I remain unconvinced by the suggestion that the benefits of the proposal would outweigh its costs.
Some thoughts, in no particular order
1. “So the 10% figure is not exactly arbitrary. It is chosen for a specific set of practical reasons—having brand recognition, being a nice round number, and being used by religious groups.”
In the comment you refer to, I was arguing that you misunderstood criticisms that target the % of donation EA requires. Specifically, any % is arbitrary on normative grounds: if you have a duty of beneficence towards the global poor, it is unclear why it would discharge at 10%, 12%, 18%, 90% and so on. There are indeed practical reasons to choose 10% over others, but they do not solve the normative problem. Normatively, EA chooses an arbitrary number. Scott Alexander has a decent discussion of this point here: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/19/nobody-is-perfect-everything-is-commensurable/
2. If the 10% community standard is all that’s preventing a subset of current pledgers from redirecting 20% of their annual giving to the opera instead of GiveWell, are we really pleased that the 10% community standard is having that effect?”
I do not currently believe the amount of donors that you would sway by offering them the opportunity to donate X% to Givewell and Y% to other charities is large. Notably, this is already possible with the current pledge: you offer some sort of official badge of approval for the Y%.
3. And our critics most often criticize our donation standards as preventing them from donating to secular causes, such as alma maters, political movements, the arts, and so on. Showing them that there is a way to include these interests in their giving, while still saving lives in a way that can be demonstrated with cost-benefit analysis in the manner of Effective Altruism seems to be a promising strategy to me.
Somewhat more meta: I think you fundamentally misunderstand the nature of most criticism levied at the EA. I think most individuals are not criticizing that they won’t be allowed to donate to anything else. Rather, they criticize that EA focuses on specific charities/careers/volunteering over others. For example, they disagree that a banker doing earning to give does more good than a social worker (an example that was central in your last post). Or they disagree that EA says Malaria is more efficient than e.g. the local political fundraiser because the latter provides benefits that are hard to quantify, yet huge. I take it to not be typical that someone thinks “EA is correct in their appraisal, yet I want to have their approval to donate 2% to something that is not effective”. Your proposal is orthogonal to the concerns of critics of EA: you offer them approval to donate to a cause that is explicitly second-rate in the ranking of donations of the pledge. You also don’t offer a reason for EA to believe these donations will do most good outside of EA being able to trick more people into doing a pledge, or the public looking more favorably upon us. This strikes me as a transparent move that will likely backfire significantly.
I’m happy to continue this conversation, but I think a more direct conversation may be more productive than continuing via Forum-Post & Comments. If you want to schedule a zoom call, please reach out!
Thanks for your feedback! Researching and writing up my posts takes enough time that adding in individual zoom calls on top would be tough—I work full time. Maybe at some point?
I see two strains of EA criticism. The one you point out comes from EA’s ideological opponents. That doesn’t mean they are bad, wrong, or that their lives revolve around some sort of other political activism. It means that they have decided on a different organizing ideology for their worldview that generates conclusions incompatible with EA’s way of looking at a variety of questions.
I don’t think it’s productive to try and persuade this group of people.
By contrast, I think a large number of people who are potential donors exist who can basically get behind EA ideas, but who would raise concerns along the lines that the 2%/8% pledge idea is meant to address. Here, the barrier isn’t an organized ideology incompatible with EA. It’s the way we organize our conversations with the public and the background perceptions that people have of EA before they encounter our people, books, websites and donation platforms, and before they’ve put more than a few seconds of thought into our ideas.
The reason I am carrying out this series of posts is partly because I think my proposal is genuinely useful and something we should be experimenting with. But it’s also because I think EA can benefit from kicking the tires of its central ideas. It helps us maintain a culture of open-mindedness, and it also exposes where an apparent community consensus and cogent framing of an issue in fact needs work. I continue to think this is the case in this area.
I remain unconvinced by the suggestion that the benefits of the proposal would outweigh its costs.
Some thoughts, in no particular order
In the comment you refer to, I was arguing that you misunderstood criticisms that target the % of donation EA requires. Specifically, any % is arbitrary on normative grounds: if you have a duty of beneficence towards the global poor, it is unclear why it would discharge at 10%, 12%, 18%, 90% and so on. There are indeed practical reasons to choose 10% over others, but they do not solve the normative problem. Normatively, EA chooses an arbitrary number. Scott Alexander has a decent discussion of this point here: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/19/nobody-is-perfect-everything-is-commensurable/
I do not currently believe the amount of donors that you would sway by offering them the opportunity to donate X% to Givewell and Y% to other charities is large. Notably, this is already possible with the current pledge: you offer some sort of official badge of approval for the Y%.
Somewhat more meta: I think you fundamentally misunderstand the nature of most criticism levied at the EA. I think most individuals are not criticizing that they won’t be allowed to donate to anything else. Rather, they criticize that EA focuses on specific charities/careers/volunteering over others. For example, they disagree that a banker doing earning to give does more good than a social worker (an example that was central in your last post). Or they disagree that EA says Malaria is more efficient than e.g. the local political fundraiser because the latter provides benefits that are hard to quantify, yet huge. I take it to not be typical that someone thinks “EA is correct in their appraisal, yet I want to have their approval to donate 2% to something that is not effective”. Your proposal is orthogonal to the concerns of critics of EA: you offer them approval to donate to a cause that is explicitly second-rate in the ranking of donations of the pledge. You also don’t offer a reason for EA to believe these donations will do most good outside of EA being able to trick more people into doing a pledge, or the public looking more favorably upon us. This strikes me as a transparent move that will likely backfire significantly.
I’m happy to continue this conversation, but I think a more direct conversation may be more productive than continuing via Forum-Post & Comments. If you want to schedule a zoom call, please reach out!
Hi mhendric,
Thanks for your feedback! Researching and writing up my posts takes enough time that adding in individual zoom calls on top would be tough—I work full time. Maybe at some point?
I see two strains of EA criticism. The one you point out comes from EA’s ideological opponents. That doesn’t mean they are bad, wrong, or that their lives revolve around some sort of other political activism. It means that they have decided on a different organizing ideology for their worldview that generates conclusions incompatible with EA’s way of looking at a variety of questions.
I don’t think it’s productive to try and persuade this group of people.
By contrast, I think a large number of people who are potential donors exist who can basically get behind EA ideas, but who would raise concerns along the lines that the 2%/8% pledge idea is meant to address. Here, the barrier isn’t an organized ideology incompatible with EA. It’s the way we organize our conversations with the public and the background perceptions that people have of EA before they encounter our people, books, websites and donation platforms, and before they’ve put more than a few seconds of thought into our ideas.
The reason I am carrying out this series of posts is partly because I think my proposal is genuinely useful and something we should be experimenting with. But it’s also because I think EA can benefit from kicking the tires of its central ideas. It helps us maintain a culture of open-mindedness, and it also exposes where an apparent community consensus and cogent framing of an issue in fact needs work. I continue to think this is the case in this area.