Sorry this is slightly off topic. Considering Givewell’s recommendations are between 1x and 10-20x and there are questions about room for funding etc. where are you thinking that people might conceivably get a 100-1000x return on their donations?
And you could think AMF is 5x that, getting you to over 100.
Then you could think GiveWell itself (or other EA orgs) get you another 10x due to the multiplier effect, getting you to an overall CBR of 1000x.
Of course there’s lots of ways you could object to this too!
2) Another way you might get led to CBR of over 100 is that if you care mainly about long-run effects, and you think there’s a relatively narrow range of activities that clearly benefit the long-run. e.g. if you think preventing existential risk is the key proxy for a good long-run future, you might think most ways of spending money have about zero effect on that, while some opportunities have very positive effects (e.g. donating to the FHI), creating a very high-return on well targeted donations.
Those are multipliers in terms of social value created for the community compared to cost. It is a common (but not universal) position that a dollar has a higher value in a poor society than a rich one. If your work creates social value mostly in rich countries but your donations create value mostly in poor ones, this could add one to two orders of magnitude to the relevant ratio.
This is perhaps easiest to think about with GiveDirectly. At one level it’s easy to see that the return is 1x. The reason people think it’s a better target than just spending money yourself is that a dollar goes much further in the target community.
Some people may also or instead think there are more speculative interventions with bigger returns ratios.
Thanks Ben, that’s a helpful summary.
Sorry this is slightly off topic. Considering Givewell’s recommendations are between 1x and 10-20x and there are questions about room for funding etc. where are you thinking that people might conceivably get a 100-1000x return on their donations?
Just to clarify, I’m not claiming you can get 1000x returns, just that your view about the maximum spread of returns will effect the conclusion.
Some examples of how you could reason towards CBR of over 100:
1) It’s plausible Give Directly has a CBR of ~30 (just focusing on the short-run welfare effects). http://reflectivedisequilibrium.blogspot.com/2014/03/givedirectly-happiness-and-log-income.html
And you could think AMF is 5x that, getting you to over 100.
Then you could think GiveWell itself (or other EA orgs) get you another 10x due to the multiplier effect, getting you to an overall CBR of 1000x.
Of course there’s lots of ways you could object to this too!
2) Another way you might get led to CBR of over 100 is that if you care mainly about long-run effects, and you think there’s a relatively narrow range of activities that clearly benefit the long-run. e.g. if you think preventing existential risk is the key proxy for a good long-run future, you might think most ways of spending money have about zero effect on that, while some opportunities have very positive effects (e.g. donating to the FHI), creating a very high-return on well targeted donations.
You can see a great review of the overall debate about how large typical differences in cost-effectiveness are here: http://reducing-suffering.org/why-charities-dont-differ-astronomically-in-cost-effectiveness/
Those are multipliers in terms of social value created for the community compared to cost. It is a common (but not universal) position that a dollar has a higher value in a poor society than a rich one. If your work creates social value mostly in rich countries but your donations create value mostly in poor ones, this could add one to two orders of magnitude to the relevant ratio.
This is perhaps easiest to think about with GiveDirectly. At one level it’s easy to see that the return is 1x. The reason people think it’s a better target than just spending money yourself is that a dollar goes much further in the target community.
Some people may also or instead think there are more speculative interventions with bigger returns ratios.
Great responses, thanks both for taking the time.