Cluelessness: can we know the effects of our actions?

Abstract

Many people argue that the effects of our actions are so diverse and unpredictable that it’s impossible to know whether they’re ultimately good or bad — so it doesn’t make sense to struggle to increase our impact. The pop version of the criticism is that if you save a life, that person might become the next Hitler — so your well-intentioned action might have actually resulted in the deaths of millions. This version of the criticism is silly: although there’s some chance that the person whose life you save will be the next Hitler, it’s so low that the possibility doesn’t have much effect on the expected value. And just as you might save the next Hitler, you might also save the next Norman Borlaug, who saved hundreds of millions of lives.