In this week of the programme, we explore how to prioritise between strategies for improving the long term future. Some resources this week argue that prioritisation is crucial because the best options for improving the world are tens, hundreds or thousands of times better than others. We think about some tools for comparing global problems and solutions to those problems: direct quantification (including comparing risky options in terms of expected value) and the ‘Importance, neglectedness, tractability’ framework.
Curriculum
Core Materials
The importance of prioritisation:
Effective altruism in a nutshell - 80,000 Hours
How to prioritise:
How to Measure Anything - Douglas W. Hubbard
Recommended Reading
'An evaluation framework for comparing interventions' - Michael Dickens. An alternative to the INT framework, focussed on comparison of interventions.
‘Chapter 6: Why voting is like donating thousands of dollars to charity’ in ‘Doing Good Better’ by William Macaskill
Examples of making progress on big questions using quantitative reasoning and the INT framework:
'Space governance is important, tractable and neglected' - Tobias Baumann
