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Mea­sur­ing and com­par­ing value

TagLast edit: 13 Jan 2022 17:36 UTC by Leo

Measuring how much value interventions create can help us to evaluate their cost-effectiveness.

Ideally, we would measure the things we value directly. Unfortunately, we often value things that are difficult to measure, so that we must instead measure other variables that are closely related to what we do value. For instance, we may try to measure the impact of an intervention on someone’s health, because improving health tends to improve wellbeing. Although we ultimately care about wellbeing rather than health, the latter is a relatively good measure of the former, which is hard to measure directly.

It can also be worthwhile to assess the value of things that matter only instrumentally, such as the value of information, and to consider how value may change over time, as represented by discount rates.

Further reading

Grace, Katja (2014) Apples and oranges? Some initial thoughts on comparing diverse benefits, Giving What We Can, May 22.
A discussion of various means of measurement and comparison.

Wikipedia (2007) Happiness economics, Wikipedia, July 4 (updated 17 February 2021‎).
A discussion of the measurement of happiness.

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GiveWell27 Oct 2023 21:40 UTC
36 points
8 comments6 min readEA link
(blog.givewell.org)

The price is right

EJT16 Oct 2023 16:34 UTC
27 points
5 comments4 min readEA link
(openairopensea.substack.com)

Trans­for­ma­tive AI and Com­pute—Read­ing List

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24 points
0 comments1 min readEA link
(docs.google.com)

“Di­men­sions of Pain” work­shop: Sum­mary and up­dated conclusions

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88 points
8 comments13 min readEA link

[Question] How do in­spired con­tri­bu­tions and ex­ter­nal­ized costs fac­tor in cost-effec­tive­ness calcu­la­tions?

VictorW8 Aug 2023 21:43 UTC
12 points
8 comments2 min readEA link

About ‘sub­jec­tive’ wellbe­ing and cost-effec­tive­ness anal­y­sis in men­tal health

LondonGal30 Jul 2023 13:39 UTC
74 points
14 comments41 min readEA link

Rel­a­tive Value Func­tions: A Flex­ible New For­mat for Value Estimation

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57 points
23 comments18 min readEA link

On Child Wast­ing, Mega-Char­i­ties, and Mea­sura­bil­ity Bias

Jesper7 May 2023 14:55 UTC
51 points
24 comments2 min readEA link

How much do you be­lieve your re­sults?

Eric Neyman5 May 2023 19:51 UTC
208 points
14 comments1 min readEA link

Can we trust wellbe­ing sur­veys? A pi­lot study of com­pa­ra­bil­ity, lin­ear­ity, and neutrality

Conrad S17 Mar 2023 10:17 UTC
73 points
10 comments10 min readEA link
(www.happierlivesinstitute.org)

Mo­ral Weights ac­cord­ing to EA Orgs

Simon_M8 Jan 2023 16:46 UTC
102 points
15 comments1 min readEA link

[Question] Do peo­ple have a form or re­sources for cap­tur­ing in­di­rect in­ter­per­sonal im­pacts?

PeterSlattery4 Jan 2023 4:47 UTC
47 points
6 comments1 min readEA link

[Question] What is the re­la­tion­ship be­tween im­pact and EA Fo­rum karma?

Vasco Grilo6 Dec 2022 10:42 UTC
14 points
3 comments3 min readEA link

Es­ti­mat­ing the Aver­age Im­pact of an ARPA-E Grantmaker

charrin1 Dec 2022 6:34 UTC
22 points
8 comments2 min readEA link

Cost-effec­tive­ness of op­er­a­tions man­age­ment in high-im­pact organisations

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48 points
11 comments12 min readEA link

The Challenges with Mea­sur­ing the Im­pact of Lobbying

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57 points
1 comment33 min readEA link

Mea­sur­ing Good Better

MichaelPlant14 Oct 2022 13:36 UTC
233 points
19 comments15 min readEA link

A peek at pair­wise prefer­ence es­ti­ma­tion in eco­nomics, mar­ket­ing, and statistics

Jonas Moss8 Oct 2022 4:56 UTC
31 points
5 comments3 min readEA link
(blog.jonasmoss.com)

Es­ti­mat­ing value from pair­wise comparisons

Jonas Moss5 Oct 2022 11:23 UTC
34 points
3 comments1 min readEA link
(blog.jonasmoss.com)

$5k challenge to quan­tify the im­pact of 80,000 hours’ top ca­reer paths

NunoSempere23 Sep 2022 11:32 UTC
126 points
14 comments4 min readEA link

Longterm cost-effec­tive­ness of Founders Pledge’s Cli­mate Change Fund

Vasco Grilo14 Sep 2022 15:11 UTC
35 points
9 comments6 min readEA link

[Question] Are there im­por­tant things that aren’t quan­tifi­able?

Joseph Lemien12 Sep 2022 11:49 UTC
8 points
0 comments1 min readEA link

Value of Life: VSL Es­ti­mates vs Com­mu­nity Per­spec­tive Evaluations

Joel Tan6 Sep 2022 14:35 UTC
53 points
4 comments4 min readEA link

A pod­cast epi­sode ex­plor­ing cri­tiques of effec­tive al­tru­ism (with Michael Niel­sen and Ajeya Co­tra)

spencerg1 Sep 2022 16:13 UTC
14 points
4 comments1 min readEA link
(clearerthinkingpodcast.com)

The Wages of North-At­lantic Bias

Sach Wry19 Aug 2022 12:34 UTC
8 points
2 comments17 min readEA link

Cor­po­rate cam­paigns for chicken welfare are 10,000 times as effec­tive as GiveWell’s Max­i­mum Im­pact Fund?

Vasco Grilo28 Jul 2022 8:22 UTC
77 points
19 comments11 min readEA link

Open Philan­thropy Should Fund Fur­ther Cause Exploration

brb2438 Jul 2022 23:47 UTC
3 points
0 comments13 min readEA link

Mo­ral weights for var­i­ous species and distributions

Vasco Grilo3 Jul 2022 18:19 UTC
15 points
10 comments3 min readEA link

[Question] When should the in­verse-var­i­ance method be ap­plied to dis­tri­bu­tions?

Vasco Grilo14 Jun 2022 14:33 UTC
5 points
6 comments1 min readEA link

Com­par­i­son be­tween the he­do­nic util­ity of hu­man life and poul­try liv­ing time

Vasco Grilo8 Jun 2022 7:52 UTC
47 points
28 comments8 min readEA link

How to de­ter­mine dis­tri­bu­tion pa­ram­e­ters from quantiles

Vasco Grilo30 May 2022 15:20 UTC
23 points
6 comments1 min readEA link

Th­e­sis Sum­mary and Open Ques­tions: Nor­ma­tive Uncer­tainty and In­for­ma­tion Value

rileyharris27 Apr 2022 8:46 UTC
31 points
0 comments3 min readEA link

Effec­tive­ness is a Con­junc­tion of Multipliers

Thomas Kwa25 Mar 2022 18:44 UTC
244 points
34 comments3 min readEA link

Sim­ple com­par­i­son pol­ling to cre­ate util­ity functions

NunoSempere15 Nov 2021 19:48 UTC
46 points
13 comments6 min readEA link

Welfare Foot­print Pro­ject—a blueprint for quan­tify­ing an­i­mal pain

MichaelStJules26 Jun 2021 20:05 UTC
71 points
2 comments2 min readEA link

List of ways in which cost-effec­tive­ness es­ti­mates can be misleading

saulius20 Aug 2019 18:05 UTC
228 points
33 comments13 min readEA link
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