What are the key uncertainties that are well-suited to a parliamentary approach?

By David_Moss @ 2025-10-16T20:53 (+6)

The parliamentary approach to normative uncertainty has typically been applied to high-level moral theories (e.g. consequentialism vs deontology). But, it can also be applied to other normative uncertainties or cruxes, such as how we weight saving lives vs increasing income, whether we value invertebrates, or even whether EA should be a mass movement or a focused elite.

Adopting a parliamentary approach seems like it can have particular advantages in cases where:

• Our values seem incommensurable, so they are hard to combine in a single CEA (e.g. we're mostly consequentialist but put some weight on deontology).
• We want to take account of views we have low credence in, which we otherwise might ignore (e.g. different species being sentient)
• We want to reflect true heterogeneity not just an average (e.g. 45% of people believe life has infinite value, 55% believe it has some finite value, the median value is $X).

I think there are various standard EA cruxes which naturally fit this approach (e.g. the value of the future, digital sentience), but I'm curious what the most important or most neglected cruxes or dilemmas people think are well-suited to this approach.