For those who are interested, this is our current blog: https://eapolicy.wordpress.com/
We will try to keep it fairly updated.
Gentzel
Karma: 195
Effective Altruism Policy Analytics Update
Effective Altruism Policy Analytics, cooperative documents and feedback
I think it is most likely we will be backing up good policies that some regulators want. New policies are hard, and a lot of requests for comments come in a sort of binary way: “should we implement policy x.1 or x.2?”
I currently have a google doc that I have been using to record hours, mistakes, lessons learned, and observations. I do think I should write it up as we make a blog.
Writing down problems has seemed to function in a similar way to rubber ducking though, trying to get certain problems into words can sometimes highlight a solution, and that has been useful.
I think we will start blogging in a limited capacity about regulations we are seriously considering working on and some that we considered and then dismissed. We probably aren’t going to blog about every regulation we look at since there are so many. Some comments are likely to be far more impactful than others, however the comments that are likely to have the most impact are also likely to have slower feedback and no nearby certain deadlines for implementation.
Our current priority list seems to be: -Network early to get expert feedback and assistance -Produce lots of comments early to get feedback and learn how to make influential comments -Focus on high impact comments toward the end of our project trial
To some degree, these priorities can get jumbled by time sensitive opportunities, but as an overall aim, we think this is correct for moving forward.
Animal issues are on our radar, but I have yet to see anything lately relevant to factory farming of cows, pigs, or chickens. We have seen a lot of proposed rules about fisheries and species protection, but didn’t have the expertise to go after them yet. If there are experts we could consult on animal issues, they would likely be helpful unless their way of sorting policies into “worth going after” and “not worth it” is the same as ours and nothing new comes up/is noticed.
As for spreadsheets, we could go through a cluster thinking way of producing estimates, but I am under the impression this would take a lot more time per person, and then when comparing spreadsheets at the end, we’d be finding errors that would have been easier to handle earlier if we worked together earlier and got faster feedback.
There certainly is value to avoiding groupthink though. Overall I do think using multiple sequential techniques could be a rather rigorous way to evaluate something, and make a very good comment, but we are also trying to get useful feedback by making a lot of comments and we are already commenting much slower than we desired to because of outreach.
I would like to do this, but I think it would be useful to have more comment drafting workers if we want to do this a lot.
Some of these questions require semi-detailed responses, so I will respond with a few different comments. Richard had some examples/anecdotes about the level of impact policy comments could have:
“A good recent example of FDA making major changes as a result of public comment is the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) Produce Safety rule. This rule was extensively changed as a result of feedback from the public, mostly the affected farmers. Some of the comments were merely self-interested lobbying, but some pointed out where FDA’s lack of understanding of specific situations would have led to an inefficient regulation. The changes were so extensive that FDA had to publish a reproposal of the rule.
This is a large and complex rule, so you can choose how much detail you want to look into. The overview is here:
http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/FSMA/ucm334114.htm
and it has links to further information. The full Federal Register notice is here:
You can do a text search in the Federal Register document for the phrase “Relevant Comments” to see the FDA responses to comments on various subjects and how those comments changed the regulation.
This is a link to the economic analysis of the reproposal, which has details on the costs and benefits of the changes in the reproposal:
Another rule where public comments led to major changes and a repropsal is the FSMA Preventative Controls rule:
http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/FSMA/ucm334115.htm
However, understanding the issues in that rule requires a bit more specialized knowledge.”
Introducing Effective Altruism Policy Analytics: Request for help and expert consultation
A friend made the argument to me yesterday that large organizations have high costs to finding such investments, since people may try to scam them or just compete for their funding by exaggerating. As an individual, who already has knowledge of these small scale circumstances, you can spend time and money on such small projects without facing similar risks. This might be a comparative advantage for small donors who are good at evaluating persons working on such projects.
I agree that quality matters, but it does help accountability for progress to be measurable. Do you know if there are any proposed improvements to measurements like QALYs? If the EA movement proposed a new such measurement, backed by good data, it might be a very valuable contribution. Depression is now causing a very high DALY burden, so it seems plausible that the most effective interventions may be in reducing depression, rather than saving lives.
If that scale was achieved, I think we would be able to make a political party. When you have a large amount of people trying to be effective, the actions that we consider effective now may be the type that are replaceable in such an environment.
I suspect that such a criticism does apply. I remember a friend criticizing the way the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded charter schools and scholarships as ineffective. You can see some of the grants they have awarded here.
Washington DC, Wednesday, February 11 at 6:00 PM:
Does anything have impersonal and objective force? I am rather confused as to what you are comparing to that is better. If you are just talking about forcing people to believe things, that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with what it true. If you were just comparing to Rawls, why should I accept Rawls’ formulation of the right as being prior or independent from the good? You can use Rawls’ veil of ignorance thought experiment to support utilitarianism (1), so I don’t see how Rawls can really be a counter objection, or specifically how Rawls’ arguments don’t rely on evoking intuitions. I may be misunderstanding the last sentence of your first paragraph though, so I do think it is possible that you have an argument which will change my mind.
I haven’t seen someone attack the VNM axioms as there are plenty of non-consequentialists who think there are good reasons for believing them. I have a feeling you are really attacking the other presented axioms, but not these.
“sophistic rationalisation of a pre-given reason” This is a pretty uncharitable jump to accusation. The statements I listed above above are not immune to attack, when convinced to drop an axiom or to adopt a different one, the ethics system advocated will change. I had different values before I became utilitarian, and my beliefs about what was of utility changed based on changes in the axioms I used to derive it.
When I was a preference utilitarian, I came across a thought experiment about imagining a preference which has no consequences in terms of experience when it is satisfied. It didn’t seem like such preferences could matter: therefore I was no longer a preference utilitarian. There wasn’t a pre-given reason, though intuitions were used.
If you do think there is a way to derive a good ethical theory which does not rely on appealing to intuitions at some point in the argument, I would be very interested in hearing it. =)
(note from earlier) (1) Consider what world a self benefiting being would make with the veil of ignorance. The most rational thing based on it’s goals is to maximize expected benefit: which will align exactly with what some utilitarians will argue for.
These are heuristics for specialized cases. In most cases you can do far more good elsewhere than you can do for your family. The case with Mill is a case where you are developing a child to help many more than you could, the case with parents is likewise a case where you are helping them to help many others via donating more than you could on your own. If we are being Kantian about this, the parents still aren’t being used merely as a means because their own happiness matters and is a part of the consideration.
In cases where helping your parents helps only your parents, why not help someone else who you could help more effectively? There are more appalling counter-factual cases than letting parents rot, such as letting 10 times as many non-related people rot.
I think a fairly small set of axioms can be used to justify utilitarianism. This should get you pretty close:
-Only consequences matter.
-The only consequences that matter are experiences.
-Experiences that are preferred by beings are positive in value.
-Experiences that are avoided by beings are negative in value.
It is certainly possible to disagree with these statements though, and those who agree with them might justify them based on intuitions coming from thought experiments.
Earlier from Peter Hurford:
“I think I recall GiveWell agreeing that some of the Gates Foundation work is higher impact than GiveWell top charities, but it’s already exceeded room for more funding (because of the Gates Foundation). Some of the vitamin fortification stuff seems like good examples, though GiveWell has recently recognized some vitamin fortification charities as standout charities.”
Here are some examples of interesting things the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has looked into:
(1) Inexpensive lasers which only target the mosquitoes that can carry malaria
(2) Producing inexpensive meat substitutes that actually taste like meat
(3) Malaria vaccines and education about children’s health
Should your choice of charity change based on how much money you have?
In some cases “special duties” to family can be derived as a heuristic for utilitarianism. As a family member, you probably aren’t replaceable, families tend to expect help from their members, and families are predisposed to reciprocate altruism: for many people there is a large chance of high negative utility both to yourself and family if you ignore your family. The consequences to you could be negative enough to make you less effective as an altruist in general.
For example, if you are a college student interested in EA and your parents stop paying for your degree, now you will have much less money to donate, and much less time to study if you have to pick up a job to pay your way though school.
Taking care of parents when they get older might also seem fairly non-consequentialist, but if there is a large inheritance at stake it could be the case that taking good care of your family is the highest utility thing for you to do.
As for kids, in some cases it may be possible that raising them to become effective altruists is the highest leverage thing to do. John Stuart Mill for example was raised in this manner… though I am sure he may have been quite miserable in the process:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill#Biography
In an early version of the sheet we had multiple columns subjectively assessing things like the replaceability of comments, how high impact an influential comment could be, and our sense of how probable influence was. Each person on the team had their own column for ranking importance.
In the current sheet, these were merged together to make a rough prioritization and remove clutter from the sheet for those who help us. That being said, this prioritization did not take into account our current team ability to produce comments, or the fact that easier comments may be good for feedback. This is why we submitted a low importance comment as a feedback test.