Because disaster giving (in a fairly developed country, especially) is the antithesis of effective giving. These organizations, especially now, are not neglected, and are almost certainly not as cost effective as something like AMF. Disaster giving is the textbook example of philanthropy based on bias instead of cost effectiveness.
From another member of the EA community in Turkey, on behalf of several members who’ve seen this comment
Dear Anon Rationalist, we would like to encourage you to read our in-depth reply to the original comment, and particularly consider our kind ask for sensitivity. We understand your concern related to sharing criticisms of disaster giving and informing those who may not be aware. We believe many members of this community are very likely already well-aware of them, and we’ve tried hard to be careful with our wording and considerations. We have also now shared Kelsey Piper’s article in our at length-reply, which focuses on the difficulties of disaster giving, particularly on the context of Turkey, in case there are forum readers that may not be as aware and would like to know further so that it may be helpful and informative for them.
Overall, by no means is anyone—or an entire EA country community, in this case—claiming that the listed options are as effective as AMF or making anti-EA arguments. However, we also understand some readers may not have accurately understood the rationale of this post, and we would like to hear suggestions from readers of this post and comments for better rephrasing our post and/or our comments, if that is the case.
Moreover, this is unlike a regular forum post but more of a country-specific community update, which, again, we realize may not be as clear (and could potentially benefit from further community guidelines and Forum norms being developed around this, fyi, @lizka, or potentially by CEA Community Health). We also understand the difficulties that many could have empathizing mainly due to the differences in our experiences and context, however, comments like this one at this time and this particular post may not only hurt those directly affected, but they may even be the tipping point for people leaving EA, given the problems already existing within the broader community, and we only wish that these were exaggerations.
I think you need to re-read the post. They were in no means affiliating the charities with EA Turkey or even suggesting they were the “most” effective. These were some ideas to help out the community at a difficult time.
Hard for me to see why this was widely disagreed with when I read it.
Because disaster giving (in a fairly developed country, especially) is the antithesis of effective giving. These organizations, especially now, are not neglected, and are almost certainly not as cost effective as something like AMF. Disaster giving is the textbook example of philanthropy based on bias instead of cost effectiveness.
From another member of the EA community in Turkey, on behalf of several members who’ve seen this comment
Dear Anon Rationalist, we would like to encourage you to read our in-depth reply to the original comment, and particularly consider our kind ask for sensitivity. We understand your concern related to sharing criticisms of disaster giving and informing those who may not be aware. We believe many members of this community are very likely already well-aware of them, and we’ve tried hard to be careful with our wording and considerations. We have also now shared Kelsey Piper’s article in our at length-reply, which focuses on the difficulties of disaster giving, particularly on the context of Turkey, in case there are forum readers that may not be as aware and would like to know further so that it may be helpful and informative for them.
Overall, by no means is anyone—or an entire EA country community, in this case—claiming that the listed options are as effective as AMF or making anti-EA arguments. However, we also understand some readers may not have accurately understood the rationale of this post, and we would like to hear suggestions from readers of this post and comments for better rephrasing our post and/or our comments, if that is the case.
Moreover, this is unlike a regular forum post but more of a country-specific community update, which, again, we realize may not be as clear (and could potentially benefit from further community guidelines and Forum norms being developed around this, fyi, @lizka, or potentially by CEA Community Health). We also understand the difficulties that many could have empathizing mainly due to the differences in our experiences and context, however, comments like this one at this time and this particular post may not only hurt those directly affected, but they may even be the tipping point for people leaving EA, given the problems already existing within the broader community, and we only wish that these were exaggerations.
I think you need to re-read the post. They were in no means affiliating the charities with EA Turkey or even suggesting they were the “most” effective. These were some ideas to help out the community at a difficult time.
I read Anon Rationalist’s comment as arguing against Henry Howard’s comment, not against the OP.