-> choose robustly good actions, maintain option value, build capacity etc. Which is basically what most meta interventions are about, no?
Unfortunately I donāt think thereās really much of a case for āmaintain option value, build capacity etc.ā being robustly good either, as argued here.
Thanks Anthony. Would it be fair to interpret your unawareness series as your steelman of OPās post title, or as being relevant?
I couldnāt find on a quick look what decision-making approach you would (at least provisionally) endorse instead, bracketing maybe? For my own reference later:
Bracketing says to base our decisions on those consequences we are ā in a precise sense ā not clueless about, ābracketing outā the others. The idea is that the effects weāre clueless about should not override the obligations given to us by the benefits we arenāt clueless about, like the immediate benefits of malaria nets to the global poor. Thus bracketing could provide action-guidance in the face of cluelessness and in particular support neartermism.
ā¦ Take Mogensenās (2020) example of deciding whether to donate to the Against Malaria Foundation (AMF) or the Make-a-Wish Foundation (MAWF). As Mogensen argues, youāre clueless about the overall effects of donating to AMF vs. MAWF, due to their highly ambiguous effects on population dynamics, economic growth, resource usage, etc. You can come up with lots of asymmetrical effects each intervention has on total value, and you donāt have any principled way of weighing them up, but they still may swamp the immediate effects. Thus it seems that each of the available actions ā Donate to AMF, Donate to MAWF, or Do Nothing ā is permissible.
And yet, if youāre like me, you suspect that even an impartial consequentialist ought to choose AMF. For we arenāt clueless about the effects of our actions on the immediate beneficiaries! Restricting attention to those who would be prevented from contracting malaria by an AMF donation and the child who would be granted a wish by an MAWF donation, we can rank our actions by their expected total value: AMF MAWF Do Nothing. So my thought is, āThose immediately affected, who Iām not clueless about, give me a reason to Donate to AMF. It is true that, once I start accounting for more moral patients, Iāll become clueless about total value. But my cluelessness about this enlarged set of patients does not overridethe reasons given to me by the immediate beneficiaries. So, still, Iām required to Donate to AMF.ā And thatās the essence of bracketing.
I would be particularly interested in how you think meta- and/āor longtermist-oriented grantmaking could be improved by your work. I have not been very impressed by the reasoning behind some of these (sometimes quite large) grants, at least on the rare occasions theyāve been shared publicly.
Unfortunately I donāt think thereās really much of a case for āmaintain option value, build capacity etc.ā being robustly good either, as argued here.
Thanks Anthony. Would it be fair to interpret your unawareness series as your steelman of OPās post title, or as being relevant?
I couldnāt find on a quick look what decision-making approach you would (at least provisionally) endorse instead, bracketing maybe? For my own reference later:
I would be particularly interested in how you think meta- and/āor longtermist-oriented grantmaking could be improved by your work. I have not been very impressed by the reasoning behind some of these (sometimes quite large) grants, at least on the rare occasions theyāve been shared publicly.