Linch’s comment could be (mis?)read as equating the value of adding 1 dollar to the pool of EA resources to 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)
For what it’s worth, I don’t think those two are the same thing, but I usually think of “improving decision quality” of situations that roughly looks like a funder wants to invest in $X in Y, we look at the evidence and suggest something like
a) best bets are Z charities/interventions in Y b) this isn’t worth investing for ABC reasons, or c) ambiguous, more research is needed
as some percentage improvement on $X in the first two cases, and I usually think of that percentage as less than 100%. Maybe 20-50%*? Depends on funder quality. So I don’t think “adding 1 dollar to the pool of EA resources to the value of guiding 1 dollar towards a good donation target” are the same thing, but you’re implying >100% improvement and I usually think improvements are lower, especially in expectation. 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).
The other thing to note is that this “decision quality” approach already might inflate our importance at least a little (compared to a more natural question candidates might ask like at what $X amount should they be indifferent between working for us and earning-to-give for $X) because it implies that the cause prioritization of EA is already basically reasonable, and I don’t actually believe this, in either my research or my other career/life decisions.
A different tack here is a quick sanity check: maybe it has happened a few times before, but I’m not aware of any point that an RP employee was so confident about an intervention/donation opportunity that they’ve researched that they decided that the donation opportunity is a clearly better bet than RP. Obviously there are self-serving reasons/biases for this, but I basically think this is a directionally correct move from the POV of the universe.
* I need to check if how much I can share, but 20% is not the lowest number I’ve seen from other people at RP, at least when I talk about specific intervention reports.
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
For what it’s worth, I don’t think those two are the same thing, but I usually think of “improving decision quality” of situations that roughly looks like a funder wants to invest in $X in Y, we look at the evidence and suggest something like
as some percentage improvement on $X in the first two cases, and I usually think of that percentage as less than 100%. Maybe 20-50%*? Depends on funder quality. So I don’t think “adding 1 dollar to the pool of EA resources to the value of guiding 1 dollar towards a good donation target” are the same thing, but you’re implying >100% improvement and I usually think improvements are lower, especially in expectation. 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).
The other thing to note is that this “decision quality” approach already might inflate our importance at least a little (compared to a more natural question candidates might ask like at what $X amount should they be indifferent between working for us and earning-to-give for $X) because it implies that the cause prioritization of EA is already basically reasonable, and I don’t actually believe this, in either my research or my other career/life decisions.
A different tack here is a quick sanity check: maybe it has happened a few times before, but I’m not aware of any point that an RP employee was so confident about an intervention/donation opportunity that they’ve researched that they decided that the donation opportunity is a clearly better bet than RP. Obviously there are self-serving reasons/biases for this, but I basically think this is a directionally correct move from the POV of the universe.
* I need to check if how much I can share, but 20% is not the lowest number I’ve seen from other people at RP, at least when I talk about specific intervention reports.
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.