Thanks a lot for this post! I really appreciate it and think (as you also noted) that it could be really useful also for career decisions, all well as for structuring ideas around how to improve specific organizations.
we must be careful to avoid scenarios in which improving the technical quality of decision-making at an institution yields outcomes that are beneficial for the institution but harmful by the standards of the “better world”
I think this is a really important consideration that you highlight here. When working in an organization my hunch is that one tends to get relatively immediate feedback on if decisions are good for the organization itself, while feedback on how good decisions are for the world and in the long term is much more difficult to get.
For a user seeking to make casual or fast choices about prioritizing between institutional engagement strategies, for example a small consulting firm choosing among competing client offers, it’s perfectly acceptable to eschew calculations and instead treat the questions as general prompts to add structure and guidance to an otherwise intuitive process. Since institutional engagement can often carry high stakes, however, where possible we recommend at least trying a heuristic quantitative approach to deciding how much additional quantification is useful, if not more fully quantifying the decision.
I’m doing some work on potential improvements to the scientific research system, and after reading this post I’m thinking I should try to apply this framework to specific funding agencies and other meta-organizations in the research system. Do you have any further thoughts since posting this regarding how difficult vs valuable it is to attempt quantification of the values? Approximately how time-consuming is such work in your experience?
Do you have any further thoughts since posting this regarding how difficult vs valuable it is to attempt quantification of the values? Approximately how time-consuming is such work in your experience?
With the caveat that I’m someone who’s pretty pro-quantification in general and also unusually comfortable with high-uncertainty estimates, I didn’t find the quantification process to be all that burdensome. In constructing the FDA case study, far more of my time was spent on qualitative research to understand the potential role the FDA might play in various x-risk scenarios than coming up with and running the numbers. Hope that helps!
Thanks a lot for this post! I really appreciate it and think (as you also noted) that it could be really useful also for career decisions, all well as for structuring ideas around how to improve specific organizations.
I think this is a really important consideration that you highlight here. When working in an organization my hunch is that one tends to get relatively immediate feedback on if decisions are good for the organization itself, while feedback on how good decisions are for the world and in the long term is much more difficult to get.
I’m doing some work on potential improvements to the scientific research system, and after reading this post I’m thinking I should try to apply this framework to specific funding agencies and other meta-organizations in the research system. Do you have any further thoughts since posting this regarding how difficult vs valuable it is to attempt quantification of the values? Approximately how time-consuming is such work in your experience?
Thanks for the comment!
With the caveat that I’m someone who’s pretty pro-quantification in general and also unusually comfortable with high-uncertainty estimates, I didn’t find the quantification process to be all that burdensome. In constructing the FDA case study, far more of my time was spent on qualitative research to understand the potential role the FDA might play in various x-risk scenarios than coming up with and running the numbers. Hope that helps!