Thanks for this. It’s important to give to rescue and relief efforts when disasters happen in addition to giving to development efforts in the good times so that communities are less vulnerable to disasters.
The information you’ve provided here is really valuable. Thank you. It will inform how I donate.
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?
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.
Thanks for this. It’s important to give to rescue and relief efforts when disasters happen in addition to giving to development efforts in the good times so that communities are less vulnerable to disasters.
The information you’ve provided here is really valuable. Thank you. It will inform how I donate.
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?
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.