see comments on Is GiveWell.org the best charity (excluding SIAI)? - Less Wrong

37 Post author: syllogism 26 February 2011 01:37PM

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Comment author: see 02 March 2011 06:46:24AM 0 points [-]

The second.

Specifically, I am of the opinion that it is well-demonstrated that calculating adverse consequences of social policy is both sufficiently complicated and sufficiently subject to priming and biases that it is beyond human capacity at this time to accurately estimate whether the well-intentioned efforts of the Nuclear Threat Initiative are more likely to reduce or increase the risk of global thermonuclear war.

If I were forced to take a bet on the issue, I would set the odds at perfectly even. Not because I expect that a full and complete analysis by, say, Omega would come up with the probability being even, but because I have no ability to predict whether Omega would find that the Nuclear Threat initiative reduces or increases the chance of global thermonuclear war.