I kind of like the general sentiment but I’m a bit annoyed that it’s just assumed that your burden of proof is so strongly on the funders.
Maybe you want to share your BOTEC first, particularly given the framing of the post is “I want to see the numbers because I’m concerned” as opposed to just curiosity?
I’m not sure why the burden wouldn’t fall on people making the distribution of funds? (Incidentally, I’m using this to mean that the funders could also hire external consultancies etc. to produce this.)
But, more to the point, I wrote this really hoping that both organisations would say “sure, here it is” and we could go from there. That might really have helped bring people together. (NB: I realise FTX haven’t engaged with this yet.)
In many ways, if the outcome is that there isn’t a clear/shared/approved expected value rationale being used internally to guide a given set of spending, that seems to validate some of the concerns that were expressed at EAG.
I think what I’m getting at is that burden of proof is generally an unhelpful framing, and an action that you could take that might be helpful is communicating your model that makes you sceptical of their spending.
Hiring consultancies to do this seems like it’s not going to go well unless it’s rethink priorities or they have lot of context and on the margin I think it’s reasonable for CEA to say no, they have better things to do.
I feel confused about the following but I think that as someone that runs an EA org you could easily have reached out directly to CEA/FTX to ask this question (maybe you did, if so apologies) and this action seems kind of like outing them more than being curious.
I’m not necessarily against this (in fact I think this is helpful in lots of ways) but many forum users seen to not like these kinds of adversarial actions.
Like you, I’m fairly relaxed about asking people publicly to be transparent. Specifically in this context, though, someone from FTX said they would be open to doing this if the idea was popular, which prompted the post.
As a sidenote, I think also that MEL consultancies are adept at understanding context quickly and would be a good option (or something that EA could found itself—see Rossa’s comment). My wife is an MEL consultant, which informs my view of this. But that’s not to say they are necessarily the best option.
I as an individual would endorse someone hiring an MEL consultant to do this for the information value and would also bet on this not providing much value due to the analysis being poor at $100.
Terms to be worked out of course, but if someone was interested in hiring the low context consultant, I’d be interested in working out the terms.
Oh right, I didn’t pick up on the ftx said they’d like to see if this was popular thing. This resolves part of this for me (at least on the ftx as opposed to the CEA side).
Broken into a different comment so people can vote more clearly
In many ways, if the outcome is that there isn’t a clear/shared/approved expected value rationale being used internally to guide a given set of spending, that seems to validate some of the concerns that were expressed at EAG.
I think that there is likely different epistemic standards between cause areas such that this is a pretty complicated question and people underpreciate how much of a challenge this is for the EA movement.
I think it makes sense to have the burden of proof mostly on the funders given that they presumably have more info about all their activities, plus having the burden set this way has instrumental benefits of encouraging transparency which could lead to useful critiques, and extra reputation-related incentives to use good reasoning and do a good job of judging what grants do and do not meet a cost-effectiveness bar.
I kind of like the general sentiment but I’m a bit annoyed that it’s just assumed that your burden of proof is so strongly on the funders.
Maybe you want to share your BOTEC first, particularly given the framing of the post is “I want to see the numbers because I’m concerned” as opposed to just curiosity?
I’m not sure why the burden wouldn’t fall on people making the distribution of funds? (Incidentally, I’m using this to mean that the funders could also hire external consultancies etc. to produce this.)
But, more to the point, I wrote this really hoping that both organisations would say “sure, here it is” and we could go from there. That might really have helped bring people together. (NB: I realise FTX haven’t engaged with this yet.)
In many ways, if the outcome is that there isn’t a clear/shared/approved expected value rationale being used internally to guide a given set of spending, that seems to validate some of the concerns that were expressed at EAG.
I think what I’m getting at is that burden of proof is generally an unhelpful framing, and an action that you could take that might be helpful is communicating your model that makes you sceptical of their spending.
Hiring consultancies to do this seems like it’s not going to go well unless it’s rethink priorities or they have lot of context and on the margin I think it’s reasonable for CEA to say no, they have better things to do.
I feel confused about the following but I think that as someone that runs an EA org you could easily have reached out directly to CEA/FTX to ask this question (maybe you did, if so apologies) and this action seems kind of like outing them more than being curious. I’m not necessarily against this (in fact I think this is helpful in lots of ways) but many forum users seen to not like these kinds of adversarial actions.
Like you, I’m fairly relaxed about asking people publicly to be transparent. Specifically in this context, though, someone from FTX said they would be open to doing this if the idea was popular, which prompted the post.
As a sidenote, I think also that MEL consultancies are adept at understanding context quickly and would be a good option (or something that EA could found itself—see Rossa’s comment). My wife is an MEL consultant, which informs my view of this. But that’s not to say they are necessarily the best option.
I as an individual would endorse someone hiring an MEL consultant to do this for the information value and would also bet on this not providing much value due to the analysis being poor at $100.
Terms to be worked out of course, but if someone was interested in hiring the low context consultant, I’d be interested in working out the terms.
Oh right, I didn’t pick up on the ftx said they’d like to see if this was popular thing. This resolves part of this for me (at least on the ftx as opposed to the CEA side).
Broken into a different comment so people can vote more clearly
I think that there is likely different epistemic standards between cause areas such that this is a pretty complicated question and people underpreciate how much of a challenge this is for the EA movement.
I think it makes sense to have the burden of proof mostly on the funders given that they presumably have more info about all their activities, plus having the burden set this way has instrumental benefits of encouraging transparency which could lead to useful critiques, and extra reputation-related incentives to use good reasoning and do a good job of judging what grants do and do not meet a cost-effectiveness bar.