What kinds of things do you think it would be helpful to do cost effectiveness analyses of? Are you looking for cost effectiveness analyses of problem areas or specific interventions?
I think it would be valuable to see quantitative estimates of more problem areas and interventions. My order of magnitude estimate would be that if one is considering spending $10,000-$100,000, one should do a simple scale, neglectedness, and tractability analysis. But if one is considering spending $100,000-$1 million, one should do an actual cost-effectiveness analysis. So candidates here would be wild animal welfare, approval voting, improving institutional decision-making, climate change from an existential risk perspective, biodiversity from an existential risk perspective, governance of outer space etc. Though it is a significant amount of work to get a cost-effectiveness analysis up to peer review publishable quality (which we have found requires moving beyond Guesstimate, e.g. here and here), I still think that there is value in doing a rougher Guesstimate model and having a discussion about parameters. One could even add to one of our Guesstimate models, allowing a direct comparison with AGI safety and resilient foods or interventions for loss of electricity/industry from a long-term perspective.
Hmm one recent example is that somebody casually floated to me an idea that can potentially entirely solve an existential risk (though the solution might have downside risks of its own) and I realized then that I had no idea how much to price the solution in terms of EA $s, like whether it should be closer to 100M, 1B or $100B.
My first gut instinct was to examine the solution and also to probe the downside risks, but then I realized this is thinking about it entirely backwards. The downside risks and operational details don’t matter if even the most optimistic cost-effectiveness analyses isn’t enough to warrant this being worth funding!
What kinds of things do you think it would be helpful to do cost effectiveness analyses of? Are you looking for cost effectiveness analyses of problem areas or specific interventions?
I think it would be valuable to see quantitative estimates of more problem areas and interventions. My order of magnitude estimate would be that if one is considering spending $10,000-$100,000, one should do a simple scale, neglectedness, and tractability analysis. But if one is considering spending $100,000-$1 million, one should do an actual cost-effectiveness analysis. So candidates here would be wild animal welfare, approval voting, improving institutional decision-making, climate change from an existential risk perspective, biodiversity from an existential risk perspective, governance of outer space etc. Though it is a significant amount of work to get a cost-effectiveness analysis up to peer review publishable quality (which we have found requires moving beyond Guesstimate, e.g. here and here), I still think that there is value in doing a rougher Guesstimate model and having a discussion about parameters. One could even add to one of our Guesstimate models, allowing a direct comparison with AGI safety and resilient foods or interventions for loss of electricity/industry from a long-term perspective.
I agree with the general flavor of what you said, but am unsure about the exact numbers.
Hmm one recent example is that somebody casually floated to me an idea that can potentially entirely solve an existential risk (though the solution might have downside risks of its own) and I realized then that I had no idea how much to price the solution in terms of EA $s, like whether it should be closer to 100M, 1B or $100B.
My first gut instinct was to examine the solution and also to probe the downside risks, but then I realized this is thinking about it entirely backwards. The downside risks and operational details don’t matter if even the most optimistic cost-effectiveness analyses isn’t enough to warrant this being worth funding!