Keep in mind that there’s usually at least an additional grantmaker layer between donors and the people doing direct work, and we have to be careful to avoid double-counting (which I was maybe a bit sloppy at too but worth noting).
Yeah, this is a good point that I think I hadn’t had saliently in mind, which feels a bit embarrassing.
I think the important, correct core of what I was saying there is just that “the value of adding 1 dollar to the pool of EA resources” and “the value of guiding 1 dollar towards a good donation target (rather than it going towards a net negative target, a less good target, or going nowhere for a while)” are not necessarily the same, and plausibly actually differ a lot, and also the value of the latter thing will itself differ a lot depending on various specifics. I think it’s way less clear which of the two things is bigger and by how much, and I guess I’d now back down from even my tentative claims above and instead mostly shrug.
(EDIT: I realised I should note that I have more reasons behind my originally stated views than I gave, basically related to my EAIF work. But I haven’t given those reasons here, and overall my views on this are pretty unstable and not super informed.)
I think the important, correct core of what I was saying there is just that “the value of adding 1 dollar to the pool of EA resources” and “the value of guiding 1 dollar towards a good donation target (rather than it going towards a net negative target, a less good target, or going nowhere for a while)” are not necessarily the same
Yeah, this is a good point that I think I hadn’t had saliently in mind, which feels a bit embarrassing.
I think the important, correct core of what I was saying there is just that “the value of adding 1 dollar to the pool of EA resources” and “the value of guiding 1 dollar towards a good donation target (rather than it going towards a net negative target, a less good target, or going nowhere for a while)” are not necessarily the same, and plausibly actually differ a lot, and also the value of the latter thing will itself differ a lot depending on various specifics. I think it’s way less clear which of the two things is bigger and by how much, and I guess I’d now back down from even my tentative claims above and instead mostly shrug.
(EDIT: I realised I should note that I have more reasons behind my originally stated views than I gave, basically related to my EAIF work. But I haven’t given those reasons here, and overall my views on this are pretty unstable and not super informed.)
I agree with this.