We put this question to Alexander Berger in our recent podcast. Best to engage with his response directly, but the very short version of his response was that they do expect to be able to find some opportunities that are even more leveraged than AMF within policy (AMF is 20x leveraged on cash transfers, but maybe 100x or more is possible), and that’s why they’re currently hiring for someone to work on each of SE Asian air quality advocacy and advocacy for more effective international aid, and also people to look for other areas like this. Though, my impression is that Alexander doesn’t expect to be able to find $1bn per year of opportunities like this, so they also need to fund more scalable things like AMF.
Hello, yes this was in part a response to the arguments there where he suggested that policy is in the same ballpark as GiveWell top charities, which I don’t think can be true given other things he says.
“Yeah, I think that’s totally right. And I think, again, if you had more of a dominance argument, where it’s like, look, the returns to the policy are just always going to outweigh the returns to evidence-based aid, then I think you would end up with more back and forth and debate between them. But when you see the arguments for cost effectiveness actually ending up in the same ballpark, the same universe, it’s just like, cool, we can all get along. People are going to sort into buckets that appeal to them, or styles that work for them, or interventions that they’re more personally excited about. I think that’s totally healthy. And then when some of them think, actually, the expected value-type argument seems to lead you to think one of these is going to just totally destroy the other, that’s where I think you get a little bit more friction and tension and debate sometimes.”
Because there is little public discussion about what happens in the near-termist area, it is difficult to know why certain decisions are taken. I think it would be better for decisions that affect millions of dollars to be made with more public discussion and scrutiny.
We put this question to Alexander Berger in our recent podcast. Best to engage with his response directly, but the very short version of his response was that they do expect to be able to find some opportunities that are even more leveraged than AMF within policy (AMF is 20x leveraged on cash transfers, but maybe 100x or more is possible), and that’s why they’re currently hiring for someone to work on each of SE Asian air quality advocacy and advocacy for more effective international aid, and also people to look for other areas like this. Though, my impression is that Alexander doesn’t expect to be able to find $1bn per year of opportunities like this, so they also need to fund more scalable things like AMF.
Hello, yes this was in part a response to the arguments there where he suggested that policy is in the same ballpark as GiveWell top charities, which I don’t think can be true given other things he says.
“Yeah, I think that’s totally right. And I think, again, if you had more of a dominance argument, where it’s like, look, the returns to the policy are just always going to outweigh the returns to evidence-based aid, then I think you would end up with more back and forth and debate between them. But when you see the arguments for cost effectiveness actually ending up in the same ballpark, the same universe, it’s just like, cool, we can all get along. People are going to sort into buckets that appeal to them, or styles that work for them, or interventions that they’re more personally excited about. I think that’s totally healthy. And then when some of them think, actually, the expected value-type argument seems to lead you to think one of these is going to just totally destroy the other, that’s where I think you get a little bit more friction and tension and debate sometimes.”
Because there is little public discussion about what happens in the near-termist area, it is difficult to know why certain decisions are taken. I think it would be better for decisions that affect millions of dollars to be made with more public discussion and scrutiny.