Figuring out the most effective ways to do as much good as possible.

By Basel Kirmani

I recently attended the EA Horizon programe , with no expectations beyond a fluffy “I want to be a better person, and this programme has the word ‘altruism’ in its name”. While there’s only so much one can learn in eight hours, I was impressed at some of the concepts that were introduced - and I certainly don’t feel as fluffy about the way to approach being a better person.

We covered a number of topics - with interesting discussions on animal rights as a vehicle for altruism. That was put into practice by ordering in high-quality vegan lunchboxes - which one of the attendees pointed out was the first vegan meal he had tried, and it was surprisingly tasty.

One of the other concepts we had discussed, the issue “Improving decision-making” is described by the EA Forum at  Introduction to Effective Altruism — EA Forum  as:

if key actors — such as politicians, private and third sector leaders, or grantmakers at funding bodies — were generally better at making decisions, society would be in a better position to deal with a whole range of future global problems, whatever they turn out to be.

This reminded me of the Cobra Effect. In a nutshell: in British administered Delhi, authorities, wishing to reduce the population of venomous cobras, offered a bounty for each dead snake. The number of cobras spotted in town decreased - huzzah! But, strangely, the number of cobras being claimed for bounty mysteriously kept increasing. A little investigation revealed that the government had in fact subsidized cobra farms. Upon stopping the bounty, the entrepreneurial farmers released their wards, resulting a flood of cobras on the streets of Delhi!

This anecdote is often used to describe “unintended consequences”, but if anything, I think it shows the value of better decision-making. I can imagine a small handful of cheroot-smoking colonial officers coming up with the cobra bounty idea without properly scrutinizing the plan for holes. Would a wider group of decision-makers have spotted the flaw in the plan? Perhaps a junior office in the meeting foresaw what would happen, but held his tongue to avoid speaking out of place.

The world is full of bad decisions today. Trillions of dollars subsidize the consumption of fossil fuels; it’s cheaper to buy a hamburger than it is to by fresh produce; consumers must pay a green premium for environmentally sustainable products (when in fact they should be paying a penalty for poisoning the well). And, the sad thing is that most governance systems (both corporate and governmental) encourage this. In corporations, shareholder value primacy has resulted in corporate short-termism at the cost of longer term value; in democratic governments, vote-winning is more important than long-term policy. What if there were better ways of making decisions - and those better ways were held to constantly, rigorously tested? Shouldn’t there be investigation into which forms of decision-making result in “optimal” outcomes (where even the decision of what is “optimal” is subject to scrutiny)?

Prediction markets are one way of sourcing the wisdom of crowds to make sense of potential future states. Citizen’s Assemblies are another; Diversity policies are an attempt to ensure the best talent, no matter their background, has a chance to contribute to senior-level decision making. The fact that EA is conducting research and debate into how decisions can be made better is heartening.

Making better decisions is crucial to achieving more good. I like to think of the Butterfly Effect: assuming that Climate Change is one of the biggest detractors from “good” in the world today, what decisions could we have made in the past to have improved the situation today? Perhaps if the 2000 US Presidential Election had been won by Al Gore rather than George W Bush, the US would have taken leadership on the environment and emissions would have peaked much earlier; and as a counterfactual, 2025 would have already seen global emissions on a downwards curve. Let’s further imagine that we can get into a time machine and ask Florida voters to really ensure that they weren’t leaving hanging chads, ultimately leaving the decision in the hands of the (Republican) State Supreme Court. Let’s further think about why electoral matters were arbitrated by a partisan body - was that likely to result in unbiased outcomes? There are a couple of decision-making mechanisms, such the entire planet relying on the votes of a few hundred Floridians; or the decision to let the judicial bodies which adjudicate on electoral decisions themselves be partisan which I wish had had more thought put into them.

But we don’t have a time machine. We do, however, have decision-making power today which can impact the world 25 years from now. Shouldn’t we strive to ensure that those decisions are made in such a way that doesn’t result in a flood of cobras?