I agree that EA funds shouldn’t be distributed democratically, nor that “EA leaders” or survey participants are necessarily the right allocators. Do you think that the current resource allocation is being made by experts with “judgment, track record, and depth of thinking about cause prioritization”?
If I had to guess, I would say it is a combination of this, but also EA UHNW donor preferences, a cause’s ability to attract funding from other sources, etc.
Ideally we would survey some of the best grantmaking experts on cause prio, but I still found the EA survey and MCF survey to be a useful proxy, albeit flawed.
Despite being the one who wrote the original post I did think in writing it that trying to figure out if one cause is being underfunded compared another cause is a really difficult question to answer. Part of my motivation to write this was to see if anyone had any insights as to whether my claims were right or not.
I agree that EA funds shouldn’t be distributed democratically, nor that “EA leaders” or survey participants are necessarily the right allocators. Do you think that the current resource allocation is being made by experts with “judgment, track record, and depth of thinking about cause prioritization”?
If I had to guess, I would say it is a combination of this, but also EA UHNW donor preferences, a cause’s ability to attract funding from other sources, etc.
Ideally we would survey some of the best grantmaking experts on cause prio, but I still found the EA survey and MCF survey to be a useful proxy, albeit flawed.
I guess that I am just not very confident that this is a good proxy.
The allocation is probably not what it should be, but I’m not yet convinced that animal stuff is being underfunded.
Despite being the one who wrote the original post I did think in writing it that trying to figure out if one cause is being underfunded compared another cause is a really difficult question to answer. Part of my motivation to write this was to see if anyone had any insights as to whether my claims were right or not.