Roughly I think that you are currently not really calculating cost-effectiveness. That is, whether you’re giving out malaria nets or preventing nuclear war, almost all of the effects of your actions will be affecting people in the future.
To clarify, by “future” I don’t necessarily mean “long run future”. Where you put that bar is a fascinating question. But focusing on current lives lost seems to approximately ignore most of the (positive or negative) value, so I expect your estimates to not be capturing much about what matters.
(You’ve probably seen this talk by Greaves, but flagging it in case you haven’t! Sam isn’t a huge fan, I think in part because Greaves reinvents a bunch of stuff that non-philosophers have already thought a bunch about, but I think it’s a good intro to the problem overall anyway.)
On the cluelessness issue—to be honest, I don’t find myself that bothered, insofar as it’s just the standard epistemic objection to utilitarianism, and if (a) we make a good faith effort to estimate the effects that can reasonably be estimated, and (b) have symmetric expectations as to long term value (I think Greaves has written on the indifference solution before, but it’s been some time), existing CEAs would still yield be a reasonably accurate signpost to maximization.
Happy to chat more on this, and also to get your views on research methodology in general—will drop you an email, then!
I agree with (a). I disagree that (b) is true! And as a result I disagree that existing CEAs give you an accurate signpost.
Why is (b) untrue? Well, we do have some information about the future, so it seems extremely unlikely that you won’t be able to have any indication as to the sign of your actions, if you do (a) reasonably well.
Again, I don’t purely mean this from an extreme longtermist perspective (although I would certainly be interested in longtermist analyses given my personal ethics). For example, simply thinking about population changes in the above report would be one way to move in this direction. Other possibilities include thinking about the effects of GHW interventions on long-term trajectories, like growth in developing countries (and that these effects may dominate short-term effects like DALYs averted for the very best interventions). I haven’t thought much about what other things you’d want to measure to make these estimates, but I would love to see someone try, and it seems pretty crucial if you’re going to be doing accurate CEAs.
Sure, happy to chat about this!
Roughly I think that you are currently not really calculating cost-effectiveness. That is, whether you’re giving out malaria nets or preventing nuclear war, almost all of the effects of your actions will be affecting people in the future.
To clarify, by “future” I don’t necessarily mean “long run future”. Where you put that bar is a fascinating question. But focusing on current lives lost seems to approximately ignore most of the (positive or negative) value, so I expect your estimates to not be capturing much about what matters.
(You’ve probably seen this talk by Greaves, but flagging it in case you haven’t! Sam isn’t a huge fan, I think in part because Greaves reinvents a bunch of stuff that non-philosophers have already thought a bunch about, but I think it’s a good intro to the problem overall anyway.)
On the cluelessness issue—to be honest, I don’t find myself that bothered, insofar as it’s just the standard epistemic objection to utilitarianism, and if (a) we make a good faith effort to estimate the effects that can reasonably be estimated, and (b) have symmetric expectations as to long term value (I think Greaves has written on the indifference solution before, but it’s been some time), existing CEAs would still yield be a reasonably accurate signpost to maximization.
Happy to chat more on this, and also to get your views on research methodology in general—will drop you an email, then!
I agree with (a). I disagree that (b) is true! And as a result I disagree that existing CEAs give you an accurate signpost.
Why is (b) untrue? Well, we do have some information about the future, so it seems extremely unlikely that you won’t be able to have any indication as to the sign of your actions, if you do (a) reasonably well.
Again, I don’t purely mean this from an extreme longtermist perspective (although I would certainly be interested in longtermist analyses given my personal ethics). For example, simply thinking about population changes in the above report would be one way to move in this direction. Other possibilities include thinking about the effects of GHW interventions on long-term trajectories, like growth in developing countries (and that these effects may dominate short-term effects like DALYs averted for the very best interventions). I haven’t thought much about what other things you’d want to measure to make these estimates, but I would love to see someone try, and it seems pretty crucial if you’re going to be doing accurate CEAs.