I agree with other comments that the 80k article is the place to go.
But I also want to specifically praise and thank the original poster for (1) noticing an important seeming empirical claim being bandied around (2) noticing that the evidence being used seemed insufficient (3) sharing that potentially important discovery.
(For what it’s worth, before the 80k article, I also worried that people in the EA community were excessively confident in similar claims.)
(Ironically, I suppose the title—“We don’t have evidence that the best charities are over 1000x more cost effective than the average”—is also an overly confident claim, where a question might have been better, unless the original poster had carried out an exhaustive search for relevant evidence)
Thanks for the first comment and for this note! I hadn’t seen the 80k article, which would have been a useful document to feed in. But regardless I think the strength of the title matched the confidence of my belief (perhaps 98%)
I agree with other comments that the 80k article is the place to go.
But I also want to specifically praise and thank the original poster for (1) noticing an important seeming empirical claim being bandied around (2) noticing that the evidence being used seemed insufficient (3) sharing that potentially important discovery.
(For what it’s worth, before the 80k article, I also worried that people in the EA community were excessively confident in similar claims.)
Also, even if charities differ significantly on a specific, narrow metric, they may differ less substantially in terms of various indirect and knock on effects (which also matter). See https://reducing-suffering.org/why-charities-dont-differ-astronomically-in-cost-effectiveness/
(Ironically, I suppose the title—“We don’t have evidence that the best charities are over 1000x more cost effective than the average”—is also an overly confident claim, where a question might have been better, unless the original poster had carried out an exhaustive search for relevant evidence)
Thanks for the first comment and for this note! I hadn’t seen the 80k article, which would have been a useful document to feed in. But regardless I think the strength of the title matched the confidence of my belief (perhaps 98%)