The recent talk of not having good giving opportunities is confusing to me. Maybe there are limited opportunities to save a life at $3000, but there should be many opportunities to save a life at $10,000 (UNICEF? Oxfam?). This is still far better than developed country charities (where it costs millions of dollars to save a life), so it is still a great opportunity.
As for global catastrophic risk, it is true that some areas receive a lot of funding. But then there is the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute that has an integrated assessment to look across all the global catastrophic risks and prioritize interventions that is largely unfunded (disclosure: I am a research associate at the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute). And in general, if we took seriously the value of future generations, we should be funding global catastrophic risk reduction orders of magnitude more than it is currently funded.
The idea that we could become saturated with money seems bizarre. It’s not like Givewell’s top charities have run out of RfMF, and even if they do, and all the top organisations are genuinely more talent- than money-constrained, it doesn’t follow that there’s a better option than putting money towards them.
You could potentially fund scholarships for people learning the skills they need—not that I would expect this to be a top-tier use of the money, but it seems likely to be as good or better use of your resources than either a) applying or studying for a highly ‘talent-constrained’ job which, if it’s that hard, there’s little reason to expect yourself to be be competent for, or b) sitting around and waiting for someone to show up.
In the future, effective altruism may need to become less risk averse. There is appeal in Givewell’s top recommendations for classic charitable causes because there is more-or-less a guarantee people will be helped as cash transfers, mosquito bed nets, or vaccinations are delivered. If effective altruism donates millions of dollars to an advocacy campaign which may fail, or fund a project with a decades-long trajectory difficult to predict in the present, it’s less certain someone in need will be as helped as we hoped for. There may also be a personal bias among individuals who want to feel as though their dollars donated definitely made a difference despite what mistakes other donors make. So, that could be a bias towards donating to the Against Malaria Foundation, or GiveDirectly. I know this worry has pulled on my heartstrings in the past, but I’m (slowly) overcoming it. I know of no data of how pervasive this bias may actually be among altruists.
One solution could be to separate ego and psychology from expected value. Part of effective altruism’s appeal is it can make one feel good about oneself. This can come from a confidence that donating to an effective charity which will definitely leads to lives saved feels better than feeling ambivalent about the value of private charity and its uncertainty. However, that’s a state of thinking effective altruism may need to return to. Plenty of wealthy philanthropists donate money to art museums and other institutions which won’t go on to save lives. These philanthropists still reap the status of donating, and feel good about themselves. There are activists and protest movements around the world proud of the work they do, but not all are guaranteed to work. If others can feel that way, then I think effective altruism can take on bigger risks with a chance of greater value as well, without us feeling bad about ourselves.
Another solution may be effective altruism scaling up what it approaches, and thinking bigger about what it can achieve. Good Ventures is more or less aligned with effective altruism, with other major philanthropists able to donate as much as the rest of this movement combined doing related work (e.g., Elon Musk). William MacAskill’s new book Doing Good Better was recently positively reviewed by Susan Desmond-Hellman, the CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Further, catastrophic risks like Artificial Intelligence and pandemic biotechnology are now or may soon receive funding from the National Science Foundation and other governmental bodies in the United States.
These are all indicators that even if effective altruism doesn’t hit explosive growth in the next couple years, it still has a chance of affecting the biggest movers and donors in philanthropy. This doesn’t make much less imperative for individual donors the identified responsibility of saving lives by way of UNICEF or OxFam. Effective altruism may need change its pitch. Being an individual who saves hundreds of lives through earning to give or through regular donations might need give way to pursuing a more ambitious and less conventional career of being part of a more coordinated global network or actors whose greatest value is in doing work beyond the scope of individuals.
To find the best giving opportunities might require effective altruism pioneering new ways of finding them, or creating them itself.
The recent talk of not having good giving opportunities is confusing to me. Maybe there are limited opportunities to save a life at $3000, but there should be many opportunities to save a life at $10,000 (UNICEF? Oxfam?). This is still far better than developed country charities (where it costs millions of dollars to save a life), so it is still a great opportunity. As for global catastrophic risk, it is true that some areas receive a lot of funding. But then there is the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute that has an integrated assessment to look across all the global catastrophic risks and prioritize interventions that is largely unfunded (disclosure: I am a research associate at the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute). And in general, if we took seriously the value of future generations, we should be funding global catastrophic risk reduction orders of magnitude more than it is currently funded.
I completely agree.
+1
The idea that we could become saturated with money seems bizarre. It’s not like Givewell’s top charities have run out of RfMF, and even if they do, and all the top organisations are genuinely more talent- than money-constrained, it doesn’t follow that there’s a better option than putting money towards them.
You could potentially fund scholarships for people learning the skills they need—not that I would expect this to be a top-tier use of the money, but it seems likely to be as good or better use of your resources than either a) applying or studying for a highly ‘talent-constrained’ job which, if it’s that hard, there’s little reason to expect yourself to be be competent for, or b) sitting around and waiting for someone to show up.
In the future, effective altruism may need to become less risk averse. There is appeal in Givewell’s top recommendations for classic charitable causes because there is more-or-less a guarantee people will be helped as cash transfers, mosquito bed nets, or vaccinations are delivered. If effective altruism donates millions of dollars to an advocacy campaign which may fail, or fund a project with a decades-long trajectory difficult to predict in the present, it’s less certain someone in need will be as helped as we hoped for. There may also be a personal bias among individuals who want to feel as though their dollars donated definitely made a difference despite what mistakes other donors make. So, that could be a bias towards donating to the Against Malaria Foundation, or GiveDirectly. I know this worry has pulled on my heartstrings in the past, but I’m (slowly) overcoming it. I know of no data of how pervasive this bias may actually be among altruists.
One solution could be to separate ego and psychology from expected value. Part of effective altruism’s appeal is it can make one feel good about oneself. This can come from a confidence that donating to an effective charity which will definitely leads to lives saved feels better than feeling ambivalent about the value of private charity and its uncertainty. However, that’s a state of thinking effective altruism may need to return to. Plenty of wealthy philanthropists donate money to art museums and other institutions which won’t go on to save lives. These philanthropists still reap the status of donating, and feel good about themselves. There are activists and protest movements around the world proud of the work they do, but not all are guaranteed to work. If others can feel that way, then I think effective altruism can take on bigger risks with a chance of greater value as well, without us feeling bad about ourselves.
Another solution may be effective altruism scaling up what it approaches, and thinking bigger about what it can achieve. Good Ventures is more or less aligned with effective altruism, with other major philanthropists able to donate as much as the rest of this movement combined doing related work (e.g., Elon Musk). William MacAskill’s new book Doing Good Better was recently positively reviewed by Susan Desmond-Hellman, the CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Further, catastrophic risks like Artificial Intelligence and pandemic biotechnology are now or may soon receive funding from the National Science Foundation and other governmental bodies in the United States.
These are all indicators that even if effective altruism doesn’t hit explosive growth in the next couple years, it still has a chance of affecting the biggest movers and donors in philanthropy. This doesn’t make much less imperative for individual donors the identified responsibility of saving lives by way of UNICEF or OxFam. Effective altruism may need change its pitch. Being an individual who saves hundreds of lives through earning to give or through regular donations might need give way to pursuing a more ambitious and less conventional career of being part of a more coordinated global network or actors whose greatest value is in doing work beyond the scope of individuals.
To find the best giving opportunities might require effective altruism pioneering new ways of finding them, or creating them itself.