Hi Henry, thanks so much for your kindness and support, and we’re glad you’ve found this post valuable.
Recognizing the disagreements with your comment, importantly, we would like to express that we would appreciate it if this particular forum post is not used as a place to generally discuss for or against the effectiveness of disaster relief (via votes and/or comments). We would like to ask those engaging with this post to please be mindful that there may be readers directly affected by the earthquake and of the sensitivity of the subject, particularly at this time (the death toll has risen by more than 5000 people since we’ve made the first post and it’s still estimated to rise). We fully agree that disaster giving is an important subject to discuss and we encourage that discussion to take place; however, please use other existing EA forum posts on the subjects of disaster relief, emergency response, or other discussion threads unattached to this forum post.
Moreover, our post is by no means a general stance or an argument on the effectiveness of disaster relief, and there are differing views related to disaster giving overall, and to doing good in general (e.i. (ultra) neartermism vs (strong) longtermism) within the EA community in Turkey just as in the broader international community. Our post mainly intends to share our thoughts in response to the considerate questions and concerns we’ve received from some of you, given the severe magnitude of the earthquakes and the resulting losses, damages, and suffering. And there are EAs that are comfortable and interested in allocating some, generally much smaller part, of their charitable donations, to organizations or causes that may be simply difficult to assess, or to personal causes, or in an imperfectly effective way; just as there are others who prefer to only or entirely donate to fully evidence-backed charities for most neglected causes only. It is valuable to discuss both approaches to charitable giving, but, preferably in more appropriate EA forum posts than this one at the moment.
We once again acknowledge that there are many uncertainties and challenges of disaster relief efforts, making assessing the effectiveness and impact of disaster relief interventions very difficult. This has also been well-explained in a recently updated Vox Article by Kelsey Piper following the earthquakes in Turkey. We’ve tried to take into account as many considerations as we could based on the situation here in Turkey while making this list (e.g. logistical difficulties given infrastructure damages, immediate vs longer-term needs of survivors, Turkish government’s measures and capabilities of enforcement for various matters, such as those related to pricing of scare supplies etc.) This list reflects our current best efforts and is limited by it, written with the intention of hopefully providing information and guidance to those interested in hearing from us in Turkey.
Thank you for sharing your experiences, and this sounds like a really difficult time for everyone in Turkey, EA or otherwise.
On the other hand, what you’re doing here is sharing charity recommendations on the effective altruism forum while asking people not to discuss efficacy. If you don’t think this is an appropriate time or place for this kind of discussion and want to keep this to an update on the situation and how this has affected the EA community, you could consider editing out the recommendations?
Hi Henry, thanks so much for your kindness and support, and we’re glad you’ve found this post valuable.
Recognizing the disagreements with your comment, importantly, we would like to express that we would appreciate it if this particular forum post is not used as a place to generally discuss for or against the effectiveness of disaster relief (via votes and/or comments). We would like to ask those engaging with this post to please be mindful that there may be readers directly affected by the earthquake and of the sensitivity of the subject, particularly at this time (the death toll has risen by more than 5000 people since we’ve made the first post and it’s still estimated to rise). We fully agree that disaster giving is an important subject to discuss and we encourage that discussion to take place; however, please use other existing EA forum posts on the subjects of disaster relief, emergency response, or other discussion threads unattached to this forum post.
Moreover, our post is by no means a general stance or an argument on the effectiveness of disaster relief, and there are differing views related to disaster giving overall, and to doing good in general (e.i. (ultra) neartermism vs (strong) longtermism) within the EA community in Turkey just as in the broader international community. Our post mainly intends to share our thoughts in response to the considerate questions and concerns we’ve received from some of you, given the severe magnitude of the earthquakes and the resulting losses, damages, and suffering. And there are EAs that are comfortable and interested in allocating some, generally much smaller part, of their charitable donations, to organizations or causes that may be simply difficult to assess, or to personal causes, or in an imperfectly effective way; just as there are others who prefer to only or entirely donate to fully evidence-backed charities for most neglected causes only. It is valuable to discuss both approaches to charitable giving, but, preferably in more appropriate EA forum posts than this one at the moment.
We once again acknowledge that there are many uncertainties and challenges of disaster relief efforts, making assessing the effectiveness and impact of disaster relief interventions very difficult. This has also been well-explained in a recently updated Vox Article by Kelsey Piper following the earthquakes in Turkey. We’ve tried to take into account as many considerations as we could based on the situation here in Turkey while making this list (e.g. logistical difficulties given infrastructure damages, immediate vs longer-term needs of survivors, Turkish government’s measures and capabilities of enforcement for various matters, such as those related to pricing of scare supplies etc.) This list reflects our current best efforts and is limited by it, written with the intention of hopefully providing information and guidance to those interested in hearing from us in Turkey.
Thank you for sharing your experiences, and this sounds like a really difficult time for everyone in Turkey, EA or otherwise.
On the other hand, what you’re doing here is sharing charity recommendations on the effective altruism forum while asking people not to discuss efficacy. If you don’t think this is an appropriate time or place for this kind of discussion and want to keep this to an update on the situation and how this has affected the EA community, you could consider editing out the recommendations?