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Effective altruism is this century's biggest idea

9 points · 33 comments · Anon84

  1. pfortuny · · focus · HN ↗
    The basic idea of EA is the same many people have (especially those not used to the idea of nonlinear orders): quantifying everything, even "goodness" or "utility".

    Not everything is quantifiable, and even more, not any family of things (investments, in this case) admits a linear ordering (they may even not admit a total order).

    There can be incomparable outcomes from actions, and they may be maximal in their suborder.

    This is difficult until you stop measuring everything and dedicate a minute to think of ordered trees.

    1. d_silin · · focus · HN ↗
      I was thinking of applying partially ordered set theory to social science. Order theory assumes only comparison operation ("less than" or "greater than") is possible to perform on the elements of the sets, so ordering is possible, but the values themselves can be completely non-measurable.
      1. gizajob · · focus · HN ↗
        What parts of social science do you think are amenable to this approach?
        1. d_silin · · focus · HN ↗
          Identifying what social policies work best in the long-term, hopefully. Or why certain cultural patterns persist and how they contribute to the society well-being.
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