Thanks for this. I found it interesting to think about. Here are my main comments.
Mainline and extreme risks
I think it would be better to analyse mainline risks and extreme risks separately.
Depending on whether or not you put substantial weight on future people, one type of risks may be much more important than the other. The extreme risks appear to pose a much larger existential threat than mainline risks, so if you value future generations the extreme risks may be much more important to focus on. The opposite may be true for people who apply high pure time discounting. (Relatedly, on most worldviews, the ‘scale’ factor will be materially different between the two.)
The ideal responses to mainline and extreme risks appear to be different. (Relatedly, the ‘solvability’ of those responses may differ, as might the amount of resources that are already committed to the relevant kinds of responses.)
The methodologies which are useful are different. Efforts to understand and act on mainline risks are amenable to standard economic approaches, while extreme risk analysis requires substantive judgements about empirical and model uncertainty.
Overall, putting the two together seems to make the analysis less clear, not more.
More expensive things are worse
Firstly, this approach will undervalue capital intensive causes where the total required investment is so large that $10 billion/year may still represent underfunding. A better model would be one which examined the total funding required to solve the problem compared to the current level of funding.
The framework 80k uses is designed to add up to a cost-effectiveness heuristic. Adjusting this by giving more expensive things higher neglectedness scores in effect takes the ‘cost’ out of the ‘cost-effectiveness analysis’. Using a completely different framework would be fine, but making this adjustment alone causes one to depart from any notion of good done per effort put in.
If I put more time into this, I would focus on the solvability part
In your initial comments on solvability, you give a concrete set of interventions which you say would cost approximately a certain amount and achieve approximately a certain amount. If someone were to analyse these in detail, this could be the basis for a cost-effectiveness calculation. Of course, I don’t know enough to say whether the Project Drawdown analysis you reference is accurate. Other people looking into this might want to focus on that since it seems crucial to the bottom line.
Qualified ’need’s
When you just say ‘we need to do Y’, this seems to be sort of assuming the conclusion, adding little to my understanding of which actions produce the most impact. For example:
All of these solutions, and more, need to be rolled out as quickly as possible at global scale.
I found it much more helpful when you said ‘if we want to achieve X, we need to do Y’, improving my understanding of what actions lead to what effects. For example:
the latest UN press release (2019-10-23) states that nations need to increase their targets fivefold to meet the goal of limiting warming to 1.5C.
This part of my comment might sound like a nitpick, but I think attention to this kind of thing can make for better analysis and better communication.
The ideal responses to mainline and extreme risks appear to be different.
I’m curious to know what you think the difference is. Both problems require greenhouse gas emissions to be halted.
Adjusting this by giving more expensive things higher neglectedness scores in effect takes the ‘cost’ out of the ‘cost-effectiveness analysis’.
The neglectedness guidelines focus on the level of existing funding. I argue that this is an insufficient view—that if you have two problems who require $100 or $200 of total funding to solve completely, if they both have $50 of funding today, they are not equally neglected. The denominator matters—the $200 problem is much further from being solved.
Using a completely different framework would be fine, but making this adjustment alone causes one to depart from any notion of good done per effort put in.
Perhaps I’m proposing a slightly different framework—but it’s definitely not one divorced from the notion of caring about the good done per effort put in. I just don’t believe that climate change is really at saturation point for the level of effort.
Qualified ’need’s
Fair point about use of language. I’ll try and address this in a future edit.
I’m curious to know what you think the difference is. Both problems require greenhouse gas emissions to be halted.
I agree that both mainline and extreme scenarios are helped by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but there are other things one can do about climate change, and the most effective actions might turn out to be things which are specific to either mainline or extreme risks. To take examples from that link:
Developing drought-resistant crops could mitigate some of the worst effects of mainline scenarios, but might help little in extreme scenarios.
Attempting to artificially reverse climate change may be a last resort for extreme scenarios, but may be too risky to be worthwhile for mainline scenarios.
For the avoidance of doubt, I think that my point about mainline and extreme risks appealing to different worldviews is sufficient reason to separate the analyses even if the interventions ended up looking similar.
if you have two problems who require $100 or $200 of total funding to solve completely, if they both have $50 of funding today, they are not equally neglected
Yep, you could use the word ‘neglected’ that way, but I stand by my comment that if you do that without also modifying your definition of ‘scale’ or ‘solvability’, the three factors no longer add up to a cost-effectiveness heuristic. i.e. if you formalise what you mean by neglectedness and insert it into the formula here without changing anything else, the formula will no longer cancel out to ‘good done / extra person or $’.
Thanks for this. I found it interesting to think about. Here are my main comments.
Mainline and extreme risks
I think it would be better to analyse mainline risks and extreme risks separately.
Depending on whether or not you put substantial weight on future people, one type of risks may be much more important than the other. The extreme risks appear to pose a much larger existential threat than mainline risks, so if you value future generations the extreme risks may be much more important to focus on. The opposite may be true for people who apply high pure time discounting. (Relatedly, on most worldviews, the ‘scale’ factor will be materially different between the two.)
The ideal responses to mainline and extreme risks appear to be different. (Relatedly, the ‘solvability’ of those responses may differ, as might the amount of resources that are already committed to the relevant kinds of responses.)
The methodologies which are useful are different. Efforts to understand and act on mainline risks are amenable to standard economic approaches, while extreme risk analysis requires substantive judgements about empirical and model uncertainty.
Overall, putting the two together seems to make the analysis less clear, not more.
More expensive things are worse
The framework 80k uses is designed to add up to a cost-effectiveness heuristic. Adjusting this by giving more expensive things higher neglectedness scores in effect takes the ‘cost’ out of the ‘cost-effectiveness analysis’. Using a completely different framework would be fine, but making this adjustment alone causes one to depart from any notion of good done per effort put in.
If I put more time into this, I would focus on the solvability part
In your initial comments on solvability, you give a concrete set of interventions which you say would cost approximately a certain amount and achieve approximately a certain amount. If someone were to analyse these in detail, this could be the basis for a cost-effectiveness calculation. Of course, I don’t know enough to say whether the Project Drawdown analysis you reference is accurate. Other people looking into this might want to focus on that since it seems crucial to the bottom line.
Qualified ’need’s
When you just say ‘we need to do Y’, this seems to be sort of assuming the conclusion, adding little to my understanding of which actions produce the most impact. For example:
I found it much more helpful when you said ‘if we want to achieve X, we need to do Y’, improving my understanding of what actions lead to what effects. For example:
This part of my comment might sound like a nitpick, but I think attention to this kind of thing can make for better analysis and better communication.
All personal views only, of course.
I’m curious to know what you think the difference is. Both problems require greenhouse gas emissions to be halted.
The neglectedness guidelines focus on the level of existing funding. I argue that this is an insufficient view—that if you have two problems who require $100 or $200 of total funding to solve completely, if they both have $50 of funding today, they are not equally neglected. The denominator matters—the $200 problem is much further from being solved.
Perhaps I’m proposing a slightly different framework—but it’s definitely not one divorced from the notion of caring about the good done per effort put in. I just don’t believe that climate change is really at saturation point for the level of effort.
Fair point about use of language. I’ll try and address this in a future edit.
I agree that both mainline and extreme scenarios are helped by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but there are other things one can do about climate change, and the most effective actions might turn out to be things which are specific to either mainline or extreme risks. To take examples from that link:
Developing drought-resistant crops could mitigate some of the worst effects of mainline scenarios, but might help little in extreme scenarios.
Attempting to artificially reverse climate change may be a last resort for extreme scenarios, but may be too risky to be worthwhile for mainline scenarios.
For the avoidance of doubt, I think that my point about mainline and extreme risks appealing to different worldviews is sufficient reason to separate the analyses even if the interventions ended up looking similar.
Yep, you could use the word ‘neglected’ that way, but I stand by my comment that if you do that without also modifying your definition of ‘scale’ or ‘solvability’, the three factors no longer add up to a cost-effectiveness heuristic. i.e. if you formalise what you mean by neglectedness and insert it into the formula here without changing anything else, the formula will no longer cancel out to ‘good done / extra person or $’.