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Direct effects matter! — LessWrong

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A strange phenomenon plagues public discourse. Subtle and largely detached from the culture war, it often manages to evade detection. Can you spot it in each of the following arguments or discussion points? All four arguments completely ignore the first-order, direct effects of the practice in question! Drug use and the war on drugs might impose serious costs on society, but we can’t forget that drugs themselves are fun to use! Exercise may be very important to personal wellbeing, but don’t ignore that (for some people, some of the time) exercise sucks! And we can talk about the second-order consequences of any sort of social welfare program, but let’s not neglect that the money directly improves poor people’s lives! Saying this out loud sounds trivial, almost stupid. But I think “first-order effect neglect,” as I’ll call it, is a serious issue with public discourse. When was the last time that you heard a debate over the merits of drug legalization consider the stupidly-obvious fact t

x Direct effects matter! — LessWrong World Optimization Rationality Frontpage 106 Direct effects matter! by Aaron Bergman 14th Mar 2021 Linkpost for aaronbergman.substack.com 6 min read 28 106 Note: this is from my personal blog here . A strange phenomenon plagues public discourse. Subtle and largely detached from the culture war, it often manages to evade detection. Can you spot it in each of the following arguments or discussion points? Drugs like cocaine and heroin are bad. They are ruinous to users’ health, and use imposes a large negative externality on society. We should decriminalize dr

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