If (say) the total pool of EA-aligned funds grows by 50% over the next 5 years due to additional donors joining—which seems extremely plausible—it seems like that should make the marginal opportunity much more than 10% less good.
I’m not sure whether it would, considering, for example, the large room for funding GiveWell opportunities have had for multiple years (and will likely keep having) and their seemingly hardly diminishing cost-effectiveness on the margin (though data are obviously noisy here/​there are other explanations).
But I do take your point that this is not a very conservative estimate. I’ll update them from 1%/​2% to 2%/​4%, thank you!
but used 7% as your conservative estimate in the spreadsheet and in the bottom-line estimates you reported.
See the rest of the paragraph you refer to: the 5% is my conservative estimate for index investing, the 7% for investing more generally.
GiveWell top charities are relatively extreme in the flatness of their returns curves among areas EA is active in, which is related to their being part of a vast funding pool of global health/​foreign aid spending, which EA contributions don’t proportionately increase much.
In other areas like animal welfare and AI risk EA is a very large proportional source of funding. So this would seem to require an important bet that areas with relatively flat marginal returns curves are and will be the best place to spend.
I’m not sure whether it would, considering, for example, the large room for funding GiveWell opportunities have had for multiple years (and will likely keep having) and their seemingly hardly diminishing cost-effectiveness on the margin (though data are obviously noisy here/​there are other explanations).
But I do take your point that this is not a very conservative estimate. I’ll update them from 1%/​2% to 2%/​4%, thank you!
See the rest of the paragraph you refer to: the 5% is my conservative estimate for index investing, the 7% for investing more generally.
GiveWell top charities are relatively extreme in the flatness of their returns curves among areas EA is active in, which is related to their being part of a vast funding pool of global health/​foreign aid spending, which EA contributions don’t proportionately increase much.
In other areas like animal welfare and AI risk EA is a very large proportional source of funding. So this would seem to require an important bet that areas with relatively flat marginal returns curves are and will be the best place to spend.