Fair enough. This doesn’t seem central to my point so I don’t really want to go down a rabbit-hole here. As I said originally “I’m picking this example not because it’s the best analysis of its kind, but because it’s the sort of analysis I think people should be doing all the time and should be practiced at, and I think it’s very reasonable to produce things of this quality fairly regularly.” I know this particular analysis surfaced some useful considerations others’ hadn’t thought of, and I learned things from reading it.
I also suspect you dislike the original analysis for reasons that stem from deep-seated worldview disagreements with Eric, not because the methodology is flawed.
I also suspect you dislike the original analysis for reasons that stem from deep-seated worldview disagreements with Eric, not because the methodology is flawed.
I think the methodology of elevating cost-effectiveness estimates that thereby (usually, at least at a community level) produce lots of naive consequentialist choices, is a large chunk of the deep-seated worldview disagreement!
I actually think I probably have it less with Eric than other people, but I think the disagreement here is at least not uncorrelated from the worldview divergence.
I know this particular analysis surfaced some useful considerations others’ hadn’t thought of, and I learned things from reading it.
Agree! I am glad to have read it and wish more people produced things like it. It’s also not particularly high on my list of things to strongly incentivize, but it’s nice because it scales well, and lots of people doing more things like this seems like it just makes things a bit better.
My only sadness about it comes from the context in which it was produced. It seems eminently possible to me to have a culture of producing these kinds of estimates without failing to engage with the most important questions (or like, to include them in your estimates somehow), but I think it requires at least a bit of intentionality, and in the absence of that does seem like a bit of a trap.
Fair enough. This doesn’t seem central to my point so I don’t really want to go down a rabbit-hole here. As I said originally “I’m picking this example not because it’s the best analysis of its kind, but because it’s the sort of analysis I think people should be doing all the time and should be practiced at, and I think it’s very reasonable to produce things of this quality fairly regularly.” I know this particular analysis surfaced some useful considerations others’ hadn’t thought of, and I learned things from reading it.
I also suspect you dislike the original analysis for reasons that stem from deep-seated worldview disagreements with Eric, not because the methodology is flawed.
I think the methodology of elevating cost-effectiveness estimates that thereby (usually, at least at a community level) produce lots of naive consequentialist choices, is a large chunk of the deep-seated worldview disagreement!
I actually think I probably have it less with Eric than other people, but I think the disagreement here is at least not uncorrelated from the worldview divergence.
Agree! I am glad to have read it and wish more people produced things like it. It’s also not particularly high on my list of things to strongly incentivize, but it’s nice because it scales well, and lots of people doing more things like this seems like it just makes things a bit better.
My only sadness about it comes from the context in which it was produced. It seems eminently possible to me to have a culture of producing these kinds of estimates without failing to engage with the most important questions (or like, to include them in your estimates somehow), but I think it requires at least a bit of intentionality, and in the absence of that does seem like a bit of a trap.