Thanks for sharing your experience (and for the work you’re doing). I think it’s worth noting that the funding discussion in the original post has quite a specific context:
Giving Green claimed that progressive climate activism was neglected based on financial data from 2015.
Given what’s happened in the subsequent 6 years (including the formation of XR), financial data from 2015 is not close to sufficient to show neglectedness.
I secondly want to note, as has been discussed pretty extensively in the comments, that our prior should be that an organisation which is not CATF will underperform it, given that multiple independent evaluations of CATF by different people over a period of several years have repeatedly rated it extremely highly. Wanting to allocate money to the highest EV option is not borne out of “risk-aversion”, it’s just straight EV maximisation. Of course, if it turns out that the potential funding pools are so divergent that recommending both options would result in far more donations coming in, I’d be extremely happy, and enthusiastically recommend both. This is why I called for modelling of exactly this tradeoff.
I’m afraid your final point about EA potentially being too late to social movements, while important in general, somewhat missed the mark if what you’re attempting to do is imply that the reason the people on this thread who are skeptical about TSM have this particular blindspot. Sanjay, who I’ve worked closely with for some time, and who posted his own comment on this thread, has been working hard to start a social movement in the UK dedicated to preventing future pandemics, Johannes was a climate activist himself, and I’ve been thinking for some time about ways to allow people to get involved with EA in a ways other than donating even if they don’t have the option of a full career switch. Our skepticism about TSM is skepticism about TSM, not about activism or mass movements more broadly.
Hi James,
Thanks for sharing your experience (and for the work you’re doing). I think it’s worth noting that the funding discussion in the original post has quite a specific context:
Giving Green claimed that progressive climate activism was neglected based on financial data from 2015.
Given what’s happened in the subsequent 6 years (including the formation of XR), financial data from 2015 is not close to sufficient to show neglectedness.
I secondly want to note, as has been discussed pretty extensively in the comments, that our prior should be that an organisation which is not CATF will underperform it, given that multiple independent evaluations of CATF by different people over a period of several years have repeatedly rated it extremely highly. Wanting to allocate money to the highest EV option is not borne out of “risk-aversion”, it’s just straight EV maximisation. Of course, if it turns out that the potential funding pools are so divergent that recommending both options would result in far more donations coming in, I’d be extremely happy, and enthusiastically recommend both. This is why I called for modelling of exactly this tradeoff.
I’m afraid your final point about EA potentially being too late to social movements, while important in general, somewhat missed the mark if what you’re attempting to do is imply that the reason the people on this thread who are skeptical about TSM have this particular blindspot. Sanjay, who I’ve worked closely with for some time, and who posted his own comment on this thread, has been working hard to start a social movement in the UK dedicated to preventing future pandemics, Johannes was a climate activist himself, and I’ve been thinking for some time about ways to allow people to get involved with EA in a ways other than donating even if they don’t have the option of a full career switch. Our skepticism about TSM is skepticism about TSM, not about activism or mass movements more broadly.