Thanks for your kind words and for the heads up about these other initiatives—I’ll look into them.
I’m interested in the idea of who makes a “good decision maker”. I think the question of what causes are worth donating towards is in large part a value judgement which your average citizen is just as well-equipped to make as anyone else. Particularly if they’re able to draw on outside expertise, which I intend on providing to them.
It’s possible that at the end of the process the participants will say that they don’t really feel like they added much value and/or it was a burdensome responsibility, in which case that’ll be an argument in favour of leaving philanthropic decision-making in the hands of experts. However, if they feel like it is an empowering experience and/or it reaches a good outcome, it may inspire other people in my position to go in a similar direction.
Very interesting. It seems we can split the giving decision into two components:
Empirical things about the world
Value judgements, which the average citizen is as well-equipped to make as anyone else
Are you aiming for the average citizens whom you engage with to only provide input on the second, but not on the first?
In case it’s helpful, we at SoGive have been thinking about this quite a bit.
I run SoGive which does research on charity impact and supports major donors.
We ran a moral weights exercise 2 years ago which involved survey of 500 members of the public and number of qualitative surveys with donors. We’re currently in the process of revisiting this work. If you would like to have a chat, feel free to ping me via the EA Forum or on sanjay@sogive.org
Thanks for your kind words and for the heads up about these other initiatives—I’ll look into them.
I’m interested in the idea of who makes a “good decision maker”. I think the question of what causes are worth donating towards is in large part a value judgement which your average citizen is just as well-equipped to make as anyone else. Particularly if they’re able to draw on outside expertise, which I intend on providing to them.
It’s possible that at the end of the process the participants will say that they don’t really feel like they added much value and/or it was a burdensome responsibility, in which case that’ll be an argument in favour of leaving philanthropic decision-making in the hands of experts. However, if they feel like it is an empowering experience and/or it reaches a good outcome, it may inspire other people in my position to go in a similar direction.
Very interesting. It seems we can split the giving decision into two components:
Empirical things about the world
Value judgements, which the average citizen is as well-equipped to make as anyone else
Are you aiming for the average citizens whom you engage with to only provide input on the second, but not on the first?
In case it’s helpful, we at SoGive have been thinking about this quite a bit.
I run SoGive which does research on charity impact and supports major donors.
We ran a moral weights exercise 2 years ago which involved survey of 500 members of the public and number of qualitative surveys with donors. We’re currently in the process of revisiting this work. If you would like to have a chat, feel free to ping me via the EA Forum or on sanjay@sogive.org