There are two typical ways of deciding whether on net something is worth doing. The first is to come up with a model of the relevant part of the world, look at all the consequences of doing the thing in the model, and determine if those consequences are net positive. When this is done right, the consequences should be easy to evaluate and weigh off against each other. The second way is to think of a bunch of considerations in favour of and against doing something, and decide whether the balance of considerations supports doing the thing or not.
I prefer model-building to consideration-listing, for the following reasons:
By building a model, you’re forcing yourself to explicitly think about how important various consequences are, which is often elided in consideration-listing. Or rather, I don’t know how to quantitatively compare importances of considerations without doing something very close to model-building.
Building a model lets you check which possible consequences are actually likely. This is an improvement on considerations, which are often of the form “such-and-such consequence might occur”.
Building a model lets you notice consequences which you might not have immediately thought of. This can either cause you to believe that those consequences are likely, or look for a faulty modelling assumption that is producing those assumptions within the model.
Building a model helps you integrate your knowledge of the world, and explicitly enforces consistency in your beliefs about different questions.
However, there are also upsides to consideration-listing:
The process of constructing a model is pretty similar to consideration-listing: specifically, the part where one uses one’s judgement to determine which aspects of reality are important enough to include.
Consideration-listing is much easier to do, which is why it’s the form that this hastily-written shortform post takes.
Models and considerations.
There are two typical ways of deciding whether on net something is worth doing. The first is to come up with a model of the relevant part of the world, look at all the consequences of doing the thing in the model, and determine if those consequences are net positive. When this is done right, the consequences should be easy to evaluate and weigh off against each other. The second way is to think of a bunch of considerations in favour of and against doing something, and decide whether the balance of considerations supports doing the thing or not.
I prefer model-building to consideration-listing, for the following reasons:
By building a model, you’re forcing yourself to explicitly think about how important various consequences are, which is often elided in consideration-listing. Or rather, I don’t know how to quantitatively compare importances of considerations without doing something very close to model-building.
Building a model lets you check which possible consequences are actually likely. This is an improvement on considerations, which are often of the form “such-and-such consequence might occur”.
Building a model lets you notice consequences which you might not have immediately thought of. This can either cause you to believe that those consequences are likely, or look for a faulty modelling assumption that is producing those assumptions within the model.
Building a model helps you integrate your knowledge of the world, and explicitly enforces consistency in your beliefs about different questions.
However, there are also upsides to consideration-listing:
The process of constructing a model is pretty similar to consideration-listing: specifically, the part where one uses one’s judgement to determine which aspects of reality are important enough to include.
Consideration-listing is much easier to do, which is why it’s the form that this hastily-written shortform post takes.
Homework: come up with a model of this.