Regarding argument 3, wanted to note that GiveWell funded a large survey in 2019 to learn about the preferences of its beneficiaries (general commentary, dedicated page, blog post). The learnings from that study changed GiveWell’s moral weights, and they’ve funded more work on understanding beneficiary preferences since then.
There are many more cases of GiveWell considering local insights, cross-context applicability of programming, etc. I’m commenting quickly so not going to pull examples at the moment, but I think it’s pretty easy to look at ~any grant writeup and see evidence of this.
I’m focusing on GiveWell in this comment because I think GiveWell is implicitly the target of many critiques of “EA” global health and development funding. I’d retract the comment if it became clear that such critiques weren’t referring to GiveWell.
And, this comment isn’t intended to address the question of whether GiveWell and other EA-ish funders should do more to listen to beneficiaries and learn from local experts (personal opinion: they should), but I think some of the quoted critiques in argument 3 above are false if taken literally. Such critiques are consistently confusing to me; I’m not sure whether to interpret them as bad faith, imprecise, or as operating from very different basic views on moral philosophy and ethical obligation.
Regarding argument 3, wanted to note that GiveWell funded a large survey in 2019 to learn about the preferences of its beneficiaries (general commentary, dedicated page, blog post). The learnings from that study changed GiveWell’s moral weights, and they’ve funded more work on understanding beneficiary preferences since then.
There are many more cases of GiveWell considering local insights, cross-context applicability of programming, etc. I’m commenting quickly so not going to pull examples at the moment, but I think it’s pretty easy to look at ~any grant writeup and see evidence of this.
I’m focusing on GiveWell in this comment because I think GiveWell is implicitly the target of many critiques of “EA” global health and development funding. I’d retract the comment if it became clear that such critiques weren’t referring to GiveWell.
And, this comment isn’t intended to address the question of whether GiveWell and other EA-ish funders should do more to listen to beneficiaries and learn from local experts (personal opinion: they should), but I think some of the quoted critiques in argument 3 above are false if taken literally. Such critiques are consistently confusing to me; I’m not sure whether to interpret them as bad faith, imprecise, or as operating from very different basic views on moral philosophy and ethical obligation.
(commenting in personal capacity)