Alternatively, worldview diversification can be understood as an attempt to approximate expected value given a limited ability to estimate relative values. If so, then the answer might be to notice that worldview-diversification is a fairly imperfect approximation to any kind of utilitarian/consequentialist expected value maximization, and to try to more perfectly approximate utilitarian/consequentialist expected value maximization. This would involve estimating the relative values of projects in different areas, and attempting to equalize marginal values across cause areas and across years.
I think this is the interpretation of worldview diversification that makes the most sense, and I see two major difficulties with your alternative:
The total funding amounts are not constant over time, so it doesn’t make sense to equalize marginal values across time. In a year where funding decreases (e.g. FTX) all marginal values should be higher than in the previous year. And since there’s no clearcut relationship between total funding and marginal values, I don’t see any way to set the marginal values to be consistent across years, at least not with the information we have.
More importantly, a relatively fixed funding pool (or at least a non-shrinking one) is kind of a requirement for a healthy ecosystem of projects and organizations. If the animal welfare funding bucket bounced between $100 million and $20 million and $300 million year to year, it would be really hard to actually get any animal welfare organizations up and running for an extended time.
Re: 1: Yes, the post considered a situation where funding streams are known, for simplicity. But when they are unknown, you could do expected marginal relative values. This would require some forecasting infrastructure which doesn’t exist. But the solution in that case still doesn’t seem like it would be worldview diversification.
Re: 2: Yes, I agree. I think you could deal with this in various ways, e.g., calculating the expected relative values of committed vs floating funding, or doing the rebalancing every few years instead of all the time. But I also think that there is some meaningful difference between a) the underlying framework, and b) how you choose to go about it, and I think this post was more about a)
I think this is the interpretation of worldview diversification that makes the most sense, and I see two major difficulties with your alternative:
The total funding amounts are not constant over time, so it doesn’t make sense to equalize marginal values across time. In a year where funding decreases (e.g. FTX) all marginal values should be higher than in the previous year. And since there’s no clearcut relationship between total funding and marginal values, I don’t see any way to set the marginal values to be consistent across years, at least not with the information we have.
More importantly, a relatively fixed funding pool (or at least a non-shrinking one) is kind of a requirement for a healthy ecosystem of projects and organizations. If the animal welfare funding bucket bounced between $100 million and $20 million and $300 million year to year, it would be really hard to actually get any animal welfare organizations up and running for an extended time.
Re: 1: Yes, the post considered a situation where funding streams are known, for simplicity. But when they are unknown, you could do expected marginal relative values. This would require some forecasting infrastructure which doesn’t exist. But the solution in that case still doesn’t seem like it would be worldview diversification.
Re: 2: Yes, I agree. I think you could deal with this in various ways, e.g., calculating the expected relative values of committed vs floating funding, or doing the rebalancing every few years instead of all the time. But I also think that there is some meaningful difference between a) the underlying framework, and b) how you choose to go about it, and I think this post was more about a)