EA - EA and LW Forums Weekly Summary (28 Aug - 3 Sep 22’) by Zoe Williams

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: EA & LW Forums Weekly Summary (28 Aug - 3 Sep 22’), published by Zoe Williams on September 6, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Supported by Rethink Priorities This is part of a weekly series - you can see the previous week's summaries here, which also includes some notes on purpose and methodology. If you'd like to receive these summaries via email, you can subscribe here. EA Forum Philosophy and Methodologies Questioning the Foundations of EA By Wei_Dai Author links two previous posts they’ve written questioning the morality of caring:1) Shut up and Divide - if you take your emotional caring for a population, and divide it by number of people, you get that you shouldn’t care almost at all about a given individual. If this feels wrong, is the ‘shut up and multiply’ argument also wrong? 2) Small astronomical waste - as a perfect utilitarian, we would trade away everything in a finite universe for more resources in an unlimited universe (more possible utility). Our best guess is our universe is finite, so we should act like we traded them away and stop caring. If this feels wrong, is the parliamentary model for moral uncertainty wrong more generally? Methods for improving uncertainty analysis in EA cost-effectiveness models By Froolow Uncertainty analysis aims to show how outputs (eg. recommendations) change based on inputs (eg. moral weights, experimental results). For example, it allows statements like ‘malaria charities could be the most cost-effective recommendations if life-years were worth >2.5x consumption doublings’, or ‘replicating this trial is worth $500K in reduced uncertainty’. Nine uncertainty analysis techniques / sub-techniques from health economics are explained: Scenario analysis - Model the case. Vary some inputs (eg. lives saved per net) to make different scenarios. What happens to the outcome? All other techniques build on this. Threshold analysis - what would an input need to be in order to change the recommendation? Do we have confidence on which side it falls? Multi-way scenario analysis - vary multiple inputs at once. Deterministic Sensitivity Analysis (DSA) - vary each input from reasonable max to min for each charity. Plot recommendations in each case. Are they reasonably consistent? Which inputs drive changes? Value of information analysis - if we knew an input for sure, how many cases of different recommendations might that solve / how much is that worth in $s? Probabilistic Sensitivity Analysis (PSA) - like DSAs, but instead of just max and min, model the probability distribution of each input and their covariance. Probability most cost effective: use the PSA to calculate a probability that a given charity is the most cost-effective. Altruistic Parameter Acceptability Curve: the above, weighted for one parameter of particular interest / that we have a leaning for, via running a DSA on that one. Risk adjustment: the above, where that parameter is risk, and we want to see how recommendations change with risk aversion. The Nietzschean Challenge to Effective Altruism By Richard Y Chappell Devil’s advocate argument that EA philosophy is too happiness / suffering focused, and true meaning comes from contribution to cultural excellence, so we should help people do that. Solves for the Repugnant Conclusion, because it values excellence over having max (people x happiness).This value system implies EA should focus more on talent scouting, nurturing potential, arts / culture, and protecting the future from hedonism. Less on global health and animal welfare. Both value systems care about protecting humanity and our long-term potential.Note the author does not believe this view (labeled ‘perfectionism’) but thinks it has useful insights, including to value excellence as well as welfare. Toby Ord’s The Scourge, Reviewed By ColdButtonIssues The Sco...