Thanks for conducting this impact assessment, for sharing this draft with us before publishing it, and for your help with GWWCâs own impact evaluation! A few high-level comments (as a researcher at GWWC):
First, just reiterating that we appreciate others checking our assumptions and sharing their views on them.
As other commenters have discussed, we donât think it makes sense to only account for our influence on longtermist donations. Weâd like to do a better job explaining our views here, which we see as similar to Open Philanthropyâs worldview diversification.
I also appreciate your acknowledgements of the limitations of your approach (some of which are similar to ours) in that you have not modelled our potential indirect benefitsâwhich may well be the driver of our impact.
Regarding the difference between how you have modelled the value of the GWWC Pledge versus how we did so:
As a quick-summary for others: the key difference is that GWWCâs impact evaluation worked out the value of the pledge by looking at GWWC Pledgers as an overall cohort, and looking at the average amount donated by Pledgers each year, over their Pledge tenure. The analysis in this evaluation (explained in the post) looks at Pledgers as individuals and models them each in turn, and takes the average of those models. (Please correct me if Iâm wrong here!).
Consequently, this approach uses a âricherâ set of information, though I also see it as requiring more assumptions (that the rules for extrapolating each individual Pledgersâ giving are in fact correct). Whereas our approach uses less information, but only assumes thatâon averageâpast data will be indicative of future data. Iâd be interested in whether you think this is a fair summary.
I have some intuitions that GWWCâs approach is more robust, but that this oneâif done wellâcould potentially be more valid. Theyâre just intuitions though, and I havenât thought too deeply about it.
I find it interesting that this approach appears to lead to more optimistic conclusions abut GWWCâs impact (despite the way it âboundsâ how any individual Pledgersâ giving can be extrapolated over time).
Thanks for conducting this impact assessment, for sharing this draft with us before publishing it, and for your help with GWWCâs own impact evaluation! A few high-level comments (as a researcher at GWWC):
First, just reiterating that we appreciate others checking our assumptions and sharing their views on them.
As other commenters have discussed, we donât think it makes sense to only account for our influence on longtermist donations. Weâd like to do a better job explaining our views here, which we see as similar to Open Philanthropyâs worldview diversification.
I also appreciate your acknowledgements of the limitations of your approach (some of which are similar to ours) in that you have not modelled our potential indirect benefitsâwhich may well be the driver of our impact.
Regarding the difference between how you have modelled the value of the GWWC Pledge versus how we did so:
As a quick-summary for others: the key difference is that GWWCâs impact evaluation worked out the value of the pledge by looking at GWWC Pledgers as an overall cohort, and looking at the average amount donated by Pledgers each year, over their Pledge tenure. The analysis in this evaluation (explained in the post) looks at Pledgers as individuals and models them each in turn, and takes the average of those models. (Please correct me if Iâm wrong here!).
Consequently, this approach uses a âricherâ set of information, though I also see it as requiring more assumptions (that the rules for extrapolating each individual Pledgersâ giving are in fact correct). Whereas our approach uses less information, but only assumes thatâon averageâpast data will be indicative of future data. Iâd be interested in whether you think this is a fair summary.
I have some intuitions that GWWCâs approach is more robust, but that this oneâif done wellâcould potentially be more valid. Theyâre just intuitions though, and I havenât thought too deeply about it.
I find it interesting that this approach appears to lead to more optimistic conclusions abut GWWCâs impact (despite the way it âboundsâ how any individual Pledgersâ giving can be extrapolated over time).
Thanks again for your work!
Hi Michael,
I think that is a great summary, thanks!