“We should be more uncertain about cause prioritization based on philosophical arguments” by Rethink Priorities, Marcus_A_Davis

Summary

In this article, I argue most of the interesting cross-cause prioritization decisions and conclusions rest on philosophical evidence that isn’t robust enough to justify high degrees of certainty that any given intervention (or class of cause interventions) is “best” above all others. I hold this to be true generally because of the reliance of such cross-cause prioritization judgments on relatively weak philosophical evidence. In particular, the case for high confidence in conclusions on which interventions are all things considered best seems to rely on particular approaches to handling normative uncertainty. The evidence for these approaches is weak and different approaches can produce radically different recommendations, which suggest that cross-cause prioritization intervention rankings or conclusions are fundamentally fragile and that high confidence in any single approach is unwarranted.

I think the reliance of cross-cause prioritization conclusions on philosophical evidence that isn’t robust has been previously underestimated in EA circles [...]

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Outline:

(00:14) Summary

(06:03) Cause Prioritization Is Uncertain and Some Key Philosophical Evidence for Particular Conclusions is Structurally Weak

(06:11) The decision-relevant parts of cross-cause prioritization heavily rely on philosophical conclusions

(09:26) Philosophical evidence about the interesting cause prioritization questions is generally weak

(17:35) Aggregation methods disagree

(21:27) Evidence for aggregation methods is weaker than empirical evidence of which EAs are skeptical

(24:07) Objections and Replies

(24:11) Aren't we here to do the most good? / Aren't we here to do consequentialism? / Doesn't our competitive edge come from being more consequentialist than others in the nonprofit sector?

(25:28) Can't I just use my intuitions or my priors about the right answers to these questions? I agree philosophical evidence is weak so we should just do what our intuitions say

(27:27) We can use common sense / or a non-philosophical approach and conclude which cause area(s) to support. For example, it's common sense that humanity going extinct would be really bad; so, we should work on that

(30:22) I'm an anti-realist about philosophical questions so I think that whatever I value is right, by my lights, so why should I care about any uncertainty across theories? Can't I just endorse whatever views seem best to me?

(31:52) If the evidence in philosophy is as weak as you say, this suggests there are no right answers at all and/or that potentially anything goes in philanthropy. If you can't confidently rule things out, wouldn't this imply that you can't distinguish a scam charity from a highly effective group like Against Malaria Foundation?

(34:08) I have high confidence in MEC (or some other aggregation method) and/or some more narrow set of normative theories so cause prioritization is more predictable than you are suggesting despite some uncertainty in what theories I give some credence to

(41:44) Conclusion (or well, what do I recommend?)

(44:05) Acknowledgements

The original text contained 20 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
July 3rd, 2025

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/nwckstt2mJinCwjtB/we-should-be-more-uncertain-about-cause-prioritization-based

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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