“Bracketing cluelessness: A new theory of altruistic decision-making” by JesseClifton

Audio note: this article contains 126 uses of latex notation, so the narration may be difficult to follow. There's a link to the original text in the episode description. This is a less formal overview of the key ideas in the working paper “Bracketing Cluelessness”. There is also a standalone linkpost for the paper, which I’ve split off from this post, since this one contains personal commentary (not necessarily endorsed by my co-authors).Summary We may be clueless about how our actions affect aggregate welfare: we may not be able to say any intervention is better, worse, or exactly as good as another, in terms of its expected total consequences. There is an intuition that the appropriate response is to base our decisions on relatively robust and predictable effects, and that this favors near-term interventions like global health and animal welfare. But there is not yet [...] ---Outline:(00:41) Summary(04:05) Introduction(07:14) The basic idea(11:49) In more detail: Formalism and major challenges(11:55) Cluelessness and imprecise probabilities(13:24) Defining bracketing(21:45) Theoretical challenges(21:49) What are the locations of value?(23:52) Cyclicity(24:48) Sequential decision-making(25:35) Further implications of bracketing(25:52) Getting off the train to crazy town: Why and where(27:46) Bracketing beyond locations of value(29:43) Conclusion(30:46) Acknowledgements(31:07) References(31:13) Appendix: More on cyclicity(31:18) Example of a cycle(33:58) Versions of the objection from cyclicity and our responses(34:04) The semantic argument(35:14) The synchronic (one-off) choice argument(36:36) The dynamic choice (value-pump) argument--- First published: September 24th, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/pecCRYaAzsfZkeAzi/bracketing-cluelessness-a-new-theory-of-altruistic-decision --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

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