Counterfactual reasoning

When we rank actions, we generally want to consider not just how good an action is, but how good it is relative to the alternatives. This is implicitly assumed by the framework of idealized decision decision-making, but it is useful to state it explicitly.

Further reading

Ord, Toby (2014) Drones, counterfactuals, and equilibria: Challenges in evaluating new military technologies, Future of Humanity Institute, University of Oxford.

Sempere, Nuño (2019) Shapley values: Better than counterfactuals, Effective Altruism Forum, October 10.

When we rank actions, we generally want to consider not just how good an action is, but how good it is relative to the alternatives. This is implicitly assumed by the framework of idealized decision making,making, but it is useful to state it explicitly.

 Counterfactual reasoning involves scenarios that will occur if an agent chooses a certain action, or that would have occurred if an agent had chosen an action they did not. For instance, we can consider a counterfactual scenario in which the effective altruism community was called ‘effective giving’ rather than effective altruism.

cooperation and coordination | impact assessment | markets for altruism

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cooperation and coordination | impact assessment | markets for altruism