Do you have a sense of why this issue is at the top for you? To me it feels like an isolated demand for rigour. When I compare this to other norms like being unclear what cause area you support, not having external reviews (for e.g. meta and x-risk orgs) or many orgs not even having a public budget (making cost effectiveness comparisons near impossible), this issue seems pretty far down the list of community norms that EAs prescribe but do a week job at doing in practice.
That’s a good question! As I said in the post, this is not my top issue in any objective sense, only what makes me most disappointed. That is, this is a place where the community had come to (what I consider) the right answer, but then backslid in response to external incentives.
I’m confused about what you mean by not being clear which cause area you support? Do you mean individuals not making their donations public? Or not disclosing how they personally prioritize cause areas?
On the question of whether organizations should have external reviews and public budgets, to me this comes down to whether organizations are raising funds from the general public. The general principle is that donors should have the information they need to make informed decisions, and if an organization is raising funds from a small group, it is sufficient to be transparent to that group, which generally has much lower costs than being transparent to the world as a whole. (I also don’t see this as a place where the EA community in general has started failing at something it used to be good at)
Do you have a sense of why this issue is at the top for you?
To me it feels like an isolated demand for rigour. When I compare this to other norms like being unclear what cause area you support, not having external reviews (for e.g. meta and x-risk orgs) or many orgs not even having a public budget (making cost effectiveness comparisons near impossible), this issue seems pretty far down the list of community norms that EAs prescribe but do a week job at doing in practice.
That’s a good question! As I said in the post, this is not my top issue in any objective sense, only what makes me most disappointed. That is, this is a place where the community had come to (what I consider) the right answer, but then backslid in response to external incentives.
I’m confused about what you mean by not being clear which cause area you support? Do you mean individuals not making their donations public? Or not disclosing how they personally prioritize cause areas?
On the question of whether organizations should have external reviews and public budgets, to me this comes down to whether organizations are raising funds from the general public. The general principle is that donors should have the information they need to make informed decisions, and if an organization is raising funds from a small group, it is sufficient to be transparent to that group, which generally has much lower costs than being transparent to the world as a whole. (I also don’t see this as a place where the EA community in general has started failing at something it used to be good at)