Not generally. It’s usually just there to counteract overconfidence bias. You want something that will never fail instead of something that will fail 1% of the time, because something that you think will never fail will only fail about 1% of the time, and something that you think will fail 1% of the time will fail around 10% of the time. It’s much more than the apparent 1% advantage.
If you donate all your money to Deworm the World because you want a lot of good to still get done if SCI turns out to be a fraud, you’re not being selfish. If you donate half you money because you personally want to be doing the good even if one of them is a fraud, then you’re selfish.
I alluded to this with the sentence:
That makes sense if you care about how many lives you save, but not if you care about how many people die.
Not generally. It’s usually just there to counteract overconfidence bias. You want something that will never fail instead of something that will fail 1% of the time, because something that you think will never fail will only fail about 1% of the time, and something that you think will fail 1% of the time will fail around 10% of the time. It’s much more than the apparent 1% advantage.
If you donate all your money to Deworm the World because you want a lot of good to still get done if SCI turns out to be a fraud, you’re not being selfish. If you donate half you money because you personally want to be doing the good even if one of them is a fraud, then you’re selfish.
I alluded to this with the sentence: