peter_hurford comments on Another Critique of Effective Altruism - Less Wrong

19 Post author: jsteinhardt 05 January 2014 09:51AM

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Comment author: peter_hurford 06 January 2014 03:14:05PM *  1 point [-]

Like I said to Ishaan:

I agree magnitude is important, for more than just a PR perspective. But it's possible to compare magnitudes without using figures like "$3400.47". I think people go a lot less funny in the head when thinking about "approximately ten times better".

Though I think I agree with [you] that producing figures like "$3400.47" is important for calibration, I don't think our goal should be to equate the lowest estimated figure with the highest impact cause or even automatically assume that a lower estimated figure is a better cause (not that [you] would say that, of course).