EA - A flaw in a simple version of worldview diversification by NunoSempere

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: A flaw in a simple version of worldview diversification, published by NunoSempere on May 15, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.SummaryI consider a simple version of “worldview diversification”: allocating a set amount of money per cause area per year. I explain in probably too much detail how that setup leads to inconsistent relative values from year to year and from cause area to cause area. This implies that there might be Pareto improvements, i.e., moves that you could make that will result in strictly better outcomes. However, identifying those Pareto improvements wouldn’t be trivial, and would probably require more investment into estimation and cross-area comparison capabilities.1More elaborate versions of worldview diversification are probably able to fix this particular flaw, for example by instituting trading between the different worldview—thought that trading does ultimately have to happen. However, I view those solutions as hacks, and I suspect that the problem I outline in this post is indicative of deeper problems with the overall approach of worldview diversification.The main flaw: inconsistent relative valuesThis section perhaps has too much detail to arrive at a fairly intuitive point. I thought this was worth doing because I find the point that there is a possible Pareto improvement on the table a powerful argument, and I didn’t want to hand-wave it. But the reader might want to skip to the next sections after getting the gist.Deducing bounds for relative values from revealed preferencesSuppose that you order the ex-ante values of grants in different cause areas. The areas could be global health and development, animal welfare, speculative long-termism, etc. Their values could be given in QALYs (quality-adjusted life-years), sentience-adjusted QALYs, expected reduction in existential risk, but also in some relative unit2.For simplicity, let us just pick the case where there are two cause areas:More undilluted shades represent more valuable grants (e.g., larger reductions per dollar: of human suffering, animal suffering or existential risk), and lighter shades represent less valuable grants. Due to diminishing marginal returns, I’ve drawn the most valuable grants as smaller, though this doesn’t particularly matter.Now, we can augment the picture by also considering the marginal grants which didn’t get funded.In particular, imagine that the marginal grant which didn’t get funded for cause #1 has the same size as the marginal grant that did get funded for cause #2 (this doesn’t affect the thrust of the argument, it just makes it more apparent):Now, from this, we can deduce some bounds on relative values:In words rather than in shades of colour, this would be:Spending L1 dollars at cost-effectiveness A greens/$ is better than spending L1 dollars at cost-effectiveness B reds/$Spending L2 dollars at cost-effectiveness X reds/$ is better than spending L2 dollars at cost-effectiveness Y greens/$Or, dividing by L1 and L2,A greens is better than B redsX reds is better than Y redsIn colors, this would correspond to all four squares having the same size:Giving some values, this could be:10 greens is better than 2 reds3 reds is better than 5 greensFrom this we could deduce that 6 reds > 10 greens > 2 reds, or that one green is worth between 0.2 and 0.6 reds.But now there comes a new yearBut the above was for one year. Now comes another year, with its own set of grants. But we are keeping the amount we allocate to each area constant.It’s been a less promising year for green, and a more promising year for red, . So this means that some of the stuff that wasn’t funded last year for green is funded now, and some of the stuff that was funded last year for red isn’t funded now:Now we can do the same comparisons as the last time:And when ...