I think one of the challenges here is for the people who are respected/have a leadershipy role on cause prioritisation, I get the sense that they’ve been reluctant to weigh in here, perhaps to the detriment of Anthropic folks trying to make a decision one way or another.
Even more speculative: Maybe part of what’s going on here is that the charity comparison numbers that GiveWell produce, or when charities are being compared within a cause area in general, is one level of crazy and difficult. But the moment you get to cross-course comparisons, these numbers become several orders of magnitude more crazy and uncertain. And maybe there’s a reluctance to use the same methodology for something so much more uncertain, because it’s a less useful tool/there’s a risk it is perceived as something more solid than it is.
Overal I think more people who have insights on cause prio should be saying: if I had a billion dollars, here’s how I’d spend it, and why.
Overal I think more people who have insights on cause prio should be saying: if I had a billion dollars, here’s how I’d spend it, and why.
I see some value in this. However, I would be much more interested in how they would decrease the uncertainty about cause prioritisation, which is super large. I would spend at least 1 %, 10 M$ (= 0.01*1*10^9), decreasing the uncertainty about comparisons of expected hedonistic welfare across species and substrates (biological or not). Relatedly, RP has a research agenda about interspecies welfare comparisons more broadly (not just under expectationaltotalhedonisticutilitarianism).
I definitely think this should happen too, but reducing uncertainty about cause prio beyond what has already been done to date is a much much bigger and harder ask than ‘share your best guess of how you would allocate a billion dollars’.
I think one of the challenges here is for the people who are respected/have a leadershipy role on cause prioritisation, I get the sense that they’ve been reluctant to weigh in here, perhaps to the detriment of Anthropic folks trying to make a decision one way or another.
Even more speculative: Maybe part of what’s going on here is that the charity comparison numbers that GiveWell produce, or when charities are being compared within a cause area in general, is one level of crazy and difficult. But the moment you get to cross-course comparisons, these numbers become several orders of magnitude more crazy and uncertain. And maybe there’s a reluctance to use the same methodology for something so much more uncertain, because it’s a less useful tool/there’s a risk it is perceived as something more solid than it is.
Overal I think more people who have insights on cause prio should be saying: if I had a billion dollars, here’s how I’d spend it, and why.
I see some value in this. However, I would be much more interested in how they would decrease the uncertainty about cause prioritisation, which is super large. I would spend at least 1 %, 10 M$ (= 0.01*1*10^9), decreasing the uncertainty about comparisons of expected hedonistic welfare across species and substrates (biological or not). Relatedly, RP has a research agenda about interspecies welfare comparisons more broadly (not just under expectationaltotal hedonistic utilitarianism).
I definitely think this should happen too, but reducing uncertainty about cause prio beyond what has already been done to date is a much much bigger and harder ask than ‘share your best guess of how you would allocate a billion dollars’.