It’s obviously the case that “do the most good” is equivalent to “optimize the Earth”. HPMOR readers will remember: “World domination is such an ugly phrase. I prefer to call it world optimisation.”
But given that they’re equivalent, I don’t see that changing the label offers any benefits. For example, the theoretical framework linked to “do the most good” already gives us a way to think about how to choose causes while taking into account inter-cause spillovers (corresponding to 1(iv)).
I think the marginal vs. total distinction is confused. Maximizing personal impact, while taking into account externalities (as EAs do), will be equivalent to maximizing collective impact.
An Effective Altruist, by focusing on impact at the margin, may ask questions such as: What impact will my next $100 donation make in this charity vs that charity?
It seems you’re trying to set up a distinction between EA focusing on small issues, and systems change focusing on big issues. But this is a strawman. Even if an individual makes a $100 donation, the cause they’re donating to can still target a systemic issue. In any case, there are now EAs making enormous donations: “What if you were in a position to give away billions of dollars to improve the world? What would you do with it?”
This approach invites sustained collective tolerance of deep uncertainty, in order to make space for new cultural norms to emerge. Linear, black-and-white thinking risks compromising this creative process before desirable novel realities have fully formed in a self-sustaining way.
This is pretty mystical.
In general, a cause needs to score high on each of impact, tractability, and neglectedness to be worthwhile. Getting two out of three is no better than zero out of three. You’ve listed causes with high impact, but they’re generally not tractable. For example, changing the political system is highly intractable.
Overall, I think that EA has already incorporated the key insights from systems change, and there’s no need to distinguish it as being separate from EA.
And if your disagreement is with the scale/tractability/neglectedness framework, then argue against that directly.
‘Spillover’ is a common term in economics, and I’m using it interchangeably with externalities/‘how causes affect other causes’.
‘Spill-over’ suggests that impact can be neatly attributed to one cause or another, but in the context of complex systems (i.e. the world we live in), impact is often more accurately understood as resulting from many factors, including the interplay of a messy web of causes pursued over many decades.
Spillovers can be simple or complex; nothing in the definition says they have to be “neatly attributed”. But you’re right, long-term flow-through effects can be massive. They’re also incredibly difficult to estimate. If you’re able to improve on our ability to estimate them, using complexity theory, then more power to you.
For what it’s worth, I currently think the solution requires modelling the Earth as a complex system, clarifying top-level metrics to optimise the system for, and a probability weighted theory of change for the system as a whole.
I’d be interested in seeing this. Do you have anything written up?
For example, the system of animal agriculture and animal product consumption is pretty complex, but ACE have done a great job
But they didn’t use complex systems theory, did they? They just used the regular EA framework of impact/tractability/neglectedness.
Is it true that men score higher than women in ‘thinking’ vs ‘feeling’? If so, the EA community (being dominated by men) might be structured in ways that appeal to ‘thinkers’ and deter ‘feelers’. To reduce the gender gap in EA, we would have to make the community be more appealing to ‘feelers’ (if women are indeed disproportionately ‘feelers’).
In all likelihood men just hide their emotions better than women
I think citing this article weakens your overall argument. The study has n=30 and is likely more of the same low-quality non-preregistered social psychology research that is driving the replication crisis. Your argument is strong enough (to think about examples of men being snarky, insulting others, engaging in pissing contests) without needing to cite some flimsy study. Otherwise, people start questioning whether your other citations are trustworthy.
My understanding of Myers Briggs is that ‘thinking’ and ‘feeling’ are mutually exclusive, at least on average, in the sense that being more thinking-oriented means you’re less feeling-oriented. The E vs. A framing is different, and it seems you could have people who score high in both. Is there any personality research on this?
This post gives a nice framework, but the article should be half as long.
Also, I wonder how much can be learned from an abstract understanding here. Consider economists studying firms: they can learn some general principles, but they’re not in a position to go run a business (“if you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?”). Similarly, my prior is that studying institutional decision-making is not going to produce actionable knowledge that can be used in the real world. That would require learning about the specific problems facing (say) DFID.
How should we think about the big players in the field (World Bank, IMF, DFID, etc) — are they doing hits-based giving?
we don’t really know how worried to be [about instability risk from AI]. These risks really haven’t been researched much, and we shouldn’t really take it for granted that AI will be destabilizing. It could be or it couldn’t be. We just basically have not done enough research to feel very confident one way or the other.
This makes me worry about tractability. The problem of instability has been known for at least five years now, and we haven’t made any progress?
The school could then be sustained by a Lambda school-style deal (Income Share Agreement): If you get employed outside EA, you owe 10% of your salary for 2 years once you make over $50,000. If you work for a think tank or inside EA, the cost is waived.
I can’t imagine anyone signing this contract.
Good post!
First, tractability is not really currently used in this way. Right now, lots of claims are being made along the lines of “cause X should be focused on more due to it having a huge problem size” with no further reference to tractability.
Charitably, this is an “other things equal” claim. But I agree, it seems like people have just forgotten about tractability.
How is this different from EA Grants?
Good post!
For distinguishing short-termist from long-termist, I think risk aversion is a key factor. Long-termists are risk-neutral, and are happy to roll the dice in hits-based giving, whereas short-termists are risk-averse, and want a higher certainty of doing good. (And overall, individuals should not identify as one or the other, because the overall portfolio is going to have a mix of both.)
Some points on China:
The way I think about the current slowdown is the same as the Soviet case: they got easy catch-up growth based on investment, but now they’re hitting diminishing returns. To maintain growth, they have to switch to innovation, but that requires inclusive political institutions (to protect creative destruction). Also, China and Soviet Russia seem to be in the same boat re: counterexamples to AR’s theory, because both achieved catch-up growth under extractive political institutions.
I wouldn’t describe China’s economic institutions as inclusive. They have a weird system of cronyism, where formal institutions are low quality, so firms use political connections to get stuff done (see this).
I’ll note that OpenPhil is hiring researchers to “focus on causes in policy, scientific research, and global development”. Hopefully their page on development won’t be empty for much longer!
Looks like you inputted the wrong table in the ‘Indirect Harms’ section.
An alternative minimal definition [...] the (intrinsic) value of an outcome is the same no matter what time it occurs.
Why doesn’t this do the job, if combined with the premise that we should maximize social welfare? I like to think in terms of a social planner maximizing welfare over all future generations. By assuming that value doesn’t depend on time, we rule out pure time preference and thereby treat all generations equally. And maximizing social welfare gets us to stop privileging current generations (eg, by investing in reducing extinction risk at the expense of current consumption).
So I’d say: longtermism =df maximizing social welfare with no pure time preference.
Is Tetlock confirmed? He’s not listed on eaglobal.org.