{"items": [{"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/638829428582?comment_id=638829558322", "anchor": "fb-638829558322", "service": "fb", "text": "George Dahl, Arthur, (and somewhat David Chudzicki)", "timestamp": "1385498600"}, {"author": "David Chudzicki", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/638829428582?comment_id=638830511412", "anchor": "fb-638830511412", "service": "fb", "text": "Re [1]: Just like them, my guess is that the type of suffering animals experience is of a kind that I would not weigh as heavily as the type of suffering that humans experience. But even given this, it could be completely reasonable to focus exclusively on non-human animals. Their evaluation so far (http://www.givewell.org/.../treatment-animals-industrial...) is fine as far as it goes, but as they point out there's plenty of research to be done in the area, and I've not seen them publish a justification for or against their almost exclusive focus on humans.", "timestamp": "1385499072"}, {"author": "Arthur", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/638829428582?comment_id=638831065302", "anchor": "fb-638831065302", "service": "fb", "text": "Well, like I said, part of the problem is that my value system says that quantifying everything and trying to turn it into an optimization problem is, in and of itself, a bad way to think and a dangerous meme to spread.", "timestamp": "1385499327"}, {"author": "Arthur", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/638829428582?comment_id=638831479472", "anchor": "fb-638831479472", "service": "fb", "text": "Another problem is one that GiveWell themselves addressed with their recent take on \"policy-oriented philanthropy\" -- the quantitative approach is going to be fundamentally conservative because it requires that you maintain the existing underlying infrastructure behind everything in order to have a stable system in which you can make quantitative analyses.
If your goal is to blow up the whole system and start from scratch with a different, better system then any form of quantification is going to be nearly impossible. How do you determine a dollar amount in expected value for an activist movement whose long-term purpose is to abolish dollars and money completely?", "timestamp": "1385499532"}, {"author": "David Chudzicki", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/638829428582?comment_id=638832507412", "anchor": "fb-638832507412", "service": "fb", "text": "Arthur, here's another Givewell post on the difficulties with quantifying things. (Expected values, in particular.) In general, they seem pretty sensitive to this kind of trouble. http://blog.givewell.org/.../why-we-cant-take-expected.../", "timestamp": "1385499898"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/638829428582?comment_id=638832806812", "anchor": "fb-638832806812", "service": "fb", "text": "@Arthur: \"How do you determine a dollar amount in expected value for an activist movement whose long-term purpose is to abolish dollars and money completely?\"
Converting things into dollars isn't required here, and as you point out it's not so helpful, but you still want evidence and evaluation. If you look at past activist movements which have had the goal of blowing up the whole system and starting from scratch you see that (a) most of them failed to replace the previous system and (b) even the ones that did succeed at (a) had wildly varying success at coming up with a better system. Avoiding (b) seems especially important, because you don't want to succeed if you're going to create the USSR, so you want to research the history of social systems, find the systems that work best, run lots of small experiments to figure out other systems that can work well, and then scale up the ones with the best outcomes.", "timestamp": "1385500078"}, {"author": "David Chudzicki", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/638829428582?comment_id=638832821782", "anchor": "fb-638832821782", "service": "fb", "text": "Arthur, your goals and mine are probably pretty different, but I have the same issue -- it's difficult to quantify progress toward big changes. I'd still like to try, though.", "timestamp": "1385500080"}, {"author": "Lukas", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/638829428582?comment_id=638835865682", "anchor": "fb-638835865682", "service": "fb", "text": "Arthur,
<<Well, like I said, part of the problem is that my value system says that quantifying everything and trying to turn it into an optimization problem is, in and of itself, a bad way to think and a dangerous meme to spread.>>
And part of my value system is that it is in and of itself a bad/dangerous way to think when your value system contains empirical claims ;)", "timestamp": "1385501316"}, {"author": "Arthur", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/638829428582?comment_id=638837033342", "anchor": "fb-638837033342", "service": "fb", "text": "\"You don't want to succeed if you're going to create the USSR\" is one of those cans of worms again. For all the negative things about the USSR there's a strong argument to be made that the world as a whole is better off because the Russian Revolution happened than it would've been had it not happened.", "timestamp": "1385501994"}, {"author": "David Chudzicki", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/638829428582?comment_id=638881474282", "anchor": "fb-638881474282", "service": "fb", "text": "Worth noting: To say that you should be evaluating charitable organizations for the purposes of recommending donations assumes something about both your values and your model of the world.", "timestamp": "1385522967"}, {"author": "David Chudzicki", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/638829428582?comment_id=638881589052", "anchor": "fb-638881589052", "service": "fb", "text": "... which is not to contradict your main point. Just to say that the set of activities you're suggesting may be broader than charity evaluation.", "timestamp": "1385523036"}]}