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.
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.