Why not? If you can’t quantify an line of action easily then it’s out as a candidate for effective altruism, which removes a very large set of possible causes, most of them in fact. And there is no reason to think that the currently quantifiable causes are the most effective.
Unless we have some particularly good reason to think that the unquantifiable ones (or some known subset) have better returns on average than the quantifiable ones, that’s at best an argument for spending more resources on improving quantification.
This is beginning to sound like burden of proof tennis, I claim that most causes can not be currently quantified to any useful degree, therefore restricting yourself to the quantifiable ones is a mistake. This isn’t a problem that can be brute forced—what will be the effect of say open borders? Or human genetic engineering? Or charter cities? Or a new Standard Model of Physics? Or Basic Income guarantees? No one has a damned clue, although many would like to pretend. This list goes on and on.
But even for the somewhat quantifiable causes, the long term effects cannot be quantified. What is the effect of significant charitable giving on a person’s other spending patterns? Does giving to charity reduce the number of children that effective altruists have, and is this a dysgenic effect? If so, is the dysgenic effect compensated for by the effects of the charity? Are effects such as this a problem? How does charitable giving affect the giver’s work patterns, ambitions and life’s trajectory? And of course, what is the long term effect of charitable giving on the target country’s development and institutions? That last effect is probably where most of the positive consequences of giving show up, not silly short term metrics like DALYs. GiveWell’s research into long term effects is noticeably much less than their research into short term effects—even though the long term effects dominate in the long run.
GiveWell’s research into long term effects is noticeably much less than their research into short term effects—even though the long term effects dominate in the long run.
If you can’t quantify an line of action easily then it’s out as a candidate for effective altruism
If effective altruism only allowed working on things that were easily quantified then GiveWell, 80000 Hours, and GivingWhatWeCan would all be unfunded and unstaffed. Most of the benefit of those organizations is unclear and very hard to measure, but there are rough reasons to think that they’re very important. Effective altruism is about doing as much good as possible with the resources you have, all things considered. Lines of action that are hard to evaluate do need to be more promising than similar more easily quantified approaches to be worth working on, but that’s a pragmatic response to uncertainty.
Can’t say I’m impressed with his reasoning there.
Interesting.
Why not? If you can’t quantify an line of action easily then it’s out as a candidate for effective altruism, which removes a very large set of possible causes, most of them in fact. And there is no reason to think that the currently quantifiable causes are the most effective.
Unless we have some particularly good reason to think that the unquantifiable ones (or some known subset) have better returns on average than the quantifiable ones, that’s at best an argument for spending more resources on improving quantification.
This is beginning to sound like burden of proof tennis, I claim that most causes can not be currently quantified to any useful degree, therefore restricting yourself to the quantifiable ones is a mistake. This isn’t a problem that can be brute forced—what will be the effect of say open borders? Or human genetic engineering? Or charter cities? Or a new Standard Model of Physics? Or Basic Income guarantees? No one has a damned clue, although many would like to pretend. This list goes on and on.
But even for the somewhat quantifiable causes, the long term effects cannot be quantified. What is the effect of significant charitable giving on a person’s other spending patterns? Does giving to charity reduce the number of children that effective altruists have, and is this a dysgenic effect? If so, is the dysgenic effect compensated for by the effects of the charity? Are effects such as this a problem? How does charitable giving affect the giver’s work patterns, ambitions and life’s trajectory? And of course, what is the long term effect of charitable giving on the target country’s development and institutions? That last effect is probably where most of the positive consequences of giving show up, not silly short term metrics like DALYs. GiveWell’s research into long term effects is noticeably much less than their research into short term effects—even though the long term effects dominate in the long run.
You might be interested in this transcript of a discussion between Holden Karnofsky of GiveWell, several people from Giving What We Can, and a few other EAs: http://www.jefftk.com/p/flow-through-effects-conversation
Retracted.
If effective altruism only allowed working on things that were easily quantified then GiveWell, 80000 Hours, and GivingWhatWeCan would all be unfunded and unstaffed. Most of the benefit of those organizations is unclear and very hard to measure, but there are rough reasons to think that they’re very important. Effective altruism is about doing as much good as possible with the resources you have, all things considered. Lines of action that are hard to evaluate do need to be more promising than similar more easily quantified approaches to be worth working on, but that’s a pragmatic response to uncertainty.