I think this is a disingenuous motte-and-bailey argument.
The OPs suggestions arenât to âlook into whether this might be effective, build some models of cost effectiveness, and compare against existing opportunitiesâ.
They are âdonate to some of the candidates Elizabeth Edwards-Appell recommendsâ, âform lists of good candidatesâ, âset up an EA funding bloc for candidatesâ and âdevote resources to training EA candidatesâ.
Answering the question of whether a candidate is âgood,â might well (at least on certain EA world views) be sufficient to answer the question of whether donating to the candidate would be (sufficiently) cost-effective (given evidence that 1) donations matter for getting elected, and 2) getting elected allows one to influence policy). Consider the case of a candidate running on a longtermist platform. My impression is that when longtermist grantmakers evaluate giving opportunities in existential risk mitigation, their decision process is much closer to âdetermine whether the opportunity in question has a reasonable chance of improving humanityâs longterm trajectory within a range of broadly acceptable costsâ than to âconduct a thorough, systematic, GiveWell-style cost-effectiveness analysis.â I would think that roughly the same principles that apply to donations to organizations that lobby Congress for better biosecurity policy apply to donations to candidates for Congress who strongly favor better biosecurity policy. This seems to be the thinking behind OPâs post. The back-of-the-envelope intuition here is pretty straightforward; insisting on a GiveWell-style CEA in its place reads like an isolated demand for rigor.
If you can point out where I asked for âa Givewell style CEAâ I might agree that it was an isolated demand for rigor.
I didnât do that, however. Instead, I asked for an attempt to make the case that it could be better than GiveDirectlyâI didnât specify how one might make the case or any level of rigor at all.
What I was imagining was a basic back of the envelope sketch of how this intervention might be cost effective, which I donât think OP provided.
The supposed motivation for the post was EA having a funding overhangâin that context asking how it compares to another intervention which can potentially absorb near limitless amounts of money without diminishing returns seems totally reasonable to me.
I think this is a disingenuous motte-and-bailey argument.
The OPs suggestions arenât to âlook into whether this might be effective, build some models of cost effectiveness, and compare against existing opportunitiesâ.
They are âdonate to some of the candidates Elizabeth Edwards-Appell recommendsâ, âform lists of good candidatesâ, âset up an EA funding bloc for candidatesâ and âdevote resources to training EA candidatesâ.
Answering the question of whether a candidate is âgood,â might well (at least on certain EA world views) be sufficient to answer the question of whether donating to the candidate would be (sufficiently) cost-effective (given evidence that 1) donations matter for getting elected, and 2) getting elected allows one to influence policy). Consider the case of a candidate running on a longtermist platform. My impression is that when longtermist grantmakers evaluate giving opportunities in existential risk mitigation, their decision process is much closer to âdetermine whether the opportunity in question has a reasonable chance of improving humanityâs longterm trajectory within a range of broadly acceptable costsâ than to âconduct a thorough, systematic, GiveWell-style cost-effectiveness analysis.â I would think that roughly the same principles that apply to donations to organizations that lobby Congress for better biosecurity policy apply to donations to candidates for Congress who strongly favor better biosecurity policy. This seems to be the thinking behind OPâs post. The back-of-the-envelope intuition here is pretty straightforward; insisting on a GiveWell-style CEA in its place reads like an isolated demand for rigor.
If you can point out where I asked for âa Givewell style CEAâ I might agree that it was an isolated demand for rigor.
I didnât do that, however. Instead, I asked for an attempt to make the case that it could be better than GiveDirectlyâI didnât specify how one might make the case or any level of rigor at all.
What I was imagining was a basic back of the envelope sketch of how this intervention might be cost effective, which I donât think OP provided.
The supposed motivation for the post was EA having a funding overhangâin that context asking how it compares to another intervention which can potentially absorb near limitless amounts of money without diminishing returns seems totally reasonable to me.