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Clarity comments on Open Thread, Feb 8 - Feb 15, 2016 - Less Wrong Discussion

4 Post author: Elo 08 February 2016 04:47AM

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Comment author: Anders_H 09 February 2016 10:38:10PM 1 point [-]

I disagree with this. In my opinion QALYs are much superior to DALYs for reasons that are inherent to how the measures are defined. I wrote a Tumblr post in response to Slatestarscratchpad a few weeks ago, see http://dooperator.tumblr.com/post/137005888794/can-you-give-me-a-or-two-good-article-on-why .

Comment author: Clarity 10 February 2016 01:56:45AM *  0 points [-]

I agree. QALY also relate to happiness, whereas DALY's relate to functioning.

If you are a billionaire, you have a selfish incentive to reduce DALY's to raise productivity.

QALY's are altruistic in the truest sense. I feel that should be pivotal in EA, not DALY's.

Just because someone can function perfectly (no 'disability') doesn't mean there no super depressed and miserable. They, even if they are a millionaire banker, could be a lot worse off than a highly 'disabled' quadraplegic from the Ivory Coast.

Comment author: bogus 10 February 2016 08:29:58PM 0 points [-]

Doesn't severe depression have a DALY weight? Of course one could also be miserable for all sorts of reasons without actually being depressed in a medical sense, and DALYs wouldn't account for this. But that's just one of the many ways in which DALYs optimize for practicality, compared to QALYs.