I’m not sure I agree with you that I find it equally worrying as moving so fast that we break too many things, but it’s a good point to raise. On a practical level, I partly wrote this because FTX is likely to have a lull after their first grant round where they could invest in transparency.
I also think a concern is what seems to be such an enormous double standard. The argument above could easily be used to justify spending aggressively in global health or animal welfare (where, notably, we have already done a serious, serious amount of research and found amazing donation options; and, as you point out, the need is acute and immediate). Instead, it seems like it might be ‘don’t spend money on anything below 5x GiveDirectly’ in one area, and the spaghetti-wall approach in another.
Out of interest, did you read the post as emotional? I was aiming for brevity and directness but didn’t/don’t feel emotional about it. Kind of the opposite, actually—I feel like this could help to make us more factually aligned and less driven by emotional reactions to things that might seem like ‘boondoggles’.
Yeah personally speaking, I don’t have very developed views on when to go with Spaghetti-wall vs RCT, so feel free to ignore the following which is more of a personal story. I’d guess there’s a bunch of ‘Giving Now vs Giving Later’ content lying around that’s much more relevant.
I think I used to be a lot more RCT because:
I was first motivated to take cost-effectiveness research seriously after hearing the Giving What We Can framing of “this data already exists, it’s just that it’s aimed at the health departments of LMICs rather than philanthropists”—that’s some mad low-hanging fruit right there (OTOH I seem to remember a bunch of friends wrestling with whether to fund Animal Charity Evaluators or ACE’s current best guesses—was existing cost-effectiveness research enough to go on yet?)
I was basically a student trying to change the world with a bunch of other students—surely the grown-ups mostly know what they’re doing and I should only expect to have better heuristics if there’s a ton of evidence behind them
My personality is very risk-averse
Over time, however:
I became more longtermist and there’s no GiveWell for longtermism
We grew up, and basically the more I saw of the rest of the world the less faith I had in people generally being sensible and altruistic and having their **** together
I recognised how much of my aversion to Spaghetti-wall is a personality thing [edit: maybe writing my undergrad dissertation on risk aversion in ethics made me acknowledge this more fully :P]
| Out of interest, did you read the post as emotional? I was aiming for brevity and directness
Ah, that might be it. I was reading the demanding/requesting tone (“show us your numbers!”, “could FTX and CEA please publish” and “If this is too time-consuming...hire some staff” vs “Here’s an idea/proposal”) as emotional, but I can see how you were just going for brevity/directness, which I generally endorse (and have empathy for emotional FWIW, but generally don’t feel like I should endorse as such).
I like this.
I’m not sure I agree with you that I find it equally worrying as moving so fast that we break too many things, but it’s a good point to raise. On a practical level, I partly wrote this because FTX is likely to have a lull after their first grant round where they could invest in transparency.
I also think a concern is what seems to be such an enormous double standard. The argument above could easily be used to justify spending aggressively in global health or animal welfare (where, notably, we have already done a serious, serious amount of research and found amazing donation options; and, as you point out, the need is acute and immediate). Instead, it seems like it might be ‘don’t spend money on anything below 5x GiveDirectly’ in one area, and the spaghetti-wall approach in another.
Out of interest, did you read the post as emotional? I was aiming for brevity and directness but didn’t/don’t feel emotional about it. Kind of the opposite, actually—I feel like this could help to make us more factually aligned and less driven by emotional reactions to things that might seem like ‘boondoggles’.
Yeah personally speaking, I don’t have very developed views on when to go with Spaghetti-wall vs RCT, so feel free to ignore the following which is more of a personal story. I’d guess there’s a bunch of ‘Giving Now vs Giving Later’ content lying around that’s much more relevant.
I think I used to be a lot more RCT because:
I was first motivated to take cost-effectiveness research seriously after hearing the Giving What We Can framing of “this data already exists, it’s just that it’s aimed at the health departments of LMICs rather than philanthropists”—that’s some mad low-hanging fruit right there (OTOH I seem to remember a bunch of friends wrestling with whether to fund Animal Charity Evaluators or ACE’s current best guesses—was existing cost-effectiveness research enough to go on yet?)
I was basically a student trying to change the world with a bunch of other students—surely the grown-ups mostly know what they’re doing and I should only expect to have better heuristics if there’s a ton of evidence behind them
My personality is very risk-averse
Over time, however:
I became more longtermist and there’s no GiveWell for longtermism
We grew up, and basically the more I saw of the rest of the world the less faith I had in people generally being sensible and altruistic and having their **** together
I recognised how much of my aversion to Spaghetti-wall is a personality thing [edit: maybe writing my undergrad dissertation on risk aversion in ethics made me acknowledge this more fully :P]
| Out of interest, did you read the post as emotional? I was aiming for brevity and directness
Ah, that might be it. I was reading the demanding/requesting tone (“show us your numbers!”, “could FTX and CEA please publish” and “If this is too time-consuming...hire some staff” vs “Here’s an idea/proposal”) as emotional, but I can see how you were just going for brevity/directness, which I generally endorse (and have empathy for emotional FWIW, but generally don’t feel like I should endorse as such).