However, I still doubt my conclusion because on the meta level it seems like an obvious thing that would be surprising if no one at GiveWell had ever thought of doing, which is evidence I am missing something important.
A thing that you might be missing is that GiveWell is only assigning limited manpower to its CEAs. This means that I think that they may not have noticed relatively subtle issues like this—clear when you notice them, but perhaps hard to notice unprompted.
Thanks. I suppose I was thinking that the CEAs are one of the core products GiveWell creates and a lot of effort has gone into them. But yes, once I have thought of something it probably seems more obvious than it is.
Nice!
A thing that you might be missing is that GiveWell is only assigning limited manpower to its CEAs. This means that I think that they may not have noticed relatively subtle issues like this—clear when you notice them, but perhaps hard to notice unprompted.
Thanks. I suppose I was thinking that the CEAs are one of the core products GiveWell creates and a lot of effort has gone into them. But yes, once I have thought of something it probably seems more obvious than it is.
With limited manpower, GiveWell also has to prioritize which CEA improvements to make—and added complexity can moreover increase the risk of errors.