate-of-change, I expect a greater probabilityOfSuccess.
Would it make sense to instead think of something like ‘reduction in total prison-years as a percent of current prison population?’ Perhaps, feeding into this, some combinations of expenditure, acceleration, reduction percent, and prob(success) that jointly seem plausible?
The baseline simple model is
This seems to depend on:
But shouldn’t this be simplified to include fewer variables? In particular:
1. Why do we need
costas a variable on it’s own?costis basically a choice variable. Presumably the more that is spent, the greater theprobabilityOfSuccess. The uncertainty surrounds ‘benefit per dollar spent’. But that ‘slope of benefit in cost’ is really only a single uncertainty, not two uncertainties. Wouldn’t it be better to just pick a middle reasonable ‘amount spent’, perhaps the amount that seems ex-ante optimal?2. Acceleration * reductionInPrisonPopulation * probabilityOfSuccess:
These seem likely to be highly (negatively?) correlated to each other, and positively correlated to
cost. For a given expenditure, if we target a lower ‘reduction in prison population’, or we a slower rate-of-change, I expect a greaterprobabilityOfSuccess.Would it make sense to instead think of something like ‘reduction in total prison-years as a percent of current prison population?’ Perhaps, feeding into this, some combinations of expenditure, acceleration, reduction percent, and prob(success) that jointly seem plausible?
Answered here.