(highlight:: The pathways:
IIDM can improve our intellectual and political environment.
IIDM can help select which institutions will survive and flourish, shaping the future.
IIDM can actually improve the direct outcomes of institutions’ decisions, where “improving outcomes” involves having a greater positive impact on the world (from an EA or moral point of view rather than from the point of view of the institutions).)
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institutions (where "better" means having a greater positive impact on the world.
Here are a couple of scenarios that I think weaken the case for value-neutral IIDM that is discussed in this section:
If you believe that voters’ values are net harmful (e.g. if you think they would vote for an industrial farming hellscape, given the opportunity, or if you think technocracy is generally better), then increasing the efficiency of the process that translates voters’ values to policies does not bring welfare
If you think that certain important corporations’ intrinsic aims are net harmful or that the average institution’s aims are basically morally neutral, then broadly improving the decision-making of institutions doesn’t seem to directly benefit the world (i.e. the impact is small or negative))
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For example, she writes: "Work on 'improving decision-making' very broadly isn’t all that neglected. There are a lot of people, in both industry and academia, trying out different techniques to improve decision-making....However, there seems to be very little work focused on...putting the best-proven techniques into practice in the most influential institutions." The definition of "important" or "influential" is left unstated in that piece, but from the context and examples provided, I read the intention as one of framing opportunities from the standpoint of broad societal wellbeing rather than organizations' parochial goals.
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One issue you don't really touch on except in a footnote is the distinction between stated values and de facto values for institutions, or internal alignment among institutional stakeholders. For example, consider a typical private health insurer in the US. In theory, its goal is to increase the health and wellbeing of millions of patients—a highly value-aligned goal! Yet in practice, the organization engages in many predatory practices to serve its own growth, enrichment of core stakeholders, etc. So is this an altruistic institution or not? And does bringing its (non-altruistic) actions into greater alignment with its (altruistic) goals count as improving decision quality or increasing value alignment under your paradigm?
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