Another way to frame this would be in terms of crucial considerations: “a consideration such that if it were taken into account it would overturn the conclusions we would otherwise reach about how we should direct our efforts, or an idea or argument that might possibly reveal the need not just for some minor course adjustment in our practical endeavors but a major change of direction or priority.”
A quick example: If Alice currently thinks that a 1 percentage point reduction in existential risk is many orders of magnitude more important than a 1 percentage point increase in the average welfare of people in developing nations*, then I think looking at ratings from this sort of system for ideas focused on improving welfare of people in developing nations is not a good use of Alice’s time.
I think she’d use that time better by doing things like:
looking at ratings of ideas focused on reducing existential risk
looking at ideas focused on proxies that seem more connected to reducing existential risk
looking specifically at crucial-consideration-y things like “How does improving welfare of people in developing nations affect existential risk?” or “What are the strongest arguments for focusing on welfare in developing nations rather than on existential risk”
This wouldn’t be aided much by answers to questions like “Has [idea X] been implemented yet? How costly would it be? What is the evidence that it indeed achieves its stated objective?”
See also Charity Entrepreneurship’s “supporting reports”, which “focus on meta and cross-cutting issues that affect a large number of ideas and would not get covered by our standard reports. Their goal is to support the consideration of different ideas.”
*I chose those proxies and numbers fairly randomly.
To be clear: I am not saying that I don’t think your model, or the sort of work that’s sort-of proposed by the model, wouldn’t be valuable. I think it would be valuable. I’m just explaining why I think some portions of the work won’t be particularly valuable to some portion of EAs. (Just as most of GiveWell’s work or FHI’s work isn’t particularly valuable—at least on the object level—to some EAs.)
Another way to frame this would be in terms of crucial considerations: “a consideration such that if it were taken into account it would overturn the conclusions we would otherwise reach about how we should direct our efforts, or an idea or argument that might possibly reveal the need not just for some minor course adjustment in our practical endeavors but a major change of direction or priority.”
A quick example: If Alice currently thinks that a 1 percentage point reduction in existential risk is many orders of magnitude more important than a 1 percentage point increase in the average welfare of people in developing nations*, then I think looking at ratings from this sort of system for ideas focused on improving welfare of people in developing nations is not a good use of Alice’s time.
I think she’d use that time better by doing things like:
looking at ratings of ideas focused on reducing existential risk
looking at ideas focused on proxies that seem more connected to reducing existential risk
looking specifically at crucial-consideration-y things like “How does improving welfare of people in developing nations affect existential risk?” or “What are the strongest arguments for focusing on welfare in developing nations rather than on existential risk”
This wouldn’t be aided much by answers to questions like “Has [idea X] been implemented yet? How costly would it be? What is the evidence that it indeed achieves its stated objective?”
See also Charity Entrepreneurship’s “supporting reports”, which “focus on meta and cross-cutting issues that affect a large number of ideas and would not get covered by our standard reports. Their goal is to support the consideration of different ideas.”
*I chose those proxies and numbers fairly randomly.
To be clear: I am not saying that I don’t think your model, or the sort of work that’s sort-of proposed by the model, wouldn’t be valuable. I think it would be valuable. I’m just explaining why I think some portions of the work won’t be particularly valuable to some portion of EAs. (Just as most of GiveWell’s work or FHI’s work isn’t particularly valuable—at least on the object level—to some EAs.)
Makes sense, thanks