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“Fat Tails Discourage Compromise” by niplav
Say that we have a set of options, such as (for example) wild animal
welfare interventions.
Say also that you have two axes along which you can score those
interventions: popularity (how much people will like your intervention)
and effectiveness (how much the intervention actually helps wild
animals).
Assume that we (for some reason) can't convert between and compare those
two properties.
Should you then pick an intervention that is a compromise on the two
axes—that is, it scores decently well on both—or should you max out
on a particular axis?
One thing you might consider is the distribution of options
along those two axes: the distribution of interventions can
be normal on for both
popularity and effectiveness, or the underlying distribution could be
lognormal
for both axes, or they could be mixed (e.g. normal for popularity,
and lognormal for effectiveness).
Intuitively, the distributions [...]
---
First published:
June 17th, 2024
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Z5sDqqGridJQfr4uC/fat-tails-discourage-compromise
---
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
View all episodes
By LessWrongSay that we have a set of options, such as (for example) wild animal
welfare interventions.
Say also that you have two axes along which you can score those
interventions: popularity (how much people will like your intervention)
and effectiveness (how much the intervention actually helps wild
animals).
Assume that we (for some reason) can't convert between and compare those
two properties.
Should you then pick an intervention that is a compromise on the two
axes—that is, it scores decently well on both—or should you max out
on a particular axis?
One thing you might consider is the distribution of options
along those two axes: the distribution of interventions can
be normal on for both
popularity and effectiveness, or the underlying distribution could be
lognormal
for both axes, or they could be mixed (e.g. normal for popularity,
and lognormal for effectiveness).
Intuitively, the distributions [...]
---
First published:
June 17th, 2024
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Z5sDqqGridJQfr4uC/fat-tails-discourage-compromise
---
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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