Gentzel

Karma: 148

Gentzel 18 Jan 2015 19:16 UTC
4 points
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in reply to: Dale’s comment on: The Choose-your-Charity Tax
During the policy comment project by the UMD effective altruism group, we found that in some government agencies there actually is a degree of cost effectiveness analysis and meritocracy. This leads me to expect that the government will do slightly better than the population at deciding where to give in a more direct manner. The government is less likely to actually go through with something like the ALS ice bucket challenge, but when you have this sort of tax system it seems to me that such things might get economically damaging levels of funding, and that this will discourage future donations and charity in general.

Effective altruism needs to be much more popular for this tax idea to have a chance of being a good thing.

Gentzel 18 Jan 2015 19:28 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: Dale’s comment on: The Choose-your-Charity Tax
If people select efficient enough charities, the benefits might outweigh the damage of deadweight loss, and value destruction via higher taxes. The thing is, this charity tax doesn’t seem to guarantee donation matching, it just increases the likelihood hat people will donate to something.

Maybe I am being confused by ambiguity, but the situation I imagined was that the government increases income tax between 1% and 10% and that the pool of money generated by this is given back to people who donate as a tax credit. If I donate $1,000 to AMF, I get $1,000 back from the government: but no guarantee that others will donate to AMF.

Gentzel 26 Jan 2015 18:42 UTC
0 points
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on: EA housemates: a good idea? Plus how to find them
https://www.facebook.com/groups/296376750542661/

The group above is looking to make a house or 2 in the DC metro area. The first house will likely be organized this year in College Park, Maryland.

Gentzel 26 Jan 2015 21:13 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Benjamin_Todd’s comment on: Supportive scepticism in practice
http://lifehacker.com/utilize-the-steel-man-tactic-to-argue-more-effectivel-1632402742

An advantage to steel-manning an opponent (arguing against the best version of their argument) is that you get to see if they agree with your steel-man. This leads to many possible outcomes, and almost all are good for information within the debate. If the person disagrees with your steel man, they may rephrase their argument in a stronger way than your steel man, which may convince you of their position and cause you to change your mind. If they agree, you know exactly what you have to argue against.

There is some nuance to this which is very useful in social situations. For example, if someone immediately agrees with a steel-man, in a rather suspicious way, you may be able to detect if the person is using sophistry to convince you of something. Some people just speak non-sense while trying to signal intelligence or group loyalty, and you can accidentally create a coherent argument where there was none initially.

To summarize, steel-man arguments often lead to good outcomes: (1) You may change your mind for good reasons (2) You can find a clear path to argue with minimal semantic issues and confrontation (3) You may identify motivated reasoners faster

Gentzel 26 Jan 2015 21:35 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Austen_Forrester’s comment on: Supportive scepticism in practice
I like this idea, and have done it before, but it is good if the process can be sped up. Being more responsive increases the likelihood that the useful things you post will get read by those you are responding to. Some forums boot people for not explaining their arguments fast enough.

Gentzel 29 Jan 2015 21:41 UTC
1 point
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on: On making spaces friendlier to parents
Due to my parent’s schedules, I once got stuck with my younger brother (11 years old at the time) at a Less Wrong meet up and the party of an EA friend in DC. I felt very awkward trying to keep my brother tame and entertained without detracting from the surrounding conversations, but he did extraordinarily well compared to other social environments. In my experience, people involved in effective altruism seem to be fairly good at handling children, even ones with special needs. That being said, the difference between an infant and an 11 year old is considerable.

I’m very glad you made the bullet point list at the end, it is very useful. It applies fairly well to most age groups for kids.

Gentzel 30 Jan 2015 18:17 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: tylermjohn’s comment on: Effective Altruism and Utilitarianism
I have seen such literature, but you can get around some of the looking back bias problems by recording how you feel in the moment (provided you aren’t pressured to answer dishonestly). I am sure a lot of people have miserable lives, but I do think that when I believe I have been fairly happy for the past 4 years, it is very unlikely the belief is false (because other people also thought I was happy to).

I do think the concern about accuracy of beliefs about experience warrants finding a better way to evaluate people’s happiness in general though. It think such analysis could change the way people set up surveys to measure things like QALYs. I think it is quite likely that the value of years lived disabled or with old age are better than people think.

Gentzel 30 Jan 2015 18:40 UTC
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in reply to: Tom_Ash’s comment on: Effective Altruism and Utilitarianism
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

Should your choice of charity change based on how much money you have?

Gentzel3 Feb 2015 4:55 UTC

5 points

15 comments3 min readEA link

Gentzel 3 Feb 2015 5:03 UTC
5 points
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on: Should your choice of charity change based on how much money you have?
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

Gentzel 3 Feb 2015 5:12 UTC
1 point
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on: Should your choice of charity change based on how much money you have?
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.”

Gentzel 3 Feb 2015 6:17 UTC
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in reply to: Geuss’s comment on: Effective Altruism and Utilitarianism
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.

-VNM axioms

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.

Gentzel 3 Feb 2015 22:57 UTC
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in reply to: Geuss’s comment on: Effective Altruism and Utilitarianism
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.

Gentzel 3 Feb 2015 23:42 UTC
0 points
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on: February Meetups Thread
Washington DC, Wednesday, February 11 at 6:00 PM:

http://www.meetup.com/Effective-Altruism-Society-of-DC/events/219950860/?gj=fbsd_ed&a=fbsd_event_details&rv=fbsd_ed&from_fb=true

Gentzel 4 Feb 2015 3:17 UTC
0 points
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in reply to: Giles’s comment on: Should your choice of charity change based on how much money you have?
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.

Gentzel 4 Feb 2015 3:27 UTC
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in reply to: GabrielEhrnstGrundin’s comment on: Should your choice of charity change based on how much money you have?
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.

Gentzel 4 Feb 2015 3:42 UTC
0 points
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in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Should your choice of charity change based on how much money you have?
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.

Introducing Effective Altruism Policy Analytics: Request for help and expert consultation

Gentzel12 Jun 2015 21:25 UTC

10 points

10 comments3 min readEA link

Gentzel 15 Jun 2015 13:43 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: John_Maxwell’s comment on: Introducing Effective Altruism Policy Analytics: Request for help and expert consultation
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:

https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2014/09/29/2014-22447/standards-for-the-growing-harvesting-packing-and-holding-of-produce-for-human-consumption

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:

http://www.fda.gov/downloads/AboutFDA/ReportsManualsForms/Reports/EconomicAnalyses/UCM442801.pdf

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.”

Gentzel 15 Jun 2015 14:41 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: John_Maxwell’s comment on: Introducing Effective Altruism Policy Analytics: Request for help and expert consultation
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.

Gentzel

Should your choice of char­ity change based on how much money you have?

In­tro­duc­ing Effec­tive Altru­ism Policy An­a­lyt­ics: Re­quest for help and ex­pert consultation

Should your choice of charity change based on how much money you have?

Introducing Effective Altruism Policy Analytics: Request for help and expert consultation