This Topic focuses on tools to quantify and evaluate how much good an intervention can achieve; introduces expected value reasoning; and investigates differences in expected cost-effectiveness between interventions.
Key Material
Doing Good Better - Chapters 5 and 6 (30 mins.)
Expected Value (2 mins.)
Scope Insensitivity (3 mins.)
How to Measure Anything, Chapter 1 and 2 (50 mins.)
Hits-based Giving - Open Philanthropy (45 mins.)
Further Reading
Finding the best charity requires estimating the unknowable. Here’s how GiveWell does it. (Podcast - 1 hour 45 mins.)
One approach to comparing global problems in terms of expected impact - 80,000 Hours - An outline of a more precise and quantitative version of the importance, neglectedness, and tractability framework; and details on how to apply it to make your own comparisons of areas. (20 mins.)
On Caring - How can we feel an appropriate emotional reaction to the sheer magnitude of the world’s problems? (20 mins.)
Subjective Confidence Intervals - Animal Charity Evaluators - A point estimate is a single value given as the estimate of a population parameter that is of interest, for example, the mean of some quantity. An interval estimate specifies instead a range within which the parameter is estimated to lie. (10 mins.)
Prospecting for Gold - An overview of potential methodological tools we can use to find and evaluate high-impact opportunities. (Video - 55 mins.)
Criticisms against cost effectiveness estimates
Evidence, cluelessness, and the long term - Evidence covers only the more immediate effects of any intervention, and it's highly likely the vast majority of the value is thereby omitted from the calculation.
Charity Cost-Effectiveness in an Uncertain World – Center on Long-Term Risk - Another way to deal with prioritisation under uncertainty is to focus on actions that seem likely to have generally positive effects across many scenarios, rather than focusing on clear, quantifiable metrics. (30 mins.)
Why Charities Usually Don't Differ Astronomically in Expected Cost-Effectiveness - An argument about how those in the effective altruism movement might overestimate the extent to which charities differ in their expected marginal cost-effectiveness. (40 mins.)
List of ways in which cost-effectiveness estimates can be misleading - A checklist of things to keep in mind when using cost-effectiveness estimates. (25 mins.)
Next in the Introduction to Effective Altruism Course
Expanding Our Compassion
Expanding Our Compassion
Arguments to expand our moral consideration beyond our ordinary societal norms
