It seems like EAs have around six different common ways of comparing interventions, each with their own pros and cons:
- Cost-benefit Analyses
- Pros
- Allow us to compare interventions within and across cause areas while using a consistent metric
- Cons
- Makes it hard to compare interventions that have different effects
- Can result in interventions with many different positive effects being under-utilized
- I think citizens initiatives are a good example of this
- They create momentum for the farm animal activism movement, create social awareness, and produce legal change, but cost-benefit analyses usually only focus on one of these effects.
- I think citizens initiatives are a good example of this
- Pros
- The ITN Frawework
- Pros
- Allows us to compare different cause areas at a very macro level
- Cons
- It can de-emphasize cause areas which may not be neglected but still possess high leverage interventions
- Pros
- Models
- Pros
- Allows us to map out complex problems and compare the effects of different interventions at a more granular level
- Cons
- We often lack the proper data to create models that are really worth using
- It takes a very long time to create models that are very valuable
- Pros
- Projections (A type of model)
- Pros
- Allow us to see how different interventions would result in change if implemented over a long time period
- Cons
- Often make overly simplistic assumptions about how to fix the problem at hand
- Pros
- Theories of change (Another type of model)
- Pros
- Give us a sense of how an intervention could help to create large-scale change
- Cons
- Often don't enable us to strictly compare the effectiveness of different interventions
- Pros
- Public discussion
- Pros
- Enable us to find the very best arguments for an against different interventions and cause areas
- Cons
- Fundamentally limited by the information available to those involved in the discussion
- Pros
I'm curious. What are there other ways of comparing interventions and cause areas? I think it's important that we avoid measurability bias, but it also seems like relying on intuition is probably a very bad approach to use instead.
