I just want to flag that I’ve raised the issue of the inconsistencies in the use of discount rate (if by “the discount rate in the GBD data” you mean the 3% or 4% discount rate in the standard inputs table) in an email sent a few days ago to one of the CE employees. Unfortunately, we failed to have a productive discussion, as the conversation died quickly when CE stopped responding. Here is one of the emails I sent:
Hi [name],
I might be wrong but you are using 1.4% rate in the CEA but the value of life saved at various ages is copied from GiveWell standard inputs that uses 4% discount rate to calculate the value. Isn’t this an inconsistency?
Mikolaj
This is an interesting article! I understand the main claim as follows:
There are a number of simple rationality techniques, such as “Don’t make irrelevant personal attacks,” that are both simpler and more effective than complex rationality techniques.
Irrationality regarding moral and political issues is often due to a failure to apply these simple techniques.
If there were a strong social norm towards applying these techniques, people would apply them more consistently.
Therefore, we should focus on creating a social norm that encourages the use of these simple techniques, rather than emphasizing complex rationality techniques, because (implicitly) we want more people to be rational about moral and political issues.
An additional claim is that we typically focus on the “fun” parts of rationality, like self-improvement, instead of the simple but important aspects because they are less enjoyable. For example, discipline and restraint are harder to practice than self-improvement.
I assume this extra claim refers to the rationality community or the EA community.
So, the main point is essentially that rationality is mundane and simple (though not easy!), and we shouldn’t try to make it more complex than it really is. This perspective is quite refreshing, and I’ve had some similar thoughts!
However, I’m concerned that, even though people might know about these techniques, the emotionally charged nature of political and moral topics can make it difficult to apply them. It’s not necessarily the other way around. Also, while I’m not sure if you would label these as complex or not, sometimes it takes time to figure out what you actually want in life, and this requires “complex” techniques.