I’m a bit unsure about whether CFAR should be classed as “EA meta”. You could see it as a whole other cause which is improving decision making. Only part of what it’s doing is trying to improve the EA movement.
Also note that we’re undercounting the amount of direct work being influenced if we just look at this year’s direct charity budget.
e.g. GPP (part of CEA) mainly advises policy makers rather than helping the direct charities.
e.g.2. 80k helps people choose careers which normally aren’t at direct charities.
e.g.3. Some of GiveWell’s research will likely be used by people outside of those working at direct charities.
e.g.4. GWWC is also raising money that will be donated in the future.
Did you also include all of Open Phil’s grants in your direct charity estimate? You should do that, or only include the proportion of GiveWell’s funding that’s spent on “traditional GiveWell”.
I think the EA survey likely has a strong selection bias in favor of those who prefer meta. There’s lots of random GiveWell and GWWC donors who’ll never fill that out.
I was also hesitant about CFAR, although for a slightly different reason—around half its revenue is from workshops, which looks more like people purchasing a service than altruism as such.
Good point regarding GPP: policy work is another of those grey areas between meta and non-meta.
Not sure about 80K: their list of career changes mostly looks like earning to give and working at EA orgs—I don’t see big additional classes of “direct work” being influenced. It’s possible people reading the website are changing their career plans in entirely different directions, but I have my doubts.
Not sure what you mean by e.g.3.
I totally get the point regarding GWWC and future earnings, but I’m not sure how to account for it. GWWC do a plausible-looking analysis that suggests expected future donations are worth 10x total donations to date. But I’m not sure that we can “borrow from the future” in this way when doing metaness estimates, and if we do I think we’d need a much sharper future discounting function to account for exponential growth of the movement.
Good point regarding OPP: My direct charity estimate only included the top recommended charities by GW,GWWC and ACE. The OPP grants come to an additional $7.8m in 2014 (“additional” because it’s not direct charities I’ve already considered and isn’t meta either).
Anyway, taking all this into consideration I get $3.2m meta, $62m non-meta for a ratio of 5%. (Plus $2.1 million in “grey area”). So we’re getting close to agreement!
I was also hesitant about CFAR … Good point regarding GPP …. Not sure about 80K
Its meta in Hurford’s sense, which is different from Todd’s—it’s indirect, and has a chain of causality to impact that has extra points of failure. That’s what many of Hurford’s arguments spoke to. GPP and 80K also count as meta by this definition.
Anyway, taking all this into consideration I get $3.2m meta, $62m non-meta for a ratio of 5%. (Plus $2.1 million in “grey area”)
Are you counting donations from people who aren’t EAs, or are only relatively loosely so? They can correct me if I’m wrong but Hurford didn’t seem concerned about those.
Regarding the survey, do you feel that it’s biased specifically towards those who prefer meta, or just those who identify as EA?
I don’t know about the Oxford line, but the general feeling where I am and among international EA’s I’ve talked to is that the survey tells us more about the people who are more engaged in the international community, identify more as EA’s and participate online, are more dedicated, etc. Most other sources confirm that these people _do_ particularly favour meta, that many came from the large old LessWrong community, that they’re heavily consequentialist, etc.
Naturally finding out about and establishing contact with as many other people as possible would also be valuable, including less engaged random GWWC and even GW donors. I don’t know about GWWC Central, but my local chapter plans to help get next survey to as many people as possible.
Some of the money going into the meta orgs comes from non-EAs too.
With e.g.3 I meant that GiveWell is also influencing the nonprofit sector beyond just the recommended charities. Arguably you could include that as part of the direct charity estimate.
With 80k, there’s also a bunch of career changes (~20-30% of the total) that are towards building career capital (which has a similar problem to accumulating pledged donations).
Nice data.
I’m a bit unsure about whether CFAR should be classed as “EA meta”. You could see it as a whole other cause which is improving decision making. Only part of what it’s doing is trying to improve the EA movement.
Also note that we’re undercounting the amount of direct work being influenced if we just look at this year’s direct charity budget. e.g. GPP (part of CEA) mainly advises policy makers rather than helping the direct charities. e.g.2. 80k helps people choose careers which normally aren’t at direct charities. e.g.3. Some of GiveWell’s research will likely be used by people outside of those working at direct charities. e.g.4. GWWC is also raising money that will be donated in the future.
Did you also include all of Open Phil’s grants in your direct charity estimate? You should do that, or only include the proportion of GiveWell’s funding that’s spent on “traditional GiveWell”.
I think the EA survey likely has a strong selection bias in favor of those who prefer meta. There’s lots of random GiveWell and GWWC donors who’ll never fill that out.
I was also hesitant about CFAR, although for a slightly different reason—around half its revenue is from workshops, which looks more like people purchasing a service than altruism as such.
Good point regarding GPP: policy work is another of those grey areas between meta and non-meta.
Not sure about 80K: their list of career changes mostly looks like earning to give and working at EA orgs—I don’t see big additional classes of “direct work” being influenced. It’s possible people reading the website are changing their career plans in entirely different directions, but I have my doubts.
Not sure what you mean by e.g.3.
I totally get the point regarding GWWC and future earnings, but I’m not sure how to account for it. GWWC do a plausible-looking analysis that suggests expected future donations are worth 10x total donations to date. But I’m not sure that we can “borrow from the future” in this way when doing metaness estimates, and if we do I think we’d need a much sharper future discounting function to account for exponential growth of the movement.
Good point regarding OPP: My direct charity estimate only included the top recommended charities by GW,GWWC and ACE. The OPP grants come to an additional $7.8m in 2014 (“additional” because it’s not direct charities I’ve already considered and isn’t meta either).
Anyway, taking all this into consideration I get $3.2m meta, $62m non-meta for a ratio of 5%. (Plus $2.1 million in “grey area”). So we’re getting close to agreement!
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PMw_q7vZ0oQgPbY3vrie3Xb0n_wifCidYzpxSDCTbPE/edit#gid=608881848
Some other caveats:
It doesn’t measure non-financial contributions, such as running local chapters or volunteering for EA orgs.
Some of the money going to direct charities comes from people with no connection whatsoever to the EA movement (i.e. not influenced by GiveWell etc.)
Regarding the survey, do you feel that it’s biased specifically towards those who prefer meta, or just those who identify as EA?
Its meta in Hurford’s sense, which is different from Todd’s—it’s indirect, and has a chain of causality to impact that has extra points of failure. That’s what many of Hurford’s arguments spoke to. GPP and 80K also count as meta by this definition.
Are you counting donations from people who aren’t EAs, or are only relatively loosely so? They can correct me if I’m wrong but Hurford didn’t seem concerned about those.
I don’t know about the Oxford line, but the general feeling where I am and among international EA’s I’ve talked to is that the survey tells us more about the people who are more engaged in the international community, identify more as EA’s and participate online, are more dedicated, etc. Most other sources confirm that these people _do_ particularly favour meta, that many came from the large old LessWrong community, that they’re heavily consequentialist, etc.
Naturally finding out about and establishing contact with as many other people as possible would also be valuable, including less engaged random GWWC and even GW donors. I don’t know about GWWC Central, but my local chapter plans to help get next survey to as many people as possible.
Yes. Looking at the survey data was an attempt to deal with this.
On the survey, those who prefer meta, I guess.
Some of the money going into the meta orgs comes from non-EAs too.
With e.g.3 I meant that GiveWell is also influencing the nonprofit sector beyond just the recommended charities. Arguably you could include that as part of the direct charity estimate.
With 80k, there’s also a bunch of career changes (~20-30% of the total) that are towards building career capital (which has a similar problem to accumulating pledged donations).