Brazilian legal philosopher, postdoc in intergenerational justice, financial supervisor, GWWC Pledger Bachelor of Laws, Master and Doctor of Philosophy from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), having published articles and translations in the areas of Political Philosophy, Applied Ethics and Philosophy of Economics – with a recent focus on climate risks, Environmental and Social Responsibility, and intergenerational justice. Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Institute of Philosophy, Faculty of Social and Human Sciences, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, integrating the Ethics and Political Philosophy Laboratory (EPLAB) and the project Present Democracy for Future Generations. Also a member of the Graduate Committee and Special Studies Analyst in the area of supervision of non-banking institutions at the Central Bank of Brazil (BCB). Member of the Inclusive and Sustainable Solutions association (SIS) and of the Effective Altruism community in Brazil (AE Brasil). https://philpeople.org/profiles/ramiro-avila-peres
Ramiro
Has anyone reframed priorities choices (such as x-risk vs. poverty) as losses to check if they’re really biased?
I’ve read a little bit about the possibility that preferences for poverty reduction/global health/animal welfare causes over x-risk reduction may be due to some kind of ambiguity-aversion bias. Between donating U$3,000 for (A) saving a life (high certainty, presently) or (B) potentially saving 10^20 future lives (I know this may be a conservative guess, but it’s the reasoning that is important here, not the numbers), by making something like a marginal 10^-5 contribution to reducing in 10^-5 some extinction risk, people would prefer the first “safe” option A, despite the large pay-off of the second one. However, such bias is sensitive to framing effects: people usually prefer sure gains (like A) and uncertain losses (like B’). So, I was trying to find out, without success, if anyone had reframed this decision as matter of losses, to see if one prefers, e.g., (A’) reducing deaths by malaria from 478,001 to 478,000 or (B’) reducing the odds of extinction (minus 10^20 lives) in 10^-10.
Perhaps there’s a better way to reframe this choice, but I’m not interested in discussing one particular example (however, I’m concerned with the possibility that there’s no bias-free way of framing it). My point is that, if one chooses something like A-B’, then we have a strong case for the existence of a bias.
(I’m well aware of other objections against x-risk causes, such as Pascal’s mugging and discount rates arguments – but I think they’ve received due attention, and should be discussed separately. Also, I’m mostly thinking about donation choices, not about policy or career decisions, which is a completely different matter; however, IF this experiment confirmed the existence of such a bias, it could influence the latter, too.
I’m new here. Since I suspect someone has probably already made a similar question somewhere else—but I couldn’t find it, so sorry bothering you—I’m mostly trying to satisfy my curiosity; however, there’s a small probability that it touches an important unsolved dilemma about global priorities—the x-risk vs. safe causes. I’m not looking for karma—though you can’t have too much of it, right?)
Has anyone reframed priorities choices (such as x-risk vs. poverty) as losses to check if they’re really biased?
I’ve read a little bit about the possibility that preferences for poverty reduction/global health/animal welfare causes over x-risk reduction may be due to some kind of ambiguity-aversion bias. Between donating U$3,000 for (A) saving a life (high certainty, presently) or (B) potentially saving 10^20 future lives (I know this may be a conservative guess, but it’s the reasoning that is important here, not the numbers), by making something like a marginal 10^-5 contribution to reducing in 10^-5 some extinction risk, people would prefer the first “safe” option A, despite the large pay-off of the second one. However, such bias is sensitive to framing effects: people usually prefer sure gains (like A) and uncertain losses (like B’). So, I was trying to find out, without success, if anyone had reframed this decision as matter of losses, to see if one prefers, e.g., (A’) reducing deaths by malaria from 478,001 to 478,000 or (B’) reducing the odds of extinction (minus 10^20 lives) in 10^-10.
Perhaps there’s a better way to reframe this choice, but I’m not interested in discussing one particular example (however, I’m concerned with the possibility that there’s no bias-free way of framing it). My point is that, if one chooses something like A-B’, then we have a strong case for the existence of a bias.
(I’m well aware of other objections against x-risk causes, such as Pascal’s mugging and discount rates arguments – but I think they’ve received due attention, and should be discussed separately. Also, I’m mostly thinking about donation choices, not about policy or career decisions, which is a completely different matter; however, IF this experiment confirmed the existence of such a bias, it could influence the latter, too.
I’m new here. Since I suspect someone has probably already made a similar question somewhere else—but I couldn’t find it, so sorry bothering you—I’m mostly trying to satisfy my curiosity; however, there’s a small probability that it touches an important unsolved dilemma about global priorities—the x-risk vs. safe causes. I’m not looking for karma—though you can’t have too much of it, right?)
Does vegan advocacy really work in reducing global meat consumption? Has anyone tested it?
My point: despite the increasing number of vegans & reducitarians, global meat production & consumption has increased (important exceptions: US & EU). That’s a problem, since effective altruists defend vegetarianism etc. in order to reduce animal slaughter. Economic development aside (and the corresponding new demand for animal protein), I wonder if, in the long-term, markets adjust prices: thus, for each individual reducing meat consumption, there are many others who increase their consumption (because of falling prices due to decreasing demand), so leading the market to a new equilibrium.
So, my question: is there a way to test it? I imagine it could be done by a RCT: we could ask parts of a populations to stop eating meat for some time and measure if there is an observable effect.
in the last 30min, I found out ACE includes considerations about demand elasticity for animal products in its evaluations. It’s not the same as a RCT, but I believe it’s a good enough estimate. I’ll keep the post, though, in case anyone have similar doubts.
Perhaps I should warn: ambiguity-aversion sensitivity to framing effects is contested by Voorhoeve et al. (philarchive.org/archive/VOOAAF); however, the authors recognize their conclusion goes against most of the literature.
Nice and useful post. I’m trying to find its sequel, on ‘projects compatible with these heuristics’. Is it ready? where do I find it?
Why don’t we have a kind of “Effective Thesis Prize”?
I know there have been prizes on particular subjects, such as the philosophy quarterly essay prize in 2016 (who won it?). But has anyone tried an open general prize, accepting applicants from any area, anywhere? Would it be too expensive? (I don’t think so: the $$ could be little, since phd candidates don’t need additional incentives to improve their thesis)
Would it it hard to organize? (Maybe a little bit, but there would be time...)
Pros: it’d be a simple way to propagate EA ideas and the Effective thesis tool. It’d be useful to elicit information, and maybe to find significative new contributions...
Actually, I think there are many more pros, and I’m considering to try something like that in Brazil (where EA movement is just beginning). So I’d really appreciate some tips about possible CONS.
Why don’t we have an entry on EA (and on X-Risk) on Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (or IEP, by the way)?
The best we have is a mention en passant of Singer’s “Most good you can do...” inside the “Altruism” entry. Really, it’s just: “If friendships and other loving relationships have a proper place in our lives even if they do not maximize the good, then sentiment is an appropriate basis for altruism. (For an opposing view, see Singer 2015.)” <https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/altruism/>
I mean, there’s even a whole new article on the Philosophy of Chemistry! It might not seem important, but SEP is one of the major preliminary sources for researches in Philosophy. It’d be an effective way “spreading the word” among philosophers outside Oxford & Berkeley communities.
(Funny thought: many EA philosophers are cited as major sources in SEP articles about Ethics, decision theory, AI… - but NOT EA)
I see that SEP’s editorial board has the responsibility of defining what’s being published and who’s gonna do it—but there must be something to do about (maybe coordinated mass requests of an EA article? or someone sending a complete article, according to item 3 in the Editorial Policies: ” ualified potential contributors may send to the Principal Editor or an appropriate member of the Editorial Board a preliminary proposal to write on an Encyclopedia topic, along with a curriculum vitae.” <https://plato.stanford.edu/info.html>
I guess all I’ve said so far applies to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosphy, too.
(P.S.: If I’m getting boring with my frequent posts, please let me know)
I think the main problem is that it’s hard to implement any substancial change in political systems of great powers, such as US and UK—precisely the kind of target one should have in order to have a huge impact.
If we want to change political systems, we would have to start from below: small countries (maybe Estonia—they’re so pro-inovation) and private associations. Has anyone ever heard of a legal statute on private orgs voting systems?
Sorry, I’m new here. You mean making a thread in this forum? I still don’t know how.
Thanks for your comment and your insights, that’s precisely what I wanted. I do agree we lack evidence about the effectiveness of prizes as a way to incent studies on specific subjects – but that’s not unsurmontable (if I don’t find a paper about it, I’ll try to compare keywords frequency in academic databases before and after the establishment of a similar prize to check if there’s a correlation). Also, I hadn’t considered a prize could result in a reputational risk – even if it’s unlikely, but it might necessary to hedge against it; one possibility is to grant the commitee the right to abstain from declaring a winner, if no one is found worthy.
Concerning the other mentioned obstacles, I don’t think they would hinder the main goals of such a prize – to foment the ideas of EA and to incent the study of EA causes. Assuming these causes are worth of my time (even more than saving a toddler’s life), so it’d not be a waste of time.
As risk mitigation, we could start by requiring that applicants provide a brief essay summarizing their research and arguing in their favor; then a crowd of blind-reviewers would use such essay (and other « cheap signals », such as abstracts, conclusions, etc.) to reduce the number of candidates to a small set, to be scrutinized by a comitee of proeminent scholars; maybe we could put the theses online and ask everyone for feedback (people could vote on the best thesis in this first phase). Also, we could mitigate reputational risks and problems of scale if, instead of a global institution such as the CEA, we had such a competition in a more restricted environment– maybe some institution in a small country, such as the Czech Republic (well, they created the Effective Thesis project, right ?). So, if something went wrong, it wouldn’t hit the whole EA movement.
Thanks for this summary. Just on comment: wouldn’t it be useful to have a kind of Effective Thesis prize? It might be convenient for advancing the idea among professors.
(This is the third − 1st in Open Thread #43, 2nd in a facebook comment—and last time I make this suggestion. Sorry if it’s getting boring)
Actually, Forethought launched this one week ago: https://www.forethought.org/undergraduate-thesis-prize
Is there any charity/project/company trying to effectively improve people’s mental health by encouraging them to frequent green spaces?
Please, don’t misunderstand me, I’m no green activist, but I’ve seen so many mentions to increasing anxiety and depression (I’m not sure if it’s true), and so many diagnoses (it’s the internet, the economy, the culture...)… but almost no one mentions that we’re the first (maybe the second) generation to spend most of our lives indoors. I could provide some anecdotal evidence, but I guess the link between green spaces and happiness is very plausible and generally not contested by literature.
(I wouldn’t say it could cure depression, but it might improve welfare. Our bodies and brains were designed by evolution to run on savannah and hunt big game… I mean, even people i know that went through stressful situations in the wild actually use to treasure these memories with joy; I mean, I know I was tired and and wet and trying not to freeze to death… but it seems like I was having fun. I don’t think anyone needs to get into the middle of the jungle to get the benefits of green spaces; we should probably observe some positive effect if we could just get young people from cold climates to go to a park a little bit during winter, instead of closing themselves at home for four months)
Is there any charity/project/company/research trying to effectively improve people’s mental health by encouraging them to frequent green spaces?
Please, don’t misunderstand me, I’m no green activist, but I’ve seen so many mentions to increasing anxiety and depression (I’m not sure if it’s true), and so many diagnoses (it’s the internet, the economy, the culture...), and its rebuttals (“actually, everything is getting better, according to this graph...”), and Michael Plant has written many convincing pieces about the importance and neglectedness of mental health… but almost no one mentions that we’re the first (maybe the second) generation to spend most of our lives indoors. I could provide some anecdotal evidence, but I guess the link between green spaces and happiness is very plausible and generally not contested by literature.
(I wouldn’t say it could cure depression, but it might improve welfare. Our bodies and brains were designed by evolution to run on savannah and hunt big game… I mean, even people i know that went through stressful situations in the wild actually use to treasure these memories with joy; I mean, I know I was tired and and wet and trying not to freeze to death… but it seems like I was having fun. I don’t think anyone needs to get into the middle of the jungle to get the benefits of green spaces; we should probably observe some positive effect if we could just get young people from cold climates to go to a park a little bit during winter, instead of closing themselves at home for four months)
I do agree with the premise/problem description (your first claim), but not with the solution/EA hotel—mostly because there might be more efficient ways to reduce the gap (e.g., the project evaluation platform). My main point is that, even if the EA hotel is the best way of supporting/incenting productive EAs in the beginning of their careers, it doesn’t solve the problem of selecting the best projects—the main cause of the Chasm; and even if someone has a great idea, they might not be the most capable of implementing them. More than the EA hotel, we need a platform to elicit project ideas and information, spread them among a community of people interested in evaluating them, and then support EA hotel guests interested in giving some of these ideas a try, or assign them to the best fit for implementation. Possible ways to fill this part of the chasm: hiring/training superforecasters, using prediction markets, contests, or maybe even just creating something like a voting system kind of incentive compatible (or just a particular forum) only for that.
I’d contribute to that, especially if the theses were open for reading or download.
(Maybe we could for the right of voting on a thesis in a pre-selection phase. E.g., I’d be willing to pay U$50 to get access to them and vote on my favorite ones. But I haven’t really thought a lot about it)
I think it’d still need a previous filter, and a good one would use many opinions of others. Maybe something lik crowdsource decision-making, as in your Metis project.
And prizes wouldn’t have to be super expensive. I mean, graduate students don’t need too much additional incentives to write a good thesis; the main one is to be acknowledged as “Effective Thesis of the year”
Has anyone reframed priorities choices (such as x-risk vs. poverty) as losses to check if they’re really biased?
I’m new here. Since I suspect someone has probably already made a similar question somewhere (but I couldn’t find it, sorry), I’m mostly trying to satisfy my curiosity; however, there’s a small probability that it touches an important unsolved dilemma about global priorities and the x-risk vs. safe causes.
I’ve read a little bit about the possibility that preferences for poverty reduction/global health/animal welfare causes over x-risk reduction may be due to some kind of ambiguity-aversion bias. Between donating U$3,000 for (A) saving a life (high certainty, presently) or (B) potentially saving 10^20 future lives (I know, this may be a conservative guess), by making something like a marginal 10^-5 contribution to reducing in 10^-5 some extinction risk, people would prefer the first safe option, despite the large pay-off of the second one. However, such bias is sensitive to framing effects: people usually prefer sure gains and uncertain losses. So, I was trying to find out, without success, if anyone had reframed this decision as matter of losses, to see if one prefers, e.g., (A’) reducing deaths by malaria from 478,001 to 478,000 or (B’) reducing the odds of extinction (minus 10^20 lives) in 10^-10.
Perhaps there’s a better way to reframe this choice, but I’m not interested in discussing one particular example (however, I’m concerned with the possibility that there’s no bias-free way of framing it). My point is that, if one chooses something like A-B’, then we have a strong case for the existence of a bias.
(I’m aware of other objections against x-risk causes, such as Pascal’s mugging and discount rates arguments – but I think they’ve received due attention, and should be discussed separately. Also, I’m mostly thinking about donation choices, not about policy or career decisions, which is a completely different decision; however, IF this experiment confirmed the existence of a bias, it could influence the latter, too.)